groove

Subtle racism...

Tonight I went to an upscale dept. store with Mrs. Groove. She has an interview today, so she was shopping for a new blouse. Wish her luck!

Anyway, as a male in a ladies dept. I had nothing to do. So I sat down in a chair by a huge sale area to people watch. There were two different associates working in the area, lowering the price on merchandise, straightening up, etc.

So anyway, while I was sitting there, I counted 17 different women enter the area and come into contact with one of the two associates. Here's where it got interesting: of those 17 women, two were black. I noticed that when the black ladies approach the area, *both* of the saleswoman asked "Can I help you find something?" They didn't do that with *any* of the white women. In fact, several of the white women had to ask _them_ for help.

Now, I'm not saying that the sales associates were racists, I highly doubt if you asked them that they would say they consider themselves biased. In fact, I would almost bet that if you pointed out to them what had happened, they would probably say something like, "Really?? I thought I asked everyone if they needed help" or something like that. But they didn't. They let 15 white women go about their business and they immediately asked the two black women if they could be helped. Interesting.