COURTESY OF ANTHONY PAUL FARLEY
SHOPPING
WHILE BLACK
doesn’t look serious — whatever it
is. The sales associate tends to get
worried if they’re stuck with somebody who’s trying to kick the tires.
They’re afraid they’re going to miss
out on the customer who’s going to
spend a lot.”
High-end stores like Barneys also
typically have less staff than discount retailers dealing with larger
crowds, said Dennis. That makes
salespeople more selective about
who they approach, particularly as
managers are constantly watching their productivity. Anthony
Paul Farley, a professor at Albany
Law School who is black, said he
stopped shopping at Barneys after
an incident he witnessed in the late
1980s. He couldn’t get anyone in
the store to help him, and as he was
heading toward the door, he spotted another black customer holding four or five suits across his arm.
“Can a black man get some help
buying a suit?” the man said loudly,
according to Farley, before dropping one of the suits on the floor.
The man repeated the process, and
when the final suit hit the floor, he
walked out, Farley said.
“No, a black man could not get
some help buying a suit at Barneys
in the late 1980s,” Farley said. “I
left when he left.”
HUFFINGTON
12.08.13
In an October story in The New
York Times on Barneys security,
Nafeesa Baptiste, a former Barneys
employee who has filed a workplace harassment claim to the
Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, alleged that she and
her black customers were profiled
by the store’s security and followed “from floor to floor.”
Even when black customers dress
up, they can’t expect equal service,
said Jerome Williams, a business
professor at Rutgers University who
Albany Law
School
Professor
Anthony Paul
Farley said
he stopped
shopping
at Barneys
in the late
1980s, after
witnessing
a black man
who could not
get anyone in
the store to
help him.