Donald Trump has claimed to love “the blacks” over and over again. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he famously asked what blacks had to lose by voting for him. A great many of us (especially black women) predicted that blacks stood to lose a lot by Trump being in office—hence our not voting for him. But we are also now learning that blacks have a lot to lose just by working for Trump. In a new lawsuit filed this week in Washington, D.C., three black employees claim that they were discriminated against in their work for BLT Prime, the steakhouse in the Trump International Hotel.
In a civil complaint filed Wednesday morning in D.C. Superior Court, [Dominque Hill], a former BLT employee, and [Irving Smith, Jr.], a current one, allege that the Trump Organization and hotel managing director Mickael Damelincourt saw to it that the restaurant routinely steered black employees to less lucrative shifts and subjected them to discriminatory behavior by other staff and by guests. The two men are joined in the case by another former BLT employee, JaNette Sturdivant.
Why is this not surprising? Trump has a long history of anti-black racism. From his calls for the death penalty for the Central Park Five to being sued for housing bias and discrimination, his actions have long proven that he believes that blacks are, in every way, inferior to whites. While Trump clearly doesn’t oversee the day-to-day operations of the hotel, we should not have any doubt that he has put in place a team of equally bigoted and racist employees who have little respect for blacks and other people of color. After all, we’ve seen who he’s brought to work for him in the White House.
“They started hiring all these people and instead of putting them on day shifts they was giving them night shifts and keeping us on day shift. Next thing I know, within the month all the black people were on the day shift,” [Smith said]. [...]
After the election, Smith claimed one of his co-workers began making racist statements to him and that Smith’s complaints to management fell on deaf ears.
“He used to say ‘This is white America time, you need to get used to it, and if you don’t get used to it you should go work somewhere else,’ ” he alleged.
Unfortunately, this case will be pretty difficult to win. The employees were not directly working for the Trump Organization but instead a third-party, ESquared Hospitality, which is in charge of the restaurant. Additionally, both the Trump Organization and ESquared Hospitality vehemently deny that any such discrimination took place. This is the difficulty of being a minority in the workplace and speaking up about the unfair treatment one faces—often the burden of proof falls on you. And since our society only seems to recognize the very covert examples of racism and white supremacy (like Neo-Nazis and white supremacists marching in the streets with torches), more subtle forms of discrimination, like racist comments or unfair treatment can be much harder to prove.
The third plaintiff, Sturdivant, 34, a black woman who worked at BLT from May to June as a server, claimed she was complimented on her light skin after arriving.
“When I first came on board … the server manager said it’s good to see someone with Milano complexion here,” she said. Still, she said she was not given “moneymaking” night shifts.
Racial discrimination is a sad reality for many blacks and people of color in the workplace. And this seems to be a persistent pattern within Donald Trump’s businesses. Trump most certainly doesn’t love “the blacks.” He doesn’t love anyone but himself. Unless they have absolutely no choice, it’s hard to imagine why black people (or anyone else for that matter) would voluntarily work for him or work with anything even remotely associated with him.