In December 2019, I was in Barbados with my husband for the New Year’s Eve celebrations. Barbados for us has always been special. It has almost everything I miss from home, minus the deeply troubling trauma landmarks and heart-tugging memories. It was where my husband proposed 10 years ago and the only place he drives without a GPS, with an almost memorised route to Oistins Fish Market. Those memories are now eclipsed by a microaggression that year that left us both floored and myself in particular deeply hurt and traumatised.
What started off as a usual day with a simple request to have a breakfast bowl in my room so I could have my medication and breakfast in peace, ended in a 20-minute humiliating exchange that had everything to do with why guests who look like me can’t be trusted. The excuses and reasoning were beyond comprehension.
I had accepted my defeat then decided in the elevator with my husband (a Caucasian) that he would go back down and make the request, since at the time of asking I was alone. It was hardly a surprise that he returned to the room in less than two minutes with the bowl having asked the same hotel employee, who, for context, looked like me.
The humiliation that I felt was temporarily masked with feelings of vindication. What I experienced was racial profiling and not just bad customer experience. Even as a paying guest, I was made to feel like a beggar, someone overstepping her welcome or nothing short of a thief in disguise who must be watched lest the cutlery disappear.
My European husband was not held to the same undignified standard. A fight down over a bowl wasn’t necessary because he was seen as trustworthy and more deserving of having a simple request fulfilled. When these micro-aggressions occur, some of us hardly ever feel the urgency to expose and retaliate because we are busy trying to bandage our axed self-esteem.
When Black and Brown people have these experiences we almost immediately assess the further harm that could be caused by having the event reinterpreted and dismissed while simultaneously being reminded that we are existing in a system of prejudice with much wider fangs that go beyond our single experience. In my case, I was in a post-colonial society operating under a neo-colonial construct.
This week, when a local boutique came under absolute fire for profiling customers using markers such as race, attire, physical outlook and price inquiries to determine interest and willingness to extend help when shopping it felt like PTSD. I had a similar response to reading columnist Akola Thompson’s dehumanising experience at a local furniture store back in 2020 in this same publication. They reminded me of my reflexes in Europe.
I almost never leave one store and go to another (especially grocery stores) without my bill, because there is an automatic sense of watchfulness that comes with being Black. We learn to live with and navigate the suspicion that follows us. In some stores, I almost beg my husband to tag along because of the eyes that follow me if I dare to forget to wear my designer purse to show some amount of spending power.
Cassi Pittman in the article “Shopping while Black: Black consumers’ management of racial stigma and racial profiling in retail settings,” published in the Journal of Consumer Culture, states that Black consumers’ disadvantage in the marketplace is due in part to social structural conditions, such as residential segregation and the organisation of the marketplace. Raphaël Charron-Chénier et al. (2017) argue that Blacks’ unequal access to goods and services is a consequence of retail desertification in segregated neighbourhoods, restricted access to credit, and discrimination. Together these factors produce racial disparities in spending. Similarly, Roopali Mukherjee (2011) argues that segregation has resulted in the “spatial containment of black consumers.”
In other words how the society was cobbled together will indefinitely affect how we determine and develop biases when it comes to making an assessment when separating the have and the have nots. Some people say classism is racism’s first cousin because in cases where race is removed it still seeks to invoke prejudice based on not meeting a certain criteria and not being good or worthy enough. I personally believe it’s all the same because it is delivering prejudice in every instance based on different factors all of which are a matter for gross concern and are strongly rooted in harmful exclusion.
While the boutique owner did the right thing to offer an apology and discount codes for anyone willing to come forward with any sort of recommendations, which could hardly be said for so many other businesses who engage in the same behaviour, it’s still so important to engage responsibly so as to not cause further harm.
If you have caused harm in any form you don’t get to dictate or lecture anyone how they should handle the harm they received; neither is there a time frame or specific medium anyone should use. Victims of any form of abuse are free to come forward at any time and however they feel comfortable with the tools and words they have at their disposal.
Two things can be true at the same time. If you have had a positive experience, great for you. However, that doesn’t mean it’s the reality for everyone else. Desist from oversharing and allow other people to air their concerns. In reality, when you are doing this you are unconsciously making and sometimes forcing people to question their experiences.
Racial stigma, profiling and prejudicial treatment are all forms of abuse and require the same amount of zero tolerance. They are harmful and remain with those who have faced them for the rest of their lives; they can contribute to varying levels of anxiety and depression. This is not the time to lightly drop the statement, ‘I didn’t mean it like that’.
