Spanish clothing retailer Zara is weathering scrutiny this week after being accused of implementing aggressively racist policies in its New York City stores . In a survey of 251 employees - roughly one-sixth of Zara's New York workforce - black employees in particular reported mistreatment from management, and many workers said they were ordered to racially profile customers.
In the survey, conducted by pro-worker advocacy group the Center for Popular Democracy, employees recalled being instructed to flag certain shoppers as "special orders" over their radio headsets - a code signalling that the customer was a likely shoplifter and should be followed and watched. According to survey respondents, signs that a customer might qualify as a special order included being African American, being a black person and "dressing a certain way" (ie, I guess, wearing any clothes that don't completely obscure your black skin). In a particularly egregious anecdote, "One black employee claimed that when he had come in to pick up a cheque one day wearing a hooded jacket he was identified as a special order and prevented from entering a back office." Ah, well, an unfortunate series of misunderstandings, perhaps.
Furthermore, the report alleges, "Lighter-skinned employees of colour and white employees experienced better treatment within the company, with higher-status assignments, more work hours and a stronger likelihood of being promoted."
Whoopsy-daisy! Bygones, at this point, I'm sure. Not to mention that Zara is currently being sued by its former lawyer, who alleges homophobic and antisemitic treatment in the company's corporate offices.
It could happen to anyone! Lawyers, am I right?!
Zara has also been accused of using racist imagery in its products: once for selling a bag emblazoned with swastikas; once for selling a pendant shaped like a person in blackface; once for selling a shirt featuring the slogan "White is the new black"; and once for selling a shirt styled to look like a concentration camp uniform.
Uh, ha. HA HA. Probably just a clerical error. I'm sure we'll all laugh about this later.
Zara's canny corporate spokesperson - seeing right through this long list of totally unrelated innocent coincidences that by pure accident all happen to look like racist garbage behaviour, probably because a butterfly flapped its wings in Johannesburg or something - responded to the allegations of racial discrimination with sputtering denial:
The baseless report was prepared with ulterior motives and not because of any actual discrimination or mistreatment. It makes assertions that cannot be supported and do not reflect Zara's diverse workforce. Zara USA believes that the report is completely inconsistent with the company's true culture and the experiences of the over 1,500 Zara employees in New York City. We are an equal-opportunity employer, and if there are individuals who are not satisfied with any aspect of their employment we have multiple avenues for them to raise issues that we would immediately investigate and address.
Referring to the claims about black customers being disproportionately identified with the code words "special orders", it said: "We are a global, multicultural company serving valued customers across 88 countries, and do not tolerate discrimination of any form."
Yes. Of course you don't.
As we all know from the anguished howls of quivering white people that erupt any time a person of colour expresses any dissatisfaction about being murdered by police, disenfranchised by voter suppression, trapped in cycles of systemic poverty and/or treated like a criminal when they're just trying to buy a horrible, $49 mauve bodysack, nobody in the world is ever racist, except for actual KKK members and the ghost of George Wallace. As Martin Luther King said in his famous speech Hey, Don't Criticise White People, ahem: "Criticising white people is mean because they don't like it. Instead, be nice to them no matter what they do. It's racist for white guys NOT to use the N-word, if you think about it. PS Elvis invented rock and roll."
Therefore - even though the accusations levelled by the Zara employees are so common and predictable that I would believe them even from employees of a store that didn't traffic in concentration camp cosplay - the Zara corporation must, surely, be innocent. There must be something else afoot. Like, say, a bunch of random retail employees all over New York City either colluding in massive secret meetings or coincidentally inventing exactly the same very specific lies about experiencing racist abuse from their totally non-racist employer. Even though the racist policies that Zara supposedly enforced - both subtle and overt - are so ubiquitous in American labour history that we have had to pass many federal and state laws to prohibit them - and establish numerous non-profit organizations to fight them full-time when those laws fail. Even though black people are absolutely, definitely, incessantly followed around in stores. Even though black children are followed around in stores.
At what point can we stop denying and debating simple truths? At what point can we start acknowledging that the simplest explanation is probably the correct one?
The US, my country, is a racist country. It's a country built on white supremacy and the lie of freedom and opportunity - a place where white people live measurably safer, freer, more validated and prosperous lives, where the dehumanisation of black people was literally written into the constitution by slave-owners we are expected to worship, yet where even saying the words "white supremacy" is taboo. Why? Why can't we just speak the truth?
It's not a coincidence that today I came across two stories of white women who pretended to be robbed and assaulted so they could blame groups of fictional black men. It's not a coincidence that the police bought white mass murderer and terrorist Dylann Roof a burger on his way to jail, but shot dead 12-year-old black child Tamir Rice for playing in a park. The familiar silhouette of Roof's crime - a deadly attack by a white racist on a southern black church - is not just a quirk of history, and neither is the fact that several major GOP politicians, whose candidacies rest on leveraging white bigotry and fear, took money from a white nationalist group that may have helped crystallise Roof's hate. It's not an anomaly that data indicates millennials are almost as racist as their parents . It's not an accident that a cheap-clothing company encourages its employees to assume most black people are thieves. And on and on and on.
What if the Zara spokesperson had just said, "We're sorry. We hear you. We'll do better," instead of bending over backwards to to deny any possible shred of culpability? You know what not-racist companies and people do? Acknowledge racism. Pay attention. Work. Change.
The simplest explanation is true. Endlessly contorting yourself to deny the mechanics of the world around you doesn't trick people into thinking you're not racist. It reveals you as a twisted fool.
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