The Stores I Don’t Go To

Racial Profiling and Shopping While Black

One of the best decisions I made in my life was to walk everywhere I possibly could. It changed my entire worldview, how I see the city I live in, and has made me healthier and more aware to boot. But there are downsides, too.

For example, every day I walk to work, I have to pass a series of stores that I don’t go to.

Racial profiling exists in many shapes and forms — not just the kind of profiling that the police do to people like me, and not just the kind of profiling people do to me on the street. Stores often racially profile, from clerks who watch you move around the aisles to security guards who will follow you from one part to another. And in the cases of others, sometimes the police will stop you outside of the store — just to make sure.

Needless to say, this is humiliating. And I’m tired of it. And that’s why I keep a list of stores that I don’t go to.

As President Barack Obama said after Trayvon Martin’s death last year:

“There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.”

Little has changed since.

Earlier in October, Trayon Christian, a teenager, was arrested after leaving Barney’s in New York City, for “stealing” a belt he had legally purchased. Even though he had paid for it with his debt card, shown the clerk his own ID, the clerk still called the police, who apprehended Christian outside the store and took him to jail on charges of theft. It was only after Chase Bank confirmed that the debit card, ID (and money) belonged to Christian that he was allowed to leave.

Shopping while black is apparently the new big crime.

Earlier this year, Oprah Winfrey of all people was forbidden from looking at a purse by a clerk at a store in Switzerland. The richest black woman in the world could not even put her hands on the purse, because the clerk was sure she could not afford it.

This is ridiculous. Why should people of color be forced to put up with this humiliation? We are human beings.

After three years of shopping at the Chevron Mart/Burger King/Starbucks next to where I work, I finally got tired of the security guard following me around the store. I asked myself, “How many years do I have to shop here before your regular staff see me as a human being and not a potential thief?” But that’s a ridiculous question to ask, because we all already know the answer.

While walking into a convenience store on 9th St & Market, I heard the clerk chasing out a black person who had gone inside. The clerk called him the n-word multiple times, and I turned around and walked out. What in the world makes that okay for people? Why should I have to deal with those kinds of racial epithets when I just want to buy a bag of chips?

There are many more stores, even in San Francisco, that I won’t go to. I can’t even keep track anymore. Instead, there’s a mental tally, a list I keep in my head, of which stores I can go into and expect to be treated like a human being. It’s a terrible waste of thought space, but I’m tired of feeling humiliated every time I want to buy something. I’m tired of not being treated as well as white customers. I’m tired of the fact that my money isn’t as good because of the color of my skin.

Mostly I’m tired of being tired about this. But it won’t go away. And every once in a while, yet another story comes out to remind me that it’s the same for others as well.