I just want an update when Earl is unemployed.
Portland is very white (> 80%). Not surprising that there’s such racism in a city devoid of diversity.
In a statement released on Friday, Peralta said, “we sincerely apologize to Mr. Massey for his treatment this past weekend, and deeply regret the experience he endured,” and added, “It was unacceptable and contrary to our values, beliefs and how we seek to treat all people who visit our hotel.”
Talk is cheap, DoubleTree/HIlton.
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i get the sense their desire to not “back down” overrode their better judgement. maybe they do have loitering issues, people who piggyback or fish a card out of the trash and say “oh hey my card is acting up can you hit (FLOOR)”
by reframing it as a compliance issue they thought it was their magic get out of trouble card - basically they knew they fucked up, and the best strategy was to paint this man in the worst light.
and in a pre social media age they might have gotten away with it
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[narrator voice]
The host was also black
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I hope by the time this is all over that he gets an ownership stake, or the cash equivalent.
Update #3 from The Oregonian newspaper: The security guard and the manager who was on duty have both been fired.
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I wonder whether the individual hotel will be kicked out of the Doubletree system for this. I’d bet that there is a clause in their franchise agreement that allows Mariott to void the franchise agreement for a hotel that causes this sort of extreme damage to the brand.
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The northeast quarter, where this hotel is, is also where most of the black residents live.
So the neighborhood white percentage might be lower.
But Portland has a weird cultural segregation thing going on. If you see a black person and a white person hanging out together in Oregon, you may safely conclude that at least one of them is from somewhere else.
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From the YouTube comments of a Young Turks video:
None of this would have happened if this gentleman had simply hired himself a White Friend. A white friend essentially makes a black person invisible. A white friend helps to inoculate all those people who are allergic to black skin. A white friend helps to reduce the perceived threat level that the black skin creates. Lesson Learned - get yourself a white friend !!!
That’d be a nice gig job with an app for it: Uber White Friend. Okay, maybe the name needs work, but at least you couldn’t be replaced by a robot. /s
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I have a few friends who ended up doing “white monkey” jobs while studying in China, getting paid to appear at company meetings and parties, smiling and shaking hands to promote and legitimise companies because “They MUST be successful if they have business ties to the West!”
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That makes it even worse, no? This happened in the “black” part of Portland.
I also feel queasy when I see photos of victims of police misconduct wearing very formal outfits. It just feels fake and trying to hard to control the narrative. In my world most people who wear formal clothes are in the service industry: waiters and hotel clerks for instance. Wearing a suit used to imply high status, but today it mostly implies servitude.
Then there is the unspoken implication in these victim dress up pictures that people of color can’t wear a hoodie and still be respectable (unlike zucklike white folks). That the clothes they wear on a daily basis are somehow unacceptable. It all feels a bit like whitewashing.
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edit: misread
Nitpick: it’s Hilton.
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Unless the move comes from the owner or it is shown this is indicative of policies that come from the top down, that seems extreme. Large companies will have some assholes in their employ at any one time, including racists. Appropriate measures is to fire their asses when they show their asses.
Oregon again:
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annnnd that’s a firing
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A franchise is a unique circumstance where the parent can just dump the entire site if they so choose, depending on the contract terms - because they are more like a contract employee than a salaried worker.
The racist salaryman tends to just be shuffled around somewhere else unless they really step in it and go march at a rally on camera or (like happened recently at my wife’s workplace) inform a traveling black executive that he didn’t know of any n— that worked in their building.
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