How I Became a Racial Profiler

By Alison Thurston

I haven’t gone a summer without gainful employment since I spent my seventh grade summer as my father’s junior legal secretary (and yes that is as inflated a title as it sounds). I got my first job in retail at fifteen, in a higher-end store for “tweenage” girls. There, as in the many stores to follow, I was asked to keep a close eye on certain women who came in. Yes, it was always women. And no, it has never not been a woman of color.

This has become an issue again because to supplement the money from my real job (i.e. to allow me to fuel my Forever 21 habit) I’ve been moonlighting at one of the stores I worked in in high school. Last year I saw an ABC special showing people being harassed for “Shopping While Black,” and I had trouble quashing my feelings of guilt when I did.  I’ve talked to my manager, a twenty-something Costa Rican woman, about my issues with tagging along behind shoppers before. When I told her I thought it was racist she said, “but….a lot of the time, they steal.” I’ve asked myself many times: just because we do sometimes catch women of color stealing, does that make it ok to always follow women of color around? And if the only reason we find disproportionate numbers of WOC stealing is because we follow them more often, does that mean we should stop following them, even though what they’re doing is wrong?

A few days ago, some young black women came into the store, picking up mostly full priced items and lingering behind racks for long periods of time. My manager told me on the radio (we all have radios and earpieces—Top Flight Security, I’m telling you) to “keep an eye on them.” And I did. I walked around behind them—surreptitiously, I thought, but I’m not known for subtlety, so who knows. And yeah, eventually one of the girls did start to put something into the large (and suspiciously empty) plastic bag she was carrying, but when she spotted me, she pulled it out quickly. Top Flight success!

But what does it mean to be a black woman, following other black women (usually) around stores, simply because of the fact that they look a lot like those who do come in and steal? People who come in with no intention of paying for the goods often carry large, underfilled plastic bags (often from the huge discount emporium not far from our store in the mall), travel in groups of two to four, ask a lot of questions of one employee to distract him or her. They are also often black. I know this is racial profiling. But it is rare for me to tag along behind a group of people while they’re visiting our store and end up seeing at least one of them buy something. It could be because they feel harassed by me and no longer want to bring their business to an establishment that does not treat them with respect. But since I often end up recognizing people as repeat bring-two-friends-and-linger, I know that is not always the case.

I don’t mean to defend racial profiling or the holding of prejudices. I myself have been followed around when I have had no intention of taking anything without paying for it. But it’s weird to have the shoe on the other foot and see that when you’re working in a place without people who specialize in loss prevention, taking the shortcut and relying on hunches and yes, stereotypes, sometimes works.

Photo Courtesy of U.S. Army