I believe Consumer Racial Profiling is indicative of the continuation of our greater community’s lack of knowledge and understanding as to what our responsibilities are for those of us who enjoy “white privilege. " How can anyone stand still and be silent?
Mexico, before Mexico as annexed to become the Lone Star, non free, Republic of Texas.
“If you are against slavery, you must be a “come-outer” or if you are not, you must be “stay-putter”!
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jonathan_Walker_(abolitionist)&printable=yes
During his youth, Walker was captain of a fishing vessel, but around 1840 he went to Florida and became a railroad contractor. He was interested in the condition of the slaves, and in 1844 aided several of them in an attempt to make their escape in an open boat from the coast of Florida to the British West Indies. After doubling the capes, he was prostrated by illness; the crew, being ignorant of navigation, would all have been drowned if they had not been rescued by a wrecking sloop that took Walker to Key West. From there, he was sent in chains to Pensacola, where he was put in prison, chained to the floor, and deprived of light and proper food.
Upon his trial in a United States court, Walker was convicted, sentenced to be heavily fined, put on the pillory, and branded on his right hand with a hot iron with the letters "S. S." for "slave-stealer". But to some he was "slave savior".
A United States marshal executed the sentence. He was then returned to jail, where he was confined eleven months, and released only after the payment of his fine by northern abolitionists. For five years after his release, he lectured on slavery in the northern and western states. He moved to Michigan about 1850, where he lived near Muskegon until his death. A monument was erected to his memory on August 1, 1878.
Walker was the subject of John Greenleaf Whittier's poem "The Man with the Branded Hand". Whittier heard about Walker's actions after reading a book about him called Trial and Imprisonment of Jonathan Walker. The poem praised Walker's actions.[1] Upon his return to New England, abolitionists hailed Walker as a hero and martyr. John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem in 1846 titled “The Branded Hand.” The most famous stanza of that poem went:
http://www.archive.org/stream/trialimprisonmen00walk/trialimprisonmen00walk_djvu.txt
"Driving while Black" has been a pervasive problem for African Americans, with more than half of Black men and more than a third of African Americans overall reporting that they have been subjected to some form of racial profiling on the roads. Far more pervasive, however, is what might be called "shopping while Black," or consumer racial profiling.
How many times have you been in a store and found yourself receiving poor treatment that you believed was racially motivated? Maybe you were stalked as a potential shoplifter, or ignored as others got assistance, or handled with outright rudeness? Did you confront the clerk or manager? Simply leave in disgust? Or did you do your best to ignore it and make your purchase anyway?
Our research suggests that most African Americans have a story to tell. A mail survey of 1,000 households that we conducted with professor Thelma Suggs of Purdue University in the mid1990s found that 86 percent of African Americans believed they had been treated differently in retail stores because of their race.
It's a worthy topic year-round, but it seems especially relevant during this holiday shopping period, with the troubled economy making retailers more nervous than usual. According to the National Retail Federation, holiday season sales account for at least 25 percent of total annual retail sales of general merchandise, as people buy everything from clothes to cameras to coffee tables. Holiday sales - excluding automobile and restaurant revenues -- produce about $800 billion annually. But regardless of this year's special crisis, the issue of consumer racial profiling is critical and it would serve retailers' self-interest, not to mention those of all their potential customers, to eradicate it.
Many of these potential customers are African Americans with significant buying power. Black households are estimated to possess aggregate purchasing power of $572 billion in 2001, an increase of nearly 86 percent since 1991. Still, consumer racial profiling persists. It can take many forms, including some that draw incredulity in the 21 st century. There is avoidance, when a sales representative might simply ignore African American customers; discouragement, when a salesperson might delay waiting on customers; rejection, an outright denial of a chance to purchase a product; and finally there can be actual verbal and/ or physical attacks.
"Hidden camera" investigations by television newsmagazines such as Dateline and 20120 and articles in the popular press have documented all kinds of cases. In addition, professors Carol M. Motley of Howard University and Thomas L. Ainscough of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater note in their own research, based on a field audit study, that African Americans wait longer for customer service in the retail industry than whites of the same gender. Getting a true national picture of this problem and whether it is rising or declining at any particular time is difficult, though. Newsmagazine shows and their cameras aren't everywhere. And there aren't enough social scientists to monitor every store.
Such discriminatory treatment can have serious consequences for retailers. For example, sales at Treasure Cache, a gift shop in Dearborn, Mich., fell more than 50 percent immediately after the death last year of an African American man during a fight with security guards from an adjacent Lord & Taylor store. Businesses also risk costly lawsuits. Dillard's Department Stores, Inc. lost $1.2 million in 1998 after a court ruling found that a store security officer interrupted an African American woman as she redeemed a coupon for free cologne and as a result had violated the woman's rights to enjoy the benefits of her contract with Dillard's.
Some organizations may justify violations against African Americans as collateral damage in their war against shoplifting, though one would expect such concerns would mean that all customers would face scrutiny, not just African American ones. Regardless, the numbers from the annual University of Florida survey on retail losses spotlight a significant point: Employee theft, at 44.5 percent, accounts for a far greater portion of the "shrinkage" at the nation's 200 largest retailers than shoplifting (32.7 percent). Given that fact, retailers might be better off channeling resources to "watch" employees rather than having employees "watch" customers based on race.
For instance, a white employee of The Children's Place Retail Stores Inc. filed discrimination charges against the Secaucus, N.J.-based national chain, alleging that African American shoppers were treated as potential criminals.
She alleged that her white supervisors in a Massachusetts store ordered her to shadow African American customers, to refuse them larger shopping bags and to withhold credit applications. Though the company (which owns 17 stores in Massachusetts and 365 stores nationwide) denies that it systematically monitored Black customers, it settled out of court, agreeing to improve employee training and donate $50,000 to charities. The Children's Place also agreed in December 2000 to spend up to $100,000 to examine its hiring and training practices.
The United States has legally addressed the issue of consumer racial profiling, however limited the effort. The U.S. Congress designed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to ensure "that a dollar in the hands of a Negro will purchase the same thing as a dollar in the hands of a white" person. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court described the purpose of Section #1981 of the 1866 act as follows: "The aim of the statute is to remove the impediment of discrimination from a minority citizen's ability to participate fully and equally in the marketplace."
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 further provides that: "All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation." This law aims "to eliminate the unfairness, humiliation, and insult of racial discrimination in facilities which purport to serve the general public."
Though the law is specific about outlawing discrimination in what is termed a "place of public accommodation," it is unclear whether a shopping mall or a retail store constitutes such a place. The public places emphasized were restaurants, hotels and motels places where it was believed discrimination was more likely to occur. Retail stores, food markets and the like were excluded from the act because it was believed there was little, if any, discrimination in such places. In other words, there are loopholes. It is conceivable, for example, that the law would address discrimination at a Woolworth's lunch counter but not necessarily confront any indignities African Americans might have experienced while trying to shop in a Woolworth's store without a lunch counter. But African Americans have never been without recourse.
Sociologist Joe R. Feagin of the University of Florida suggests several coping strategies: withdrawal, resigned acceptance, verbal or physical confrontation, and legal action. In academic circles, marketing researchers tend to aggregate all consumer responses under one of three strategies: exit (leave store), voice (complain, file a lawsuit, etc.) or loyalty (acceptance, continue to purchase from retailer).
For African Americans, it seems, chances are strong that the response did not include pursuing legal action. African American lawsuits challenging consumer racial profiling only began emerging in the 1990s. (We are studying 60 such cases filed between 1990 and 2000.) Still, the number of legal cases measured against the anecdotal and documented evidence of profiling suggests that African Americans are reluctant to file suit.
Social scientists are trying to determine why so few cases reach the legal system. In a series of recent experiments, psychology professor Karen Ruggiero of the University of Texas at Austin and her colleagues demonstrated that stigmatized people attribute their failure to discrimination only when they are certain of that discrimination. People may often avoid making such charges because they fear they have no control over the outcomes, which can be negative and include high costs, financial and emotional.
African Americans may also be reluctant to file suits because they know it will be difficult to prove discrimination. Most incidents do not provide an African American victim a chance to compare the service he or she received to the service a white customer may have received under similar conditions. This is problematic from a legal perspective.
In our ongoing study of the 60 lawsuits filed between 1990 and 2000, we have found some interesting details. More African American women than men have filed lawsuits. The cases also reflect more situations in which groups are present rather than an individual. In many of the cases, there are mixed groups, i.e., African Americans and whites together, and there is differential treatment of members in the two groups. The settings include grocery/food stores, clothing stores, department stores and office equipment stores. Some incidents include denying store access, refusing to serve customers, using racial epithets, asking for different forms of identification, limiting purchases, searching "suspicious" customers, requiring higher available credit limits, charging higher prices for service and asking more rigorous questions on applications. Defendants included major retailers such as Office Max, Wal-Mart, Sears, Dillard's, Macy's and Home Depot. In a number of these cases, the court ruled in favor of the company.
A new chapter on consumer racial profiling opened after the tragic events of Sept. 11. Another group, Arab Americans, have found themselves facing the kind of profiling that has dogged African Americans. Since the terrorists attacks on the United States, Arab Americans report being questioned and detained more, sometimes barred from boarding aircraft and even taken off planes by police and pilots. And it's not just Arabs. Retail profiling may impact anyone perceived to be Middle Eastern, including South Asians, Latinos and even Jews. In one incident, Northwest Airlines refused to let three passengers of Middle Eastern descent board a flight to Salt Lake City. In an apology, Northwest security officials acknowledged that they need to focus on passenger behavior, rather than appearance.
Sikhs have been particularly impacted. It's customary for Sikh men to wear turbans, and since Sept. 11th, they've paid dearly for it. Media reports note how they have been targeted for suspicion and attack though they are neither Arab nor Muslim. Rep. John Cooksey (R-La.) even ran political advertisements advocating racial profiling and has said "someone wearing a diaper on his head" meets the profile of a possible terrorist. At least one Sikh is believed to have been killed amid the hysteria.
Harmeet Kaur Dhillon, a senior litigation associate in the Palo Alto, Calif., office of Cooley Godward LLP, is a member of the Sikh Communications Council, a nonprofit organization composed of key Silicon Valley executives and professionals representing the Sikh community nationwide. The group recently hired a public relations consultant and launched an educational campaign to combat the racial profiling of Sikhs and other groups, including African Americans. It is also calling for congressional hearings on racial profiling.
Disturbingly enough, even African Americans have appeared to be supportive of profiling other groups when it comes to airline security. In a September Gallup poll, 71 percent of African American respondents, compared with 57 percent of whites and 63 percent of non-whites, favored requiring Arabs, including Arab Americans, to undergo greater security checks at U.S. airports. It should be noted that there were only 71 African Americans among the 1,032 respondents, only half as many as would have been needed for the sample to be representative of the U.S. population. Still, a follow-up poll by the Zogby International polling organization also found a higher overall percentage of African Americans favoring greater security checks for Arab Americans.
Besides the obvious reason of fear in the wake of nearly 3,300 people being killed on Sept. 11, there remains a question of why people from a group that has experienced such discrimination for so long might have been so supportive of these practices. Psychologist Stephen C. Wright offers one hypothesis based on social identity theory. Under this theory, when a disadvantaged group wins acceptance, members of the group will sometimes try to enhance that status by being harsh toward the new outsider. Is this what is happening with African Americans and Arab Americans? Far more research and analysis is necessary on the question.
Far more analysis and research on consumer retail profiling is necessary in general. There is now a large body of research on discrimination in major consumer purchasing such as housing and cars. However, economist Peter Siegelman at the University of Connecticut points out that we know relatively little about discrimination in other transactions, such as retail settings. In the meantime, African Americans must remain vigilant against all types of discrimination. Fighting back is key, whether it's through the courts or by wielding the hammer of purchasing power. It's the only way to make sure African Americans receive equal treatment for their equal dollars.
Jerome D. Williams and Geraldine RL Henderson are associate professors in the Marketing Department at the Howard University School of Business, and are affiliated with Howard's Center for Marketplace Diversity. Anne-Marie Harris is an assistant professor in the Management Department at the Salem State College School of Business in Massachusetts.
he said, noting that the official data statistics are “woefully inaccurate.” He said if profiling is occurring, more minorities are likely to be stopped, and consequently more people among those groups will be caught. “If you’re profiling, you’re likely to be stopping people you think are committing the offense. You’re focusing on one group, so your statistics are going to be skewed,” he said.
the profiling occurred. In 57 percent of the reported incidents, the profiler was a clerk, not store security personnel. Most often, respondents reported being watched or followed throughout the store.
The media often asks me if retail store security personnel use “profiling” tactics as a means of determining which customers are most likely to steal. The answer is undeniably, yes.
The concept of shoplifter profiling is a proven loss prevention tool and is currently being practiced in most major retail stores by trained loss prevention or security staff. Does that seem shocking? It shouldn't, as long as it doesn't include the discriminatory practice of focusing on the race of the customer alone. Profiling is used everyday as a method for quickly focusing in on a person, a product line or a section of a store most likely to contribute to shoplifting. All investigative agencies including the police, FBI, and others have used profiling as a tool to narrow the field of possible suspects. Why shouldn't retail store security be able to do the same? Store and customer profiles are developed during day-to-day operation and by collecting and analyzing inventory data. This data provides both a quantitative and a qualitative basis for determining where, when, how, and by whom shoplifting is likely to occur in the future.
A progressive retailer has numerous inventory controls in effect and at several levels. Every store should know what departments and which product lines have the greatest inventory loss based on audits, product movement analysis reports, shoplifter apprehensions, and by finding signs of theft. Professional retail loss prevention personnel are trained to know what day of the week, what time of day, what product lines, and what department will have the most shoplifting activity. Armed with this data, loss prevention personnel set out to observe shopper “conduct” in the most active areas and during the most active times. Profiling like this makes perfect business sense because it is legal and a good business practice.
There are other types of profiling based on store apprehension histories and industry experience that has taught LP professionals who to "include" and who to "exclude" when scanning the store for potential shoplifters. For example, one profile is that people rarely shoplift while in the presence of their spouse, significant other, or parents. After scanning these persons they might quickly be bypassed as theft candidates. Shoplifting is a crime of opportunity and desire. Trained loss prevention staff will spend most of their time observing those customers whose conduct demonstrates both opportunity and desire. For example, a customer standing alone in a remote aisle, carrying a large empty shopping bag, and looking from side-to-side would be immediately suspicious until their conduct proves otherwise.
A customer wearing tattered shoes might appear suspicious in a self-service shoe department until their conduct disproved a lack of desire to steal. A customer walking across a store carrying a small electronic item partially concealed in the palm of their hand might seem suspicious until several opportunities passed to conceal the product. In contrast, a customer wearing tailored shorts and a t-shirt may have the desire to steal, but will have little opportunity to conceal a large item of merchandise they are carrying. Based on profiling and shopper conduct, the professional plain-clothes security officer will scan thousands of customers a day and determine that 99% of them are legitimate shoppers.
Believe me, merchants don’t like monitoring their customers to prevent theft, but they know that it’s a matter of economic survival. Merchants know that closely watching customers is bad public relations if done crudely. However, the retail industry loses over 31.3-Billion dollars every year and shoplifting represents about one-third of it. Customer surveillance is limited to the public areas where there is no expectation of privacy as opposed to inside fitting rooms and restrooms that are considered private areas. Knowing that you are under surveillance is an uneasy feeling. No one likes being watched and being made to feel like you’re not trustworthy. However, if trained professionals do the surveillance properly, most people will never realize they were observed while shopping. A problem can arise when untrained or unqualified security, loss prevention or off-duty police undertake the task of store surveillance. The majority of the complaints of racial profiling that I have seen in retail stores have to do with the perception of being stalked throughout the store in an effort to intimidate them into leaving.
Racial profiling is an improper and illegal practice based on the mistaken belief that certain ethnic groups are more likely to shoplift than others. Because of this, misguided store employees will focus their surveillance time on the customer's “color” rather than “conduct”. Racial bias can blind store personnel and cause them to monitor only the ethic minorities and ignore the real source of their inventory losses. Racial profiling eventually leads to a pattern of false theft accusations, wrongful detentions, and harassment when no real probable cause exists. The result is that a particular ethic group will be made to feel like they can't be trusted and are unwelcome in the store. African Americans call it "shopping while black". Unless the wrongful conduct is corrected by management, civil rights violations will occur and false arrest lawsuits will follow and sorely damage the reputation of the retailer.
Customer surveillance based solely on the race of a customer is not only improper but is an ineffective method of controlling losses due to shoplifting. The thought of racial profiling is distasteful. A 1999 Gallup poll confirmed that 81% of Americans disapprove of the practice. Despite this belief, the same poll indicated that 75% of African American men said they had been victims of racial profiling while shopping.
Most major retailers have published policies against discriminatory acts but few that I've seen specifically address racial profiling by it's security personnel. Not surprisingly, incidents are occurring, which feeds the question of how much racial profiling exists in retail stores? For example, in one major department store the security staff used radio codes (code 3) as an alert anytime a black shopper came into the area. In another store, 90% of the shoplifting apprehensions were of ethnic customers where the store demographic reports only showed a 15% minority customer base. And in still another store, sales associates were told by security officers to call them anytime an ethnic minority entered their sales area.
The only way to eliminate racial profiling is to prohibit it from the top. Retail stores need to have clearly defined and articulated policies against security staffers practicing racial profiling and must have a zero tolerance for abuse. The hiring process is a good time to screen out poor candidates that seem predisposed to prejudice. Comprehensive retail security training is absolutely necessary to assure that employees know how to do the job appropriately and understand the rules of conduct. Off-duty police officers working as security need training too. You can't assume that they understand the law or will act appropriately and fairly towards all customers especially in the retail setting. Off duty police officers must follow store rules when on the clock and not resort to street tactics when dealing with store customers. During the training phase new loss prevention personnel should be taught how to observe customer conduct and not base surveillance decisions solely on the race of the customer. Supervisors should always be on the lookout for signs of racial prejudice in day-to-day conversation and in written reports. Violations should be addressed swiftly. If racial profiling becomes a factor in security staff surveillance and detentions, it’s because store management didn’t care enough to correct the problem or instead chose to ratify the behavior.
A retail store makes a choice when it decides to apprehend and arrest those who attempt to steal their merchandise. Making that choice creates a legal responsibility of doing it correctly. This involves the proper hiring, training, and supervising those who make shoplifter apprehensions and arrests. In the retail loss prevention profession, the possibility of falsely accusing and detaining a customer for theft is a business reality that must be addressed.
In the United States, citizens value their civil liberties and constitutional rights and don't appreciate submitting to unlawful seizure and search. Because of this, there has been a legal trend of suing the retail store anytime a customer is wrongfully accused of shoplifting. In recognition of this, the retail security and loss prevention industry have developed six universally accepted steps to minimize the potential for a false arrest claim.
They are:If these six steps are followed, false arrest situations and subsequent lawsuits will be almost nonexistent. These six steps were designed to establish a high degree of probable cause for detention and arrest of a person suspected of shoplifting. If one of these steps is skipped, the chance for false arrest increases proportionately. If two or more steps are skipped, the store personnel are acting recklessly towards customers and are exposing the store unnecessarily to liability and false arrest claims. Remember, state law may not require this high degree of care for criminal prosecution.
The word "false arrest" is very distasteful to the retail industry, so it has created several alternate words to describe the event. Less offensive words are used instead like "non-productive detention" or "unproductive stop" or "investigative detention". All of these words have been used in place of false arrest so not to seemingly admit liability. Whatever the terminology, if you stop a customer that is not holding stolen merchandise, you have the potential for a false arrest claim.
Many states have enacted legislation to protect the merchant from such false arrest claims by allowing the store to make "investigative detentions" of a customer suspected of shoplifting. In these jurisdictions, the law allows certain latitude or "merchant's privilege" if the merchant has a reasonable belief that a customer has stolen merchandise. In many jurisdictions, law allows the merchant to detain a customer for a reasonable time, and in a reasonable manner, for the purpose recovering the stolen merchandise or for summoning the police.
The problem with these statutes is that they are vague as to what "reasonable" means and what the word "detain" means. Some merchants have overly relied on this statutory language to protect them from lawsuit only to discover later that it would not relieve them of liability.
In most jurisdictions, a reasonable belief that someone has shoplifted does not include a stranger’s observation and report. Customers are often unreliable in what they report and it is considered unreasonable to detain and accuse someone of theft based solely on a customer observation. Besides, the customer and shoplifter could be working together to set up the store for a false arrest claim. Untrained sales associates can also be unreliable in their observations. Many store chains do not allow apprehensions on the word of a sales associate alone.
While detaining someone, you must do so in a reasonable manner. Tackling and injuring a customer in the parking lot over suspected petty theft might be deemed excessive, especially if no other means of detention were attempted first. Detentions must also be for a reasonable time period. Holding someone for three hours while you investigate a check, credit card, coupon, or refund fraud attempt is excessive. Some jurisdictions have a problem with police response times that may take over two hours to respond to your store. This business reality must be factored into the store policy of detaining shoplifters or releasing them after recovering the merchandise.
The best way to limit false arrest situations is hiring, training, and supervising competent staff. It is usually considered negligent management to have a policy of apprehension and arrest of shoplifters if the store personnel have no training on how to do so correctly. It is also negligent management if you fail to supervise loss prevention staff and their reports that indicates violations of company policy, violation of the civil rights of customers, or use of excessive force.
It is usually considered negligence if a store employee uses excessive force when apprehending a suspected shoplifter. It requires special training to understand how to routinely apprehend shoplifters while only using minimal force. Tackling, punching, and verbal abuse of shoplifters are never acceptable. Excessive or unreasonable use of handcuffs, leg restraints, chokeholds, or pain compliance holds are also inappropriate when dealing with those suspected of retail theft.
You run the risk of a false arrest claim when you:
To avoid other related claims:
