I just finished doing a week of guest hosting on talk radio.
At some point, a couple of days in, as memory serves, after a predictable number of callers offered up a predictable amount of venom sprinkled with occasional splash of vicious, I was reminded of something I had forgotten.
Why we have speed limit signs.
Stay tuned for that.
A Riverside, California woman and her three friends made a two-hour drive in harrowing winter weather for a weekend trip to Big Bear, only to find once she arrived the group would be denied shelter because of her race.
An Airbnb host in Running Springs told Dyne Suh she was canceling the booking Suh had made because she is Asian.
“I wouldn’t rent to you if you were the last person on Earth,” the host told Suh. “One word says it all. Asian.”
Suh said the host had originally confirmed via text message she could pay extra to add two people to the reservation, which had only included two individuals. When she followed up once they were near the cabin to double check, Suh said, the racist tirade ensued.
“If you think four people and two dogs ate (sic) getting a room fir (sic) $50 a night on Big Bear mountain during the busiest weekend of the year… You are insanely high,” the host told her, calling her a con artist.
When Suh said she would report the action to Airbnb officials, the host replied: “It’s why we have Trump.”
“For me personally, to now have someone say something racist to me and say it’s because of Trump, it was my fears coming true,” Suh said. “That people who held these racist beliefs felt emboldened.”
The host went on to say she would “not allow this country to be told what to do by foreigners.”
Suh is an American citizen who has called the U.S. home since she was 3 years old.
“If this is my experience as a light-skinned Asian woman, what is it like for people who have darker skin than me or are Muslim?” Suh wondered aloud. “What is it like for people who are undocumented or not U.S. citizens yet?
Because Airbnb provided the group with a reimbursement that night, they were able to find alternate lodging, Suh said on Facebook.
A spokesman for the company said it investigated the incident and the host has been barred from its service.
"Airbnb does not condone discrimination in any way,” spokesman Christopher Nulty said. “We have worked to provide the guest with our full support. In line with our non-discrimination policy, this host has been permanently removed from the Airbnb platform."
First, let's just cut to one of the obvious chases here.
Bigotry, like pollen in the springtime and long lines at the "express" checkout, ain't nothin' new. Since there has been mankind, there has been man unkind and no race, creed, culture or political affiliation has ever had a corner on the discrimination thing.
Well, actually, Nazi Germany is probably a champ that retired undefeated, but allusions to brown shirts and goose stepping do little but distract a lot of Trump supporters from whatever point is being made by the allusion.
So, let's not go there.
The thing about Dyne Suh's experience isn't that it's particularly unique, although that's not meant to imply that it's to be treated with complacency or apathy....the thing about her experience is that it illustrates a point that doesn't seem to make its way into the conversation these days.
In fact, most especially these days. If, like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives then, bet the farm, Maggie, like kidney stones through the urethra, these are the days of Trump.
Which brings us back around to speed limit signs.
And why we have them.
Because we have morons.
Oh, not you, of course. Or me.
I'm talking about them.
Them who would go a hundred miles an hour in the fifty five miles per hour zone instead of eighty miles an hour in the fifty five miles per hour zone if there were no sign there telling them that they need to be going only fifty five miles per hour.
Locks, an old proverb explains, are for honest people. The logic at work, of course, being that burglars (ie; dishonest people) can break locks. The locks, meanwhile, give the impression of security and keep the honest people honest.
Speed limits, or any limit on anything, actually, are more of an inverse to that principle.
Reasonably intelligent, compassionate people with a care for much and many more in the world beyond themselves drive at a reasonable and reasonably intelligent speed because they are reasonable.
Not because there's a sign telling them they have to do so.
The intelligence challenged in our lives tend to keep that speedometer registering somewhere between "fuck you, here I come" and "I may or may not successfully negotiate this next curve and may or may not end my life, and possibly, your own in the lesser known yoga position, 'idiot wrapped flamingly around tree'...".
Meanwhile, bigots, like their speed demon relatives, are likely to likewise drive full speed, and spew, ahead unless governed by some sense that their behavior will result in admonishment or even punishment.
And while the response from the Airbnb folks was certainly appropriate and laudable, we of the non-bigot demographic are pretty sure that losing favored status in the bed and breakfast category isn't going to put much of a dent in the mindset of that host with a hard on for hatred.
What's required here is a heavy duty intervention on injustice and intolerance, perhaps a stern admonishment from a respected leader of the community or even a condemnation of such attitudes and actions by the leader of this great nation, the role model we've all chosen to exemplify the very best of our better angels, who is ready, willing and able to speak out forcefully and articulately on the pitfalls of prejudice, the demonology of discrimination, the simple, basic truth that in this country, all men, and women, are created equal.....and......
oh....wait......
...yeah....uh...that's not gonna happen.
And the bigots know that.
"They ain't no speed limit signs around here. Git it?"
"And ain't nobody gonna tell me that I gotta put up with your slanty-eyed bullshit".
That's why we got Trump.
