Nov 16, 2023
Black Beauty Queen Discriminated Against By Hotel Worker
Black Beauty Queen Discriminated Against By Hotel Worker
- 6 minutes
According to the narrative, a black beauty
queen discriminated against a hotel staff.
Let's put up her picture for mass.
I will give you the background.
In Houston, beauty queen Blessing Nwosu
[00:00:15]
has filed a civil rights violation
claim towards the Post Oak Hotel.
Claiming she was discriminated
against because of her race and
ethnicity by workers at the hotel.
[00:00:31]
Who embarrassed her by placing
a shawl over her shoulders
while she was seated at her
table enjoying her company.
Let me give you background.
This was on May 24.
The beauty queen and three of her
friends arrived at the Bloom and
[00:00:50]
Bee restaurant in the Post Oak Hotel
to put together birthday dinner.
After she sat down, the claim details,
the unthinkable happened.
The restaurant host then came up behind
blessing and put a piece of cloth,
[00:01:09]
like a scarf, on her shoulders, okay?
That's what the lawsuit states.
Simultaneously, the host said
that the cloth had to be put
on a customer's shoulder if
her shoulders are showing.
[00:01:25]
Blessing found her treatment
to be very rude, all right?
This person just came up and
did this, quote,
my back was actually facing
the host that did it.
I looked up like, my God.
I was stricken with panic.
I couldn't believe it, the former
Miss Nigeria USA contestant said,
[00:01:42]
as reported by the Houston Chronicle.
Everybody was looking.
I feel like I was being made
a spectacle and it was embarrassing.
The lawsuit alleges that she was not
the only woman in the establishment
[00:01:57]
with her shoulders exposed.
She took a selfie that showed
over her shoulder, a blonde white
woman with her shoulders out wearing
a spaghetti-strapped tank top, okay?
We have those photos.
[00:02:13]
The complaint submitted pictures
from the restaurant's IG page,
which showed a table
filled with white women,
all of their shoulders out, and
they were allowed to dine as they were.
The beauty queen, however,
according to the suit, felt a civil rights
[00:02:32]
violated by the staff singling her out and
treating her as subhuman.
They are seeking compensation for
damages based on what state
laws consider appropriate in
an amount of at least 500,000 or
as determined by the trier of fact,
all right?
[00:02:49]
So the same hotel is also being sued
by Willie Powells, who claimed he
was discriminated against at the H Bar
in another dress code incident.
He alleged the establishment enforced
a no hats rule requiring him,
[00:03:06]
a black male,
to remove a baseball cap while allowing
some of his white patrons
to wear cowboy hats.
Post Oak Hotel general manager,
Steven Chou released
a statement regarding the claim
from the beauty queen,
[00:03:25]
calling it, quote, a frivolous lawsuit.
The Post Oak attracts hotel patrons from
all over the world and is one of the most
diverse properties in Houston both in
employees and in its customer base.
[00:03:42]
He stated, the plaintiff entered
one of the hotel's restaurants for
lunch and approached the hostess stand.
The hostess noticed on her own that
plaintiff was clearly overexposed in
[00:03:57]
her dress and discreetly and respectfully
offered her a shawl for coverage.
The hostess is a minority and
denies any discriminating nature
towards the plaintiff and
simply wanted plaintiff to cover up.
[00:04:15]
Sir, I need you to address the other
people that are clearly in the picture
who are exposed as well,
because that's the genesis of the suit.
Not the ethnicity of who did it,
not their feelings behind it, but
[00:04:30]
the policy and protocol of the behavior,
and why is it not equally enforced.
So that's the issue at hand, and
that's the issue you gotta
deal with in a lawsuit.
All right, Yasmin, thoughts here.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, so
this happened in Houston, in the uptown,
Post Oak Galleria area.
[00:04:45]
It's a very nice, expensive part of town.
There's lots of money around there.
That hotel is very popular.
There are a ton of restaurants and
bars in and around the hotel, so
it's always very busy.
It makes sense that she would
have her shoulders out,
that she would be dressed up
to go somewhere like that.
[00:05:02]
That restaurant that was featured,
the Bloom & Bee,
that's a very popular brunch spot.
It's definitely a little bit more uppity
over there, but that's uppity for Houston.
Houston is not a very uppity place,
at least not compared to
a lot of other major cities.
And we're incredibly diverse.
[00:05:18]
So whenever things like this happen here,
it's a little bit surprising.
Maybe I'm a little bit naive,
sometimes I forget because we are so
diverse here in Houston that this
is where Juneteenth became a thing.
We had slavery here.
We had Jim Crow.
All of that was here on this land where
all these diverse people now live.
[00:05:37]
Modern society looks a little different
now, but incidents like this remind us
that that history of racial disparity
isn't actually that far behind us.
>> Speaker 1: Yeah, and
the way the manager decided to respond by
not granting any level of
grace to the seemingly
[00:05:54]
differential treatment between her and
the other patrons.
Says, well, you're being defensive, and
maybe you don't get the disconnect.
But naturally, if you're being told
you have to do this because of A,
[00:06:13]
B, or C and other people don't, well,
that's going to render an emotion
of being treated unfair.
That is normal.
That's called being human.
I would feel the same way.
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