Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

My personal experience with prejudice was recently!  I was in Target doing some “major” clothing shopping.  I went up to the dressing room and asked the clerk how many items I could take in.  She nicely said, “7”.  So, I picked out 7 outfits and went up to get my number, she begin patting down the clothing that I brought into the fitting room.  She saw the disturbed look on my face and said, “Oh this is something new we are having to do!”  So, I brushed it off and went in to try on my clothes.  As I switched out those 7 for 7 more, there was a line of people waiting to go into the fitting room.  To myself, I thought, “I wonder if they will get patted down, since this is the new policy.”  I being black and the clerk being white simply made matters ten times worse for me.  I am not always looking for the prejudice in people but I was simply outraged.  I noticed that for some reason the clerk wasn’t following her new procedures with the rest of the customers in front of me.  None of them got a pat down, but when she came back to me, she proceeded with a quick pat down again.  This time, I shook my head at her.  I really wanted to say something to her about what she was doing and decided to just leave it alone.  I know it would have been a major scene and I had to think of the 2 families that I had seen in the store that went to my school.  I was so angry and I knew it wouldn’t have been pretty.

            This incident brought back so many memories of prejudice that Martin Luther King, Jr. fought against.  We are living in a world where this stuff shouldn’t still exist!  It’s a shame when you don’t feel like people trust you because you’re black and you look like you’re going to steal.  I don’t have a reason to steal clothing.  I work every day, have a bank account, and am an honest person, without any desire to steal.  I’m so much better than that, but didn’t need to be treated like a criminal who had stolen from there before.  If I could have changed this incident, I would have spoken up to the clerk.  I would have asked her why she didn’t feel the need to pat down the other customers in the store.  I probably could have gotten the Manager over there to inform me of their “new procedure” of patting down the clothing of ALL customers, if indeed it was true.  I do plan to go back into that Target and question her if it happens again.