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This Is What It's Like To Shop As A Black Person
This story was originally published on April 17, 2014. We decided to repromote it one year later, given the disturbing new report published on Zara's alleged racial profiling.
How_to_Shop_while_Black_2A number of hashtags have popped up on Twitter after Michael Brown’s shooting death by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. The one that resonated with me the most was #igotthetalk, a way for people of color to share the day their parents told them how police would treat them, and how to behave so they wouldn’t be in danger.
I remember my version; it came in middle school and was something like "How Not To Get In Trouble When You Go To The Mall." I grew up in the suburbs of Cincinnati — a place that was (and still is) segregated by both race and people’s attitudes about race. You knew in which neighborhoods you were and were not welcome. My father, an immigrant from Barbados, was never a fan of letting me go to the mall by myself, worrying I would become “just another American mall rat.” But, more importantly, he and my mother feared that mall security, store personnel, and even other shoppers would unfairly target me.
This Is What It's Like To Shop As A Black Person
This story was originally published on April 17, 2014. We decided to repromote it one year later, given the disturbing new report published on Zara's alleged racial profiling.
How_to_Shop_while_Black_2A number of hashtags have popped up on Twitter after Michael Brown’s shooting death by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. The one that resonated with me the most was #igotthetalk, a way for people of color to share the day their parents told them how police would treat them, and how to behave so they wouldn’t be in danger.
I remember my version; it came in middle school and was something like "How Not To Get In Trouble When You Go To The Mall." I grew up in the suburbs of Cincinnati — a place that was (and still is) segregated by both race and people’s attitudes about race. You knew in which neighborhoods you were and were not welcome. My father, an immigrant from Barbados, was never a fan of letting me go to the mall by myself, worrying I would become “just another American mall rat.” But, more importantly, he and my mother feared that mall security, store personnel, and even other shoppers would unfairly target me.
