Sitting in a Tuscon suburb this morning I watched the sun crawl crawl high into the sky and kiss the mountains. I looked at a handful of Starbucks faithful taking in the post dawn beside me a noticed, not for the first time, how they gauged me. At times I’ve been accused of being ‘in my own head’ about stuff, but here was a moment and an ongoing situation that was not the case at all. In fact, it started yesterday in the line to get my hotel room at a Tuscon resort.
We’d all decided to stay at the Westin La Paloma. There were three families and we all arrived within moments of each other at the resort. One of the families could be mistaken as purely caucasian, one actually was, and we are not. We pre-arranged to have our rooms blocked together, making it a family outing. When the first two families checked in they were given rooms immediately and given a pool access wristband for up to 5 family members. When I, checked in right behind them I was told no room was prepared for us. They had no idea when a room for us would possibly be ready. They offered me 4 passes and when I mentioned that we are a family of five, I was told that there was no possible way to get five passes. I asked if I could pay separately for a fifth pass and again I was told no. This despite the fact that the people directly in front of me — the people I came with– just walked off with five passes.
Three hours later we were still waiting for a room.
That’s the point where the people I came with and myself decided to stop being nice and start demanding action. The Westin claimed there wasn’t racism involved. They stopped short of suggesting that some of their best customers were black. I would’ve seen right through that lie and they knew it. After we resolved the issue (we got a room), I took a careful look around the resort and later observed the suburb itself in closer detail. I found myself at Starbucks this morning with a lot of people who were not like me and no people–even in passing cars–who were.
Sociology tells us that people gravitate towards those who are like them. When planning a society–or in this case a community–people sometimes seek to be amongst those like themselves and away from those they find different or threatening. This is the other side of racism. This is the practical side that people hide behind when creating these enclaves. This is what also blinds them to the fact that by creating exclusionary communities they exclude everyone in a particular group by creating a place where racism can not only survive, but thrive in such a way that the people responsible don’t even recognize that they are being racist. Instead they feel like they are fighting for their rights and freedoms to choose and to create a space that they feel safe in and that they can protect and populate in any way they see fit. It is the same misconception and dimness that birthed a thousand White Student Unions ignorant of the history and persecution that established their counterparts. That’s where ‘some of my best friends are black’ is born.
I can’t promise I’ll ever come back to the Westin La Paloma, but part of me wants to return for no better reason than to be present and be black and be that symbol of what we are as real people and not the MTV/CNN/FOX driven perceptions that leaves them so broken and confused. Maybe next time I won’t have to wait so many hours for a room.