VIP List or Racism

I purposely didn't post anything regarding Black History Month in February because frankly, I don't celebrate or acknowledge it. I will, however, post something I've been meaning to address for a while now about the blatant racism that is exhibited at nightclubs all over the country. Countless times I've seen people of color being turned away from the petty tyrants who guard the velvet rope because they were "outside their element" and made the club look bad in terms of image. Why should anyone be made to feel sub-par just to listen to good music, have a couple of drinks, and dance? Either the bouncers make people they don't like wait for hours in line, or act like they don't exist. These people are trying to spend money in these establishments and are getting humiliated and turned away.

I refuse to let anyone treat me so horribly and only patronize venues where I don't have to feel humiliated. Until people realize their self-worth, these brutes will wield their "power" over them. Why give them such control? Not only is this behavior racist, discriminatory, and tyrannical, it's bad business. I have copied the following letter, written by a black woman last year, that perfectly describes this experience. Once you read this, I hope you will realize that these atrocities are getting out of hand and will not stop until we take back the power we've relinquished.

On Saturday, August 12, my husband, soror and I had the displeasure of visiting Transit Nightclub. We were there supposedly as VIP guests of a friend for his birthday. His evite instructed us to mention his name at the front of the door and we would be admitted entry, free of charge into the club. We arrived shortly after 11PM and that is where the melee began. Let me preface all of this by saying, I don't take use of the race card lightly and am annoyed at people when they blame the ills of their life on being an African American. I am aware that racism exists, but I haven't experienced blatant racism since my time in Nashville as a college student.

We waited in line to enter the club, once we reached the front of the line; my husband was told that he couldn't enter because he had on sandals. We had on sandals, almost every woman that entered had on sandals, and so we were quite surprised when he said this. My husband had on a starched button down shirt, some jeans and dressy sandals- not $5 flip-flops, leather sandals he had purchased in Europe.

We questioned the doorman and he stated that men couldn't wear sandals in this club nor any other club in Chicago. I knew this was a lie because we've been to several clubs in Chicago and were admitted to all of them without incident. As we were talking to the doorman, another guest of our friend was told he couldn't get in because he had on a polo style shirt. I went into the club and to let our friend know that we'd be leaving and he was holding a conversation with one of the employees, where they stated that sandals were a liability issue because you could cut your foot on glass. If that were the case, why were women allowed to wear sandals? I informed our friend that we would be leaving and attempted to talk to the employee about his policy.

I left the club and again, since we had driven 50 miles to get there, attempted to talk some sense into the doorman. As I was talking to him, I noticed several Caucasian and Indian people entering the club, not only did they have on polo shirts, some had on plain white t-shirts, gym shoes and other garments that were not nearly as neat and professional as my husband. When I pointed this out to the doorman, he came up with a myriad of excuses, like they were repeat customers or their shirts didn't have stripes really a bunch of unreasonable excuses. At this time, it became apparent to me that the difference between these patrons and us was our skin color.

I explained to the doorman that I understand there is a certain element in Chicago that you want to keep out of your club. Trust me, I've seen many good clubs close because the wrong type of people started coming and fights, shoot outs and stampedes were the result. However, I explained that clearly we weren't those people and it was quite obvious that we weren't gaining admission because we were black.

At this point, another employee approached us and told us that no one cares that we aren't getting in. He also informed us to tell all of our friends so that they wouldn't come to the club because we weren't wanted there. He informed us that it was a private club and if they wanted to refuse admission to anyone for anything that they were within their legal rights to do so. My husband was angry by these remarks and told the employee to please step away from us so that we could wait on our car from valet (it wasn't as polite as this, but the essence of his message). The employee then told my husband that he would stomp him like an ant and that he wished he would try to hit him so that he could beat him to a pulp. He went on with a barrage of other threatening statements until his coworkers asked him to step inside.

This was a horrible incident and honestly, I think I had gotten comfortable in my little suburban life and had turned a blind eye to these types of incidents. It was a slap in the face and honestly, in addition to being angry, my feelings were very hurt. However, this caused me to think about other clubs in Chicago. The trend right now is to say you have to be on the "VIP" list to gain entry into clubs and lounges (Rednofive, Le Passage, Slicks, Transit, Bella, Sugar, etc). The reality of the situation is the VIP list is an excuse to exclude certain people. These people can be African American and typically are, they can be some other minority, they could even simply be unattractive people that don't fit into the image of the club. A columnist in Chicago even wrote how one Chicago establishment made African American patrons wait in line to gain entry, while countless Caucasian people walked in.

I went to Metromix.com to read the reviews on Transit and another woman, who seemed to be African American, had a similar experience. It is appalling and absurd, that in 2006, in a city as metropolitan as Chicago, that racism is still blatantly used to exclude minorities from clubs. Socioeconomic status doesn't preclude you from experiencing blatant racism, I am aware of that. However, I was silly enough to think that my friends and I, with all of our degrees and careers, would be sheltered to some extent. Silly me.


[Submitted by Jennifer Lee-Gilbert via CityAlert.com Message Board (http://www.cityalert.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.pl?board=nightlife)]