Quote:
Originally Posted by nfotiu
It is common in parts of the United States to call Black people Canadians. I was told it was code for white people to talk about Black people without getting in trouble.
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It's specifically used as a racist code-word in the US restaurant industry. Many servers don't want to wait on tables with black customers because they are racially stereotyped as being bad tippers. They'd rather be assigned to a table of white people, and white men in particular, because they're stereotyped as being better tippers. Canadians are also perceived as being poor tippers because the standard Canadian tip (15-18%) is less than the standard American tip (20-25%), and many Canadian travelers are unaware of this cultural difference. Wait staff can't come out and say that they don't want to serve black customers, so they'll describe the table as being a group of "Canadians" instead. It's understood in the industry what they
really mean.