weero

Twice in a row? Don't you think it might be staged or tuned or incomplete?

The Chinese-Indian dislike/competition is mutual after all, I am sure that a few individuals fight their own silly wars.

rickg523

Did everyone just decide to ignore post#6 because the law is not as interesting as talking about other people's obsession with tribalism?
It doesn't matter whether the owner is white, black, Indian, or Chinese. It doesn't matter whether they are afraid of a virus or they think Chinese people smell bad. It's illegal to deny service in a public accommodation because of race, religion, ethnicity, or national origin in the United States. Full stop. That's been the law for 56 years.

GUWonder

Mutual, schmutual, staged/tuned/incomplete or not, these were Hmongs — not Chinese — that should have been able to stay at these hotels; and illegal discrimination in the US is illegal whether it’s aimed at Hmongs, Chinese or anyone else. Even if the illegal discrimination is being done by people of one’s own ethnicity or anyone else who has been buying into (or even selling) anti-Chinese hysteria, it’s still illegal.

cbn42

(1) This would violate Title II of the Civil Rights Act, and possibly analogous state laws. However, there are ways around that, such as banning people on the basis of where they have traveled recently, rather than their ethnicity.

(2) I doubt there is any law against asking.

(3) My guess is they took it upon themselves to try and protect their hotel from the corona virus.

Maybe Chinese passports indicate the city of origin/residence, or the information is available in the linked database.

What makes you think the guests were in the US illegally? You have no basis to believe that. But even if they are, that's not the hotel's problem.

GUWonder

“Cancellation and/or change penalties will be waived for guests traveling to or from China with direct bookings for stays in any of our hotels from Jan.“ is language from the hotel websites.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the hotel employees had been told by the owner/management that employees and customers who have been to China recently should be in isolation/quarantine for two weeks and not to work or stay at the hotels during the two weeks following coming from China.

Chinese passports often list the province of birth, but I doubt that these two American Hmongs were traveling with a Chineses passport with a POB listing in Hubei or anywhere else in China.

The idea that the average Indiana hotel owner or front desk employee has a ready link to government information about Chinese place of birth and China travel history for some American Hmongs strikes me as being far-fetched, to put it kindly.

pinniped

(1) It's expressly illegal and I hope the hotel is firmly prosecuted. I mean, this is literally one of THE exact scenarios that led to and is now protected by the Civil Rights Act.

(2) No American hotel has ever asked my citizenship. I have never shown a passport or birth certificate to an American hotel. If a regular hotel is doing this to people of color it is beyond crass, racist, and unacceptable, although I'm not sure if merely asking is against the law. There were some Airbnb hosts that were at one point asking for photographs or access to guests' social media, but I'm not sure if this process is still permitted. Airbnb was allegedly going to try to be slightly less racist, according to their responses to some bad press.

(Sidebar story: I was having difficulty getting an Airbnb in a particular city once, even though lots of units were showing available. When I'd contact hosts, they'd ask for a photo. When I would not give them one, they'd say "the unit is booked, sorry." I later learned that my unusual last name happens to be shared by an African-American local public figure in that city.)

(3) Where did the hotel employees get the idea to think this way? Probably childhood. I picked up all sorts of racist/xenophobic ideas on the playground, in my neighborhood, and from certain parts of my family (although thankfully my parents were fairly well-traveled and took time to debunk any racist crap they heard teenage me say). Many people go out an interact with the world and realize these ideas are wrong. Many others don't, and then they choose to consume media that augments their existing misconceptions to the point where anyone trying to convince them otherwise gets immediately shut down. So while I hope the hotel employees can change, I don't have too much hope...and unfortunately we would need the corporate brand to do the right thing and require the property to follow the law.

TravelingZoomer

There are millions of Chinese-Americans who have never set foot out of the country, let alone China. Assuming something negative that has no correlation with someone’s race, is by definition racist. Also it’s mind boggling you’d compare the dictatorship of the PRC where you have no reasonable expectation of privacy to the United States.

StartinSanDiego

Moderator Note: Time to close this thread.