Black Consumers Making Sense of Being Over-Surveilled and Under-Served in Retail Settings

• In Event: Intersecting Inequalities: Race, Gender, and State Power in Health and Justice Systems

Abstract

A majority of Black men and women report experiencing discrimination in retail settings (Gabbidon & Higgins, 2020). A pervasive form of discrimination encountered by Black shoppers is excessive surveillance, with salespeople using repeated and disingenuous offers of assistance as a crime control strategy (Anderson, 2015). Paradoxically, Black shoppers also report being ignored by sales associates, who fail to greet them and ignore their shopping needs (Gabbidon & Higgins, 2020). The present study draws findings from 39 interviews with Black men and women about their shopping experiences. Participants discussed making sense of being over-surveilled and under-served, focusing on the various strategies they used to figure out if they were actually being followed or ignored and if their experience truly were rooted in race. Some of the strategies respondents used to make sense of their experiences also served as resilience strategies. For instance, shoppers who roamed aimlessly around stores to decipher if they were being followed often continued roaming after affirming suspicions in order to mess with sales associates. We discuss the findings in terms of the cognitive work associated with making sense of and responding to retail racism experiences that are rooted in controlling images of Black people as criminal and poor.

Authors

• Stacy De Coster, North Carolina State University

• Martha Crowley, North Carolina State University

• Eucharia Nkem Ozoemenam, North Carolina State University

• Mahabuba Islam Meem, North Carolina State University