Just sounds like savvy marketing. Casinos are very tuned in to what makes them money. If they notice that a large percentage of their clients are Asian, they will cater to their desires. They try to make people fell welcome so the people will spend money there. So Asians who feel they were catered to by the casino spread the word that the particular casino was very accomodating and the casino does what it can to get these players to its property.
The casino will send a plane to get you if they think you will gamble enough, you don’t need to meet any demographic except “extremely wealthy gambler”. They’ll send a limo to the airport to pick you up if you fly in commercial if you meet the demographic “wealthy gambler”. Sending a bus to pick up a load of “enthusiastic gamblers who might not be extremely wealthy individually, but as a group represent a chance to rake in some profit for the company” is not such a stretch. The Asians fit the demographic. If Blacks from South Central were noticed by the casino to be “enthusiastic gamblers who might not be extremely wealthy individually, but as a group represent a chance to rake in some profit for the company”, there would be buses running there.
My guess is that the casinos have not yet noticed such a trend, so it’s not a lucrative marketing strategy that they fell will make a profit for the company.
It’s not the casinos preying on Asians, it’s the casinos noticing that a certain segment of the players were Asian and catering to this.
FWIW (anecdote warning), we were checking out of a casino one day and a LOT of Asians were coming in. Buses full, with luggage. My curiosity got the best of me and I found a guy who spoke English and asked him what the story was. They were from Taiwan and had chartered an entire jet to fly to Vegas to gamble. Now that’s the kind of customer dedication that casinos thrive on, and this was in '96.
You charter a plane to come spend money at my joint, I’ll turn the TV to whatever channel you like.
The situation you mention regarding Asians and their favored treatment is not evidence of racism in Las Vegas. As the concensus on this thread states it is just good business. But walk through any casino in Las Vegas and count the number of black faces in front line positions vs. the number of Asians in those same positions and tell me that Las Vegas is not racist. Having worked there in several capacities I can tell you that casinos do not like having blacks in front line jobs. At one time I thought it was because Asians are docile and hard working and never consider organizing and I heard (no idea if it is true) that casinos get some kind of a tax break for hiring minorities, thus the concentration of Asians. My guess would be that is not true, Asians simply gravitate there because working there requires no great degree of education or acculturation and you can still make good money. However it is my opinion that blacks appear so infrequently because of actual bias.
While I wouldn’t call the neighborhoods low income, there are plenty of lower middle class neighborhoods nearby with dirt cheap buses running daily to Atlantic City from just about every bodega. The casinos certainly are encouraging people to gamble - it’s how they make their money. Casinos are pretty agnostic - anyone willing to lose money in them is welcome. It isn’t racist if a business notices that a customer segment likes their product and tries to woo more of that segment.
Usually people cry racism when an establishment is hostile to a particular race.
So now we’re trying to say that both excluding a race from an establishment is racist **and ** accomodating a race into an establishment is also racist.
As a regular in casinos, it’s an accurate stereotype. It’s amazing when you look around and see that fully 80% of the casino is Chinese. I think there’s a large aspect of luck in Chinese culture.
It is a popular stereotype that Chinese immigrants love to gamble. This stereotype is particularly prevalent in cities with large Asian immigrant populations. Having lived in Houston’s Chinatown I can say it was a common stereotype, and that there were indeed underground Chinese gambling operations here and there. Do Chinese like to gamble more than other people?, I don’t know. There are plenty of underground gambling dens operated and patronized by white people too. I think Chinese gambling in American cities draws attention to itself perhaps because some of the games are different than what Americans like to gamble on, at least in the past. Now that Chinese communities are becoming more integrated with American culture more and more Chinese are leaving the loft room lotteries to go to legal casinos to play keno, leaving the hidden coins game to go play roulette.