A Los Angeles woman is eating at a cafe called Great White when she notices that all the corner tables are occupied by Asian customers. She wants to know if this is intentional.
TikTok user Cassidy (@juminjuice) posted a video about her suspicions on Sep. 28. “I’m at Great White, and I don’t know if it’s just me, but they put all Asians in one corner,” she says in the video. “And it’s all white people—everybody’s white in the main seating area. They really put all Asians in one corner.”
To demonstrate her point, Cassidy shows viewers each corner of the restaurant, where indeed people of Asian descent are sitting. Cassidy sees the trend continue at a nearby table.
“Am I tripping or are they being racist?” she says to close the video, which has since amassed 1.8 million views.
Viewers React to the Great White Hypothesis
In the comments section of the video, viewers cracked plenty of jokes about the name of the Australian cafe and Cassidy’s observation.
“Not the name of this restaurant being the Great WHITE,” wrote one viewer.
A second person joked, “As a Mexican, do they put us in the kitchen??”
“Go to the restaurant and when they try to seat you in the corner, tell them you wanna sit elsewhere and get their reaction,” suggested a third person.
Someone else said, “I looked up their Yelp reviews and they have one from a year ago saying the same thing.”
Great White Yelp Reviews
Great White’s Yelp page is currently restricted due to an influx of comments. A review of posts from before this incident reveal numerous instances of complaints about inattentive or downright poor service. One review in particular seems to echo the spirit of Cassidy’s post.
In the review, dated Oct. 16, 2022, a customer described their “pretty negative” experience at the restaurant. The woman identifies herself as a person of color (POC) and claims her party waited more than 10 minutes after being seated to be greeted by a server.
“I didn’t think too much of this initially, but after reading some of the negative Yelp reviews about discrimination against POC, it was a bit tough to ignore that we, as people of color, were ignored, while the other table sat after us, white, were served almost immediately,” she wrote.
It’s not clear which Yelp reviews the customer is referring to in this post.
The Owners of Great White Respond
The owners of Great White, Sam Trude and Sam Cooper, vehemently denied the allegations in multiple press statements. Trude told Eater that the cafe doesn’t discriminate based on race in its seating procedure. However, the outlet heard a different tale from former staffers. Some defended the culture while others said Cassidy’s claim has merit.
All Hip Hop contacted Cassidy and Great White via email for comment on the situation.
@juminjuice No but fr tho.. #greatwhite #la #asians #asian #racism ♬ original sound – cassidy