Agreed. It was a teenage prank. No different than if he had walked down the street with a Mr. Microphone saying that all black people are funny looking.
But the reaction that it was somehow institutional racism on the part of Wal-Mart is way overblown.
We never said you couldn’t. But if you do, we can choose to laugh at you for overreacting.
With this country’s history I think you need to be serious about every act of racism no matter how minor it seems because if you don’t there is a reasonable possibility that the ante will continualy be upped. We go from making an announcement on a PA system to having a mob blocking the entrance to the store. Sound far fetched??? This is a country where black people weren’t allowed to shop, eat, or drink water at certain places and that was legal and enforced by mobs. You can’t take this incident out of the context of this country’s history of racial oppression, moreover this incident happened because of this history.
As I wrote above, the important question was how WalMart responded to this. If WalMart’s response had been “Yes, we realize this is a racist prank and we do not find that acceptable and will do whatever we reasonably can to address it” then WalMart handled it correctly (which seems to be the case). But if WalMart’s response had been “C’mon. It was just a little joke. You people have to learn to accept a certain amount of racism.” then it would be indicative of institutional racism even if no WalMart employee had been involved in the announcment.
Oh please don’t. That was some funny shit right there.
I went to a WalMart today to buy a new TV but they were out of stock of the one I wanted. I asked if there was any way they could verify if any of the other local WalMarts had one (rather than me having to drive around) and the clerk told me that unfortunately they couldn’t make outgoing calls “because of an incident in New Jersey.” I was about to ask what he meant when it suddenly clicked. I wonder how he would have explained it to me if I had asked (and if it would have made any difference that he was black and I was white).
I think at this point Wal-Mart have crossed the line into “over-reaction”. Some idiot made a stupid announcement on the PA in a different State and suddenly all Wal-Marts find their phone systems nobbled?
That thought did cross my mind, but I didn’t feel like pursuing it at the time. The poor guy had already gone out of his way to be helpful; when he returned from checking the back to verify that my first choice was out of stock he said that they had several of the same brand in the next size smaller and larger. I gave it a bit of thought and decided to opt for the larger size, and he went back to get it, only to return with the news that what he had thought was the larger size when he saw it on the upper shelf was just the box from the display model (which they weren’t allowed to sell).
I’m not criticising the sales guy at all- sounds like he’s been extremely helpful and genuine in his desire to help. But I do think there’s something wrong when what was essentially a (IMHO relatively harmless) teenage prank is getting treated as Serious Business on an inter-state (possibly National) level and affecting customers and store operations thousands of miles away.
Yeah, it sounds like Wal*Mart is in the process of losing perspective. I remember when I was shopping for a car; we talked to one salesperson who only talked to my husband, in spite of me answering all his questions about the car for me. Was it sexist and irritating? Oh yes. Did I lose my mind and take it for anything but what it was, one jerk salesguy? Nope. One person doing something stupid didn’t mean that the fight for equal rights for women was suddenly just swept away, and one idiot prankster doesn’t mean that the fight for equal rights for black people has been swept away.
The headline for these articles should be:
“4chan steps out of interwebs, trolls Walmart”
or
“/b/tards invade local Walmart”
Seriously though, there is money to be made here. I propose the mods of SDMB start a seminar called “Do not feed the trolls” and market it towards people who knee-jerked this story into the national news. You’ll be millionaires.