"Handled very poorly"
That's one way to describe what happened to Reginald Pitts, a black customer who tried to buy materials for his roofing company at a Tampa-area Wal-Mart. Store managers held him for two hours for check forgery, but it took police only 19 minutes to realize he'd done nothing wrong:
TAMPA - GAF Materials Corp. is handing out gift cards from Target as a reward to select employees this holiday season. That's because Wal-Mart, the discount store that held the business for years, last week called sheriff's deputies to apprehend a GAF manager on a bogus bad check rap while he was trying to buy this year's gift card supply.The episode not only points to the everyday racism pervading our culture; it also would be a lot easier to dismiss if Wal-Mart didn't have an ongoing history of discrimination complaints (pdf).
"I keep going over and over the incident in my mind," said Reginald Pitts, the 34-year-old human resources manager for the roof material manufacturer's Tampa distribution center. "I cannot come up with any possible reason why I was treated like this except that I am black."
Wal-Mart has launched its own internal investigation of the incident, which store officials concede upfront "was handled very poorly."
2 Comments:
I think it is great news that someone else has a good reason to avoid Wal-Mart!
They have done some horrible things for America.
Audio Activism has more of the same: One man protests racism at Walmart and
More stories about racism at Walmart.
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