This week’s opening thought: Just in time for food assistance program funding to disappear under a cruel presidential regime, it’s the return of blatant racial profiling at the supermarket led by “good samaritan” people of pallor!
Yay.
As a Black person in a city with an overall very pale population, I’m no stranger to racial profiling, especially in retail settings. I’ve been profiled by people of pallor my entire life, probably more so as an adult.
Must be the t-shirts.
Anyhoo, like I was saying, being profiled is something I’m well acquainted with. Hell, a couple of weeks ago, I caught a person of pallor out of the corner of my eye following me around a local supermarket. He thought that I didn’t notice him trying to keep 10 paces away, watching me like a hawk as I picked up some tofu, but his lack of subtlety in trying to surveil me covertly was pathetic and almost cartoon-like. So when I stopped, made eye contact, and asked him if there was a problem, I damn near scared the pallor off of him.
Why was he tailing me, you ask? That’s a silly-ass question that you know the answer to, but what the hell. I’ll answer it with some specifics for you inquisitive folx.
He was tailing me because he thought I was putting unpaid-for items in my reusable shopping bag and not in the hand basket FULL OF GOODS in my right hand, which, once I called him out on his nonsense, he could blatantly see wasn’t the case.
Now, this store employee, who was not a loss prevention officer or security guard, mind you, could’ve been doing anything with his day at work - stocking shelves, helping customers find things, taking a smoke break and shirking responsibility - but something in him felt “obligated” to follow my Black ass around the store to “catch me.” He sheepishly sulked away, his balloon deflated because he hadn’t gotten his ‘gotcha’ moment. Meanwhile, I went back to completing my shopping, chalking it up as another Wednesday while Black in the United States. It did, however, highlight something I was fearful of as we went into November with SNAP benefits being non-existent: people of pallor policing Black and Brown folx in supermarkets even harder than they already do. And I knew what that meant: an increase in racism and hate crimes as “good” people of pallor think they’re stopping “dastardly criminals” when all they’re doing is showing how racist and ridiculous they truly are. I wondered how quickly into a hunger epidemic would people of pallor crank up their need to “catch the bad guys.”
It only took three days into November for my wondering to cease.
I’m using the self-checkout at the supermarket today because two cashiers are working and 100 damn people are trying to check out. I can sense the woman of pallor “managing” the self-checkout area, watching me like a lion stalking a gazelle as I ring up my vegetables. The moment I finish ringing up my zucchini, she pounces.
“Um, excuse me, but those squashes are different than the squashes you rang up.”
They weren’t. But I couldn’t wait to hear what she had to say.
Go on.
“These are $1.59/lb. And what you rang up was a $1.50/lb.”
You read that right. Your eyes do not deceive you. And I’d love to tell you this was the first time in my life I’ve faced something so preposterous in a supermarket, but that would be a lie.
9 cents.
She was hovering so close to me while I checked out that she saw the price and quantity of what I rang up. She was in my personal space that much, y’all. And she just had to make sure I was “caught red-handed” for a 9-cent difference that she was actually wrong about.
Eight other shoppers were checking out, but she had nothing to say to them. Not a thing. Not a glance their way. But she was on my ass like white on rice.
I’ll let you piece together what the racial demographics of every other person at a self-checkout machine were at the time.
It is these moments when I know that if I respond a certain way, I’ll be swarmed by security. I’ll be swarmed by security, and not one person of pallor checking out with their carts would step in and call out the nonsense they’re witnessing. But I’m also not willing to get treated like crap when my money with dead pallor presidents on it has the same value as anyone else’s, plus I don’t deserve harassment and targeting because of my skin color and the state of the raggedy-ass country I live in. And so I paused, stared her right in the eyes, and said, “If they’re so wrong, do you want to ring them up again?”
She went pale. Pale as a ghost rinsed with bleach, y’all.
She proceeded to recoil before stammering out, “No...no. Just telling you for next time.”
Again, I’m in a store full of shoppers and a packed self-checkout area at 4 in the afternoon, yet I’m the only person receiving the hands-on, red-carpet treatment.
Lucky me.
Please believe that what happened to me today is an escalation of an already normalized practice of white supremacist capitalism that will only get worse the longer this country’s leaders continue embracing harming as many people as possible while blaming their intentional harm tactics on Black, Brown, and immigrant communities.
Please believe that if you’re a person of pallor, or someone who has more privilege, power, and positionality than other melanated folx, and you witness this escalating harassment and say nothing, you are complicit in the harm of others for the sake of your own comfort.
And please believe that people in your life already know you’re a bystander and not a disruptor, “ally,” or whatever performative-ass thing y’all are calling yourselves these days.
