Shopping for Equality

Black Enterprise, July, 1998 by Valerie Lynn Gray

Tired of racism in retail, black shoppers are starting to speak up, and the industry is being forced to listen

WHEN PAULA D. HAMPTON, 37, WENT shopping with her family on April 5, 1996, at Dillard's Department Store at the Oak Park Mall in Overland Park, Kansas, she didn't know that as a result her child would be traumatized.

She didn't know that one day she'd testify in court on behalf of countless African Americans who have faced discrimination while shopping in retail stores nationwide. Nor did she know that what many recognize as racially motivated harassment by security officers, refusal by clerks to honor legitimate credit cards and demands to see numerous forms of identification would soon have a name: consumer racism.

What Hampton did know was that the treatment she experienced from a store security guard was unacceptable. "I can't say that I knew my rights as a citizen that day, but I knew that it felt wrong and I didn't have to take it, not with what I spent at that store," she says.

An all-white jury agreed and in December 1997 awarded her more than $1 million. They ruled that when the security officer, an off-duty Kansas Highway Patrol sergeant, wrongly accused Hampton and her 24-year-old niece of shoplifting while the two waited at a fragrance counter for a free gift, the retailer interfered and violated her contractual rights.

The million-dollar verdict is not typical of what most African Americans experience. Not everyone has the time, money or desire for a lawsuit. But the publicity from that and other cases has led to a growing consumer movement where blacks who have faced consumer racism are finding ways to fight back. The legal system, customer service departments, consumer and civil rights organizations and media publicity are the weapons of choice to get justice for what once sent us home in silence.

Hampton, who works in the human resources department of Babies "R" Us in Overland Park, claims that her seven-year-old daughter's reaction to the security guard prompted her and her husband, Oscar, a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Labor, to file a claim a year after the incident.

"She's watching this man with a gun threatening to have me physically removed from the store," says Hampton, who was involved in a heated argument with the officer. "She's no longer the secure little girl she used to be."

In October 1997, just two months before Hampton heard her verdict, a federal jury in Maryland awarded $1 million to Alonzo Jackson and two friends. The trio accused apparel retailer Eddie Bauer Inc. of consumer racism. In October 1995, at an Eddie Bauer warehouse outlet in Fort Washington, Maryland, a then 16-year-old Jackson was told by a security guard (an off-duty Prince George's County police officer) to remove the green plaid shirt he'd bought the previous day after he couldn't produce a receipt. Jackson, an honor student, went home wearing only his T-shirt to retrieve the receipt, thinking he'd be arrested otherwise.

The jury, composed of three whites, three blacks and one Arab American, cleared Bauer of any civil rights violations but found the company, owned by Spiegel, liable for false imprisonment, negligent supervision of the security guards and defamation of Jackson. Both Dillard's and Bauer are appealing the courts' decisions.

"The jury said that what the police officer did was wrong but that Eddie Bauer did not discriminate," explains David Hiatt, vice president of corporate affairs at Eddie Bauer in Redmond, Washington. "But they hit us with punitive damages, meaning that we acted with malice. That doesn't jibe with the part of the verdict that says we didn't discriminate."

"Punitive damages are meant to punish and deter similar conduct," says Jackson's lawyer, Donald M. Temple in Washington, D.C. "A $1 million verdict is an appropriate slap for a $2 billion corporation," he says of Bauer's decision to appeal. "People don't realize how offensive it is for black consumers to experience this commercial apartheid."

Paul Shroeder, general counsel for Dillard's Inc. in Little Rock, Arkansas, denies that race was a factor. "We are appealing the court's decision to let the case go forward when they already ruled that the officer had reasonable cause to stop the party," he says.

The verdicts may be wrapped in technicalities, but the million-dollar awards speak loud and clear: businesses that don't consider the rights of African American customers will literally be forced to pay for it.

"We asked for $56,000 in compensatory damages for the injustice and $1 million in punitive damages to send a message to retailers nationwide that this won't be tolerated," says Hampton's lawyer, Kathy D. Finnell of Benson & Associates in Kansas City, Missouri. "What's going to bring about change is not the monetary settlements, which have a shock value, but the public outrage."

THE NUMBERS DON'T ADD UP

You'd think that with the growing affluence of the African American market, perhaps retailers would want to make sure their employees treated blacks with the same respect afforded to the general population. After all, statistics, such as those from a 1995 Yankelovich Partners survey of 1,000 blacks and 4,000 whites ages 16 and older, show that blacks are more likely than whites to patronize upscale stores. Forty-one percent of blacks (vs. 32% of whites) say they shop at department stores at least once a month; 30% of blacks (vs. 19% of whites) shop at specialty stores. The survey also found that six in 10 African Americans find it fun and exciting to shop for clothes. It sounds like a retailer's dream.