Minority consumers have long complained about being treated unfairly in stores, using the phrase "guilty of shopping while black" to describe the situation. In recent years, some have filed and settled high profile suits with retailers after alleging racial profiling. Now, four former CVS employees have filed suit charging the chain with racial profiling and for terminating their employment after they complained about the practice.
According to the suit, two loss prevention supervisors instructed the four workers to pay attention to black and Hispanic shoppers to catch more shoplifters.
"While there have been many high-profile shop-and-frisk cases filed by customers of large retailers in recent years," David E. Gottlieb, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told The New York Times, "this is the first time a group of employees has banded together to provide an inside account and expose the blatant racial profiling policy at one of the largest retailers in the world."
Carolyn Castel, a spokesperson for CVS, wrote in an email to The Associated Press, "CVS Health has firm nondiscrimination policies that it rigorously enforces. We serve all communities and we do not tolerate any policy or practice that discriminates against any group."
Photo: RetailWire
A study by researchers from Villanova, "Shopping While Nonwhite: Racial Discrimination among Minority Consumers," published last December in the Journal of Consumer Affairs found that on a scale of one (never) to five (always), black consumers averaged 3.15 in reporting unfair treatment in stores because of their ethnicity. Among white consumers, the number was 1.86.
One of the challenges with identifying racial discrimination is that it can oftentimes be subtle.
"We have a hard time recognizing these experiences that other people have because we don't notice them," Aronté Bennett, one of the Villanova researchers told Quartz. "Many consumers, minority and otherwise, don't think that minorities are experiencing discrimination as a whole."