(ThyBlackMan.com) Just when you thought it was safe to stop by your local liquor store.
I have often written about examples of racial discrimination and injustices perpetrated against people of color for this publication and others. These are issues I have cared deeply about since working as a teacher in grossly underfunded public schools in New York City years ago, schools that perversely served predominantly African-American and Hispanic children, disadvantaged and vulnerable populations in our society most in need of robust school funding.
But on Saturday night yours truly was the victim of a vicious racial macro-aggression in a Suffolk County suburb on the innocuous errand of a trip to my neighborhood liquor store to pick up a bottle of wine and/or rum for a celebration. I was followed and confronted by a store employee, who
looked to be of Indian or Pakistani descent, not once but three times, demanding to know if I was “looking for anything in particular” and then telling me outright that he “didn’t consider me [to be] a customer”.
As my readers might guess, I was indignant…and livid. Of course, I retorted, asking rhetorically if the establishment was, in fact, “a store” and asking if as an employee he was there “to bring customers in or drive them away”. It was then that he let me know that he did not consider me to be a customer.
Ordinarily, it is not a good thing for the journalist, or even blogger, to become the story. But in this case, I have made an exception in order to illustrate the plight still faced by millions of Black and Hispanic men on a daily basis in this country, and so that others might learn from my example.
For the benefit of some CNN hiring manager who might stumble across this article while surfing the web, and of course my editors at Thy Black Man, let me be clear: I do not drink often. I do not patronize liquor stores frequently. In fact, I do not drink at all, and the exception would be the
rare celebration of some significant event.
Saturday night was one such exception. It was the weekend, and I was dressed casually – I arrived at the store dressed in a t-shirt and denim jeans slightly frayed at the ends.
Immediately upon my arrival, the Indian/Pakistani store employee gave me the evil eye and proceeded to conspicuously stand no more than five feet away as he made a deliberate show of chatting into his cell phone as he watched me. He followed me through the aisles – and the store is tiny. Initially, I thought he was the store detective and while I was incensed I ignored him. When he asked in a hostile tone, “You looking for something?” it dawned on me he was perhaps nothing more than a stock boy, though he looked a little older than myself; I shot a dirty look back at him and left the store in order to compare the prices at a liquor store around the corner.
When I returned (as it had turned out booze was more expensive around the corner) the Indian/Pakistani stock boy again glared at me and again proceeded to follow me through the aisles, and eventually asked, “You looking for something in particular?” followed by, “You need something, man?” and after I replied in the negative, in an accusatory tone, “I saw you go to the other store and now you’re back – it’s weird.”
At this point I asked my rhetorical question about the nature of the establishment and whether it was his job to “bring customers in or drive them away.”
He replied, “I don’t consider you a customer.”
When I asked why he did not consider me to be a customer, he smirked and did not reply.
Another customer in the store, a White man in a baseball cap and a tattered and dirty hoodie, snickered.
I immediately left the store.
It is important to note in this situation that while harassing me our racist Indian or Pakistani stock boy ignored a whole cast of infinitely more suspicious-looking characters that had entered the store in the interim: a group of rowdy White teenagers who didn’t look old enough to drive let alone drink, the White customer in the torn and dirty hoodie who reeked of alcohol and cigarettes, a shabbily-dressed White couple conferring furtively in a corner of the store.
Despite all these strange, White people milling about the store, for some reason, I was this stock boy’s chief concern.
The racist behavior displayed by this Indian/Pakistani liquor store employee has no place in modern society. It is unclear why he thought it was both appropriate and acceptable to treat me in such a horrible and degrading fashion. After all, I did nothing wrong. I was not dressed substantially differently than any other customer who entered that store at the time. I was not loitering, I was shopping – even going so far as to compare prices at another shop.
Perhaps this Indian/Pakistani has no idea what a “customer” is, as defined by law. Perhaps he has a skewed idea of what “weird” is. Perhaps he’s never heard of Terry v. Ohio.
Perhaps he thought I was just another one of millions of faceless, voiceless, undereducated Black men who confront such situations every day in America and who feel too picked on by “the system” to speak up about such incidents.
Perhaps he thought I had been adjudicated into social impotency by some past criminal conviction, as the stereotypes such people subscribe to go, some Black parolee or ex-felon too timid to “make trouble” for the local racists.
Whatever he thought, he was very wrong.
Unfortunately for him, I am an Ivy League educated Black professional who knows his rights and has rubbed elbows with celebrities, elected officials, broadcast journalists, and a whole host of upstanding, like-minded citizens who are eager to put a stop to racism in the public square.
This sordid episode was a terrible reminder of the hurdles our society must still overcome in order to become truly equitable. I am contemplating writing to the New York Better Business Bureau and the Hate Crimes Unit of the Suffolk County Police Department, and perhaps registering a discrimination complaint with the United States Department of Justice.
I am well within my rights to do so – even as a Black man in a sleepy Long Island village.
Staff Writer; David Christopher Steele, A.M
This talented brother is a native New Yorker and former educator who taught in New York City public schools and at a New England boarding school. Steele is now an educational blogger and political journalist. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and New York University. Follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/DCSteele1.