Being a person of colour in predominantly white spaces is exhausting. The stares, the assumptions, the prejudices. Most people who have never experienced it cannot fully grasp what it costs to navigate that on a regular basis, and most people who have experienced it are tired of explaining it.
One woman was sitting in a coffee shop on her day off, answering emails on her phone, when a woman walked over and decided that a black woman in a hoodie with a nice phone could only have gotten it one way. And she was not going to keep her wild assumptions to herself.
More info: Reddit
On your day off, the last thing you want to be dealing with is a big helping of racial profiling
Image credits: svetlanasokolova / Magnific (not the actual photo)
A black woman was enjoying a simple morning coffee in a well-off neighborhood, as she was perfectly entitled to do, just like the rest of the customers
Image credits: prostooleh / Magnific (not the actual photo)
Another woman spotted that she was using a top-of-the-line phone and decided the narrator simply couldn’t afford such nice things
Image credits: diana.grytsku / Magnific (not the actual photo)
She started accusing her of stealing the phone and demanded that she hand it over to her son, and even phoned the police when things got heated
Image credits: Kindel Media / Magnific (not the actual photo)
The police arrived and apprehended the black woman without question, and only apologised once they saw the CCTV footage
Image credits: anonymous
The coffee shop, on the other hand, still hasn’t truly apologised for not helping her sooner, making her basically beg for the footage
The narrator was on her day off, hoodie and sweatpants, answering emails on her Samsung Note 10 in a local coffee shop, minding her own business entirely. The woman across the room had other ideas. One look at a Black woman with a nice phone was apparently all the evidence needed to conclude it had been stolen, and the demand that followed was delivered with complete confidence.
Hand it over to her son or face the police. Chaos ensued. The manager got involved, the son started screeching and grabbing, and when she understandably lost her temper after being accused of theft in public, the police were called. They arrived, assessed the scene, and apprehended her. Not the woman making false accusations. Not the child lunging for someone else’s property. Her.
The three statements given before hers painted a picture so far from reality that by the time the police got to her version, she looked like a career criminal. She did the only thing available to her and refused to cooperate until the security footage was reviewed. The coffee shop pushed back, confident they already had their answer. The footage disagreed.
The apology from the police was awkward and came with a disclaimer about not working on racial stereotypes. The woman watched herself on camera and concluded the phone must have been stolen from someone else because ‘her type’ simply could not afford one. She left, wrote it up, and noted that the only thing she was not was surprised.
Image credits: freepik / Magnific (not the actual photo)
The statistics behind what happened in that coffee shop are unfortunately not abstract. Studies found that roughly 75% of Black adults report experiencing racial discrimination either regularly or from time to time. The American Civil Liberties Union found that 41% of all Black Americans report being stopped or detained by police specifically because of their race.
Broader studies show that upwards of 60% of Black adults report experiencing some form of unfair treatment from law enforcement over their lifetime. What happened to her was a pattern playing out exactly as it always does, in a coffee shop, on a day off, over a phone she bought herself.
Taylor Hoffman Solicitors advise that if wrongfully accused in public, the best response is a calm and clear denial followed by silence. Do not argue, do not over-explain, preserve any available evidence, including CCTV footage and witness contacts, and consult a legal professional about potential defamation or criminal defence options.
The woman’s response after watching herself on camera, doubling down on the accusation rather than acknowledging what the footage showed, is the part that is hardest to explain away as a simple misunderstanding. At that point, it was about a belief system that a recording could not shake, which is a particular and exhausting reality that way too many people of color have to face.
Have you ever faced crazy, baseless discrimination? Tell us about it in the comments!
People in the comments where appalled that this situation even started in the first place, with many sharing their own racial profiling incidents
