During a girl’s night out, a trio of professional African-American women were accused of soliciting prostitution, after a group of men offered to buy them drinks.
In August, attorney Kantaki Washington and her two friends, Cydney Madlock and J. Lyn Thomas, visited Le Bain, the roof top bar atop The Standard Hotel in New York.
“After the security guard ushers the brotha away, he comes over to me and my friends and says, ‘Come on, ladies. You can buy a drink but you can’t be soliciting,” Washington said in an interview, describing the racial profiling incident. “We were like, soliciting? He said, ‘Don’t act stupid with me, ladies. You know what you’re doing. Stop soliciting in here. We were like, ‘Soliciting what?’”
“Dude, I’m a lawyer and these women are educators,” she said in reply. “Why the hell would I be in here soliciting prostitution?” Washington said the guard answered, “I don’t know but that’s what you’re doing.”
Washington notified management to complain, and she was told the security guard was an outsourced employee, and therefore not technically on The Standard Hotel staff. Weeks later, she received an email offering herself and three guests “back to The Standard for a bottle of champagne in The Top of The Standard or Le Bain, followed by dinner for 4 (valued at $400) at The Standard Grill.”
The ladies declined the offer, stating, “We all have careers. That’s nothing. We can afford that ourselves.”
Do you think race played a role in the security guard’s assumption that the women were prostitutes? Would you have accepted the bottle of champagne and dinner as compensation? Does it matter that the security guard was an outsourced employee?