I am writing to make public a time capsule of prejudice from the past that plays out daily everywhere. But I never thought I would see it so close to home, right here in New London.
One of my supervisors at work, an olive-skinned man of Hawaiian descent, likes to shop at Home Goods in the New London Mall. He visits the store, briefly, on his workdays, as he passes the store on his way to employment at a nearby school that honors diversity. He is, by nature, the consummate shopper and manages a method of shopping that entails observation and patience before making his purchases.
On February 17, he was shopping at this store when he was approached by a New London Police Officer with two “backups.” One officer asked him for identification, he and complied, asking what he had done wrong. The officer said he would “tell him later,” and told him he would have to go outside with him.
He was bewildered and frightened as three officers “escorted” him out to the parking lot to continue their interrogation. They asked him if he came there almost every day, to which he replied he did, that in fact the Home Goods store was his favorite place to shop, that in fact 50 percent of his household purchases had come from that very store. When he continued to inquire about what his crime was, while surrounded by three police officers and a bevy of curiosity seekers, the manager of the store came to confront this poor embarrassed and humiliated individual. She went on to say that because he came in almost daily, that he had made some of her employees “uncomfortable,” and that she never wanted to see him in the store again.
The police responded by saying that on their part they would be forced to arrest him should he enter the doors of his favorite store again.
I find it ironic in today’s economy a store would try to prevent some one from shopping daily, as people do in many places and many cultures. I assure you that is all this gentle man was doing. No, this is a clear-cut case of dark skinned prejudice and social profiling and small-minded people scaring themselves into thinking that they were threatened somehow by this man’s presence. Did anyone ever say “Good morning, how are you today” to him? Would they have reacted the same way to an attractive, rich looking white shopper? I think not. No, this man was publicly and privately humiliated, not for the great crime of shopping daily at the same place, but rather for the great crime of social prejudice on the loose carried out by our own police force, motivated by the small minded behavior of Home Goods Store Management. I can forgive the police officers, but I cannot forgive the Home Goods Store that used my hard earned tax dollars to help carry out a mission of prejudicial behavior, initiated by them.
For my part and many of my fellow employees at this man’s workplace, we will not, nor will anyone in our families shop at the Home Goods Store in New London Mall, until they publish a public statement renouncing their behavior and publicly apologize to this man for their shameful behavior.
