If you browsed my Instagram feed around Memorial Day weekend 2019, you’ll see lovely photos of wonderful hotel views and Los Angeles brunch life. Beautiful black kids, urban and hipster dressed and blissfully unaware of their privilege. A long picturesque weekend in the life of a black and precariously middle class family.
As I was sitting in a Westin in Downtown LA, clothed in nothing more than the hotel’s signature white robe, enjoying an epic view from the 30th floor while my kids played on their devices in the living room and my husband watched (I kid you not) Jeopardy — I was struck with a sense of surreality. My black, immigrant and “first GEN” everything self, who stood in lines for free food and toys as a child. Who clearly remembers the first time her parents took her out to eat at a “restaurant” (McDonald’s) in the 4th grade, could not compute.
Driving up to the hotel valet, with it’s outrageous $50/night charge, I felt a pang of guilt and self doubt, should I splurge on one night in a hotel convenient to the conference my husband is attending or should I have sent my mother an extra $200 or should I have given more money to my homegirl’s non-profit that just helped fund the release of another hispanic family in inhumane detention at the border. Can I really afford this and if I can, should I really spend this when we have so many things that regularly require us to stay liquid? I said as such to my husband, and he noted that the hotel is already booked and paid for so just relax.
Life is not so simple when you are black. Even less simple when you are black and poor. And very strange and precarious when you are black and middle class in America. A country built on the free labor of your ancestors. A country with a dwindling middle class that a few of us still cling to. A more modern serfdom for black folk relegated to communities where their precious plots of land will not properly appreciate in value until colonized by gentrifiers opposed to their traditions and sounds.
These are the truths, the struggles, the examples of continuous systemic inequality that make something as simple as booking a fine hotel room and paying for overpriced and nicely ambianced breakfast food seem like both a blessing and a mistake the “universe” is waiting to correct.
I hope you enjoy your long weekends; I will admit that I sometimes struggle to enjoy mine.
What did you say?