Black man hassled by Wal-Mart managers... for being black apparently.

Let me say this first, I am completely biased against Wal-Mart, so I'm really only posting this thread because it makes me feel like a better person to talk about the badside of a company I hate so much.

With that out of the way, do you really think it was because Pitts was black that events turned out this way? I honestly do think so. The fact that the Wal-Mart managerial staff refused to check Pitts' GAF contacts to confirm his identity, even with his GAF ID card, pretty much proves to me they were gunning for him just because he's a black man with a $13,600 check.

By all means, stores must be vigilant against fraud, especially during the holidays, but I think these employees crossed the line of vigilance and went straight to profiling.

I agree with you, but some bright star around here won't.

i bet he tried paying with some business check and the clerk was a noob and thought it was a fake check while 90,000 angry people stood in line.

....try reading the article before you hit 'reply' next time. You won't look as stupid.

while this could be wal-mart in general, i'm inclined to think it was that specific store and/or region. if racism were a wal-mart policy, i wouldn't see stores with all-black staffs, or black people making large purchases at all.

OF COURSE the company's headoffice told that manager to harrass the black man!!!

I look Jewish and they never look at me funny for spending lots of money on root beer and fishooks.

How does one look Jewish? Considering Jews are not a race it's a religion. I believe the race name would be Isrealite or Hebrew.

I'm inclined to believe that it's just this one particular manager/employees that were racist and not policy throughout.

Jews are expected to have lots of money, blacks aren't. :racism101:

---from the article. There isn't a proven policy of Wal-Mart profiling people, but it isn't an isolated incident. Of course, I'm sure if you looked into any major firm in the US you'd find similar instances, but I'm racist against Wal-Mart, if that's even possible.

Indeed.

Maybe it's because walmart is EVERYWHERE and they need a lot of employees, and there are still plenty of racists around. It's bound to happen.

Aye, same here.

Also, they are expected to hoard it.

And Jew is a common term for the Hebrew ethnicity.

It's my nose. Except I am also half white, half mystery exotic european.

Jews eh.

I knew a Jew once. Wait, no. I didn't. That was my left hand. The relationship didn't work out, and so I had to call back my original associate - what can I say, I'm a right hand man.

So a clerk suspects a man of having a bad check, a guy pulls the race card and suddenly Wal-Mart has a secret anti-minority policy. Yeah.

Um, the clerk didn't just "suspect" him. Start reading stuff, mister partisan. :p

And it wasn't just 'suspect', Obi. they brought the sherrif in on a felony suspect, absolutely refused to use the guys credentials, and now is not commenting at all about the incident (i don't include the head office remark, frankly that means diddly squat)

I'm inclined to believe this had NOTHING to do with racism.. if it did.. what was the store thinking.. in this day and age, people get sued for EVERYTHING... my opinion (having worked for wal-mart) is maybe they were having machine difficulties, and the machine wouldn't take it.. it's a mistake.. deal with it people..

And if I made such a huge mistake, and people were telling me "do you arrest EVERY black man who comes into your store" I would have nothing to say either.. I would ignor that anything was even said, cause that's just them being "smart***es"

How does a broken machine explain their refusal to offer him an explanation, their refusal to look at his numerous credentials, and their phone call to the police (who subsequently found no evidence of a crime)?

I'm not suggesting that the Wal-Mart corporation as a whole is racist, but it wouldn't surprise me if these particular managers were a little biased.

At K-mart, we caught a guy sticking stuff into his pockets in the electronics section. When confronted he ran, and was dealt with. On his person, he had what appeared to be a real police badge with official looking I.D.

Said he was working "Under Cover."

We still called the cops, he was still arrested. He wasn't a cop.


PS, he was also black.

Did that have anything to do with it? No.

You tend to not believe everything a person tells you when they're robbing you, or someone else.

if you explain to someone that you expect they handed you a counterfeit bill or check, they are liable to shoot you.. If someone hands you a counterfeit bill or check.. DON'T TELL THEM YOU THINK IT'S FAKE.. THEY MAY PANIC AND SHOOT YOU! I have been told that at ALL of my jobs.... they tell you, fake like your computer won't work.. call a manager.. they look at it, then they call the police... I have always been told to stall until police arrive... sounds like a pretty average occurance to me.

You'd have to be pretty messed up to go from giving people bad checks to shooting them in the face in the space of a few seconds, but okay. :p

seriously.. I have been told that... MANY times... I'm not saying it's probable.. as unlikely as it may be, that's what employers tell their employees... they don't want to take any chances. And that explains why they wouldn't give him his check back.... in the story it says he asked for his check back so he could go somewhere else.. that is probably why they called the police...

to them it might have looked like "he knows his fake check won't pass, so now he wants to run! He just basically told us it was fake, call the FUZZ!"

I wouldn't personally be so quick to pull the race card either.. But still, the fact that he was there for 2 hours and that they didn't bother checking the credentials he readily provided make this somewhat suspicious. All the clerk needed to do was double-check his credentials and then have another check written up.

Just because people are sensitive to racism doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

On a personal note, I'm not racist, but I can say that overall, racial profiling is done because 99% of the time it works. At my workplace, in order to set up an account, we require a SSN, a credit/debit card, and a drivers license/state id. 7 out of 10 times, if I get a call from a young, black woman naed Latisha she doesn't have a credit card. So, rather than going through the 10 to 15 minutes of work that it takes to get to the point where I ask for the credit card #, I'll just lay it out for the customer and say something along the lines of, "Mam, in order to set up an account today, I will need a SSN, drivers license or state id, and a credit or debit card in your name. Will you be able to provide those items to me?" If they say yes, I move forward, if they say no, I lay out their other options. It could be considered racial profiling, but it saves me a lot of useless work, and it's not as though the customer is offended for my having asked.

Along those same lines, another thing that is required is a credit check. 9 times out of 10, by the time I get to the point where I'm ready to do the credit check, I can already predict what it's going to bring back. Part of that prediction stems from the customer's race, and how competent/intellegent they sound. I don't treat them any different based on that prediction, I just take a few extra precautions to save me from the hassle of extra work. I've yet to have a customer get upset at me for taking these precautions.

It's was mostly likey and act of racism, but I don't like how the article tags Walmart as a whole as being responsible. It happened in a store in Bentonville, Arkansas, and was caused by that stores managerial staff, not the Walmart corporation. I agree with BobTheMasher. The article notes how examples of racism have been cited in other Walmart stores, but the truth is if you look at any large chain store in the country, your going to find instances of racism. This isn't as much about Walmart as it should be about the nation in general.

Ty. I work at Walmart, granted, just as a cart pusher, but that was front-end training 101. The person who decided to try and say it was a forgery needs to be struck. Several times.

I think that Wal-Mart did go a little over board. However, as a former Wal-Mart cashier, they do require us to be a little suspicious of people who are only buying gift cards with a check. Now, granted, this check belonged to this guy's business, so they had no night to question him. I'm really not sure whether to say this was a racial issue or not. But I won't rule it out.

The Wal-Mart corp. heads are to blame in some way. Not that they're racist, I'm saying they're a bunch of lazy jerks who won't look into this issue to get it properly resolved and make sure it won't happen again.

But you don't explicitly tell them why you're taking those precautions, do you? If you just ask them a different set of seemingly neutral questions without explaining why, then they won't be able to tell that you're treating them differently than anyone else. Lateesha will assume that the credit card disclaimer is part of your script, while some random white guy will assume it's not. It's not like they call back multiple times as different races/sexes/etc. to compare. (Unless you're being investigated for discrimination :p)

I Actually did read the article and i was pointing out the incompetence of employees in a very internetLOL way ;(, sorry if i sound stupid to you

It would take a a lot of convinceing for me to take a 13,000$ dollar check from anyone. A lot. Innocent though the guy was, the whole thing screams scam.

But Obi, it's not like the guy just randomly walked in off the street to write a personal check. They called in the order before he came in, and he used a business check.

That's true... I'm not saying, "Mam, because you're a young black woman, I have to take these extra precautions..." etc... But at the same time I do. The point of my story is to show that racial profiling does happen, and quite frankly, it's not necessarily a bad thing when done in a way that doesn't belittle the person.

In this case, the man was definately belittled. He was made to sit there for 2 hours without any explanation, he was aprehended by the police, his credentials were not checked. This, in my opionion shows a lack of respect one way or another. Whether it was as a result of race remains to be seen, but Wal-Mart's silence on the issue is somewhat incriminating.

Hmm... according to the article, "several similarly sized transactions were made for other companies that day without delay." Or would all of those scream scam to you too?

You wouldn't get much work done, Obi, if you were calling the police several times a day over common business transactions.

Obi. Listen to me, please. You need to read the article before dismissing it. That's when you look at the words and understand what they say. All of them. :p

Just to reiterate, READ THE ARTICLE

Gahh! How could I have mis-read that so many times! :p

[QUOTE=Major Striker]How does one look Jewish? Considering Jews are not a race it's a religion. I believe the race name would be Isrealite or Hebrew.[/QUOTE]


No, you're wrong. A Jew is of an ethnicity. A Jew is a descendent of Israelites and Hebrews.