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Frank Davis is an accomplished African American millionaire who hasn’t felt the sting of racism in years.

Until now.

Last week, Davis, and his son, Michael, entered their room at the luxurious Art Ovation Hotel in Sarasota, Florida, and their July 4 vacation was abruptly interrupted by a racist, three-word note: “You’re a N—-R.”

The note was written on hotel stationary and left inside a lamp next to their bed. Someone – possibly a hotel employee — broke into the Davis’ room and left the bigoted message.

The hotel management apologized but the Davis’ checked out of the hotel immediately. They refused an offer for a free night’s stay saying they feared for their safety.

“Who knows what other kind of actions that individual who clearly knew we were there was capable of,” Frank Davis, co-founder of the Horizon Group, told The New York Post. “Which is why we decided to relocate and find additional lodging for the remainder of our stay.”

Michael Davis said he was stunned.

“I was stone cold for 30 to 40 seconds when I read the note,” Davis, 27, a consultant for a financial firm, told The New York Post. “My first thought was, what did we do to deserve this? We tipped well, we were beyond nice to all the staff.”

“The whole experience has been very awful and saddening,” he said. “Despite our best efforts to be friendly, welcoming guests, someone chose to hate us simply for the color of our skin.”

A successful businessman, Frank Davis says he proudly promotes racial diversity. He donated $5 million to Bucknell University, his alma mater, for minority recruitment and a new building.

But in an era where more white people seem to be calling police on innocent, unsuspecting Black residents – some as young as 12 years old – many Black citizens believe bigots are becoming more emboldened because President Donald Trump associates with – and hires – people who exhibit racist behavior.

Just last week, the wife of Bill Shine, the new White House deputy chief of staff for communications, was criticized for tweeting racially-charged rhetoric.

Darla Shine, the author of a book called Happy Housewives, a personal tale about stay-at-home moms, questioned in her tweets why Black people can use the N-word but when white people use the N-word they are called racists. She tweeted about Black-on-Black crime while defending the Confederate flag.

She mocked Black athletes like LeBron James for speaking out about police shootings of unarmed Black men and wrote that “1 out of 10 Black boys has autism.” Shine also tweeted that Dylann Roof, a self-proclaimed white supremacist who murdered nine Black parishioners inside a Charleston, South Carolina church in 2015, was consumed by drugs, not racism.

Why does Darla Shine spend so much time on social media pontificating about race — and Black people in particular?

Meanwhile, Frank Davis said he reported the racist note incident to the Sarasota Police Department.

“This is something in 2018 you don’t expect this kind of thing to happen,” Davis told WWSB in Sarasota.

Sadly, maybe we do now.

What do you think?

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Wealthy Entrepreneur Finds Out Money Doesn’t Insulate Him From Racism  was originally published on blackamericaweb.com