Actor Mark Curry was harassed over the weekend in Colorado Springs for drinking coffee while black. What's more, he had the gall to drink said coffee while sitting in the lobby of the Wyndham Grand Hotel & Spa — the hotel he was staying at while in town to perform at a venue down the street.
Video below, posted by Curry on Instagram, shows what appears to be a hotel employee racially profiling the comedian, wanting to know if Curry was a guest at the hotel — but according to Curry, the gentleman did not ask the same question to any of the other, lighter-skinned people hanging out in the lobby.
The hotel employee — and his sidekick — then followed Curry around the hotel, as shown in the video, even blocking him from using the bathroom, according to Curry. When Curry walked up to the woman who allegedly checked him in, she did not step in to reprimand the interrogator, who was still watching Curry like a hawk, but instead robotically asked to see Curry's ID.
As an aside, the hotel interrogator would not show any ID of his own when asked by Curry to see it.
After the fact (as in, after Curry's video went viral, exposing the unsavory situation), the hotel put out a manufactured apology, with the usual, "We deeply regret this incident and have reached out to Mr. Curry to offer not only our sincere apologies … As a respected community partner, we are also using this opportunity to revisit training with our staff, helping to ensure all interactions are reflective of our company values."
From News One:
Comedian and actor Mark Curry, widely known for his starring role on the 1990s sitcom, "Hanging With Mr. Cooper," posted a video to his Instagram that appeared to show him being racially profiled in a hotel in Colorado.
Curry did not answer the question being repeatedly asked of him likely in an effort to make an example of what he called "racism."
The video lasts 26 minutes and was filmed all because of a "Black man and a Hotel Lobby," Curry wrote on his Instagram post, suggesting the purported hotel employees thought "it's impossible that he has a room here." …
When Curry tried to use the restroom in the lobby, he was physically blocked from entering.
When the two men were joined by other employees, Curry said he felt "threatened."
Later, the hotel manager issued a quasi-apology for the way hotel employees treated a patron and insisted employees would be retrained, presumably in the arena of implicit bias.
