I’m a white guy from a fairly non-diverse city. I was at a grocery store today where a cashier opened up their line to serve me and, I thought, the person behind me. As they were serving me, though, they put up their lane closed sign right in front of the black man behind me. The buy was just trying to purchase some tuna, bread, and peanut butter.
The cashier basically decided to serve me, a middle class white man, but refused to serve the black man behind me. I was so shocked that I didn’t say anything. It is possible that I misunderstood the situation but it seemed so blatant.
What should I have done in this situation? Should I have spoken up? Would that have just been more embarrassing for the man who was being discriminated against?
Honestly, I’m still just in shock to see someone treated so poorly when they were simply trying to buy food for themselves. I recognize that means that I’m sheltered but I also feel like I should be able to use my unearned privilege to help others who are being discriminated against.
“Oh, I’m sorry, he was here before me…”
Coming from my experience working in retail, unless the guy had Aryan Nation tats, more likely than not this guy was working in a severely understaffed store.
He was probably in the middle of doing a shitton of time sensitive tasks before he was interrupted by some bullshit manager that told him to help out with the checkout line and then get back to doing the million other things he needed to do before his shift was over.
He was probably doing the bare minimum to be able to say “yes, I helped out the checkout line like you said” before getting back to more important things.
Yeah, I’ve worked retail too and I don’t think I would have done this, even if I did have another task to complete.
This cashier’s lane light was on. They smiled at me, came to help, scanned my items, and let me pay. Then, rather than scanning the man’s six items, they put up their closed sign and walked away without saying a word while leaving their lane light on. It felt hostile and rude.
In situations like this it’s not even clear if it is racism. There are a million other reasons why the cashier could have done that. Don’t just automatically jump to racism as a first conclusion any time a person of color is slighted.
If it were overt, and you are the type of person who would speak up for yourself, and the victim looks like they even want interference from a third party, then absolutely speak up. But don’t go jumping into other people’s business when there’s a chance your interference is going to be another thing they have to deal with that they didn’t want to deal with. If they live in racist areas, then racism is something that members of whatever race is discriminated against deals with on a regular basis. They’re going to pick and choose their own battles.
I’d tell him to add his items to mine and buy them for him. If the cashier refused I would make them explain why to me.
I like this. This is the mentality I plan to take with me in case of future situations. I feel terrible that I wasn’t present enough to act appropriately in the moment.
“Oh, I’m sorry, you have only a couple of things, please go first”.
But it’s normal to freeze when shocked, and if it was not racism I do feel like the cashier would have just asked the guy behind you to put the sign after his stuff. I would have interpreted this just like you, and was a cashier for a long time. If there is a short line, you ask the last person to place the sign. If there is a long line, all bets off, it has to stop somewhere.
