In the comments on ABL’s post yesterday, a lot of people were trying to explain her experience at her friend’s DC apartment as the work of jackasses, not bigots. That’s an interesting game, but really, it’s ultimately fruitless. I know, because I used to play it.
My business partner is black, and we traveled together for business a fair amount a few years ago. He was often the only black person in the room, or in the hotel lobby. Sometimes, we were treated poorly. After each unpleasant interaction, I often wondered if we encountered a run-of-the-mill jackass, or if we had gotten worse than average treatment because the desk clerk or receptionist was uncomfortable dealing with a black man.
Most of the time I couldn’t really tell. People are generally fairly subtle about the hate, fear or whatever drives them to treat black people poorly. Some people are equal-opportunity jerks, so their behavior had more to do with the fight they had with the wife last night than with the color of my friend’s skin.
Even so, I’m pretty sure we got some shitty treatment based mainly on skin color. It’s also true that corporate America is still a sea of white faces with a few, rare dots of color.
So, yeah, this shit does happen every day. I was only a spectator, but even watching it got pretty fucking tiring after a while.
debit
Maybe they just thought your partner was a prostitute.
That was sarcasm, in case it wasn’t clear.
Angela
Amazing how the number of jackasses in the room increases exponentially to the number of people of color in the room.
aimai
The line between jackass and bigot isn’t one between two orders of people-that’s the mistake people make when they try to excuse one kind of action as “really” being another. A jackass is a bigot who sees a chance to let his inner asshole out. Its probably perfectly true that under other circumstances–no black people involved–he or she might be perfectly “nice.” Or it could even be true that absent certain triggers he or she might be “nice” when a particular black person was involved (famous sports star or perhaps they are the Republicans who also want President Obama’s autograph while trying to do him down politically). But a bigot jackass who acts out in historically racially charged settings *and who doesn’t do so at other times* is pretty definitionally a bigot *as well as a jackass.* Or perhaps I mean they are a bigot all the time and a jackass only when the situation allows.
aimai
Corner Stone
Wait a second. Are we talking about the apartment issue, or the hotel issue? They were two different incidents.
The hotel incident was disgraceful. But if you’re waking me up at midnight I don’t give a shit if you’re skin color is plaid or pasty Northern European. I’m going to be telling you to get off my lawn.
hilzoy
Back when I was a kid, I had a very hard time remembering to do all my homework, and I used to make up all manner of excuses to my parents about why I had somehow not been able to turn it in. I recall my Dad looking at me very earnestly and saying: hilzoy, every day this week you’ve told me a different story about how some improbable catastrophe left you really, truly unable to turn in your homework. For all I know, the one you told today is true. But it seems very unlikely to me that all of these somewhat implausible stories are true, and as punishment for whichever story is not true, you will have to stay in your room today until you finish all your homework.
That was very frustrating to eight year old me: all those excellent lies, each harder to disprove than the last, and all for nothing. But it’s a good principle, I think: what matters is not which story was false, or which person is not just a jerk but a racist (unless you’re filing a lawsuit or something); it’s knowing that the odds are vanishingly small that whenever you travel with your African-American friend, you encounter the jerks of the world by coincidence.
Roger Moore
I’m not sure if bigot vs. jackass is a really meaningful distinction. One of the most dangerous ideas is that racism only covers the kind of people who want to bring back Jim Crow. Instead, a lot of racists are otherwise unremarkable people who act like jackasses any time they have to interact with the object of their prejudice. That kind of covert racism is a lot easier to conceal, even from yourself.
WyldPirate
I don’t have a problem with the fact that woman at the hotel may have been “profiled” because she was black. She most likely was. However, as a private business, that hotel had and has the right to set that sort of policy (evicting non-guests). Those sorts of policies are usually set based due to previous problems.
What I do have a problem with is if you’re implying that the people that complained about the noise in the condos ABLwas staying at did so because she was black.
I’ve you have a balcony full of liquored up folks late at night making a lot of noise, the neighbors have the right to complain no matter if the drunks are purple, polka-dotted or chartreuse.
Mary
@Angela:
I’m pretty sure the way that this sentence came out was not the way you intended it to.
@Corner Stone:
Sure, but then would you hold an entire community meeting about that one time that someone woke you up at midnight on a Saturday? Or would you just yell, go back to sleep, and then forget about it a day or two later?
gnomedad
@aimai:
Sometimes I think this is what all extremism is about: releasing your inner asshole and getting praised for it by your tribe.
Cat Lady
fixt.
Being a middle aged white woman makes you invisible, also too. Being constantly overlooked is only marginally better than being overtly discriminated against.
Bill H.
About ten years ago four of us traveled from Arizona to Talledega, Alabama for a NASCAR race, camping for four days on the racetrack grounds. One of us was Mexican, actually, but everyone of the guys around us thought he was African-American, and those rednecks could not have been more welcoming and nicer. In the whole four days we spent in the middle of the NASCAR crowd, Roy did not experience one single incidence of anything resembling racial rejection.
Mary
@WyldPirate:
No, actually, it doesn’t. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned racial discrimination in public places and public accomodations like hotels and restaurants. Look up Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States if you don’t believe me.
Guster
I’ve been the only white guy in the room maybe three times in my life–I’m in my 40s–and every single time it made an impression. Nobody said a word to me or looked at me crosseyed, but all of a sudden race struck me as hugely salient. And with my -wide- experience, I can say pretty conclusively that if anyone had been a completely race-blind jackass to me any of those times, it would’ve still been completely race-based. Because that was the situation. There is more to this than the contents of some asshole’s heart.
I’m racist, but I try not to -act- racist. I’m also a jackass sometimes. Not being a jackass to the only black guy in the room because he is black, is kinda racist. But being a jackass to the only black guy in the room is also racist. That’s kinda why racism sucks.
I guess my point is that we tend to think of racism as an expression of racist individuals, so when we wonder if some act is racist, we try to psychoanalyze the individuals. But racism is way bigger than an activity of racist individuals.
DecidedFenceSitter
@Mary:
Considering what I’ve seen of my friends’ apartments/condo HOAs in DC – I was forever grateful that my (old) HOA was a collection of lazy buggers who could barely collect money and get the sidewalks shoveled.
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: I think there can be a difference in the hotel situation mistermix described. If the desk clerk just got off the phone with his health insurer after being informed that they won’t pay for his gall bladder procedure and he would snap at, and be rude to, the next guest who approached the desk, the clerk was being a jackass. If the clerk was rude to a minority but would not have been rude to a white person after receiving that call, the clerk is a bigot taking the opportunity to be a jackass. Finally, if the clerk had not received such a call and was just being rude to the minority guest, the clerk is a stone cold bigot. From the point of view of the guest, it is impossible to tell the difference; the guest can only react to the behavior of the clerk. The difference does exist.
JPL
Years ago I met a friend at Phipps Plaza in Atlanta, to go shopping and to a movie. My friend purchased a couple of upscale suits at Sak’s and asked them to hold them until after the movie. When she returned to pick them up the clerk asked if she was Mrs. ………. maid. That would not have happened if she were white,imo.
Dennis G.
I’ve had similar experiences traveling with friends who are black. Calling it ‘jackass’ behavior is a way that white folks have created to not think about race.
One of the privileges of being white in America is that you never have to think about race and racism unless you want to do it on your own terms. If you are not white, something usually happens everyday to force you to think about it. And if you are a white male you also get to ignore sexism. And if you are heterosexual you also get ignore discrimination about sexual orientation. All in all, being a white male in America is a sweet gig.
When challenged to think about it on somebody else’s schedule and/or framing we have developed ways to dismiss the conversation. Rebranding actions that are racist as merely the actions of isolated jackasses is one way to do it. And if somebody will not accept that then we fall back to accusing the person who noticed the racist action as being overly sensitive. And if that person is still insistent on pointing out the racism, one can always change the subject and focus of the conversation by yelling ‘reverse racism’.
As a white male, I have the privilege to NOT think about this stuff and that gives me a distinct unearned advantage in my day to day interactions. I can go days, weeks, months or years and never seriously consider discrimination at all. That is a sweet deal that I have as an unearned gift of my sex and race.
Our conversations about these things always start from the POV of folks who must think about discrimination every day. We never frame this as a discussion of white privilege–and that is yet another benefit of being white in America.
It is time to have the conversation about race with a new frame. It is time to talk about unearned white privilege.
Cheers
superdestroyer
It is hilarious that all of the white progressives believe that DC is full of white raicst. The Hampton Inn near the convention center has a large number of blacks on staff. The people in Georgetown are some of the most liberal,progressive people in the U.S.
If people hated blacks and were racist, they would not be living in DC and especially not working in the hospitality industry in DC.
If an individual black is claiming to face racist blacks in virtually every public interaction maybe that person is just a jerk who irritates most people they interact with.
gnomedad
Can the “citing improbable skin colors to disclaim racism” meme go away now, please?
El Cid
@JPL:
Whoa – was this 1952?
Omnes Omnibus
@El Cid:
@JPL:
This is a situation where the bigot or jackass call is easy to make. Just wow.
superdestroyer
@Dennis G.:
Whites who live and work in DC are faced with they fact that they are a minority everyday. The percentage of the workforce in Hospitality that is white is very small. A manager of a hotel in DC works with large number of blacks,Hispanics, Asians,and middle easterners.
Maybe we should remember the white kid who was beaten on the bus in Belleville, Illinois about how luck he is to be able to ignore racial issues. http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=185008&catid=3
JAHILL10
Probably the most racially instructive thing that ever happened to me was in junior high school when my family moved from nearly-all-white North Kansas City to Greenville, Mississippi and I went from a school with one, count him, one black guy, to a school with a 80 percent black population. You learn, or I learned, very quickly to stop judging people by how they looked and more by how they act.
And as far as I’m concerned, an asshole’s an asshole. You treat all people the same until they give you reason to treat them differently.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@WyldPirate: Rand Paul? Is that you?
mistermix
@superdestroyer: Am I the only one around here who expects a better class of race troll on Balloon-Juice? Pulling out the “here’s one example where blacks were mean to whites so it invalidates the whole of black experience, QED” asinine argument for your second comment is some pretty weak shit. Step up your game.
debit
@superdestroyer: Pies for you, my dear.
WyldPirate
@Mary:
Yes, actually they do despite the Civil Rights act. The only way the hotel gets nailed is if the woman could prove that she was profiled.
According to the woman, she was asked if she was a guest, she answered no, and she was asked to leave.
That’s no different than being asked to leave a restaurant if one is not properly attired. Neither the hotel or the restaurant is a public place. It’s the same reasoning that allows stores, restaurants and other businesses to keep any TOm, Dick or Harry from walking in off the street and using their bathrooms.
Ask yourself this question. If the woman had been white and homeless and had come in to escape the cold weather, would the hotel have had the right to ask her to leave?
WyldPirate
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people):
get over yourself.
I think the woman was possibly profiled and she shouldn’t have been thrown out. However, as a private business, they have the right to ask non guests to leave the fucking premises.
Corner Stone
@Mary: I read the line, “and they had a whole meeting about me!” but it was devoid of context so I couldn’t tell exactly who or how many had a “meeting” about ABL. Because of my experience with HOA Boards, I’m very certain that if the President had asked for a meeting to discuss the one incident he’d have had one other member show up.
So I just assumed a neighbor, or maybe two, had called her friend on the Condo HOA and that person contacted ABL’s friend about the incident. I didn’t consider the HOA convening a full meeting to discuss it.
May be wrong on that, but it seemed unlikely to me.
And no, if it happened once (or special events a couple times a year) I would forget about it and probably joke with the neighbor next time I saw them.
JPL
@El Cid: Nah, within the last decade. To put the icing on the cake they couldn’t find the suits she paid for. Management delivered the items the following day with all types of apologies. She never shopped there again, needless to say.
Mary
@superdestroyer:
As one of those whites who live and work in DC, I have to call bologna on the idea that we are “faced with the fact that we are a minority everyday.” While it’s true that there are more people of color generally in DC than white people, the suggestion that a simple reversal of the numbers is enough to give white people a glimpse of what it means to be a person of color in in America is nonsense. We still occupy a position of privilege. Just because you may have felt self-conscious about the fact that everyone around you was black at some point in time doesn’t mean that you know what it feels like to be black in a world that privileges white people.
In college I studied abroad in South Africa. I lived with a black Xhosa speaking family in a black township (ie – one of the walled ghettos that blacks were forced to live in under apartheid and that very few white South Africans have ever stepped foot in) and whenever I walked around the neighborhood I got a lot of funny and curious looks. It made me uncomfortable and self-conscious, yes, but that’s not the same thing as the kind of hostility and suspicion that many people of color face on a daily basis. And even if someone in that township was harboring very hostile thougths about me, there was no way in hell he or she would ever act upon them because the privilege of being a white American woman in South Africa was enormous. People went out of there way to be helpful because they were afraid of what it would mean for the whole community if something bad were to happen to me.
GregB
Well, since we know from contemporary conservative rhetoric that the only kind of racism that exists in America is racism by liberal whites against conservative Blacks the answer is easy.
Just shut up and stop playing the race card.
Mary
@WyldPirate:
Being able to get away with breaking the law isn’t the same thing as having the legal right to do it. Yes, the hotel may have a racially neutral policy about not allowing non-guests to loiter in the lobby. But if they look at two people who are similarly situated and only enforce it against the person of color, then they are breaking the law, full stop. The white homeless person is a strawman because she is not similarly situated to the woman who was actually kicked out.
alwhite
I used to travel a lot for work. I encountered an odd thing several times. Pasty white me never got asked to provide an ID when using my credit card but the black guy in front or behind me would get asked. Yeah, it was racist.
Besides demonstrating ‘white privilege’ to me (which I already understood) it showed me how difficult it must be to go through life wondering if you got extra scrutiny, or didn’t get the job or the apartment because of your color or some legitimate reason. I definitely would have some anger issues because it pisses me of that it happens at all let alone if it happened to me.
Corner Stone
@debit: Man, that list is adding up quick!
Or maybe this just looks like me expressing my love for chocolate pie. Which I do in fact, love.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@Dennis G.: I had a libertarian (blond, blue eyed) classmate in graduate school who simply didn’t ever think about race until he visited China for a month. One day, he said he found himself eagerly waving at a black guy he assumed was also American and rushing over to strike up a conversation. No one had treated him badly (overt staring was the norm and wasn’t considered rude where he was), but he just felt a sudden kinship that he would never have in the US.
As an African woman who wasn’t born in the US, I often overlook racial incidents that are *subtle*. Many times, they don’t register for me because I grew up in a country where the geniuses and the jackasses are black and I default to thinking someone is a jackass even when they might be acting out their bigotry. My mom thinks this is how first-generation black immigrants cope and succeed, by not noticing racial incidents that those who’ve lived here for generations do unless they are absolutely blatant, in-your-face acts of racism. By the second generation, though, it’s hard to overlook subtle incidents because you were born in the US and know the code, and it just wears you out.
mistermix
@WyldPirate: Let’s say it’s fully established that they had the right to do it. The question is whether it was the right thing to do, which is quite different, and you’re not addressing it with the red herrings you’re dragging in to the argument.
Answer this question; would you be offended if they exercised their rights with you, if you were going to meet a friend there and were dressed in a way the manager just didn’t like?
HRA
@JAHILL10:
Exactly my experience as well. I must also give my parents praise for teaching their children to not discriminate by example.
WyldPirate
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people):
I think I owe you a bit of an apology because I see where your “Rand Paul” crack came from.
What I wrote came out garbled because I used “I don’t have a problem with her being racial profiled…”
I think if you read the rest of my post it’s makes sense that I do have a problem with it, but that she was thrown out for not being a guest. The hotel can get away with that.
Sorry for the confusion.
Corner Stone
@gnomedad: You’ve never met someone with plaid skin color? What kind of sheltered life have you been living?
PurpleGirl
Last night I wrote the following comment (#122):
I ask again, should a manager at the W Hotel have asked what I was doing there and/or asked me to leave?
PurpleGirl
The second paragraph should have been block quoted. Damn, I hate it when edit doesn’t work.
Kirk Spencer
There are ways for a white male to get an idea – not a full experience, but an idea – of the norm for racial minorities in the US.
One is to be enlisted army and go places where the enlisted aren’t usually seen. I was a college graduate when I enlisted, and gradually became aware of the number of times I was openly followed by the store detective, or had a police cruiser suddenly appear if I went walking in a suburban neighborhood, or would have people get up and leave if I dared enter an upper scale restaurant. I got flatly told I could not rent an apartment in more than one complex because I was enlisted military.
And when I commented to my (also college graduate) black fellow enlistee, he told me I now had a foot in the door, and should be glad I’d never get in all the way.
There are other ways. Commit a crime that requires you to carry an open identifier while on probation or work release. Go live in a nation that is hostile to Americans or caucasians. heh – be an open atheist in the bible belt.
The problem isn’t that everyone is racist. The problem is that so many are and get away with it that you cannot tell if what you’re experiencing is someone who is a jerk to you because they’re a jerk or if it’s racism. And after a while, what exactly is the difference from your point of view?
JAHILL10
@HRA: True. There were plenty of private, all-white schools in Greenville my parents could have sent me to, but Dad was like, that’s not real life and part of education is learning how to get along with other people. I give him credit.
aimai
@Omnes Omnibus:
My point, and perhaps I wasn’t clear, isn’t that there is no difference between a jackass (to everyone) and a bigot but that there’s really no point trying to excuse the hotel manager’s behavior (not a clerk, a manager) by saying that its *just* jackasssery. As to your point about bad days or sad phone calls–everybody gets those. But when people act out their bad days on customers its very seldom the case that they act out with people of a higher perceived social status than their own. And the lower down on the social scale you are (clerk as opposed to head lawyer at your own firm) the fewer people will get the spill over of your wrath. And the faster those people will get an apology. Social structures, hierarchies, race and sex are some of the ways in which people tacitly decide who gets their wrath and who gets the good treatment despite the sad day.
And that, of course, is one of the chief reasons that we say “walk a mile in my shoes” –because unless you are standing there in a woman’s skin, or a black person’s skin, or a white person’s skin, or an upper class person’s skin you just don’t know what its like to get the treatment that person gets on a regular basis.
Its not all bad, of course. As a sympathetic looking white woman of a certain age people tell me all their problems. They think I care. They never tell my husband their stories. They assume he is to busy/businessman/upper class to care. Their error.
damn good mr. jam
I never liked the term “white privilege.” It suggests something in the nature of a prize, something we’re positively granted by virtue of being white, as opposed to the absence of a disadvantage suffered by people who aren’t white. I propose “white convenience.”
Dennis G.
@superdestroyer:
Dude. I grew up in Detroit–in the city. My neighborhood was roughly 80% black in my teenage years. And as you might expect I got some shit back in the day for just being white. And I lived having to keep the idea of race on my mind all the time. After college, I moved away and was free not to think about unless I wanted to.
I work in DC. The experience there is nothing like the experience I had growing up in Detroit. I can see how it might be if I lived and worked in SE or maybe a few neighborhoods of NE, but for the folks who live and work downtown or NW to make the claim you make is just silly.
And yes, if one searches the google one can find stories of a white kid beaten up by black kids. That should be talked about, but it does not make the unearned benefits of white privilege go away.
If you want to have the conversation based on the body count of violence motivated by race we could. But you should know that white folks in America are just way, way ahead. Hundreds of thousands people of color have been killed and wounded over the years since white folks first came to this continent. The collected episodes of violence by any other race in America do not even come close to the history of white violence.
Your ‘they do it too’ frame is just another way to avoid talking about white privilege. Have fun with that.
Cheers
Cacti
Glibertarian alert.
WyldPirate
@mistermix:
I don’t think it is at all clear that the manager threw her out because of the way she was dressed. The story went into excruciating detail describing that–but that was a “red herring” to the real issue.
The manager threw her out–according to the woman’s own story—because she wasn’t a guest. Though it’s a stupid policy, it is their right as a business to do that.
Would I have been offended? Hell yes. Do I think it was fucked up because they threw her out even after they confirmed she was there to meet a guest? Hell yes.
But had she–or even I– been a poorly dressed, unbathed, dishelved homeless person in the lobby, who, when asked by the manager if I were a guest of the establishment, and I answered “no”, would the management had the right to ask me to leave? Yes they would.
My point is that there are different ways of looking at the issue. Businesses have the right to ask you to leave if you aren’t properly attired and if you are not a paying guest. For fucks sake, I don’t understand what is so goddamned hard to understand about that. Would you expect to wander in off the street into a gym that you’re not a member of and think you can be allowed to workout?
Angela
@Mary: Exponentially is the key. Bigots can stay hidden as long as they are only interacting with white people. Yeah, and I get that it is prone to being read wrong, and I’m sorry for that. Just amazed at those who excuse away such behavior.
superdestroyer
@mistermix:
Dennis wrote “One of the privileges of being white in America is that you never have to think about race and racism unless you want to do it on your own terms. ”
I think that there are many americans who do not get to deal with race and racism on their own terms. I just used the example of white kid on the bus to show that many White Americans get to deal with race and racismon the term of blacks.
Anyone who has ever rode the metro in DC has had to face race and racism on the term of blacks. Anyone who has had todeal with hospitality, retail, or the service industries in DC has had to deal with blacks on their terms and not on terms of “white privledge.”
The idea that DC is full of racist whites is laughable and in reality, DC is full of whites that are so afraid of offending blacks that they will tolerate outrageous behavior on the part of blacks.
If you want to see how blacks behave in DC just see the recent election for mayor.
dww44
@Dennis G.:
Not to trivialize this:
but living in a red state, I can empathize for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is my politics. In a region where guys in those large loud diesel powered pick up trucks and Moms in large SUV’s still sport Bush-Cheney and/or McCain-Palin bumper stickers, I find myself reluctant to affix a sticker that says “Proud Democrat” and opt instead for a little red square with a blue dot in the middle. I did have an Obama 08 sticker, but that vehicle we gave to my Mom’s sitter.
Also, living where I live, that Tea Party rallying cry of “I want my country back” happened far too fast to be other than an underlying inability to accept a Black man as President. There may be a few absolutely non-racist members of the Tea Party but there aren’t many.
aimai
@WyldPirate:
But you are introducing law where we are all talking about common sense. Hotels have common areas–lobbies–which are transitional spaces. They are meant to be transitional. One minute you are not a guest, the next you’ve checked in and you are a guest. A few days later you have checked out but left your bags with the doorman and you are no longer a “guest” but the hotel is still calling you a cab to the airport.
In hotels where a lot of business is weddings, or business meetings, there will be literally hundreds of people who are quasi guests–they may be hired caterers, they may be hair stylists, they may be coming for a meeting–the hotel had abso-fucking-lutely figure out how to treat all of these people as guests because they are all potential guests in the future, friends of current guests, or members of the larger community.
Because of particular laws about hotel accomodation the Manager may have broken the law. But more importantly he has behaved incredibly stupidly from the point of his own managers. There’s really no excuse for that. Taking the pure libertarian/pro business point of view that the “hotel can do what it wants with non guests” isn’t even *the actual hotels point of view.* If it were they’d pretty soon have no guests left. Who want to be staying in a hotel where your own friends or family or business acquaintances are hustled to the door and humiliated?
aimai
Kirk Spencer
@WyldPirate: A caveat to that, and one that matters a lot.
“No, but I am here to meet a guest.”
That should have put a full stop on the move. At most it should have required a request for the name and calling the guest to see if they are, indeed, meeting this person.
Let’s put it this way. I’ve done a few chain interviews from a hotel suite, and had to have the next person wait in the lobby till my current interview was done. Now I have to wonder if the no-shows were because they weren’t there or because some manager didn’t like the applicant’s skin color.
Mary
@Angela: No worries at all. I knew exactly what you meant. I just read it, did a double take, and kind of chuckled at it because I was pretty sure you did not mean to say that people of color were assholes. Also, I’m obnoxious and always need to point things like that out.
aimai
@WyldPirate:
The line “would you expect to wander in off the street to a gym and start to workout” without being a paying member shows you just don’t grasp how Hotels work. There are many places in hotels, but none in gyms, where you don’t have to be an official “paying guest” to be seated and treated well. Hotels are designed around just this issue. If she had been found wandering on an upper floor or snoozing in a bedroom your point would make more sense.
aimai
WyldPirate
@Mary:
Oh, I get it now! How stupid of me to recognize that it’s ok to discriminate against dirty disheveled homeless non-guests./b> But horror upon horrors it’s so heinous to throw out the well-dressed, black, non-guest
Run the fuck along and take a class in logic. Your <class discrimination is showing, Mary.
debit
@Corner Stone:
Here’s the thing about my use of the pie filter: I don’t put people on it who I simply don’t agree with or that merely annoy me. I always assume that someday we can find common ground and that I probably annoy others as well. You wind up on the pie list if you’re a troll, or someone who has demonstrated that we will never agree on anything no matter what, or someone who is so egregiously offensive there’s no point in my even trying to talk with them.
I also love chocolate pie! See, we have found common ground. Let us celebrate with coffee and some sort of dessert.
WyldPirate
@Kirk Spencer:
I agree with this 100%. I’ve said so several times. I think it was fucked up that they threw her out after they called and confirmed she was there to meet a guest.
There’s no question they should have left her alone after that.
Svensker
@WyldPirate:
She wasn’t in the hotel to sleep in the rooms, which would be analogous to your gym example. She was a respectably dressed, clean, quiet business woman who is black. My guess is that had she been a respectably dressed, clean, quiet business woman who is white she would not have been escorted off the premises. That’s what everyone is talking about here, not whether the hotel has the right to kick “undesirables” out of the lobby. Why was THIS woman undesirable?
Dennis G.
@damn good mr. jam:
This:
is why ‘white privilege’ is the correct term. It is something we get as an unearned prize for being born white in America. And if you are lucky enough to be born white and male you get a bonus prize.
The freedom NOT to think about racism and sexism–unless you feel like–is a real benefit. It is a big fucking advantage in the game of life. And yet it is the part of race in America that we will not talk about. It is time to get past this taboo.
Cheers
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@WyldPirate: No worries. I understand what you’re saying about their having the right to throw her out but don’t believe they would have treated her the same way if she was a white male simply waiting for a friend in the lobby. And in the end that’s what the conversation is about, not whether they have the right to, but the circumstances under which a new manager on the job three months chooses to exercise that right.
WyldPirate
@aimai:
I agree that the manager behaved incredibly stupidly. I think that it was fucked up she was asked to leave.
I can also see the hotel’s point of view. Perhaps they have had problems with “working girls” there, maybe it was with homeless persons, who knows? We only have one side of the story.
Sometimes this sorts of things happen. Sometimes management sets inflexible draconian policies that are fucked up. This sort of shit goes on in schools with “zero tolerance” poilicies towards all drugs and allweapons–even legitimate prescription drugs or harmless toy weapons.
My ex-wife was a librarian at a large downtown library. They often had homeless people come in to get out of the cold in the winter. Many would sit quietly and read. Some were mentally disturbed, alcoholics or under the influence of drugs and would hassle other patrons. They eventually had to start enforcing an eviction policy because they ahd so many complaints.
Mary
@WyldPirate:
Sigh. I’m not advocating discrimination against people based on their appearance. I’m attempting to explain what the LAW says about the right of private business who operate in the public sphere to discriminate between people. My explanation was rushed because I had a limited time window to edit, so perhaps I did a poor job, so here it goes again.
Businesses have legal right the deny services based on any number of factors – but it is explicitly not legal to deny someone service on the basis of their race. Many businesses still try to discriminate on the basis of race by enacting a policy that on its face is racially neutral – for example, no non-guests may loiter in the lobby. This is a perfectly legal policy, and whether right or wrong the hotel may exercise that policy to kick out a homeless woman because of the way she dresses. It doesn’t mean it’s any less of a prickish thing to do – it just means that they have the LEGAL right (as opposed to the moral right) to do it.
What they do not have the LEGAL right to do is to selectively enforce the policy so that white non-guests may loiter while black non-guests get kicked out. The phrase “similarly situated” is a legal term of art. It is short hand for saying “two people who appear to have every relevant observable trait in common EXCEPT for their race.” And so it is against the law for a business to use race to discriminate between otherwise similarly situated people.
That is the law – it is not my opinion, it is not my personal moral or ethical code.
damn good mr. jam
@Dennis G.:
You make it sound like the benefit is a bad thing, but it’s a benefit we should all have. The problem is that black folks are being treated poorly in hotel lobbies, not that white folks are being treated too well.
Dennis G.
@superdestroyer:
You must ride the Metro in different city than the one I ride. I’ve worked in DC for twelve years and I don’t see what your seeing at all.
In the Mayor’s race Fenty paid the price of ignoring the majority of people in the city and lost. I did not follow every nuance of the race but I do not know what you meant by saying:
What was the outrageous thing that black people did in that election. Near as I could tell some voted for Fenty and some voted for Gray. Gray made the case that Fenty was out of touch with the needs of DC residents. Fenty has admitted that he was. It seems to me that voters in DC voted for the candidate who they thought would do the best job and Fenty lost. What was outrageous about that?
Cheers
Mary
Crap – the “run the fuck along….” in my previous post should be part of the block quote.
WyldPirate
@Svensker:
I don’t disagree that it is likely that it was done because she was black. I think it is f’d up if they did and I think that you’re probably right that it may have been to her being black.
I don’t buy the bit about about the use of facilities. She was using the facilities–the lobby of the hotel.
Ask yourself this question. Would it have been fucked up if the conditions and results had been the same but the person had been white, homeless and disheveled and had been there to meet his brother who was a guest at the hotel?
Would that have been “class discrimination” or would it have been ok because he was “undesirable?
Dennis G.
@damn good mr. jam:
The benefit is a great thing if you’re white. And yes, everybody should have the same benefit, but they don’t.
They key here is to acknowledge that this benefit of birth is real and that you have it. Our traditional conversation about race is focused on people who are victims and not on people who benefit. Changing the frame would make for a more honest conversation, IMHO. I do not think you can have a real conversation about race in America without putting the reality of white privilege front and center.
Cheers
aimai
@WyldPirate:
But the conditions weren’t the same. None of your examples are “the same”–and we are talking about what happened to this particular woman. I don’t get why you are wasting everyone’s time just arguing in circles. The hotel literally *threw* this woman out when it made no sense to do so. The fact that they might ask *other kinds of people* under other circumstances, at other times of the day, dressed in other ways out simply has no bearing on this matter.
aimai
WyldPirate
@Mary:
It’s cool. I know what you said was against the law and I know that business can get away with that sort of discrimination by cloaking it as something else.
Businesses do this all the time and not just with people of color but with age, weight, appearances, disabilities and all sorts of other things. Hell, the government did it for years with the disparities regarding sentencing between powder and crack cocaine. NYC does it now with “stop and fris” of minorities for drugs and weapons.
My entire point was that businesses can have legitimate reasons for having policies like the one they seemed to have.
What I have a problem with is the absolute hysterics people go into about screaming “racism” over this incident. I’m not so bothered by the hotel incident as I was the harrumphing over the noise incident at the condo involving ABL.
Corner Stone
I wonder when anyone will ask the hotel manager how many white women he has had escorted out during normal business hours?
BethanyAnne
Welp, it’s late in this thread, but it’s totally time to link Derailing for Dummies again.
debit
@Dennis G.:
When I was active on Livejournal every now and again there would be a crop of postings on race and invariably someone would use an icon that read: White privilege; you’re soaking in it. My first reaction was to be defensive. Don’t talk to me about privilege, I’m not a racist, I’m culturally sensitive, I’m a woman, for crying out loud. I don’t know, but I suspect that my reaction from back then is not so uncommon. It took a long time for me to be able to see that it wasn’t an accusation, it was simply a statement of fact. I have benefits and privileges I’m not even aware of and take for granted as the norm.
I agree that the topic needs to be front and center. I just don’t know how to put it there without making people feel defensive.
WyldPirate
@aimai:
Yes it does if they are not guests. That was the reason the manager gave.
You have tied your knickers in a knot so tight because this incident is, in your eyes, solely about race, that you can’t distinguish that there might be either discrimination based on class or a legitimate reason to ask the homeless white person to leave because they are not a guest.
That same either/or question could be operative in the case of the well-dressed black woman in ABL’s post.
Mnemosyne
@WyldPirate:
The black woman had business at the hotel — she was there to meet one of the hotel’s guests. The hotel confirmed that.
The homeless woman does not have business at the hotel — she just wandered in out of the cold.
Do you really not understand the difference between someone who wanders into the lobby and someone who enters the lobby because they have business at the hotel? If you’re meeting someone, having lunch, attending a conference, attending a banquet, any of the bajillion things that hotels do other than provide a sleeping place, does the hotel have the right to treat you like you’re a homeless person who wandered in off the street who has no purpose in being there?
The courts say no, you cannot throw people out who have legitimate business at the hotel and are not creating a disturbance, but apparently you say yes.
superdestroyer
@Dennis G.:
Fenty lost because he was too nice to whites. Fenty won the vast majority of the white vote and Gray won the vast majority of black vote.
What was ironic was the victory celebration during the general election where Gray had a “one city” sign as his backdrop while everyone on stage was black.
If a hotel in DC was profiling blacks, they would profile 100’s ofpeople a day. The idea that DC is full of racist whites is laughable. DC is actually full of blacks who hate whites and will vote for people like Marion Barry just to irritate whites.
Mnemosyne
@WyldPirate:
Yes, it would have been just as fucked up and discriminatory, because he had legitimate business at the hotel and the hotel was throwing him out anyway.
Again, there’s a difference between waiting in the lobby to meet a hotel guest or attending a meeting and loitering without any specific business with or at the hotel.
Nancy
When I can get out of my own white head in trying to understand this kind of thing, I feel like one of the important lessons is to understand the kind of mental gymnastics people of color have to constantly play in their own head trying to understand if our reactions are based on reality (we were being too loud) or racism (its because we’re black). That’s the question I heard ABL asking herself. Having to do that all the time must be exhausting!
I can relate to that a bit because sometimes I find myself in the same dilemma as a woman. In other words, “am I really being a bitch, or is it because you can’t handle an assertive woman?” My reactions will be VERY different depending on how I answer that question.
WyldPirate
@Mnemosyne:
Of course I understand the difference. Of course I think it was fucked up that she got thrown out.
I used a different example latter with a homeless person there to meet a guest that was his brother because I recognized the flaw in my initial example.
I don’t think the law is at all clear that there is a special exception for being there vs not being there on business for non guests.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@BethanyAnne: Brilliant!
aimai
@WyldPirate:
You are a deeply stupid person. I have pointed out to you what is trivially obvious to anyone: hotels have *many people using their lobbies, and specifically their lobbies, who are “quasi guests”* and to whom the hotel has many duties that are distinct from the kinds of duties other businesses have to other kinds of people. This has nothing to do with race. Lots of different kinds of people legitimately use hotel lobbies during the day and the hotel is aware of it and even encourages it because otherwise many guests/businesses will simply stay away. The hotel retains the right to evict certain kinds of people from its premises but has to restrain itself from doing so in a manner that is more offensive or problematic to its paying guests or to the community if it wants to continue doing business with the community at large. That’s just the reality. Continuing to insist that the hotel “has the right” to do something is just really totally besides the point.
I recommend you read the linked article “derailing for dummies” and spend a whole lot of time meditating on the word “dummy.”
aimai
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@BethanyAnne: Brilliant!
Given that its scope is “derailing,” it leaves out one of the most effective methods: simply ignore anyone who makes it clear that they belong to a group that has experienced marginalization and engage solely with those you think have not.
aimai
@superdestroyer:
And three cheers for superdestroyer for the best spoof racist rant of all time. That just had me rolling in the aisles–especially the part about how racist it is of black people to vote for a black guy because they do it simply to piss off the real voters (white people).
aimai
BethanyAnne
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people): I’m glad you liked it. :) I was very happy when someone pointed that link out to me. And aye, that does sound like an effective way to not engage while appearing to.
Lolis
@WyldPirate:
Nice. Wyld Pirate is a glibertarian. It all makes sense now.
JMC_in_the_ATL
Dear Lord, another thread to make me hate my fellow white people.
You douchebags keep flashing your privileged asses every time on every thread, you “progressive” racist fucks, and I will be calling it out. Starting with WyldPirate. I no longer care if it is the cardinal sin amongst white people, I’m done tossing a white sheet over someone else’s flashed privileged ass and pretending its a decorative end table.
Lost Left Coaster
@WyldPirate:
It’s telling that you bring up an example with a homeless woman. Very interesting that you make that comparison, when we’re talking about an African American woman there to conduct the exact kind of business that a hotel lobby is designed for.
To you, homeless, or African American, all the same, all undesirable, right?
I’m not sure what a hotel lobby is for if it isn’t for meeting someone who is staying there with whom you have a scheduled meeting. It is beyond obvious that she was asked to leave simply because she is black.
damn good mr. jam
@Dennis G.:
The problem is that by treating freedom from discrimination as an “unearned benefit,” it sounds like you’re expecting white people to give something up. That’s a hard sell, and there’s no need to frame it that way. Dignity is not a finite resource. Everyone deserves it, and everyone can have it.
Lost Left Coaster
@superdestroyer:
I’m white, I live in a predominantly black neighborhood in Washington DC, and I think that you are absolutely and completely full of shit. I have no idea what you’re talking about.
My hypothesis is that you’re uncomfortable around black people, and your reaction to this fact is to project some kind of negative behavior onto the black people you encounter. Or maybe you take it personally every time a teenager is loud or rude on the Metro (NEWSFLASH: Teens of all races are loud and rude on occasion. I grew up in a white town full of white loud and rude teens).
pika
@Dennis G.:
Thank you, Dennis. Also, I would like to point out that everyone who has spent so much time trying to figure out ‘racist’ or ‘bigot’ and is feeling aggravated by the process should now imagine having to do that analytical process pretty much 24-7. A major part of white privilege (and/or male privilege, and/or hetero privilege) is the conferral of a kind of psychological space to not have to be at analytical defcon 5 as a part of your regularly scheduled programming.
Nutella
@superdestroyer:
We can be sure DC has at least one racist white named ‘superdestroyer’ who is quite disturbed to find that blacks have electoral power when obviously they shouldn’t have any power at all in DC since they’re, you know, black.
sherifffruitfly
I would imagine that black folks love it even more when white folks who are supposedly “on their side” spend their time trying to come up with any other theoretically possible explanation, just to avoid calling other white folks racist. (Because we REALLY all know that it’s just black folks being oversensitive “race card” whiners looking for handouts.)
aimai
@BethanyAnne:
I want to give a huge shout out to behtanyAnne for the link she posted to Derailing for Dummies. I read the whole thing and instantly recognized so many of the tropes and gambits that we saw in this thread. I post, for the hell of it, over at Ann Landers blog and there are a couple of very guyly guys who always bring up the oppression of men by rapacious women in every single discussion. But they also do a more subtle thing which reading Derailing for Dummies helped me recognize: they always demand just a little more information than the letter writer offers and imply that the letter writer’s inability to “tell both sides of the story” indicates that the letter writer is not “acting in good faith.” This often goes along with “its highly improbable that anything bad would happen to a woman/blackperson/gay person” because “you can’t run a business like that.”
Both these assertions were made in this thread and on the thread following Dori’s original post about her experiences on Huffington Post. Some guy (or woman in Maude’s case) always comes along and insist that the story is, on its face, so improbable that the person telling it must be lying. Why is it improbable? Because if stuff like that happened all the time then the world would look really different. And it doesn’t look different to me so the story must be false. Accusing a person of lying about their own personal experience, for some ephemeral notion of gain, is definitely one of the gambits in Derailing for Dummies.
Thanks for posting the link BethanyAnne, I’ve bookmarked it for a future game of “derailing bingo.”
aimai
Kyle
This type of incident is an example of the ones that, I am certain, would result in my being a violent, angry black person.
It must be so exhausting to be black in this country. If I (white male, but gay so I get some of it) sit down in a restaurant and encounter a bitchy waiter, then that is what I encounter: a bitchy waiter. Her bitchiness has nothing to do with me.
But if I’m black, I have to process the possibility that I’ve run into another racist. Whether the waiter is actually a racist or is just having a bad day doesn’t really matter. I would still have to process it. Imagine having to do that with every slight or act of rudeness from the time you are a child throughout your life. I don’t think I would be able to do it.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
@Kirk Spencer:
I wanted to make the point that to the recipient of the jackassery, does it really matter what the reason is? If it is more than an occasional thing how is it not bigotry of some sort? How does one know if it is bigotry or if people just don’t like you?
I have questions. Can/will bigotry ever be eliminated? Isn’t there bigotry among what would look like the same group? Light and dark skinned blacks may be one. Men shaven or not, personal experience. Levi wearers, again personal experience. These were not earth shattering by any means, it’s just they were not isolated instances. I was in a multi racial relationship and have seen/experienced racial bigotry first hand. Being white allowed me to make a scene, my other half just wanted to slink away. And it still felt like shit to be in that situation.
Kirk
When I was in the navy in San Diego I saw signs that said dogs and sailors keep off the grass. Yea, yea I know, You kids get off my lawn! Funny thing was I wasn’t sure the sailors could read the signs in their condition when they were laying on the lawn.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kyle: This is a very good point. Earlier in the thread, I had written about the fact that sometimes someone could simply be having a bad day might have taken it out on someone. I had ignored the fact that a person who is traditionally subject to discrimination will always have wonder whether the cause of the jackassery was a bad day or bigotry. Also, Aimai’s point that acting out is usually directed towards those seen as lower in status which would reinforce the concern.
eemom
@JMC_in_the_ATL:
late to the party again, but I gotta tell you that comment is eleventy kinds of awesome.
lmao
Angry Black Lady
@WyldPirate: FWIW, it wasn’t a condo full of liquored up people on a balcony. It was 5 people and at no time were we all partying it up on the balcony. I had a few smokes out there, and at the time we got told to shut up, I was on the balcony with one other person. We apologized and went back inside.
That being said, I am loud as hell, which I mentioned several times yesterday.
I also mentioned the weird looks I was getting which easily could have been “who is this strange person in the building, and not who is this black person on the building. The sum total of my life experience, however, made me wonder if it wasn’t some of the latter.
That was my point.
Angry Black Lady
@Corner Stone: There was a meeting the next day. I do not know that the meeting was specially held, but I do find it odd that it was discussed, although I don’t know the extent to which it was discussed. Then again, I know HOAs tend to be alarmist.
BethanyAnne
@aimai: You’re very welcome. I have gotten lots from your comments here the past couple of years, so I’m extra happy you found this useful. :)
LongHairedWeirdo
That’s a false dichotomy.
Here’s a favorite example of mine, because there’s no real villain in it.
I had a math student doing poorly through two of the four tests. He was black, and I knew a lot of black students went to shitty high schools, and might not have good prep work for college.
I wrote a message on the second test that he had to seriously consider his options – he was doing so poorly he had little chance of pulling things out. But he did.
Now, was there any racism on display here? Any bigotry? No.
But – because he was black, my first thought was “he’s had shitty prep work – not his fault, but there it is.”
I *did not* say that he had to seriously consider his options *because* of that. I did not say he had little chance of pulling it out *because* of that. But it was there, in my thoughts.
I’m satisfied that I treated him just as I’d have treated any other student in the same position. But his skin color was sitting right there, plain as day. And if he’d said he was sure he could pull it out, well… maybe I’d have expressed some doubts. Maybe not.
I’m not sure my point here is clear, so let me make it explicit: there was only one piece of information that was relevant here. A student had done poorly on two college exams out of four, and was clearly struggling. All the rest – the unconscious concerns, the speculation going on in my head, was pointless and worthless. But it was there!
By making things into “X was an asshole, but not a bigot” we’re covering up prejudice and our own fears of prejudice, just like a cat covering up a turd – but as anyone who’s had a cat knows, the stink can stick around even when you can’t see it any more.
We can’t live in US society for very long without being touched by generations of prejudice, and bigotry. I won’t say it’s impossible for a person to root out their own race issues and eliminate them, but I will say that I won’t believe anyone who claims to have done so. Not because I don’t trust them, but because it goes *so deep*.
aimai
@Kyle:
I had an African American roomate my first year in Graduate school. The little local grocery store refused to take a check from her, although they had taken my check (this was more or less before ATM’s) and I got very upset on her behalf and asked her if she thought it was “because she was black”–I certainly thought it was given the guys at that store–and she just looked at me, so wearily, and said “you just can’t think that way because you’d be thinking that way all the time.” She meant it would be so exhausting, not that it wouldn’t be correct.
I think about that every time I see some righteous glibertarian white boy (I used to have a fellowship at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago and there were tons of those law and econ types there) explaining to me that racism and discrimination can’t exist because “black people would just sue” and since that “money on the table” would just magically come their way businesses would have no incentive to discriminate. The idea that law is transparently and costlessly on the side of the discriminated, that every law suit produces damages, and that people can live in a state of constant vigiliance–always trying to protect themselves through law–is something you can only say if you haven’t experienced full time discrimination in matters high and low. In reality, people suffer (as Dori did in her story) because for five seconds they thought they had the right to be themselves in public without guessing that someone was going to attack them for being black in public.
Sometimes I just don’t know how people get through the day without resorting to violence. I know for sure that if I had to endure the kind of discrimination that many people experience I couldn’t get through the day without extreme sadness and depression.
aimai
Angry Black Lady
@BethanyAnne: BEST LINK EVER. thank you.
Angry Black Lady
@Mnemosyne: additionally (while this likely doesn’t apply to the hampton inn) there are many hotels that have hotel bars that cater to non-guests.
the guest v. non-guest argument is silly.
Ruckus
Dennis G.
You are absolutely correct that the only way to get past being bigots is to see both sides. To admit that there is always a group that has privilege.
I believe that a lot of bigotry is subtle. I imagine that you have to be the subject of it on a regular basis to even see it, without focusing on it. Not having the subjective point of reference makes this much harder to see.The woman in the hotel lobby was surprised by the bigotry that she experienced. It sounded to me that she was surprised because it was so overt. It was outside of her normal sphere of experience. I have a hard time remembering many overtly racist interactions I have seen in my life because most of them are subtle to the viewer, even when not to the subjected. I wonder how many are subtle to the bigot as well, ingrained reactions to a situation, not a thought out process.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
As a privileged white male, let me just express how much it embarrasses me when my fellow privileged white males respond to every obvious example of racism by desperately trying to find any reason at all such a thing could happen, besides racism. I don’t understand it.
Don Imus calls a basketball team full of black girls “nappy-headed hos” but it’s not because he’s racist, it’s because…. uh, political correctness run amuck! Tea partiers hold up signs depicting Obama as a witch doctor complete with a bone in the nose but it’s not racist, because…. um, they’re making a political statement, and political correctness is running amuck!
I’ve reached the point where I assume anyone whining about political correctness is a fucking racist who desperately wants to think of himself as a good person, but is unwilling to engage in the self-reflection that being a good person requires. And when I hear someone say something like “political correctness is ruining our country,” I assume there are white hoods and robes in that person’s closet.
I just have to wonder what the hell all the people twisting their brains to find some reason, any reason, for this hotel manager to act the way he did besides racism are hoping to accomplish. Even if you can conclusively prove that this manager was simply a huge jackass without a racist bone in his body… so fucking what? Is that supposed to make the person kicked out into the cold feel better? Does that make the manager a better person if his motivation for being an asshole was misogyny or just a bad day, rather than latent racism? Does it make your lily-white dick shrivel up a little less when you think that this guy was just a generic jerk as opposed to a racist jerk?
OK, fine, he’s a manager who’s a giant asshole to black women, rather than a racist. This distinction is super-duper important, for some reason.
Ruckus
@LongHairedWeirdo:
but because it goes so deep
I think we are making the same argument. Deep. Ingrained. Learned? Behavior and social interaction have subtle nuance. Can we change it? Yes, we can but it takes work and it takes knowing that what we are doing wrong, admitting it is wrong and working to adjust that. Wasn’t it Skinner who said behavior is the key? We change that, we change attitudes. We see this in each new generation. more and more the behavior and attitudes change. Not all of them, not very fast but overall they do seem to change. It just seems like it’s a real bitch to have to spent an entire lifetime living through the changes.
The teatards are the blowback to change, they want their perceptions back. And that’s what makes them bigots, they know they are wrong, but refuse to go change. And everyone suffers.
Ruckus
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Seconded.
Notice that no one was calling anyone here racist, only the hotel manager. Who acted racist. His actions were his ideals. Or at the very least his actions spoke louder than his ideals.
thalarctos
@Mary: While I totally enjoy the kind of analysis you’re engaging in, I think the “exponentially” took that reading off the table a priori. If it were the people of colour themselves, it would have been linearly.
Brachiator
@mistermix:
For some reason, some people are always eager to downplay racism to a person just being an asshole or being stupid. This just doesn’t work anymore, especially since Obama’s election has seemingly brought on a counter-response in which people are increasingly explicit in their displays of racism, sexism, homophobia and religious intolerance.
I can also relate to the anecdotes you relate about you and your business partner. I used to do tax work for a video store that was started as a partnership of a black man of West Indian descent a white American. The West Indian, who eventually bought out the other guy, would mention how when they got started and talked to bankers, vendors and other businesspeople, invariably the businesspeople would direct questions and comments to the white guy even though the partnership papers clearly identified them both as equal partners.
I also agree that WyldPirate’s defense of the hotel situation is a red herring. There is not a hotel in the universe that could rationally justify such a hard core guest-non-guest policy, especially when the non-guest specifically notes that she or he has come to the hotel for a business meeting with a guest.
SmallAxe
@superdestroyer:
Amen! finally someone else commenting on the site of this incident… it was in DC for god’s sakes. You can’t go anywhere in this town without it being a mixed racial environment. How does the fact that it occurred in a Downtown DC hotel with predominately black customers being common not become part of the equation.
And yes count me on the Jackass side, just ask Debit.
SmallAxe
@mistermix:
What about the DC argument Mistermix, that makes no sense to you? The demographics of the city don’t play into it all? Come on.
Karen
My best friend lives outside of Charleston, SC. She used to work as a manager for CVS and told me that there were white customers who refused to put the money in her hand and would just throw it on the counter. This was 3 years ago but I doubt it’s changed all that much. I could say that’s an experience that a white woman like me had never had.
I live in the DC Metro area and those who say DC isn’t racist are seeing a different DC than I am. For example, there is an open secret that stores redline here. Prince George’s County, MD, a DC suburb, is the wealthiest suburb for African Americans in the USA. Yet, there is no Sach’s Fifth Avenue, no Nordstrom’s and no Bloomingdale’s which are upscale department store chains. There is also no Talbots or Barney’s, both upscale clothing stores that are in Georgetown, an affluent section of DC.
Nope, no racism in the DC Metro area.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@SmallAxe: So your position is that racism doesn’t exist in DC? Does racism magically vanish once the black population hits 51% or something?
SmallAxe
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
no Jrod you know damn well what my position is from the other thread. My position is that it is most likely that he thought she was a prostitute not that he injected race because of the fact that it happened in a downtown DC hotel and not in DesMoines. Once again MOST LIKELY not definitive… got it?
SmallAxe
And of course racism exists in DC it is everywhere and we are not immune to it obviously. I’m just saying a GM of a downtown hotel to be a racist regularly kicking young black women out of his lobby because they are black wouldn’t last a week in this town.
Karen
In my opinion, the tribe rule applies here as it does anywhere.
No one but a member of the same tribe really knows how it feels which is why the efforts to brush it off as jackassery is really disingenuous.
Minimizing it is to invalidate it and if you’re not the one going through it you have no right to.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@SmallAxe: OK.
Why did he think she was a whore?
How many other supposed whores were kicked out of the hotel that morning?
More to the point: why the fuck do you care? The post on this subject are about the many small indignities that black people have to put up with, and how they can never be sure whether the asshole is just an asshole or if the asshole is being an asshole to them because of their race.
And your response is to come in and declare that the conversation is silly because obviously in this case he’s just an asshole? Why?
You say that it’s expected that a hotel manager will be regularly kicking whores out of his lobby. The question of how the manager decides who’s a whore is pretty pertinent, because we have at least one case here in which the person kicked out was not a hooker. She was, however, black.
But go on, keep trying to have this stupid argument. This black woman was still humiliated, and will still face many more humiliations in the future. But at least this poor hotel manager will be spared to horror of being thought of as a racist asshole, rather than just an asshole.
ruemara
@aimai:
“Black people would just sue.” Uh, yeah, sure. Where do we get the funds? Who’s gonna back us up in court?
Sue-able things I have been through since 2000:
Denied service at liberal hippie college town chinese restaurant. They sat my friends down, were surprised I wanted to sit with the people I came in with, took their order and refused to take mine. As I’m sitting there wondering why, my friends are laughing at me. You see, being denied service is HILARIOUS! The way the waitress is trying to ignore you as she serves, OMG ROFLMAO! The manager had to come over to take my order and serve me because the waitress simply wouldn’t. I got my food as my buds were finishing up. They still don’t get why I found them to be idiots.
Liberal hippie college town newspaper ditched my resume. In fact, based on the horrified/terrified expressions of the reception staff, I do believe my resume and application had the cooties. Upon exiting, I walked down the street sadly, knowing that I had no chance at a job I was very qualified for. A woman approached me and made a very obvious attempt to give me a super wide berth and AVOID THE EYE CONTACT THAT’S HOW THE BLACK STEALS YOUR SOUL. I had to know. Sure enough, she went into the newspaper office where it seemed she worked.
Interview where they were excited until I got there. After I arrived, the person who’d seemed very eager was so annoyed at me, I felt apologetic for not being the right person, or something. I have 15 years in the business, this was about mid to low level position for me. After a hurried session, I was summarily dismissed, knowing I’d failed, but not sure why. Racism? Who knows? It’s a creative position and black chicks are about as common in the field as rainbow glitter farting unicorns.
Interview where the leads were excited but the direct supervisor was not. 1st & 2nd interviews went well. Great company, great creative, I’d approached them, and they were intrigued and had been planning to create a position just like the one I was asking about. Kismet, amirite? Met supervisor on 3rd interview, she just didn’t believe me. It seems my skills were impossible, my desire to work for them was impossible. I’m imaginary. Oh well.
Interviews where “fit” is an issue. I have the skills, I just don’t “fit”. Except when they want $50/hr skills for $12/hr. Even then, there’s a “fit” issue. I feel like remaindered jeans,
Just plain annoying shite:
Followed in an IKEA by a woman demanding service. No, I neither worked there, nor was I wearing any sort of IKEA-esque outfit. She passed 2 IKEA employees, “Excuse me, excuse me miss, I have a question. MISS!” Finally I realized this crazy lady was actually talking to me. She’s annoyed as hell at having to chase me down for service. “I was wondering where I would find [some product or another].” “Lady, I don’t work here.” This is not the first time I’ve been an honorary employee at a store, this was just the longest I’ve ever seen someone persist in thinking so.
As I sit here, with homelessness (yay working poor) looming on the horizon, paid less than anyone I know, no drug history, college degree, everyone I’ve ever trained or supervised in much better shape than me, I can’t even begin to comprehend what the hell happened to me. I don’t know if America is a land of opportunity for me and as I’m now over 40, I fear that now I face a triple obstacle of color, gender and age. Who the fuck do I sue? Bigot or jackass? Does it matter? I’m working for pennies, about to lose my home with no future but low end wage slavery. It seems that a jackass does pretty well doing a bigots work.
SmallAxe
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
“And your response is to come in and declare that the conversation is silly because obviously in this case he’s just an asshole? Why?’
Never ever said that, you are over the top at this point, don’t put words in my mouth.
And ABL for what it’s worth I’m sorry this happened to you and I hope appropriate action is taken against the GM. I never intended to offend you and hope I haven’t in any of my posts. Hey at least I never called you “frumpy” :)
I guess I got invested in responding to these threads because it’s my hometown, I’m in an interacial marriage, I’ve worked in DC Hotels and I thought I might provide some counter insight for what it was worth. Obviously not much to some people.
Cheers, I’m out.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@SmallAxe: ABL wasn’t the person kicked out of the hotel.
And no, for your insight to have any value, you have to actually have some insight. “This couldn’t be racism because that’s so rare in DC” is not insight. It’s condescension. It’s a flat denial of reality.
Do you have any “insight” into why the things that happened to ruemara @120 weren’t racism either?
SmallAxe
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Jesus H Friggin Kristi Jrod, I never ever said
“This couldn’t be racism because that’s so rare in DC”
I said I didn’t think it was the MOST LIKELY scenario.
You are being very disingenuous
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@SmallAxe: And you still haven’t explained why that point is so damn important to you.
The original post that started this off (which is right here, since you apparently never read it) was by a black woman who felt she was kicked out of a hotel because of her skin color. Why don’t you head over to her place and tell her how there’s only a 5% chance it was actually about race? I’m sure she’d welcome your “insight.”
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@ruemara: Damn! I don’t even know what to say, so I’ll go with the overused “hang in there,” and a heart-felt cyber-hug.
Brachiator
@SmallAxe:
Sorry, that dog won’t hunt.
There are white people whose racial anxiety prevents them from seeing or applying the social and status distinctions to blacks and Latinos that they easily apply to other white people.
And so, if the black or Latino is not an easily recognizable celebrity, they are suspect, or someone who can be treated with disrespect.
I have no idea whether this fool really thought that the woman was a prostitute.
And the larger point is that from what has been presented in the original article, there was absolutely nothing that the woman could say or do to correct whatever misconceptions that the hotel staffer had about her. And it is inexcusable that he didn’t do the obvious, verify whether she might have legitimate business at the hotel.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Brachiator:
It’s worse than that. The manager actually did confirm that she had business at the hotel, then kicked her out anyway.
If a person reads this story, and all they get out of it is a desire to show how, maybe, racism wasn’t the culprit here, I’d say that person missed the point in a huge way.
Is it possible that the manager wasn’t considering race at all when he kicked an innocent woman out of his lobby? Yes, that’s entirely possible. And the next time Dori Maynard or ABL or ruemara get mistreated and humiliated, well, it might not be racial then either. Hell, every single time they have to deal with this shit that falls somewhere short of burning crosses on their lawns might possibly not be racially motivated.
I think our standard for calling racism on an action shouldn’t be “no reasonable doubt.” We’re not talking about a goddam trial here, we’re talking about why a person is acting like a dick. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I’m not gonna pretend it can’t be a duck until a raft of studies and research prove it conclusively.
And you know what? Making this story of black women being mistreated into a story about a white guy unfairly accused of racism is a bunch of bullshit, no matter what the motivation for doing so.
Angry Black Lady
@ruemara: i feel your pain, although i’ve been lucky enough to end up on the other side.
at one law firm where i worked (and was “fired”), i was hauled into the managing partner’s office after being there for a couple of weeks and was told that my work dress was inappropriate. i asked what he meant. he said: “i don’t know if it’s some sort of cultural thing, but your nose ring is anappropriate attire.”
mind you, i had the tiniest smallest dot of a silver stud in my nose. smaller than the one i’m wearing here.
i didn’t make a habit of wearing it to work, but i definitely didn’t check to make sure i removed it every morning. also, i didn’t think it would be that big a deal, since there was a blonde blue eyed associate who was my same year who had purple fucking streaks in her hair. vibrant purple.
i have done more firm-hopping than a lot of attorneys at my level. always wondered WHY i wasn’t getting the work the other associates were. was it me? sometimes. was it them? i don’t know.
i’ve had complete breakdowns at the end of a day because it’s so exhausting having to always be ON. smarter, faster, more thorough than me peers. every mistake gives me a heart attack. although i will say, it works to my advantage in court on occasion. no one expects the 5’3 black girl playing dress up in a pants suit to be able to argue a motion.
those are my “fuck you” moments. they are few and far between.
anyway, i’m sorry. it’s tiring if you “make it,” i can’t imagine how tiring it must be for you.
ETA: i should have said it’s exhausting feeling like i have to always be on. what i wrote makes me sound like a pompous asshole, which i am, but only partially so.
Brachiator
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Yeah, I saw this in the original story, but I wasn’t sure if there was any follow-up that revised or clarified what happened. Guess not.
The Balloon Juice commentariat is pretty diverse. Has there been any comments posted by white women, or by their friends, husbands or family members recounting times when they were summarily hustled out of a hotel anywhere in the US or Canada merely because they were perceived as being “undesirable?”
Angry Black Lady
that pirate guy is getting to me. ;)
Dennis G.
@superdestroyer:
I’m pretty certain that you are wrong on the facts here. I could spend some time proving it, but your mind is made up. You are the victim and all must agree with your reasons why.
Good luck with that/
Cheers
Darkrose
@debit:
My “privilege” LJ icon is the one that says “Oops! Your privilege is showing!” And I don’t know that there is a way to point out that someone is speaking from a privileged position without being defensive. I’m firmly on the side of Social Justice Fandom, and yet, I have had moments of feeling defensive when being smacked in the face by my cis-gendered privilege. I think it’s human.
Mary
@SmallAxe:
I promise you that no Downtown DC hotels have a predominantly black customer base.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Brachiator: I don’t recall anyone here saying that happened to them. But then, I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to retell the story about the time some pencil-neck thought they were a whore.
I also don’t recall anyone ever being kicked out of the hotel for being a hooker during the six months I spent working at one. I have no doubt that it has happened, at some time and in some hotel, but it hardly seems common. And I would expect that it’s very uncommon indeed for confirmed guests of paying customers to be kicked out of hotels for any reason short of wanton destruction of property. I know that if my friend or colleague was treated so shabbily by my hotel’s manager, that hotel would never get my business again, and I’d be certain that the manager was very loudly informed of why.
But then, I’m a white male. I get to think about things in that way. It’s privilege, plain and simple. I do wonder what Maynard’s friend at that hotel did when he found out what happened to her…
SmallAxe
@Mary:
Okay drop the predominately, although I’m sure Hampton Inn has more than most. Still without a doubt has dozens of blacks in and out of that hotel all day long, any hotel in DC does.
Brachiator
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
I find it almost inconceivable that someone who is not black or Latino (maybe even Asian) who had a similar experience would fail to share such a story in the threads dedicated to the topic. I mean, we’re all friends here.
One thing that this incident reminded me of: I live in Southern California, and I have seen women in the upscale parts of Hollywood accosted in the daytime by men driving by who want to solicit hookers. But while white women who are solicited get an apology (or the men just shamefacedly drive on), I have observed black and Latino women continue to be pestered, as though the man figures that these women are whores by nature or he might get lucky if he is persistent. In some cases, the women have been dressed more modestly than the white women. In other cases, I can’t imagine how any sane individual could think the woman to be a possible hooker.
There is more than “privilege” at work here. There is a fundamental disrespect at play here, infused with some odious racial sentiments.
I’ve heard about hotels in Vegas, San Francisco and other cities being concerned about call girls and grifters, but I’ve also never heard about anyone being kicked out of a hotel for being a hooker.
Agreed.
aimai
@ruemara:
Couldn’t agree more. I hope it was clear from my post that I was quoting the guys at the Bar Foundation and not agreeing with them.
However, I would like to add that very late in my time there some of the worst offenders got together with a pretty nice guy and did an actual study where they sent black people, women, and white guys to car dealerships and discovered (“discovered!”) that women and black people were treated completely differently and invariably ripped off by the car dealers. It was a total eye opener for some of those guys and they really stopped talking, for a while, about how racism didn’t exist.
aimai
Nutella
About 15 years ago one of the networks did a show on this topic. They chose St Louis but it could have been anywhere.
What they did was get two young men from the east coast, one white and one black, and sent them to St Louis with the same resume and same story to tell when the applied for jobs and apartments. They also set up a test for the general population: Young guy looking puzzled next to car with lifted hood in suburban parking lot.
Most of you will not be surprised to hear that the two were treated very differently in almost every encounter with the locals. Not only did some employers/landlords tell the black guy nothing was available while offering jobs/apartments to the white guy but even the others usually treated the black guy differently. One landlord gave him (and not the white guy) a lecture about not having loud parties.
The reaction of white St Louis residents? “How dare those TV people make us look bad!”