California wine train orders off black women’s book club

A wine train that runs through California’s famed Napa Valley apologized on Tuesday to a predominantly black women’s book club whose members complained of discrimination after they were kicked off a recent trip over noise complaints.

A group of women with the book club Sisters on the Reading Edge boarded the luxurious Napa Valley Wine Train around 11 a.m. on Saturday for an annual excursion to wine country. Halfway through the ride, they were escorted off the train to police waiting outside.

“It was humiliating. I’m really offended to be quite honest”, said Lisa Johnson, 47, who is a member of the group. Staff does not enjoy asking guests to depart early, but they take these issues seriously to ensure the safety and enjoyment of all of our guests. After the Register and other media outlets reported on the dispute Sunday afternoon, readers shared the story extensively – often using the hashtag #laughingwhileblack – and many viewers attacked the women’s removal as racially motivated.

Giaccio said he contacted Ms. Johnson late Monday, August 24, and apologized for the book club’s experience, pledging to learn from the incident and offering additional diversity training for employees and inviting the club members, their family and friends to be his guest and fill an entire train vehicle. “At that point, they wiped clean everything they had said about us”, said Johnson.

Not only does Johnson think she and her friends were discriminated against because of their race, a Yelp review also came to the same conclusion. Johnson said the officers were surprised by the book club as the officers had been told they were responding to a group of “unruly” and “aggressive” passengers.

“When we get off the train, the police are just standing there”, Katherine Neal told KTVU, “and they’re looking at us like, these are the unruly people?” “We were singled out”.

The group, she said, was paraded through six cars “on display in front of the other guests to waiting police like we were criminals”.

The train company issued a statement defending its actions. “We don’t make that judgment unless we receive a complaint from the people around them”. One of the club’s members says they were treated unfairly because they were black.

Devitt noted that the train removes rowdy passengers roughly once a month.

Ruiz had chose 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.

“When someone is removed from a train, they have to be dropped off at a station, and our policy is if someone is let off the train we’ll stand by”, said Napa Valley Railroad Police Department Chief Jeff Hullquist.

“Certainly a wine train in Napa Valley would be considered a ‘white space, ‘ ” says University of California-Berkeley associate professor Nikki Jones, who has discussed the topic on This American Life. After a manager on the train asked them to quiet down, Johnson said the group was thinking, “Who are we offending?” “That’s the humiliating part”.