Shopping While Black

It is nothing new for a black person to be racially profiled. It happens all of the time in America. It normally happens because black people are seen as a threat by other races.

There are several ways in which black people are racially profiled. One of the most common ways are in stores. When black people shop in stores, they are watched more than people of other races. They employees stare at them for long periods of times and they even follow them. This is what happens in WWYD? video.

The WWYD? video was a social experiment to see how people would react to a black man being racially profiled because of his skin color. Although the people in this video were acting, situations like this actually happens.

When I was a freshman in high school, my friend was celebrating her birthday at the Louisiana Boardwalk in Shreveport, Louisiana. The Boardwalk has restaurants, clothing stores, and a movie theater. So, me and a group of friends had just finished eating, and we were waiting to see a movie. We were just walking around and going into different stores until the movie started. So, the last store we went to was a jewelry store called Claire’s. We were just looking around and suddenly a black employee at Claire’s stopped us and said, “I need all of y’all to go stand over here in this corner”. My friends and I were very confused on why she wanted us to stand in the corner. So, the black employee turned to her white coworker and said, “Are these the girls?”, and her coworker confirmed that we were the ones that she wanted to have a word with. The white employee told her black coworker that she saw us stealing something. Let me add that my group of friends were all black girls. So, the black employee said, “I was told that y’all were stealing, so I need to check everyone’s purse”. I was really offended that she accused us of stealing. I knew for a fact that she did not see me take anything and I knew that the group of girls that I was with would not steal anything either. Each of us calmly let the employees look inside of our purses, and of course she did not find anything. She then said we were free to leave, but we did not get an apology. We told our parents what happened and they called the manager and filed a complaint. The thing that make me more upset about the situation is that the white employee was the one that supposedly “saw us stealing”, however, she sent her black coworker to confront us about it. Maybe she thought we were a threat to her and we were going to harm her. We were just 14-year-old girls at the time, so we shouldn’t have been seen as threatening. It was because we were black that we were even targeted in the first place.

My situation at Claire’s was similar to what went on in this video involving a white Sephora employee.

A Sephora employee was accused of racially profiling two black girls while they were shopping for makeup. When those girls confronted here about it she denied that she was accusing them of stealing. The employee said to the girls that, “I will never treat you that way again”. That statement suggests that she was racially profiling them. The employee then states that she’s “from the hood”. This makes the situation even worse. Saying that she’s “from the hood’ suggests that the other girls are “from the hood” as well. She is racially profiling them again by saying that. Just because these girls are black, does not necessarily mean that they live in a ghetto and are poor. The employee then goes on to say, “I have black friend”. It is offensive when white people say things like, “I’m not racists because I have black friends”. Having black friends does not mean you are not racist. That statement just used to justify racism. The video below goes more into detail about the Sephora situation.

As you can see, racial profiling is offensive and upsetting. It is shocking that people are still judged based on their race and not on their character. Maybe in the future, people will stop judging others because of their skin color, but until then, we must continue to educate each other about what is considered racial profiling.

-Brenee’

#Brenee