I
cannot imagine that there is a black man
in America who has not heard of, or
does not know someone who has suffered the indignity of racial profiling. In fact,
if I had to hazard a guess, I would suppose most black men have endured the
sting associated with that repugnant act, live, and in living personal color. I certainly have.
Though
the story always hits home when it is personal, it tends to have a broader and
deeper resonance when the party involved is a “known entity” or has a higher than normal profile. Such is the case with “Treme” actor Rob Brown.
According
to Brown, while shopping at Macy’s Manhattan Flagship store, he bought
a watch for his mother. He made the
purchase to commemorate her college graduation, which coincidentally, he was en
route to attend. The price of the $1300 watch, (relatively expensive, but
not so much when compared to the nearly $40K
purse Oprah was allegedly denied an
opportunity to purchase in a Swiss
Boutique a couple of months ago), apparently in conjunction with Brown’s skin color caused a Macy’s clerk to suspect Brown’s may have been using a fraudulent
credit card. At least that is what Mr. Brown’s surmises.
By
Brown’s account, he completed the
transaction to purchase the watch.
Because it was a display model, the clerk needed to remove some excess
paper and glue residue from the watch.
Meanwhile, Brown walked to a
nearby store and initiated a purchase of a pair of sunglasses. While in the midst of this purchase, several
white males, at least one of whom flashed a badge, approached him.
They
began to lecture him about a stolen credit card, and told him he was going to
jail. They “cuffed and paraded him,” he said, through the Macy’s store, and took him to a room for interrogation.
Eventually,
the detectives or security team gleaned enough information to determine that
they had detained Brown in
error. They then took Brown, a graduate of Amherst College, to his mother’s
graduation…, an event he missed, by the way.
Macy’s issued a statement in its
defense insisting that none of its employees were involved in the arrest. They added there was “no record” of any employee contacting authorities regarding Brown’s purchase of a luxury Movado watch. Wink-wink!
While
that is certainly within the realm of possibility, the likelihood that the
security detail materialized out of thin air, before the sunglass purchase was
complete, but after the watch, alleging credit card fraud, with no prompting
from Macy’s seems like one huge-A stretch. Having already admitted I have experienced
profiling, and on numerous occasions, I admit I am inherently a cynic on this
question.
The
Brown incident is not an isolated
case in the Naked City. Recently, two blacks sued Barney’s, another lionized New York shopping institution, for
racial profiling. In Brown’s case, he sued Macy’s for racial profiling, and the New York City Police Department for
unlawful stop and search. As this world
turns, it is still clear, like driving, we must consider “Shopping While Black: A Story in Racial Profiling!”
I’m
done; holla back!
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