Truth Be Told | Prejudice doesn’t discriminate

When I wear sweats, I command a little more respect. Police think I’m a little more interesting, women reach in their purse (I assume to give me a lollipop if I asked) and they cross the street before the crosswalk just to make sure I can have a little more room on the sidewalk. People’s thoughtfulness knows no bounds when you look like the nice man on the wanted poster.

Racial profiling is usually just background noise in our society. But the amount of attention that was given to an incident involving the black Harvard and Yale university graduate students and alumni at Cure Lounge in Boston highlights just how little attention the issue really gets.

After the Harvard-Yale game, organizers set up a party at Cure Lounge. About 400 mostly black Harvard and Yale graduate students and alumni bought advance tickets so they could be added to a closed guest list. According to Latrisha Desrosiers, a Harvard Law student at the event, doormen started letting in only people with Harvard or Yale IDs, which the guests were not told that they needed beforehand. At about 11:15 p.m., Desrosiers said everyone was told to leave the club. Outside the club, the crowd was informed that there were technical difficulties and that the fire marshal was being called — neither of which, according to Desrosiers and others there, actually happened.

One of the organizers, Harvard alumnus Michael Beal, sent out an e-mail the next day saying that “club management called the owner to say that they saw individuals on line whom they recognized as ‘local gang bangers.’” Later, according to the e-mail, management said it was concerned that the line would attract the “wrong crowd” and negative attention if said gang bangers were denied entrance.

In The Boston Globe, George Regan, the club’s spokesman, denied that race was a factor in the decision to shut down the club. But regardless of whether the club was racist, there’s a reason why this incident got so much attention.

You tell me which headline sounds better, “Black partygoers denied entrance to nightclub” or, as The Harvard Crimson wrote, “Club shuts down party for black Harvard and Yale students”? The story at the club received media coverage because it involved affiliates of Ivy League universities. It may remind you of the story of Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, the black Harvard professor who made headlines after he was arrested right outside his home.

By kicking out this particular group of black people, the management of Cure Lounge has assaulted the Ivy League — a hallowed American brand name — and effectively committed business suicide. But, in theory, it shouldn’t matter so much who was kicked out of the club that night but why.

If the management was racist when it shut down an entire closed-list party when the attendees were well-dressed, well-educated and well-connected, then what would keep the club from discriminating against people with even less of a voice? In these cases, clubs would have less fear of media and legal repercussions. I have no doubt that bigotry happens in major cities all over to varying degrees, Philadelphia included.

Beal wrote that the club kicked everyone out because it did not want to “draw negative attention to the establishment.” How ironic. Many of the attendees who feel they were discriminated against were law and business students who are now talking to the Massachusetts Attorney General, filing a report with the Better Business Bureau and generating an open letter to circulate to the press. The attendees should use these avenues to make their case, if for no other reason than to speak up for people who are only heard as faraway whispers.

Mark Attiah is a first-year medical student from Dallas. His e-mail address is attiah@theDP.com. Truth Be Told appears on alternate Thursdays.

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