All I wanted was to spend some money and go home, but I ended up contemplating my role in the world.
Whenever it's freezing in Manhattan, it doesn't feel like it. Everyone is walking at 60 mph, people are brushing past you, and hot steam smelling faintly of something nasty is floating past your face. Despite the unpleasant source, Marco, Angelique, and I felt grateful for the heat. Marco and I have been getting in trouble since Mrs. Werner's third-grade class. We automatically liked each other because we were some of the only dark kids in the class; we realized that it made us stick out. Marco and I kept getting put in the same class year to year. We caused mayhem and havoc until the end of middle school.
Walking next to Marco was his youngest sibling Angelique. When we turned away from the steam and onto a side street, we would be quickly reminded of how cold it was on this brutal December day with very mean gusts of wind. We had been walking through the crowded pre-Christmas streets for an hour when Marco's little sister wanted to take a break in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral. At the same time, I was trying to remind myself why I was even in Manhattan.
Earlier that day, Marco and I had worked the opening shift at a shop we both worked at. Usually, we wouldn't be too happy about that, but today was a special day. Today was payday. Today was much anticipated after we worked countless overtime hours to match the excessive number of holiday customers. While opening our envelopes, we both gave each other a knowing look over the heavenly numbers we knew would soon be in our bank accounts.
After we were both made very happy, we decided to feed our mutual affliction of terrible spending habits. The first thing we did was buy train tickets to Penn Station on our phones. Marco said he wanted to buy something expensive for his brother to celebrate both his new job and his birthday. I sat there without noble intentions, just wanting to waste money. Shortly after we planned this extremely impulsive trip, I looked at Marco and saw his face fall.
"What happened?" I asked, thinking that he was about to cancel. "My mom is only cool with me going if we take my little sister," he said, with a look that would make you think that you just killed a puppy in front of him. Unfortunately, it seemed like I would have to deal with a very talkative 10th grader who couldn't be convinced I didn't care about the drama at my old high school.
This once talkative sophomore had very little to say; only making rare, vague comments about how annoying Marco was as she was focused on trying to keep up with her brother through crowds instead of updating us on the latest gossip. After what seemed like an eternity, we had finally reached the promised land: Bergdorf Goodman.
Immediately after I made my way through the bronze revolving door and my slightly creased Jordan 1's touched the polished white marble floors, I automatically felt out of place. As I looked around, I was no longer proud of what I was wearing on my feet, noticing the young adults next to me wearing brands I had only seen on the internet. One of them was wearing sneakers that could be resold for the price of two brand-new MacBooks.
There was a palpable difference in the air between Fifth Avenue and this store. Once I took a few steps in, I tensed up almost out of instinct; this place didn't make me feel at home. This place felt much more cutthroat, as if predators surrounded me, and I was doing my best to convince them I wasn't prey. Trying to blend in with the group of trust fund babies to my right, I put on my best “I belong here” face and puffed my chest out. I wanted to exude arrogance like my "peers" had seemed to do so masterfully and effortlessly. When I looked to my left to see if Marco and Angie were feeling the same uneasiness, I quickly noticed the icy cold stare boring into the side of my head. Like a hawk circling above a snake. Standing in the corner was a 6'4” bald wall of muscle with a complexion of flour. I don't know what it was about his stare, but I automatically realized that he saw through the character I was playing. He saw the uneasiness I was trying so hard to hide. It felt like a great white shark just smelled a drop of blood in the ocean.
After we had stared at each other for an eternity, I could finally break eye contact that felt like pins and needles. "What are you going to get your brother?" I quickly asked Marco, hoping to get reassurance that I wasn't the only one feeling uncomfortable. Though as I looked at him and his sister, they seemed wholly poised. "Probably one of those cool leather duffel bags," his sister interrupted. "You're not the one paying, dumbass," replied Marco. "I'll probably get him some designer sunglasses, so I don't have to give him a gift for a while," he said, correcting his sister's earlier statement.
"You know where the sunglasses are?" I asked Marco. "F*ck no, let's just look around till we find them," he said, his sister quickly agreeing. I wouldn't win a two-on-one against these two, no matter how hard I tried. I quickly relented, and we started walking around the highly posh maze.
This store was more prominent on the inside than on the outside. Every corner I turned, I saw more clothes or watches enclosed in glass with European labels showcasing names and companies I had never heard of before. Seeing all these expensive brands I knew I wouldn't be buying was extremely fun until I felt a familiar coldness on the back of my neck.
Whipping my head around, my gaze was met by the same guard that had me on guard in the first place. "Why are you walking like that?" Angie asked. "Like what? I replied. "Like one of those soldiers," she said. I took a second to try and realize what she was talking about until I subconsciously put my hands behind my back while walking around.
I instantly felt subconscious and quickly stuffed my hands into my pockets. When she turned around, I took my hands out of my pockets because I didn't feel right keeping them there. After what seemed like forever, Marco finally found a wall of sunglasses filled with ones that fit his brother's style. Marco, not wanting to talk about money in front of his sister, asked me if I could take her to look at bags or something to keep her busy. Wanting to leave as soon as possible, I quickly went to another store section that seemed to have every type of designer bag that a high schooler would ever dream about.
While Angie was in Wonderland looking at bags she couldn't afford, I found myself checking my phone in a corner. I was trying to look as inconspicuous as possible even though I hadn't done anything. After finally relaxing, I noticed a familiar pale bald head in the corner of my eye. This was the last straw. This couldn't just be a random series of coincidences. This guy was following me around the store. No matter where I was, he was close behind with the same unwavering stare. I knew it couldn't have been my age because he didn't give the trust fund kids next to me a second thought. I couldn't take it anymore, so Angie waited outside until Macro finished paying for the glasses.
We walked confidently out of the store with our heads held high and that security guard's gaze never leaving the back of my head. Once I made it back through the same bronze revolving door, the first thing I saw was an NYPD SUV pull up to the curb. My first thought was, "I guess this is it for my night." I just stood three feet before the revolving door, thinking I was doomed.
Just then instead of only my hands feeling cold my whole body froze from fear. Two cops who looked like agents J and K from “Men In Black” hopped out of the cruiser and rushed past me into the revolving door. Once I fully processed that they went past me, I unfroze. Angie asked me why I was being so weird today. I quickly responded, "Shut the f*ck up; you're still in high school." Realizing there was no winning for her, she promptly stopped talking.
Around ten minutes later, the two cops walked out with a handcuffed black man who looked like he could have been my brother. Around three minutes after that, Marco came out of the revolving door, returning to the world of mediocrity with a small Bergdorf Goodman bag in hand. "Did y’all see that guy get arrested?” were the first words that left his mouth. Angie and I both nodded. "Did you hear what happened?" I asked Marco since I know from experience exactly how good he is at eavesdropping. "Apparently, he tried to steal around three thousand dollars worth of stuff in that duffel bag he was carrying."
To anybody else, this story probably wouldn't stick out in a pile, but this night still sticks with me and makes me question how I view prejudice and profiling. Was the security guard in the wrong for following one of the only black people in the store around for an hour, or was I wrong to assume the angry-looking white security guard was racist when he might have just been doing his job?
The train ride home was pretty silent, so I had time alone with my phone and my thoughts, automatically turning to Safari. One of the articles I found was “NYPD Watchdog Will Investigate Racial Profiling Complaints” by Chelsea Rose Marcius in the New York Times. The way Marcius talks about the sheer number of complaints the police department has had in the last year didn’t really surprise me. Her uneasiness around the police department in the last year spoke to me. “Between 2014 and 2021, the department investigated 3,480 such allegations, including complaints that officers had discriminated against people because of race, gender, sexual orientation, or housing status” (3). At the time, I felt relieved that my reaction wasn’t completely baseless.
This didn’t seem like one of those cases. The cops were just doing their job, but they no longer served the purpose an officer should, which is to be someone you can turn to for safety and protection. They felt like a threat.
Another part of that night that didn’t sit right with me was why the security guard was interested in me. I wondered if other black people had experienced what I experienced. I researched racial profiling in retail and found in an article by Repko that “nearly 30% of Black Americans said they were treated unfairly because of their race when shopping in the past 30 days.” This new information only affirmed my initial thoughts. If other people were out here experiencing this, I couldn’t be wrong in my suspicion.
After my thoughts were given some validity, I gained more confidence until I stumbled upon an article that showcased the potential harm my distrust and vilification could do. Anemona Hartocollis’s “After a Legal Fight, Oberlin Says It Will Pay $36.59 Million to a Local Bakery” portrays what false accusations of racial profiling can do to a business. “Oberlin hinted that the... fight had undermined its relationship with the people and businesses in the surrounding community” (22).
Don’t get me wrong - I'm not trying to say one complaint against Bergdorf Goodman from some random nobody would ruin the luxury store. It did make me rethink my initial reaction to the security guard. Sure, I was 90% sure he was just some racist a**hole who followed me because he didn’t have anything better to do, but these articles made me think about the gravity of that 10% uncertainty. If I reported a case of racial profiling and the store was to side with me, a man could lose his job and the ability to feed his family. I could ruin his life. Betting someone's future on an uncertainty didn’t sit right with me, so I decided to sit back and enjoy the rest of the train ride home.
Do you want to know why I just sat back? Because it's not my problem. Just because I'm black, do I have to be more cautious than my counterparts? I know of so many other people of color who've had to deal with situations like this, and I still don’t really care. It could have gone worse; it didn’t. So, I'm just going to live my life.
Works Cited
Hartocollis, Anemona. “After a Legal Fight, Oberlin Says It Will Pay $36.59 Million to a Local Bakery.” The New York Times, 8 Sept. 2022.
Marcius, Chelsia Rose. “Watchdog Will Investigate Racial Profiling Complaints
against N.Y.P.D.” The New York Times, 24 Oct. 2022.
Repko, Melissa. “As Black Buying Power Grows, Racial Profiling by Retailers
Remains Persistent Problem.” CNBC, NBCUniversal News Group, 5 July 2020,
retailers-remains-a -problem.html.
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