Imagine being a millionaire with a 800+ credit score and being willing to pay all your rent in advance and still be denied housing.
Welcome to being black in America.
Chargers Brandon Mebane tells his story.
Now 32, one season into a three-year, $13.5 million deal, Mebane was homeward bound. Teammates lamented leaving San Diego. But as his career entered its twilight, Mebane warmed to the idea of playing in L.A. “It felt like everything was coming full circle,” he said.
So he and his wife, Amena, applied to rent a new house in Irvine, near the Chargers facility and next to a park, where their son and daughter could play. The home felt like a dream; they spent hours perfecting their rental application, ensuring it would come true. There were glowing references and a sterling credit score. They offered to pay six months of rent, in advance, just to sweeten the deal, and Amena spent an entire afternoon crafting a cover letter. The realtor told her it was “the best application I’ve seen.”
A few days later, it was denied. To Mebane, the implication was clear.
“We weren’t welcome in that neighborhood.”
“You can’t tell a person they can’t come in your neighborhood because they’re black; that’s against the law. They don’t actually say those types of things. But they’ll point out things like those four points. The neighborhood was brand new. There were no black families there.”
Other teammates, he says, have faced similar discrimination in Orange County, where, per the most recent census, African-Americans comprised a minuscule 1.5 percent of the population. One of Mebane’s teammates offered a year’s worth of rent up front on a home in Newport Beach, only to be denied at the last minute, with no explanation. Another was told pets were allowed, “then, they find out the family is black and decide they weren’t accepting pets.”
On a recent trip to a nearby Louis Vuitton store, Mebane says he and his wife were again subject to similar microaggression, as a security guard not-so-subtly followed them for the entirety of their time in the store.
This is just normal life for black people in America, rich, poor or somewhere in the middle.
It is sad that it becomes routine and normalized when it simply isn’t right.
America needs to do better.