A top diversity administrator at Syracuse University strolled back into the lobby of his hotel after an early morning walk while in Portland for a national conference on race.
That’s when Quincy Bufkin said things got ugly at the DoubleTree in the Lloyd District, the same hotel where another racial profiling encounter four years ago involving another Black man spurred a $10 million lawsuit.
Bufkin is an assistant director of diversity, equity and inclusion at the private university in New York and was here for the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education earlier this month at the nearby Oregon Convention Center.
The 35-year-old was returning from a walk around 5 a.m. June 3 when he followed another employee into the building.
The employee gave Bufkin strange looks as he went into the lobby, he said, but he didn’t think much of it.
Hotel policy requires that guests use their room key to enter the building from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. If someone follows an employee into the building, it’s customary for the hotel to confirm their stay, said Eugene Hilliard, DoubleTree general manager.
But it wasn’t what happened that made Bufkin uncomfortable. It was how it happened, he said.
The female employee he had followed in asked Bufkin if he was a guest, he said.
“She was looking at me as if she already knew I didn’t belong there,” he said. “There was no ‘hey, hello, how are you?’ There was no customer service.”
Bufkin said he answered the question politely, assuming that would be the end of it. It wasn’t.
The employee asked him his room number multiple times and asked for his room ID.
“Anybody would think that if I had a room ID as well, that would do it,” Bufkin said. “No. I gave her my room ID and she still needed to confirm that I was a resident.”
The employee went to a coworker to confirm Bufkin’s stay. That’s when a security guard approached him, asking if there was going to be a problem, Bufkin said.
“I told him, you know, as a security guard you should try and deescalate the situation,” he said. “That’s when he stopped talking. I think he realized he should stop.”
A few minutes later, another employee came out to greet Bufkin with a much more hospitable attitude, he said. This person confirmed his stay and apologized.
“The co-worker was wonderful. I give her props,” Bufkin said.
Bufkin, frustrated by the situation, left to take another walk. When he returned, the head of security apologized for how the situation was handled, he said.
Hilliard confirmed the encounter, but did not give details.
“We verified that he was a guest and apologized for the interruption,” Hilliard said. “We take very seriously our commitment to always welcome our guests with warm hospitality and service.”
Bufkin said he filed a complaint with the Hilton corporation, which owns the DoubleTree, and was told it would look into his complaint.
He’s not planning to take legal action, Bufkin said, but he contacted The Oregonian/OregonLive saying he wanted to hold the hotel accountable.
“I thought about it, I took some time, and I decided this should not go under the rug,” Bufkin said. “If we look at statistics on these types of situations, the target is overwhelmingly people of color, specifically Black males. We get treated unfairly and feel unwelcome at establishments such as this, and it must stop.”
He said he was familiar with what happened to Black guest Jermaine Massey in October 2019.
Massey sued DoubleTree for $10 million after being evicted from the hotel. He had posted videos on Instagram of his conversations with hotel employees and police.
Massey was taking a call from his mother while sitting in the lobby when a security guard approached him to confirm his stay. The guard had a manager call the police.
Massey showed the manager his room ID envelope with his room number on it, but he still wanted to confirm Massey was a guest. Massey was kicked out for “loitering.”
The hotel “sincerely apologized” and fired the guard and manager, according to statements from Hilton. The lawsuit pointed to three other accounts of staff singling out Black guests with suspicious questions in other Hilton chain hotels in Richmond, Virginia, Nashville, Tenn. and Wilson, North Carolina. Court records don’t indicate if or how it was settled.
Bufkin said he figured that things had gotten better over the years.
Since returning home to Syracuse a few days after the encounter, he has been thinking about it constantly.
“It’s just so embedded in my mind,” Bufkin said. “I think about the security, too, if he had deemed me a threat he could’ve physically harmed me. It just shook me up a bit just how easily someone could have been harmed.”
– Austin De Dios; adedios@oregonian.com
