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Posted on 08/25/2015 7:35:06 AM PDT by Citizen Zed
Getting wine-drunk on a train in Napa Valley sounds pretty good if you're the guys from Sideways or the parents in Bob's Burgers, but it's apparently a lot less fun if you're a black woman with a loud laugh.
A group of 11 women, members of the Sistahs on the Edge book club, were kicked off the Napa Valley Wine Train last Saturday for allegedly being too loud and disturbing other passengers—but the women say it was because of their race.
One of the book club's members, Lisa Johnson, chronicled the event on Facebook, igniting an outcry across social media and inspiring the hashtag #LaughingWhileBlack.
"I felt like it was a racist attack on us," Johnson later told the San Francisco Chronicle. "We were being singled out."
According to Johnson, the train's manager approached the group—which included an 83-year-old grandmother—and said that the ladies would have to leave if they "didn't tone it down."
"The train is set up to be with your friends, to drink wine, and to have a good time ... We were thinking, 'Who are we offending?'"
The real humiliation, said Johnson, came from being escorted on a "walk of shame" through the rest of the train cars before the women were asked to leave at the next train station stop.
The Napa Valley Wine Train gave each of the women a full refund after the fact, but Johnson is holding out for "a public apology for the humiliations they caused to us as professional women." They are considering taking legal action.
According to the Chronicle, Sam Singer—a spokesperson for the company—maintains that the incident "wasn't an issue of bias. It was an issue of noise."
The Napa Valley Wine Train did not immediately return VICE's request for comment.
Yep.
Change the title of the article to
“Drunk People Kicked Off Train After Repeatedly Ignoring Conductor’s Instructions”
Doesn’t quite carry the same weight, does it?
Interesting, because i would guess there are probably more black attendants, at least percentage wise, on Trains than whites, so....
No blacks tip that matter!
Good. I’m tired of laughter.
Maybe the Napa Valley leftists are not so tolerant after all at least not in their own neighborhoods.
They also know they won't get a tip.
Obnoxious drunks of any race are obnoxious drunks. To top it off these “professional” women play the race card. Typical.
Because treating everybody the same is racist.
Some snooty white California liberals, the types who prefer blacks on TV as opposed to next to them, were made uncomfortable by their "less refined" behavior and got them kicked off.
In the highly unlikely event I ever find myself on a wine-tasting train through the Napa Valley, I'll be laughing it up with the black ladies! I mean, isn't this type of event supposed to be fun?
Blacks ARE loud. Our church playground had three black children join twenty church members children. Those few blacks were louder than the white children by substantial decibels. No sense of decorum or manners
When it's loud and rowdy Black women doing the "non-disturbing".
I bet the same ones who call racism in this matter would raise holy hell if a child were crying while they were trying to enjoy their favorite restaurant...
Maybe they were wearing Tena?
Well, years ago, was in a movie theater in Chicago.
The audience was mostly black.. It was a mixed group but definitely over half black.
The blacks in the audience never shut up. At funny points in the movie, the laughter was so stereotypically exaggerated as to be a joke in and of itself. The constant chatter and talk back and forth made it an ordeal to try to hear the movie sound track.
I will be called a racist for this, but, based on that and other experiences, I have learned, from experiences not from prejudice, that too many blacks together changes the group dynamic. And the result in behavior which would not be expected elsewhere among polite society.
Professional women?What profession?
I don’t understand the emphasis on their being professional women. They themselves are making this distinction.
What’s their point? That they are “professional” as opposed to being “ghetto” blacks? But if that’s what they mean, aren’t they being the bigots against ghetto blacks that they accuse everyone else of being????
I don’t know ... I need more facts. Sounds like a fun group I’d like to hang with myself ....
yep, I can GUARANTEE you the business owner would have preferred NOT to have had to throw them off the train and give them a refund.
All these women had to do was quite down when asked.
It’s not like the didn’t get multiple warnings.
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