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.