Anything While Black: Experiencing America’s Quiet Genocide
At my local off-price department store a few months back, I rummaged through a small clearance rack for a new cell phone case. The options here, brand-name items at a discount, are often disorganized. There were full-priced cases mixed with sale ones with little regard to what type of phone or model they belonged to. Some cases hung haphazardly on their respective hooks, some no longer hung at all. I picked up a clear, hard plastic case with a delicate rose print that did not have the necessary label, just a “$5.99” sticker hanging by a thin clear t-shaped tag.
Since no store associate was a qualified cell phone case connoisseur, the easiest solution was to try it out on my bare cell-phone. I began to nudge the edges of my phone into the case’s upper left and right corners when I thought of the store cameras above me. I pictured the color of my skin on a pixelated TV screen, how a blurred angle could tell the wrong story. I stopped and kept my cell phone out of my pocket in case that looked like an item as well. I piled my phone, the unlabeled phone case, and three other cases in my arms in full view as I headed to the front registers. When my turn came, I asked my cashier, a woman whose tag read ‘Pamela’, if I could try out the cases in front of her.
