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Shopping While Black

William Parcher said:
How would any store clerk anywhere at any time suspect that an item may have been stolen if they don't believe that an item may have been stolen?
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I have no doubt that the clerk believed an item was stolen. The question is if it was reasonable for them to believe an item was stolen and why they believed so.
 
sir drinks-a-lot said:
[qimg]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KIyeMnICgJA/UZkV1GIrOQI/AAAAAAAACO0/GoOWDVtWZ0Y/s1600/cherry-picking.jpg[/qimg]
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Great metaphor! But have you noticed just how many cherries there are in those trees? It is no trouble at all to pick one, and then another, and then another. Pretty soon one starts to realize that there are a lot of cherries, an entire crop worth, and picking any one is representative of what is going on at a much larger scale.
 
William Parcher said:
How would any store clerk anywhere at any time suspect that an item may have been stolen if they don't believe that an item may have been stolen?
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I don't know what game you're trying to play. There was nothing stolen and the clerk didn't see them steal anything. Accusing customers (including those who on a particular day end up just browsing) of being thieves without evidence is at best a really terrible way to run a business.
 
Why did the police follow the women to the hospital and not give a driver's license back until 11pm?

You've got a she said she said between the clerk and the women. Perhaps the video can clear that up.

Clerk suspects shoplifting but later wasn't sure. Regardless of what level of racism that was, it's more probable than not that the clerk's assumptions were biased by the ethnicity of the customers.
 
I can assure you that this boutique is a thief. Their store logo was stolen from Federico Fellini.
 

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Babbylonian said:
I don't know what game you're trying to play. There was nothing stolen and the clerk didn't see them steal anything. Accusing customers (including those who on a particular day end up just browsing) of being thieves without evidence is at best a really terrible way to run a business.
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There is no game being played by me. Shoplifters generally hide their actions and the items.

There was a dressing room and a Doc Martin shopping bag. The clerk would not see a theft happen but it could be suspected/believed for whatever reasons.

But when the clerk is white and the customer is black it becomes impossible for it not to be racial profiling. If the exact same scenario happens with a white customer then it's impossible for racial profiling to be applied.

A white clerk has no way to escape from the accusation once it is made and it can be made without any factual basis. The accusation is prejudiced and looks just like racism itself.
 
William Parcher said:
More information at Daily Mail...



Why is it necessary to say that the employee is white? It's as if the husband is now racially profiling her.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ed-white-store-clerk-accused-shoplifting.html
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I don't think you understand what "racial profiling" is. Hint - it's guessing a person's behavior based on their race, not guessing a person's motivation based on their behavior.

eg: "That black guy is using lockpicks to break into a house, I think he may be a thief" Not racial profiling.

"You blacks are always stealing things." - racial profiling.

'This white woman must be a racist, just like the rest of her kind" - racial profiling.

"This white woman called the cops on us for shoplifting, and had no evidence that we did anything wrong, and we were attacked by the cops because of her ignorance." - Not racial profiling.

You may as well call the last example "gender profiling"...
 
William Parcher said:
There is no game being played by me. Shoplifters generally hide their actions and the items.

There was a dressing room and a Doc Martin shopping bag. The clerk would not see a theft happen but it could be suspected/believed for whatever reasons.
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This is where you seem to be having a problem. You need more than "whatever reasons" to accuse someone of a crime. If someone says "I have reason to suspect __________," then the reason needs to be stated...and it had better be more than the word "furtive" which is code for "gut feeling," which does not justify an accusation.
But when the clerk is white and the customer is black it becomes impossible for it not to be racial profiling. If the exact same scenario happens with a white customer then it's impossible for racial profiling to be applied.

A white clerk has no way to escape from the accusation once it is made and it can be made without any factual basis. The accusation is prejudiced and looks just like racism itself.
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Awww, I'll cry a river for them. Maybe the next clerk will have evidence on which to base their accusation of criminal conduct. That would make it a lot harder for an accusation of racism to stick.
 
I was administering final exams (and grading them at the front desk) when a black student (among others) turned his in. He was repeating the class, and this time I wanted him to pass. I noticed he needed to sign his name or answer a certain question. He did so at the front desk, probably thanked me for the class, and started to leave as I returned to grading but something was missing --

Cain (evenly): "Hey, you stole my pen." (That's how I talk in general, I swear.)
Student: "This is my pen."

He held up a clearish/blue plastic BIC pen -- common enough, but identical to the one I had just been using.

I laughed, "C'mon, man."
Student: "This is my pen, bruh!"
I looked down at my desk, the floor -- nothing.
Cain: "Dude..."
Student: "This is my pen, bruh!"

So I started looking under some of the exams scattered on my desk, and there it was -- the blue pen.

Aw, **** me.

I probably muttered an apology. I know he walked out shaking his head like, "Man, everyday with this ****." I thought about unconscious bias, the scourge of racism, and my generally distrusting nature. I should've known better, and a timeless wisdom suddenly became real for me: Always grade in red.
 
Thermal said:
I take the store to be saying they did not accuse of shoplifting directly. Not until the women tried to leave and police were called, where they certainly said something like that to police.
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In which case, the patrons were correct - they were being accused of shoplifting. Arguing that the clerk "didn't use that exact word" is frankly intelligence-insulting; even non-white people are capable of reading subtext, and the store clerk's actions after they left proved their interpretation accurate.


It seems to me that a great deal of "they're just playing the race card" objections do stem from this refusal to acknowledge the existence of subtext; or rather, refusal to allow black people's interpretations of it to be used against those employing it. The white store clerk read "possible shoplifting" into the black patrons' "furtive behavior" and that reading is perfectly reasonable of course; but for the black patrons to read "possible racism" into the clerk's line of questioning is malicious and "playing the race card".
 
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Thermal said:
Whoa, whoa, whoa...where do you see that they made a purchase? Cite, please.
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My apologies, it's not confirmed in the article that they actually bought something.

Thermal said:
Did you read the notice the store put up? All lies too? You are assuming a lot, no?
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Which notice? Cite please.

Anyway, I don't understand why this is an issue in clothing stores in the USA.

When I was 10 or so, i.e., some 40 years ago, every clothing store here introduced those thingies they put in clothes, which the cashier removes, and installed gates at the exit so that whenever someone tried to shoplift clothes the exit gate would ring off with a loud bell. That would pretty much eliminate the possibility of (unconscious) racism with store personnel (except then for a consciously racist cashier who systematically "forgets" to remove the thingies from the purchases of black customers, but that case would be pretty obvious).
 
I'm in retail. You either know someone is stealing something or you say to yourself, "damn, need to pay better attention."
 
Thermal said:
The very same problem. People of all races get suspected of shoplifting, often wrongly. There is no reason to project race as a discriminating factor here. It undermines the painfully real incidents of discrimination when the race card is pulled gratuitously
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No, the Nordstrom case is worse, when it comes to the store personnel. The customers were aware of being followed by the personnel through the store. They obviously didn't see them shoplift anything during that time, but nevertheless sent the police on them. They knew they had no evidence.

As the question whether it's racism, I'll agree with you it's not obvious like in the Starbucks case or the Siyonbola (the Yale student) case. But the majority of white Americans voted for the Racist-in-Chief. That warrants the baseline assumption that it's more likely racism than not.
 
Checkmite said:
In which case, the patrons were correct - they were being accused of shoplifting. Arguing that the clerk "didn't use that exact word" is frankly intelligence-insulting; even non-white people are capable of reading subtext, and the store clerk's actions after they left proved their interpretation accurate.
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The clerk may not have used a specific word, but the owner did. According to the article, the call to the police was to report a "larceny in progress." That's a very exact word. According to the article, also, after the police had handcuffed the couple and searched their bags (and done them physical harm and confiscated the mother's documents), found no evidence of larceny, and let them go (though apparently they did not actually stop following them, nor did they give the mother back her driver's license), the store owner "became uncertain" that there had been a theft. Became uncertain?

The owners' story varies considerably, but one thing they assert is that it was partly at the patrons' insistence that the police were called. Does it sound reasonable that persons accused of shoplifting would ask that the police be called? And sorry, but I really doubt that the clerk who miscounted items was polite about the "discrepancy." How do you politely tell customers that you think they stole something? If, as appears to be the case, the customers are entirely sure that they did not steal anything, there is no polite way to suggest that they did.

Of course it's possible that the whole thing was not racial at the start, and that the patrons were overly sensitive, but the whole incident certainly ended up a mess, and if the store and the police end up with egg on their face, it looks to be deserved.

Of course as usual we don't have all the facts, but one thing that seems odd is that apparently the couple were sent to a changing room by one clerk, and accused of theft by another. Why didn't someone think to ask the first clerk if she knew how many items they'd taken in? Even if the owners are innocent of bias, one does wonder a little about that clerk. What reason did she have for presuming that they had stolen anything?
 
When I come out of a dressing room with clothing that I don't buy, I will hand the clothes to the clerk that directed me to the dressing room and say something like it doesn't fit or I have decided no. This incident may have been different and was regarded as atypical furtive behavior. Maybe there was avoidance of eye contact and a beeline for the exit with the shopping bag. We don't know if the bag was taken into the dressing room or if that was seen or what.

Furtive definition: attempting to avoid notice or attention, typically because of guilt or a belief that discovery would lead to trouble; secretive.
 
William Parcher said:
When I come out of a dressing room with clothing that I don't buy, I will hand the clothes to the clerk that directed me to the dressing room and say something like it doesn't fit or I have decided no. This incident may have been different and was regarded as atypical furtive behavior. Maybe there was avoidance of eye contact and a beeline for the exit with the shopping bag. We don't know if the bag was taken into the dressing room or if that was seen or what.

Furtive definition: attempting to avoid notice or attention, typically because of guilt or a belief that discovery would lead to trouble; secretive.
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Trying to avoid notice or attention?

The account from the customer:
When they exited (the changing room), a blond-haired clerk confronted the two about a fifth clothing item.

"I remember counting on my fingers: 'One, two, three, four. There is no missing item,'" the lawyer said.

Bedard says she tried to step outside the shop and walk away, but the clerk continued to interrogate them about the phantom dress.
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The account from the store owner is that the clerk "politely approached two patrons to clarify a situation," whereupon they were impolite and left the store, whereupon the clerk pursued them and they acted threatening toward her.

In either account, it seems a considerable stretch to consider their behavior furtive. While one can dispute the tone and the reasonableness of it depending on whom you believe, in both accounts the customers interact openly, and are more confrontational than furtive, unless of course certain people are considered inherently furtive.
 
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