![Shopkeepers Devise New Surveillance Program to Profile Black People]()
The Washington Post has a stomach-churning report on an app upper-crust types in one of D.C.’s wealthiest neighborhoods use for racial profiling. GroupMe is a messaging app, and while it is ostensibly being used in Georgetown to protect businesses from shoplifting, its regular use is, unsurprisingly, devoted to dehumanizing black people.
Georgetown is a few things: a hip shopping destination; the home of Georgetown University; and a residential area where some of the wealthiest people on earth live. The mix of people on the ground, then, is fairly diverse (as long-since-gentrified neighborhoods go)—young students, shoppers from all over the place, tourists, kajillionaires, and so on. This is not always a comfortable arrangement, as you can imagine.
According to the Post report, shopkeepers in Georgetown have been trying for years to make a community project of curtailing shoplifting, apparently to no avail. Until, that is, they found GroupMe, an app that enabled quick communication and photo sharing. The plan, dubbed “Operation GroupMe,” links retailers with other businesses and residents and, of course, police. Anyone can jump on there and report something suspicious and be in direct contact with neighbors and police.
And here’s what’s happened:
“Suspicious shoppers in store,” an American Apparel retailer said in April last year. “3 female. 1 male strong smell of weed. All African American. Help please.”
Notably, no criminal behavior had been observed. This is a shopkeeper asking for assistance—armed assistance—because there are black people in his/her store.
It gets much worse. Reading this thing is like coming face to face with the howling void.
“What did they look like?” a True Religion employee in May last year asked an American Apparel retailer who had reported a theft. “Ratchet,” the American Apparel worker replied, using a slang term for trashy that often has a racial connotation. “Lol.”
[...]
“Suspicious tranny in store at Wear,” reported one worker at Hu’s Wear in May. “AA male as female. 6ft 2. Broad shoulders.”
[...]
“Known thieves,” one retailer wrote beside pictures of three African American women, without specifying any evidence. “Look out.”
[...]
The group has codified its own language and operating culture. African Americans are referred to as “aa.” Hundreds of images of unaware African Americans circulate in the group.
[...]
One person in July reported that “3 aa males currently in zara smelling of weed.” One officer advised him to “call 911.”
The Post notes that officials with the Georgetown Business Improvement District have had to pass out “brochures establishing guidelines on how to use the application to communicate concern without offending.” Seems like some aren’t getting the message:
In February, an employee at Hu’s Wear surreptitiously snapped a photograph of a tall, elegantly dressed African American man wearing distressed jeans, a gray scarf and a long brown coat. “AA male,” the retailer said. “He just left. Headed towards 29th St. About 6 foot. Tats on neck and hand. Very suspicious, looking everywhere.”
An employee at Suitsupply saw the message. He recognized the man. But he was no shoplifter. “He was just in Suitsupply,” the employee wrote. “Made a purchase of several suits and some gloves.”
Ah yes, the always-suspicious behavior of looking around in a retail shop.
In 1986, Post columnist and general shitheel Richard Cohen wrote a piece in which he defended the prerogative of D.C.’s jewelry shop owners to lock black men out of their stores for no reason other than that they were black men. There was an uproar, and Cohen walked it back some, but here we are! This is the present form, right here—a secret surveillance program shared among the very privileged in a posh, exclusive neighborhood where simply being black is reported as suspicious, and is enough to put your description and image on a list for removal.
You should go read the whole report.
[Washington Post]
