Mark Curry: Colorado Springs Ain't Friendly!

Mark Curry goes live on racism.

Over two weeks ago, a white terrorist shot and killed five people inside a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs. The city had many mass shootings in the past.

The city is relatively conservative.

Comedian and actor Mark Curry had an experience in the city. Curry records two men who he says approached him while he was sitting in a hotel lobby in The Mining Exchange A Wyndham Grand Hotel & Spa in Colorado Springs.

One of the men, who is white, was not displaying any identification but claimed he was an employee at the hotel and repeatedly asked Curry if he was a guest there. The other man, who was of color, claimed Curry was trying to pull “the race card” — a quip that prompted Curry to call that person an “Uncle Tom.”

Curry did not answer the question being repeatedly asked of him likely in an effort to make an example of what he called “racism.”

The video lasts 26 minutes and was filmed all because of a “Black man and a Hotel Lobby,” Curry wrote on his Instagram post, suggesting the purported hotel employees thought “it’s impossible that he has a room here.”

He expressed a similar sentiment in the video by saying to his hundreds of thousands of followers: “If you’re Black and you’re in Colorado Springs, you can’t be in the lobby. Wow! This is crazy, isn’t it?”

When Curry tried to use the restroom in the lobby, he was physically blocked from entering.

When the two men were joined by other employees, Curry said he felt “threatened.”

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Later, the hotel manager issued a quasi-apology for the way hotel employees treated a patron and insisted employees would be retrained, presumably in the arena of implicit bias.

“We are committed to providing a safe and inclusive space for all guests and employees. We deeply regret this incident and have reached out to Mr. Curry to offer not only our sincere apologies but a full refund of his stay and an invitation to return, at no cost, anytime in the future,” Neil Cramm said in a statement to the Colorado Springs Indy, a local news outlet. “As a respected community partner, we are also using this opportunity to revisit training with our staff, helping to ensure all interactions are reflective of our company values. The Mining Exchange plays a special role in the Colorado Springs community and we will continue working each and every day to ensure that our hotel remains a space that is open and welcoming to all.”