Originally Posted By skinnerbox It's all in the details. And the following two journalists took the time to dig up those pesky little details to verify that this incident was racially motivated: <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3208842/Group-black-women-kicked-Napa-wine-tour-laughing-loud-white-guest-witnessed-incident-calls-staff-saying-actions-racially-motivated.html">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...ted.html</a> <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/08/24/napa_valley_wine_train_was_a_book_club_kicked_off_of_this_wine_tour_because.html">http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...use.html</a> I've always been against the stupid Wine Train since its inception and truly feel for the county residents who have to put up with the s-l-o-o-o-w train crossing inconveniences and obnoxiously drunk tourists it spits out into downtown Napa every day it runs. That being said, there is a long and sorted history of large rowdy groups on this train, mostly rich white techie bachelorette party attendees, who are never escorted off the train while local law enforcement stands at the ready. And the only difference between those bachelorette parties and this book club's annual gathering is as simple as black and white.
Originally Posted By Ivan58 I don't care who is making noise. If you disturb my dinner I want you off the train. If if was disturbed I would tell them: "This ain't "Soul Train", time to get off" Sometimes you have to fight for your right just to eat in peace.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Great. Another sock puppet who joins merely to come directly to WE and spew racist crap.
Originally Posted By ecdc Cue "If anyone was loud they would've been thrown off" posts, followed shortly by, "Wow, now this is what black people are complaining about--drinking wine on a fancy train?" The issue is public spaces that are often seen as white and treated as white, especially wealthy or nice public spaces. White Americans expect to see black Americans in lower-class spaces--lower-class spaces white policies created that now reinforce the idea in their minds that it is somehow African American's fault they are stuck in poverty and the ghetto.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox <<Great. Another sock puppet who joins merely to come directly to WE and spew racist crap.>> Seems that WE if not most of the LP discussion boards have become the wild west. Moderators have taken an extremely hands-off stance with their jobs.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox <<The issue is public spaces that are often seen as white and treated as white, especially wealthy or nice public spaces. White Americans expect to see black Americans in lower-class spaces--lower-class spaces white policies created that now reinforce the idea in their minds that it is somehow African American's fault they are stuck in poverty and the ghetto.>> Bingo! These women were all over 40, all college-educated professionals or retirees. That's why they joined this book club. They were seeking good conversation, intellectual discussion. They're hardly poster girls for down-and-out black women mired in poverty. But there's the rub, right? Elitist white bigots, like so many in Napa Valley's tourist demographic, don't want African Americans to be anyplace OTHER than at the bottom, barely getting by, working their butts off in service to the 1%. Which, btw, is over 96% white. But when African-Americans manage to break out of that socioeconomic prison, to become college-educated and professional, those same elitist white bigots who were blaming African-Americans for their inability to escape poverty, now expect them to become silent and invisible. They are not welcomed into the white public space, as ecdc described. And if they insist on equal treatment, they're to be shunned if not physically barred from that white public space. This is precisely what happened to these women. They had the audacity to expect equal treatment on the elitist white tourist trap train. They failed to "know their place," i.e., back in a quiet corner of the tasting car, using whispers to communicate with each other, lest the elitist white patrons have their sensibilities offended by the realization that THOSE PEOPLE have enough resources to enjoy the more expensive niceties of modern living. Other groups on that same train in that same car were also being loud. Difference is, they were drunk and obnoxious. These women were not drunk nor obnoxious. They were simply speaking loudly and laughing loudly to each other over the train noise and the raucous behavior of other patrons. White patrons. But how dare they, right? They're not white. They've got to "know their place" lest they become "uppity you-know-whats." Shame on anyone who defends the removal of these women when hundreds of white bachelorette parties have been as drunken and as loud and as obnoxious as the typical college frat party, all without incident, all without notice. Shame on you, NVWT, for siding with the wealthy elite bigots who applaude you for kicking these women off the train. But I guess you know EXACTLY which side your bread is buttered on.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip Napa Valley is way too elitist for me. I would never consider visiting there. Although I did enjoy watching Paul Giamatti getting drunk and disorderly there in Sideways.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Seems that WE if not most of the LP discussion boards have become the wild west. Moderators have taken an extremely hands-off stance with their jobs.<< In fairness to the mods, this is a huge problem across the internet. More and more newspaper sites are disabling the ability to add comments or are heavily moderating them. If major websites with a lot of funds can't figure this out, imagine a family owned site like LP. The way the internet was built and expanded has made it possible for a tiny handful of sociopaths to destroy entire web communities. All it takes is one or two dedicated trolls and it's over. Regular people (read: people with lives, ethics, and a basic sense of human decency, all three of which trolls lack) won't bother because they have better things to do. Unlike trolls, whose lives revolve around destroying these communities and hurting other human beings, these people come to websites on a fairly casual basis to engage in conversation. If that becomes impossible, they leave. What you're left with are online communities made up of people who shrug trolls off...and trolls. Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of good spaces on the web to still post and chat about things. LP frankly has it fairly good--our trolls (I'm convinced there's two or three at most) aren't very bright or clever, rotating through a handful of characters so transparent it's at once embarrassing and amusing. But across the web, online comment boards have become the refuge of cowards. These people are racist, sexist, and they know their bile isn't welcome IRL, so they retreat to the anonymity of the internet. They are overwhelmingly white men who feel emasculated and powerless IRL because of their families and their failed careers and lives. They aren't intelligent enough to recognize what's going on: that they were raised to be entitled and believe that the world is supposed to work exclusively in their favor, and when it doesn't, they lash out in the crudest way possible: against the weak and those without power, and they are so cowardly they can't even stand up to these people in person, so they retreat to their laptop while their wife yells at them for not taking out the garbage again.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox <<Although I did enjoy watching Paul Giamatti getting drunk and disorderly there in Sideways.>> Not Napa or Sonoma or Mendocino. Not Northern California, but Southern California. Specifically Santa Barbara County, Santa Maria. Another great wine growing region in our state. (And a really fun flick.)
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <Napa Valley is way too elitist for me. I would never consider visiting there. Although I did enjoy watching Paul Giamatti getting drunk and disorderly there in Sideways.> I loved that movie. That was the Santa Barbara/Santa Ynez wine country though. I went to Napa and Sonoma once. Enjoyed Calistoga, which is a funkier town, and a couple of the wineries themselves. Much of Napa can indeed have a bit of an attitude, though.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox LOL!!! But you're correct about Napa. I lived outside Santa Rosa for awhile, many years ago, and still travel there every few months to see my specialist. I love driving on Hwy 12 between SR and Sonoma, but I'm not particularly fond of driving over the hill into Napa. Totally different vibe along Silverado Hwy. Seems more snobbish. Meh. Interesting that Ron and Diane Disney Miller put their vineyard in Napa, and John Lasseter put his vineyard in Sonoma. Hmm...
Originally Posted By Ivan58 "Soul Train" None of you got it. I'm a regular on here so no need to introduce myself always and that's the best pun I have ever made. Normally I only add to the the gun rights discussion on LP to FIGHT FOR OUR RIGHTS!!!!!!! but soul train is funny for all of us to enjoy.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox Excellent article about another minority group's encounter with unhappy management aboard the NVWT, which also cites the "white space" aspect of the wine train, as ecdc pointed out earlier: <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/08/25/napa_valley_wine_train_discrimination_another_passenger_thinks_she_was_discriminated.html">http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...ted.html</a> <> Another woman has accused the Napa Valley Wine Train of racial bias for threatening to remove her party from the train after a noise complaint made against them in April, even as the company has apologized for a similar incident on Saturday and said it didn’t reflect its values. The latest report comes after the removal of a group of mostly black women from the train following a similar complaint against them, the difference in this second case being that the group was only threatened with removal and not actually ultimately removed. Norma Ruiz, a graduate student in the University of California–San Francisco’s nursing program, was celebrating her 28th birthday in April when a patron approached her party of 10 people to say that they were being annoying and loud. “We were kind of taken by surprise because we were just celebrating my birthday having normal conversation,” Ruiz told me. A waiter told her group to continue their celebration and they moved to the dining car on their own, she said. Then a woman from the train company approached their party, which at this point had quieted down to below the noise level of the dining car, and told them if they didn’t “control [their] level of noise” they would be kicked off the train. “We were not making noise, we felt very uncomfortable the way we were being approached and [they were] embarrassing our group in front of everyone,” Ruiz says. Ruiz described the group as being made up of “all Latino individuals,” the majority of whom were local University of California–Berkeley graduates. She now sees the incident as one of racial bias. “I think it was just that person complaining and then the manager seeing that we were Latino, basically decided to discriminate [against] us because we were Latinos and [a big] group,” she said. “Now that I hear about this event with a group of African American ladies being kicked out of the train, I’m seeing a pattern. I’m realizing that how I was treated was not normal.” Over the weekend, a group of black women were kicked off of the train after a noise complaint, raising hackles on social media and questions about prejudice. The company’s CEO, Anthony Giaccio, has since apologized personally to Lisa Johnson, the woman who reported the incident occurring to her and her book club, according to a spokesman for the company. “The Napa Valley Wine Train is open to anybody of any persuasion, any color, any day of the week,” crisis communications specialist Sam Singer told me, speaking for the company. When I asked Singer about the incident with Ruiz, he said that he didn’t know anything about it but that the company has to remove parties of “all different races” from the train or ask them to leave about once a month “because of behavior that affects the experience of other passengers.” Singer said the company’s normal policy was to move passengers to other cars when there’s a conflict over noise, but they couldn’t do that with the book club because the train was sold-out. Ruiz, however, says her party had not only moved to the dining car when they were threatened with removal, but explicitly asked if they could be placed in an open car and were denied. <> More at the link.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>When I asked Singer about the incident with Ruiz, he said that he didn’t know anything about it but that the company has to remove parties of “all different races” from the train or ask them to leave about once a month “because of behavior that affects the experience of other passengers.” Singer said the company’s normal policy was to move passengers to other cars when there’s a conflict over noise, but they couldn’t do that with the book club because the train was sold-out.<< Maybe I don't understand how a wine train works. I'm thinking that you ride a train and consume wine, which can tend to make people act silly and laugh more than they might if it were, say, any other kind of train.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <"Soul Train" None of you got it.> Of course I got it. That's why I immediately followed it with #3.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox Apparently, only white laughs matter on the wine train. From what I've read, white bachelorette parties with 8 to 12 women, are some of the loudest and most raucous groups that NVWT hosts. But so far, I've read zero recollections about these groups getting kicked off the train. In fact, Ruiz mentioned that she wanted her birthday party on the train because of an earlier trip where she saw how much fun women were having during one of these parties: <> Ruiz had decided to have her birthday there after taking the train previously with her parents and boyfriend and having seen a “large group of white girls celebrating a birthday or a bachelorette” and not experiencing any problems. The group was making a similar amount of noise as Ruiz’s group. “I remember them having fun,” she said. “I never saw anyone approach them. Ruiz’s description of the white women not being approached, her own experience, the experience of the book club, and a series of Yelp reviews in which similar events seemed to unfold differently raise further questions. <> Given what happened to this Latina in April, I would agree about further questions being raised. I know Napa is a very, very white city. But this is a tourist destination, specifically designed to bring tourists to the area in the hopes that they ditch Sonoma and focus exclusively on Napa resorts and wineries. Appealing to only the white tourist clientele is not only unethical, it's also stupid from a business standpoint. If the NVWT were truly for the 1%, the food and wine offerings would be ten times better at three times the price. But this is elitist-wannabe tourism, not Auberge du Soleil, and should be offered accordingly. That means welcoming EVERYONE who wants to pony up $150 for mediocre food and wine on a 3-hour train ride next to Hwy 29, including tourists of color. And if you have patrons who complain about the overall complexion of the car being too dark, well... give them the boot instead. Chances are, their insensitive racist attitudes will keep them from returning, anyway, so good riddance to rubbish! Diversity is king!
