Trayon Christian: Good Ol’ Manhattan Racism
The more I hear about racism still occurring in 2013, the less I’m as shocked as some other people. “I can’t believe this is still happening!” Are you alive? Are you conscious? Because, if so, this shouldn’t be shocking. It should be embarrassing and shameful, however. Today’s post is about good ol’ Manhattan racism.
It’s not enough that New York City (in which Manhattan is the central borough and called “the city” by the other-borough residents) has a stop-and-frisk law that gives carte blanche to stop and frisk residents who police think are about to commit a crime (with no proof). It’s not enough that the law unfairly targets black and Latino men more than any other group. It’s not enough that over 90% of those black and Latino men stopped and frisked had no weapons on them whatsoever.
Trayon Christian, New York College of Technology Freshman
But what is enough is some dumb clerk in Barneys who stopped a 19 year-old college student from buying a $350 belt he wanted. Why did the clerk do that? The clerk felt that Trayon Christian was committed identity theft when he presented a debit card and his ID. The police were called. They detained him for either 2 hours or 42 minutes, depending on whom you believe. (It doesn’t matter how long he was held, the fact that he was held at all for a legal purchase is doing too much already.) The police called Citibank and verified that Trayon was indeed the correct account holder. He subsequently returned the belt to Barneys.
Look, I love NYC. I don’t want to see it turn into Florida, where I am vowing to never visit unless I absolutely have to these days. Is New York City doing the most these days? I know there’s someone out there who will say that this wasn’t racist, but the clerk probably had a reason to doubt Trayon’s story. To that person, I’d like to say
