On Being The Right Color

[monstro]

I regularly exercise my right to walk out of the store unaccosted. Sometimes I’ll let the checker glance into my bag and check off my receipt, but most times I walk right past him or her, daring them to stop me my intense eye contact. They never say or do anything.

[Arien]

@monstro

I regularly exercise my right to walk out of the store unaccosted. Sometimes I’ll let the checker glance into my bag and check off my receipt, but most times I walk right past him or her, daring them to stop me my intense eye contact. They never say or do anything.

Yeah, I usually walk right by. I’ll stop if they wave me over or something but they never do.

[JohnT]

@Ethilrist

I just signed up with CostCo, and they actually had a sign up by the receipt checker person which said they checked the receipts to make sure I was charged properly for the big-ticket items in the cart, not, as I had always suspected at Sam’s Club, to make sure I wasn’t stupid enough to successfuly sneak something past the checkout stand by hiding it on my person and then dropping it into the cart, knowing somebody would compare the contents of my cart to the receipt. I felt relieved.

In your case, however, the OWMCRATDOTW-M figured you would have said something about it if you were overcharged for a $500 item, and didn’t care if you were undercharged for it, because it’s still a big chunk of money for Wal-Mart.

Hey, it could happen.

You do realize that Costco is just saying they’re checking your bag for that reason while actually checking it for the other reason, don’t you?

If not, I’ve got this awesome property in FL to sell you!

[elfbabe]

Last winter, a friend of mine had a racist offer him money because he’s white! In his words:

“Walking to work in the blowing snow today an older woman in a minivan honked, pulled over and offered me a dollar coin to go get myself a coffee… I just replied with “I have a job”… “I’m a bike mechanic” explaining both why I didn’t need the loonie (that badly) and why I dressed like a loonie would be consideration for opening a trust fund. She then mentioned that she’s “just trying to spread it around… white English people are starving!”… oh good… a SUPPORTIVE Nazi.”

Sadly, he didn’t take the loonie. I thought he should have, then split it with a black Francophone or something.

[Mama_Tiger]

I had an interesting experience with the upside of racism a few years ago, when I went to my first Mardi Gras parade put on by the Zulu. The prize throw from the Zulu parade is a coconut, often painted, decorated, etc. They pass about maybe 10,000 on a parade route with a crowd that that year was estimated at maybe 3 million people, so as you can imagine, it takes some creative begging to get one.

Anyway, the very first float of my very first Zulu parade goes by, and I stick out my hand, along with everyone around me. We happened to be on a block where I guess we were the only white people at that point – more came along later, but it certainly wasn’t a problem; everyone gets along on Mardi Gras day – and all I can figure is that because mine was the only white hand sticking out of the crowd, that’s why the guy handed the very first coconut to be passed out that day to me.

So I not only got my coconut, but I got it because I was white. And apparently my squealing and jumping up and down won me the approval of the folks around us; we ended up having some good eatin’ from the heavenly barbecues of the family groups on our block.

[msmith537]

@monstro

I regularly exercise my right to walk out of the store unaccosted. Sometimes I’ll let the checker glance into my bag and check off my receipt, but most times I walk right past him or her, daring them to stop me my intense eye contact. They never say or do anything.

Yeah…I sometimes do that too if the lines long. Fuck em. What are they going to do?

[Kozmik]

@Mama Tiger

So I not only got my coconut, but I got it because I was white. And apparently my squealing and jumping up and down won me the approval of the folks around us; we ended up having some good eatin’ from the heavenly barbecues of the family groups on our block.

But how do you think you would feel if you were a coconut?

[Shoeless]

@Sage Rat

I (honky) live in Tokyo and am currently working with a bunch of **Chinese **guys (all contract workers), and we were comparing areas and apartment prices and such. So one of them asks, “Ah so you were able to find a place that would take you?”

Sorry, but in a thread about racial profiling, that just sort of jumped out at me.

[Moirai]

@monstro

I regularly exercise my right to walk out of the store unaccosted. Sometimes I’ll let the checker glance into my bag and check off my receipt, but most times I walk right past him or her, daring them to stop me my intense eye contact. They never say or do anything.

Me too, except that I never allow anyone to check my receipt or paw through my bags. A couple of times, they have asked to check my bags, and I politely declined.

[Moirai]

Oh, I should clarify that- it only applies to stores like Target, electronics chains, etc. I let the Costco people do it.

[Rigamarole]

@EJsGirl

Oh, I should clarify that- it only applies to stores like Target, electronics chains, etc. I let the Costco people do it.

Glad you cleared that up. I was beginning to think you were a completely unreasonable person.

[astro]

@OneCentStamp

**Case #2: ** On my Saturday with the kids a couple weeks ago, I took them to an activity at the ex’s church as a favor to her. One of the activities was a “get-to-know-you” type thing where you filled out a short survey card about yourself and then they drew the cards out of a box, read them aloud, and everyone had to guess whom the card referred to. Anyway, after the activity this stereotypical Kindly Doughy Middle-Aged White Church Lady[sup]TM[/sup], who is apparently some of my kids’ Sunday School teacher, came up to me.

KDM-AWCL: “OneCentStamp, I had no idea you were half Vietnamese!”
**1CS: ** “Yes, I am. It doesn’t look that way, but it’s true. Actually, my little brother looks much more typically Asian than I do.”
**KDM-AWCL: ** “Well, that’s why your kids are so smart. They have those oriental brains!”
**1CS: ** “…”
**KDM-AWCL: ** “I sure wish I’d got me some of those smarts!”

Now, she was really nice and I could tell she meant it as a compliment, so I wasn’t about to throw it in her face, but I was pretty much speechless.

Anyway, just thought I’d share some stories from the “up” side of racial profiling.

I remember one interview years ago where Arsenio Hall was being teased by some white female guest commenting that she heard that black guys were hung like rhinos, and he said “Well… not all of us, I want to know here I can get one one of of those things”