Consumer Racial Profiling Presented to PSU: Blacks Get Bad Customer Service or Suspected Shoplifters

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Ph. D and professor of criminal justice at Penn. State Harrisburg Shaun Gabbidon spoke at Plymouth State University on Mon., Oct. 1, to inform the campus on the social cost of being black in America. Gabbidon’s presentation, “The Black Thief Stereotype, Shopping While Black, and Consumer Racial Profiling in the 21^st Century” displayed his research and explanation to the contemporary problem.

“I don’t just look at what happened last year. I look at the long view,” Gabbidon stated, beginning with the slave era when the black thief stereotype was produced.

“When slaves ran away, they were committing a crime. Do you know what the crime was? Stealing. Slaves were property and when they ran away they were stealing themselves.”

Gabbidon began noticing consumer racial profiling as a security manager in Virginia before he left to pursue his doctorate. While achieving over 100 scholarly publications, Gabbidon distinguished two types of racial profiling; minorities being treated with a lack of service and being suspected as thieves.

Gabbidon conducted research on consumer racial profiling and found that 80% of the victims polled do not report the incident, while about half of the victims make purchases after the incident only to prove they do not intend to shoplift.

“Minorities go in to stores, get treated poorly and go back without reporting the problem. This repetition makes the stereotyping normalized,” Gabbidon stated.

In his research, Gabbidon found that 14% of the people involved support consumer racial profiling. “It’s that 14% I’m interested in,” he stated and now plans to continue his research to help end the minority abuse.

“I’m not saying there aren’t variations with certain groups doing certain things. It’s when that is irrationally intensified that an issue arises,” Gabbidon stated. This irrationality has a negative impact of a minority’s self-worth and Gabbidon claims it is his, “mission to change this.”

New research and publications are in progress for Gabbidon because the fight against racial profiling is far from over.

“Culture change is very difficult and it takes a long time. We are only in the infancy of studying this issue.”