Doubletree Inn kicks out blacks

USA Today wrote:A black guest of DoubleTree gets kicked out of the hotel for calling his mother in the lobby

Jermaine Massey took a seat in a quiet section of the Doubletree hotel lobby he was staying at in Portland to take a call from his mother. But he says he was soon interrupted by a security guard – Earl – who asked if Massey was staying in the hotel. Massey showed him his key card but couldn't remember the room number off hand. This prompted Earl to call the police. Earl is white and Massey is black.

Apparently, Massey was kicked out of the hotel for "trespassing," even though he had paid for a hotel room and already had his belongings in the room. In fact, it wasn't until after the police were called that the manager of the hotel came over to Massey and asked what happened.

"Tonight I was racially profiled and discriminated against for taking a phone call in the lobby of my hotel room at the @doubletreepdx @doubletree. The security guard “Earl” decided that he would call the police on me, the exact reason is still unclear to me..." Massey says in one of his Instagram posts.

And later from his new room at the Sheraton by the airport: "It just goes to show you that racism is still alive and well man. This was a real incident where I could’ve gone to jail if I responded in a different way."

https://boingboing.net/2018/12/27/a-black-guest-of-doubletree-ge.html

Newsone wrote:
Doubletree Portland said it has “a zero-tolerance stance on discrimination," but that didn't appear to be true.
Written By NewsOne Staff
Posted 6 hours ago



The good news is that a hotel in Oregon announced it would be investigating why a Black guest at a Doubletree Inn was kicked out over suspicion of loitering on a property he had paid to stay at last weekend. But the bad news is far more telling: The security guard and other workers responsible for kicking out Jermaine Massey, a 34-year-old Black man who was only guilty of wearing a hoodie and having brown skin, were still on the company payroll as of Saturday morning, one week later.

Many people who looked at Massey’s social media posts of the incident agreed he was racially profiled and pointed to similar incidents in which white people have called the cops on Black people who were doing nothing wrong.

“It just goes to show you that racism is still alive and well man. This was a real incident where I could’ve gone to jail if I responded in a different way,” Massey said in one of his social media posts documenting the unfortunate incident.

Massey had returned to the hotel Sunday night after attending a Travis Scott concert. He was in the hotel lobby when he noticed that he missed a phone call from his mother. Concerned that it was important, Massey said he decided to sit in the lobby and return her call before going up to his room.

That’s when he said the security guard approached him and demanded to know if Massey was a guest. Massey couldn’t recall his room number when the guard asked. In the heated exchange, the guard accused Massey of loitering and had a manager call the police, even though Massey was holding his room key card.

Massey said white guests were standing in the lobby without the security guard interrogating them. Responding police officers told him to check out of the hotel as the dispute escalated.

After gathering his belongings, the cops directed Massey to file a complaint with hotel management to avoid being arrested for trespassing, he recalled. Massey declined the cops’ offer of a ride to another hotel, choosing instead to take a Lyft to a Sheraton.

Last month, Hilton did the right thing and fired one of its workers who posted a social media meme depicting the head football coach at Florida State University being lynched. While Hilton suspended Tom Shand before firing him, it only took the Hotel chain three days to terminate his employment. Conversely, it’s been a full week since the ugly episode surrounding Massey took place over the holidays in Portland, a city renowned for its racism against Black people.

In the past 12 months alone, Portland has been the scene of a bakery refusing to serve a Black customer, a food truck owner assaulting a Black woman, a white supremacist riot and the suspicious police shooting of an innocent Black man.