LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
ART STREIBER
Black
and White
I
N THIS WEEK’S issue, Kim Bhasin and
Julee Wilson go behind
the scenes at Barneys,
speaking to insiders who describe
a deep-seated culture of racism at
the luxury department store chain.
Two highly-publicized cases of
alleged racial discrimination in
recent months have put an unsavory spotlight on Barneys — but
as Kim and Julee find, it’s a problem that’s goes deeper, and has
been around for some time.
“It’s elitism — racial profiling is
just one expression of that elitism,”
said former Wall Street Journal
reporter Johnnie Roberts, who said
he was falsely accused of stealing a
tie at Barneys 23 years ago.
Current and former Barneys
salespeople spoke candidly
about a culture of racial profiling
at the store.
One former employee relayed
conversations she overheard between Barneys workers: “‘Their
card is probably not going to go
through,’ they’d say. ‘I don’t know
why they come in here and want to
try stuff on that they know they’re
not going to buy.’” A veteran employee at the Madison Avenue
HUFFINGTON
12.08.13
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