Pittsburgh Activist
Jasiri X Says He Was Racially Profiled Before Delivering Address About ... Racial Profiling
Appeared on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's multiple news platforms in December 2021. Go here for the original story.
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BY ANTHONY CONROY
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Pittsburgh-based rapper and activist Jasiri X said he was racially profiled by a shuttle driver last week after he arrived in a Wisconsin city where he was slated to be a keynote speaker at a symposium about race.
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Jasiri X, the founder and CEO of 1Hood Media, flew into La Crosse, Wis., on Friday morning, a day before he was set to speak at the White Privilege Symposium, which he said covered topics that also included white supremacy and racial profiling.
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He was leaving the airport and walking toward a Radisson hotel shuttle, he said, when the driver — a white woman, who he said was between 40 and 50 years old — appeared hesitant and didn’t seem to believe him when he informed her he was staying at the hotel.
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“Before opening any doors, letting me in or letting me put my bags up, she goes to the driver’s seat to get her phone to call the Radisson to make sure that they have a guest — me — staying there,” he says in an Instagram video he posted about the exchange.
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In a separate phone interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Sunday, he said, “I travel a lot. I’ve never had anybody or a shuttle driver call the hotel to find out if I was staying there. When I saw her doing that, I was like, ‘Oh, wow. Word?’ ”
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The driver’s tone changed, he said, when a white man also needed a ride.
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“The kicker is, as iI get in and sit down — and i’m obviously annoyed and whatever — a white guy rolls up to the door and says, ‘are you going downtown? Can I get a ride?’ (The driver) immediately opens the door and says, ‘yes,’ and allows him to get into the car,” he wrote in the Instagram post. “No questions. No, ‘are you staying at the Radisson?’ In fact — and this is the wild part — he wasn’t even staying at the Radisson. He just wanted a ride downtown.”
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Recalling how he felt in that moment, Jasiri X later said, “I thought to myself, ‘Ain’t this something? He’s not even staying here.’ But this white driver didn’t even ask and had no problem giving him a ride.” He added the driver “didn’t seem like she wanted to be in the car with me alone.”
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In the comments section of the post, a man who identified himself as a sales account manager at the hotel apologized for the incident. His comment has since been deleted.
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Jasiri X also said he spoke about the issue with a hotel manager, and he has plans to talk with an assistant general manager about it Tuesday. He said the hotel apologized to him with a hand-written note, gave him a gift bag and didn’t charge him for the room.
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On Sunday, a phone call and an email to the assistant general manager were not returned. A person at the front desk claiming to be a manager said he “can neither confirm nor deny that the incident happened and cannot speak on behalf of the hotel.” He referred future phone calls to the assistant general manager.
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While Jasiri X was discouraged by the experience, he said it gave him something fresh to talk about at the symposium.
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“At least, I guess, I got a good story for my white privilege, white supremacy talk. But this is how it plays out in real life,” he said. “I get 21 questions just to get into the shuttle for the hotel that I’m staying at. White guy gets a ride, no questions asked, and he ain’t even staying at the hotel.”
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Unfortunately, the incident was just another example of the “type of [expletive] happens to Black people traveling in white spaces all of the time,” he said in the Instagram post’s caption.
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During the symposium, he said many people approached him and apologized for his experience. At a diner, he said the incident was aired by a La Crosse television station, and other diners recognized him and offered apologies.
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The gestures, he said, were appreciated “and heartfelt.”
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Still, he said the experience needs to be a teachable moment — for the driver and others like her.
“I go to thousands of these kinds of events where we speak about this kind of thing, and here I am, I just get off the plane and walking to the shuttle, that’s the first thing I have to deal with,” he said. “I want to ask [the shuttle driver], ‘Why did you feel like you had to ask me all those questions?’ It’s not even for her to answer me, but to think about it, to think about the answer. That’s exactly why I do this and why I created 1Hood Media. That’s why I’m at this symposium.
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“When I walked to the shuttle, I had a beanie on, and (the white passenger) had a beanie on. I was wearing a mask. He was wearing a mask. We had on (similar clothes). So what was it about me? I want her to begin that process, for her to understand why,” he said.
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She likely “had been working off a narrative — one based on how Black and Brown men are portrayed in the media — that she had been taught her whole life,” he said.
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Despite his own role at 1Hood, Jasiri X said he wasn’t going to say anything to the hotel until friends and followers on Instagram convinced him otherwise. It was important to do so, he said, because it goes toward a larger mission.
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“How can we get to where we need to go if we don’t do this?” he said.