I got followed around a store...and potentially profiled?

[lurkingdobalina]

and all I could think about was...this happens to black people and people of color on the regular.  Gross.  What a horrid way to be treated.


I was in a high end boutique in Manhattan.  A security person, who stands by the door followed me the entire time, making conspicuous amounts of eye contact with me.  The grand irony here is that the security associate was himself a POC, and if I had to guess, of middle eastern heritage.   So that set my spidey senses tingling...like was he Jew profiling me?  That's legit scary.  I don't know if he was just on me to be on me or what, but f that noise.   And really, it's so trite to have your security folks wearing black suits with black shirts and black ties.   Can we just not?  Ug.  

I was looking for a little something nice for myself and he stared me down so hard I literally walked away from the Sales person and left.   I'm not one for fancy stuff, but I wanted to get myself something nice for the New Year.  

So thanks to this board, I checked my privilege, because I know that I was hyper aware of it because it was the only time it's happened to me.  And people with more melanin have it much worse.  But now maybe I can empathize a touch because it was gross.   I did not buy at that store.  I popped off to an even fancier store and got better treatment.

*shudders*