I have no financial interest in Blanchard’s, other than the fact that I spend money there.
Just saw this today, amid a Twitter storm of righteous indignation about how terrible this business is and how we should all boycott them.
I don’t know about the specifics of the situation beyond what’s in the article, but it certainly sounds like Blanchard’s employees made a relatively big and probably racist mistake.
The knee-jerk response was, “Oh, I’m never shopping there again!”
Well. Okay. What’s the aim of your boycott?
Is it to drive Blanchard’s out of business?
Is it to make sure that your money isn’t supporting a racist business?
Okay, but then there’s this: Blanchard’s has one of the most diverse staffs of any retail business in JP. Are you boycotting those stores with all-white staffs? Are you boycotting those stores where people of color are allowed to scoop your ice cream but never seem to find their way into managerial positions?
I guess what I’m saying is that Blanchard’s screwed up in a very visible way here, but this, like everything, is complicated, and when you’re looking at a business’s record on race, you absolutely have to look at their hiring and promotion practices. On that score, most of the businesses that JP’s white liberals patronize look piss poor.
See you in the craft beer aisle.
I don’t feel any need to boycott. The law provides adequate remedy, and the victim is pursuing that remedy. That’s enough for me.
The plain and sad fact is that the members of the “diverse staff” who initiated the humiliation of Mr. Johnson are white, and Mr. Johnson is black. There is a 20 year age difference between the perpetrator of the original crime and Mr. Johnson, and other obvious physical differences. In fact, the main similarity is that both are black. Mr. Johnson joins the multitude of black men, women and children who are harassed by authorities because they are guilty of shopping while black.
There is no reason to believe that the white staff members who initiated Mr. Johnson’s ordeal are evil vicious KKK-slogan-spouting racial bigots. That is actually one of the most important lessons from episodes like this — their racism is unconscious, and shows itself in their well-intentioned and utterly wrong mis-identification. Because of their unconscious racism, they sincerely thought they were “face-to-face with the thief” that had robbed the store before.
An enlightened store management will follow up on this by providing racial sensitivity counseling to ALL staff (not just those involved with this mistake). It wouldn’t surprise me if such counseling were included in the settlement terms of Mr. Johnson’s lawsuit. The store staff needs education and counseling, not punishment. They were caught between their laudable loyalty to their employer and their sincere but mistaken intuitive certainty that they were facing the thief.
There is one other aspect of this episode, as reported in the story cited in the thread-starter, that troubles me (emphasis mine):
Not every black man can be an attorney, noted author, professor, and department chair at an accredited university. The systemic racism of our society causes black men to be mis-identified as criminals far more often than white men, and simultaneously condemns black men to menial jobs or unemployment far more frequently than white men.
What would have happened in this situation if the innocent victim of the mis-identification had been a younger unemployed (because unemployment falls disproportionately on young black men) black man with a prison record (because the inexcusable racial bias of our criminal system incarcerates a shameful 50% of black men)? Sadly, there is a very good chance that were the victim more representative of the black experience, he would be on his way back to prison today for a “crime” he did not commit. I’m glad that, in this case, the victim turns out to be fully capable of defending himself and of transforming this sorry episode into a learning experience for all of us.
I hope we are attentive to the lesson.
On which staff members called the police? I didn’t see it in the article, but I might have missed it. I’m perfectly willing to believe that they were white, but given the number of black and Latino employees in the place, I don’t think it’s a safe assumption.
Big, big agreement with your point about his status: a guy shouldn’t have to be middle-class to be cleared of a crime he didn’t commit.
…
Knowing not a thing about Blanchards regular clientele, I, nevertheless, very much doubt that the actual thief and the actual professor are the only two black men to have been in the store between the time of the robbery and the time of the accusation. If Blanchards store had a prior reputation for discouraging a black clientele that would be one thing, but nothing I’ve seen indicates that in any way.
The anguish of racial profiling is the fact of trumped up charges on the basis of stereotyped, often nonexistent, crimes. Trayvon Martin, for example, did absolutely nothing wrong and there wasn’t even a legit criminal to confuse him with…. Here we have an actual crime with an actual criminal. The professor was mistaken for the criminal. He was not mistaken for an inchoate, generic, probably-up-to-no-good phantom hood. He was mistaken for a real, actual, caught on tape, criminal.
I doubt very much that the sole reason for his release was his professorship and I’m certain that the article doesn’t support this view. In fact the only think article makes clear is that the police behaviour changed when they found out who he was, not their prosecution of the charges. I think the police can fairly be said to have tracked down a charge that turned out to be mistaken. When they got the ‘suspect’ in the room with the photos they too, had to have realized, that it was mistake. Cops are not strangers to eyewitnesses who are not always accurate.
I was walking home for the train one night about a month ago when, in the distance, I saw much flashing of police lights and some hubbub in a local cemetery. After a time, I saw the cops leave with lights off. I had to pass the cemetery to get home and, in doing so, I was stopped by a police officer who emerged from his cruiser with his hand on his holster and rather aggressively asked me who I was and what I was doing. After displaying my ID and telling him my purpose he checked it out an visibly relaxed when he realized I was not one of the vandals he, and some of this fellow officers, had chased in the cemetery. I, a six foot 200+ lbs white guy had been, however briefly, possibly ID’d as one of the skinny white vandals who’d defaced some property and had, in their run from the police flung some things at the officers. It’s not a big deal to me, I think the cop was just doing his job. He was clearly a little tweaked that they had been unable to catch the vandals and that may have played a role in his initial aggression towards me… but It’s not an easy job so I make allowances. I’ve seen this attitude play out in many other interactions with police, mine and others… and I think it’s part of the job to adopt a tough, no -nonsense stance to any suspect until cleared. It’s probably bad community policing but it’s there… so it’s not axiomatic that they were aggressive to the professor because he was black. They likely were aggressive to the professor because he was a suspect. Once he wasn’t a suspect their aspect and attitude changed.
There is simply no excuse for this. What thief is going to come back to the store later and buy cognac? Any store that treats its paying customers like this will not get my business, pure and simple.
This is too bad, because they really did have a nice selection of craft beers. I will be shopping somewhere else in the future.
Just curious as to whether you will continue to patronize those JP businesses that pretty clearly discriminate in their hiring and promotion practices.
Not sure what business you are talking about, but I don’t like to patronize businesses that discriminate against either employees or customers.
I am not sure whether this was a case of racial discrimination or not, but it was an unacceptable way to treat a customer.
This is really a challenge to me as much as you. I happily shop in these lefty establishments with NPR-listening clientele and think that they “reflect my values” without stopping to think that the manager is always white, or that the entire staff of tattooed twentysomethings is white. In a city as diverse as Boston, I think that probably indicates some (possibly unconscious) discrimination at work.
I left a pretty big clue in the original post as to a business in JP where entry-level staff have told me that people of color don’t get promoted to managerial positions. I don’t have any hard data to back this up, but I’ve never seen a manager of color in any of their locations.
Perhaps you are right but you really have no real basis to assume that JP businesses “clearly discriminate” merely because you don’t see employees of color. It might be true, or not. Most places I shop I don’t even know who is a manager.
Barring actual knowledge of discrimination I base my choice of which stores to patronize on their products and level of service.
… that ‘knee jerk’ doesn’t describe much of every aspect of this issue, and that more isn’t being read into it than is there… and I’m including the professors response in this categorization. If we posit, for the moment, removing from the scene the professor and, in his place, put the actual thief in the store the employees reactions would have been no different and they might be hailed as responsible citizens. So, I’m not convinced this is a case, strictly speaking, that describes any of the employees doing something out of the ordinary.
Instances of racial profiling often include an aspect of extraordinary attention: a black man in an all white neighborhood might get scrutiny no one else would receive under any circumstances… Or, police and/or societal attitudes tend to the unsupported notion that all black men deserve scrutiny. But here a black man got the scrutiny than another black man actually did deserve. I don’t know that a diverse workforce can easily be accused of making a ‘”They all look the same to me” eyewitness mistake nor do we know how many black men shopped at Blanchards between the robbery and the afternoon of July 16 who didn’t get wrongfully accused. If the professor and the thief are the only two black ‘patrons’ of the store, then that would be a problem… but I doubt they were. I tend to think that, if such was the case, the thief wouldn’t have been able to simply walk in and take things. Nor do I think the employees can fairly be accused of doing shoddy police work because, obviously, they are not police. I think it entirely possible they were honest in their witness, but mistaken. That does happen, to white and to black.
I think if we want to live in a post racist society we have to accept the possibility of a post racist society and that includes believing honest people can make mistakes.
The liquor was stolen from the basement, not from the main store. It would be difficult to walk out of that store caring a case of cognac without being noticed since the only way in/out of the store goes right past the registers. Furthermore, it makes absolutely no sense that someone who had stolen liquor from the basement would then come back to the same store and then talk to staff members and buy a bottle. Any store manager that thinks it is ok to cause a paying customer to be arrested without being 100% sure they are right is more concerned with retribution over a small loss than making their customer’s happy.
It doesn’t matter that the professor was black or white. He was a customer and he was treated like crap.
Eye witness testimony is notoriously bad. People are just bad at remembering details about other people. Even if there wasn’t a racial bias in anyone, anywhere(!), mistakes like this are going to be made all the time. To a 25 year old, 40 and 65 don’t look that different, and even if facial hair wasn’t easy to change over the course of months, one had a mustache and the other a goatee. Weight can change too, and short of beanpole and buddha, most folks don’t remember much about weight. In short, it’s easy to imagine this as a flat out, non-biased mistake.
On the other hand… this just doesn’t seem to happen to white people with nearly the frequency of blacks. I wonder: why didn’t the police compare the surveliance videos before making the arrest? If they are as described in the article, the police could have easily determined no match. Similarly, they could have knocked on Professor Robert Johnson, Jr.’s door, determined that he was chair of a department at a university, determined that he was in no way a flight risk, and kicked the meeting downtown down the road a bit. When all you’ve got is three month old eyewitness testimonies, two pictures that don’t match, and remarkably unlikely motive, you don’t need to bring him downtown to release him. You can have a conversation in the parking lot or in his living room and then, if necessary, have a second conversation at a later date.
I don’t shop at Blanchard’s because they manage their large store with student clientele in a way that is high security — as if they assume everyone is a crook. I’m not, and I don’t like shopping at a place where they seem to assume I am. Furthermore, their bottle deposit return policy sucks — it doesn’t have the same set of open hours as the store, or at least it didn’t the last time I tried to return bottles there.
I’m curious as to the correct course of action for an employee sincerely convinced they have seen a criminal.
They should have realized that it some guy who steals a case from the basement is not likely to come into the store and engage with store employees and buy an expensive bottle of liquor. They should have looked much more carefully at the pictures they had of the thief. They should have questioned their own judgement more. They should have anticipated the cost of being wrong. In they had been right, they would not have gotten their money back, and would only the the satisfaction of having caught the thief. Now they will lose thousands of dollars of business plus a potential lawsuit.
Honest mistake or not, it was a truly stupid business decision.
Do you honestly think that this was a good business decision on their part?
Do you really find it inconceivable that they could not have found a better way to handle this?
Stranger things have happened. Seems likely that the same brazenness which leads someone to roll up on a store while open and remove 20 bottles of cognac wouldn’t necessarily morph into a reticence.
…All this is police work, not the work of store clerks and managers. It’s as simple as that. Store employees had their suspicions. The police were called. The police did their work. The store went back to doing theirs.
It is unclear if the professor should proceed with a lawsuit and, if he does, whether he will, or ought to, prevail.
On the matter of losing business… it would be ironic that an instance of mistaken identification leads to a identification of a business as racist if that, too, is a mistake: kinda of like the crime returning to the scene… But, then again, stranger things have happened.
I know that others are doing that, and perhaps that is really what is behind this, but any business that cannot calculate the high cost of mistakenly identifying a respectable customer of any race as a criminal deserves to lose business.
The store manager should have thought about the implications of screwing over a customer which is exactly what they did here.
I don’t know why you think that someone sneaking into a basement entrance is likely to cause them to go into the store later and buy a bottle. It makes absolutely no sense. Add to that the fact that he looks much older than the suspect and has a different type and color car, and you have to wonder what they were thinking.
Do you really think that businesses should not be held responsible for how they treat their customers? That’s my point.
In any case, you and thebaker can disapprove all you want, it won’t change the business reality for Blanchards. They have created a huge public relations problem for themselves here. And they continue to make it worse by refusing to speak to the press (supposedly at the advice of their lawyers, of course), so instead of a public apology that would appear in the same news cycle as the initial report and might repair the damage, they circle the wagons and enhance the perception of an “us vs them” attitude. Really stupid.
… without speaking for ‘thebaker’ I’ll, personally, object to your characterization of my disagreement as a judgement or condemnation on the order of ‘disapproval‘ (a word you have used twice now). I am disagreeing with you when I give you a down rate. I neither approve nor disapprove.
I would prefer to register my disagreement, in this instance, with a simple down rate and a move along. You have called me out twice on this and have turned a disagreement into something it isn’t.
If you downrate a comment you are asking to be noticed. You don’t have to respond, of course, but you cannot expect me not to infer some sort of motivation. As to the word “disapprove”, that is exactly the word used in the dropdown menu for “View voters”, so I fail to understand why you pretend to be confused about that. If you don’t like that label, then don’t downvote.
Still don’t know what you are disagreeing about here. Do you really not think that Blanchards created a PR issue with how they responded to this? Do you honestly believe that they could not have handled this better?
You are correct. I had, actually, never bothered to notice it before. My apologies and I withdraw the accusation that you were trying to make something different of it. I have always used it as disagreement — and will continue to use is simply as disagreement — but you are correct it does say ‘disapprove’.
I think an honest mistake is an honest mistake. And I don’t think an honest mistake, whether it has racial implications or PR implications, ought to be held against a person or company that makes it. If it was not an honest mistake, then throw the book at them and boycott them, whatever…
I don’t particularly think that Blanchards treated the professor in question ‘like crap’ which is a phrase you used earlier. I think the article insinuates that the police treated the professor like crap. As I have lain out elsewhere, most encounters with police are often fraught with tension… especially for people who are law abiding and don’t expect it or who don’t see it coming. But what the police did or did not do is completely severable from what Blanchards employees did. Blanchards did not direct the police to act in a specific manner towards the ‘suspect’ (and I remain unconvinced that the cops treated this suspect differently than they do any other, of any race…) I think the employees had a suspicion and they acted on it by calling the appropriate authorities… exactly as they should have done if their suspicions had been 100% correct. This is not like the cop arresting Henry Louis Gates Jr. for trying to enter his own home… this is honest people mistaking one person who did not commit a crime for another person who did commit a crime and telling the police about it. It’s an ugly situation… but ugly isn’t limited to nefarious motives and skullduggery, honest mistakes can be just as ugly and messy.
Why did it take an entire week for the manager to call him back and apologize? You don’t treat your customers like that. If you turn a customer into the police and turn out to be wrong you apologize right way. They should have called him back immediately and followed it up with gift basket. If they had responded appropriately, this probably never would even have made it to the news and we wouldn’t be talking about this at all.
And there was no emergency here. They could have taken a little time and looked at the pictures of the thief and his car before rushing to call 911. Did the manager who told them to call the police understand that this was a customer who had just purchased a bottle of cognac totally above board?
It may have been an honest mistake, but it was one that could have been avoided if they were more careful. Honest mistakes have business implications just as much as dishonest ones. If you get really bad service from a restaurant due to an honest mistake, you still are unlikely to return. And honest mistakes that could easily be mistaken for a racially motivated one are especially fraught with danger for a careless business person. That’s my point. It doesn’t matter whether the mistake was “honest” or not. What matters to me is whether they were thinking of their customers and they clearly were not except in that the manager did eventually apologize.
If they had thought about it, they would have realized that the risk of being wrong in this case was far higher than the minimal reward they would have gotten if they had been right. They compounded their error by failing to make it up to the professor in a timely fashion, and then compounded it again by refusing to comment to the Globe and ending up on the front of the Metro section.
I don’t think of it as boycotting them for racial profiling, but more as avoiding patronizing a business that treated a customer badly in a very public way. There are other places I can buy beer and wine where I know they would not make this mistake.
So funny, I really laughed out loud.
…though I have heard this is more common across racial lines. It also appears that in this case everyone involved acted appropriately and the misunderstanding was cleared up, unlike too many other cases we’ve seen.
You are right that this could have been much worse, but if everyone “acted appropriately” why is this a news item? If Blanchards had either been more careful before deciding to call the police or more proactive in making amends to the victim we would never have heard about it.
I know this is the kind of privilege that people don’t like to admit exists in this country, but this is a news story ONLY because of the class status of the guy who was wrongly accused.
This is not to excuse what the Blanchard’s staff did, but I’d be very surprised if this is the only guy who’s ever been falsely accused of shoplifting. He has the connections and the means to make a big deal of it, whereas people without means just have to accept this stuff as one of the many humiliations that come with being poor.
and this is not a shoplifting charge. This is accusing a paying customer who acted perfectly normally of being a thief months previously based purely on a low-resolution security camera image.
Yes, I am sure the fact that he is a professor raises the profile of the story. No doubt.
Perhaps it is a story because the victim did not take his treatment sitting down.
While a professor isn’t likely to do this the flip side is the bias that suggests that a lower class person is just the sort who would. As for why it’s news I suggest it’s because it at least sort of fits the recent narrative and theme of white people making bad assumptions about black people.
that while it may be a recent narrative, white people making bad assumptions about black people sure as hell isn’t a recent theme.