WASHINGTON — Pizza delivery can be a problem in certain parts of town. The folks in Tarpon Springs, Fla., know what I mean. They can't get a pizza delivered after dark to their town's predominantly black Union Academy neighborhood.
They also know it in the nation's capital, where the only pizza chain that delivered to all parts of town established the practice of having customers come to the curb to pick up their orders. One Washingtonian was so disgusted with that practice — it "humiliated" him and his black neighbors, he said — that he sued Domino's.
It used to be a problem in Norfolk, too. But let me get back to that.
People in all three places — and in unpublicized dozens of others, no doubt — spent a lot of time in earnest argument over whether the core problem is economics, personal safety or racism.
Jim Bell, the Washingtonian who sued, was sure it was racism. But the judge who heard the case ruled that Domino's practice was a matter of safety for the drivers (most of whom, in the particular instance, were black) and not of a case of unwarranted racial profiling.
In Tarpon Springs, former City Commissioner Glenn Davis thinks the matter is beyond serious doubt. "It's racism plain and simple," he said.
He said it knowing that a 62-year-old pizza delivery driver had been severely beaten and robbed during a delivery to Union Academy — knowing as well that Domino's was paying a $250,000 worker's compensation settlement in the case.
Back to Norfolk. There used to be a problem getting pizza delivered to certain places, including Bowling Green and Roberts Village public housing developments. But five Norfolk teenagers had a brainstorm. Instead of complaining about racism, or suing, or leading demonstrations, they took the problem as an opportunity. At first, they set themselves up as middlemen, picking up the pizzas from Pizza Hut and bringing them back to the red-lined neighborhoods. Later, they got a $4,000 loan from the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority and worked out a deal whereby they would purchase pizzas at wholesale from Pizza Hut and retail them to their
neighbors.
They named their business Pizza-Ria! and adopted as their slogan: "It's fresh! It's good! It's from the 'hood!"
The youngsters haven't been robbed, and the folks at the housing authority say teen crime is down, at least in part as result of Pizza-Ria!
It seems to me the lessons go far beyond pizza. What we have are three ways of looking at problems — none of them right or wrong, just different. It is true, as many claim, that the refusal of service based on appearance or zip code is, denials aside, a form of racial profiling. It punishes the innocent majority for the sins of the guilty few. Whether it involves pizzas or taxi drivers or jewelry store operators, it is, if not racism, at least classism with serious racial overtones.
It is also true that denial of service can reach a point where it becomes a violation of the law. If Americans sue for virtually every other infringement of rights, dashed expectation or personal embarrassment, why not sue for discrimination by stereotype?
The problem, though, is that most of us who complain about the stereotyping would think long and hard before we drove our taxicab on a late-night run to the "wrong" side of town.
I'm impressed by what the kids in Norfolk are doing because it stems not from any knee-jerk response but from independent analysis and a willingness to try another way. And they have turned an innate entrepreneurial drive that might have been perverted in drug-peddling into a legitimate and successful business enterprise — and maybe soon a string of enterprises.
They've long since paid off their loan, and now they've expanded their reach to include a bookstore, several cookie factories and another food operation. They're providing jobs and positive role models, and they're even making a little money.
Instead of protesting, name-calling and suing, they probed a negative situation and found a positive opportunity for (forgive me) a pizza the action.
William Raspberry's e-mail address is willrasp@washpost.com .