Believe me, that’s about lack of job skills, lack of job applications, and a feeling that a kitchen job is beneath their dignity, not about their color. The reason Mexicans, Colombians and Guatemalans (and even Brazilians, many of whom are black) have done so well in the NYC kitchen world is that they will work at anything, they show up for work, don’t have attitude, and actually want to learn and get ahead. I have seen them go from being the busboy to the manager in about 5 years.
Also, all the protesters in this looked to me to be quite well dressed, probably grad students or government or union employees. If they had wanted to work in the restaurant or dine there, they could have. But the work would be too hard, and as for dining...probably a lot of them actually eat at these restaurants from time to time, which is how they knew how to pick them.
Now that you mention it, they do look like students.
As for being “too good” for kitchen jobs, many restaurant chains ONLY hire from within, preferring to have managers totally familiar with even the lowliest floor scrubbing and potato peeling problems. Managerial jobs in big restaurants like Applebee’s pay very well.
My dad, an orphan, started work in the kitchen of a little restaurant at age 17. Grew with the company as it expanded and ended up as president of a national restaurant chain. He would have had ZERO tolerance for bad behavior by creeps like these. OTOH, he always knew everyone at City Hall.
Which makes me wonder why these particular restaurants were targeted. Were they not “contributing” to City Hall coffers? As I recall, they were called “emergency funds” for city workers. Then, when city workers went on strike, miraculously the streets were cleaned, garbage collected, show removed in front of cooperating businesses.
Lots of layers in this little outburst in NYC.