Black Hotel Guest Files Lawsuit Against California Hotel, Accuses Manager of Racial Profiling and Berating Him for Sitting in Car in Parking Lot

In today’s episode of Can Black People Even Exist Without Looking Suspicious Someone? a Black man has filed a lawsuit against the Fremont Marriott Silicon Valley hotel in Alameda County, Calif., after he said he was racially profiled and treated like shit last year by the hotel manager all because he committed the egregious crime of...sitting in his car in the hotel parking lot.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Dramaine Vinegar said he booked a three-night stay at the Fremont Marriott Silicon Valley last April with his fiancee. On the second-to-last day of his stay, Vinegar sat in his car in the hotel’s parking lot to make a phone call, according to the lawsuit.

Vinegar said a car pulled up behind him. A hotel manager, William Gheen, jumped out and told Vinegar to “Get the f— off the property,” according to the lawsuit, which names Gheen, Marriott International, and the hotel’s franchisee and management company, Fremont Hotel Operating Co. and Remington Hotels.

In an interview with The Chronicle, Vinegar said he told Gheen that he had a “motel” room. Gheen snapped back, “It’s a hotel, not a motel,” according to Vinegar and the lawsuit.

The pair continued to argue in the hotel’s lobby, in an interaction that Vinegar filmed with his cell phone.

“I’m a customer. I’ve been here for two nights. You got out your truck, and you told me to get the f— off of private property without even addressing me properly,” Vinegar tells Gheen in the video. When Vinegar asks Gheen for his name, the manager extends his middle finger while walking away, the video shows.

It appears to be a classic case of negroes not being able to engage in even the most mundane of activities—such as sitting in a car while making a phone call—without a Karen-esque white person thinking something isn’t right, and then acting like a child after being called out on their shit.

“I’m 100% certain if I was white, he wouldn’t have addressed me like that,” Vinegar told the Chronicle.

Like Black men across the country, Vinegar said he’d been subjected to “certain looks, certain stereotypes,” but he said nothing as blatant as what he experienced at the hotel has ever happened to him. (Which honestly makes him a relatively fortunate Black man in America.)

Jason Kafoury, Vinegar’s attorney, said the incident was just one in “a pattern of white managers in hotels walking up to paying guests and racially profiling them to try to clear out lobbies and parking lots.”

According to the Chronicle, Vinegar’s lawsuit doesn’t specify any damages, but he is demanding that Marriot hotels screen people for racial bias before hiring them to be managers.

“For the most part, I’m hoping that people will understand that they have to treat all races the same,” he said.

My petty side really hopes Vinegar goes after the manager’s and/or the hotel’s pockets as well. If racists can’t say “I’m sorry” from their hearts, they can say it with their wallets.