Don't make a political point by confirming stereotypes

I’ve mentioned an incident at a shopping area called Kent Station (in Kent, of course) where a security guard told me he  was banning me from the premises merely for washing my hand in the public restroom, apparently because  he harbored certain stereotypes about certain “groups,” and he wanted to flex his “authority." Without reprising the whole story again, basically my response was to find the nearest bench and park myself there, which discombobulated him for a while before he called the police, who asked him to explain why he banned me from the premises. In his mind, he was the “power” on the premises, but when confronted by a “higher” power, he was exposed as a bigoted fraud who could not answer for himself save to expose his own shortcomings as a human being. 

This is one way to make a political and social point. I had not done anything illegal, was not doing anything illegal, and I had given this security guard no justifiable reason to believe that I was about to commit any illegality in future. I had every reason to accuse this person of unjustified harassment.

Now consider the following incident: I entered a convenience store, and noticed that a black youth, whose mode of dress looked like something out of a Seventies sitcom, or at least not anything that should arouse “suspicion.” The problem was that he was acting suspicious, at least to the clerk. He was standing motionless with his back to the clerk in one of the far aisles, and apparently had been doing so for longer than a few moments. As I was pouring myself a cup of coffee, the clerk finally asked him if he was looking for something; the youth’s response sounded to me as if there was certain deliberateness in his lack of motion. Don’t worry about me, he said in an exaggerated tone that suggested that he was expecting this query from the clerk. I have money, he declared. He was obviously daring the clerk of accusing him of being a thief. 

What happened next convinced me that the youth was “playing” the clerk: After I paid for the coffee and proceeded to exit the store, I noticed that he had moved to another aisle, but bent down on his haunches out of sight of the clerk, who by now was becoming visibly upset. What was he doing? He was rummaging around a box of—what else—Skittles. They were all of the same content, so why was he wasting time picking out each bag? Was he deliberately trying to attract the attention of the clerk and make him “suspicious”—and then accuse him of “racial profiling”? I didn’t hang around long enough to find out how all of this played out, although I felt some sympathy for the clerk’s plight. Since I recognized what the “game” was, if I was in clerk’s place I would have let the kid continue on and let him make a fool of himself. 

There are ways to make a political and social “point.” One of those ways does not include acting in a way that deliberately invites suspicion just so you can accuse someone of harboring negative racial (or gender) attitudes. It is one thing to make your “point” in a setting where the accusing party is left in a situation where they have to explain themselves in the vacuum of their own dark minds; it is quite another when your “point” is made in a way that “confirms” stereotypes.

(As an addendum, I spoke to the clerk the next day and asked him if this individual had actually made a purchase; he said that the youth had gone to the counter with an item, but that he left without making a purchase because it was more than the two dollars he said he had brought.)