Racial habits make people respond to black faces with unwarranted alarm

Evidence

On a basic level, many people simply respond to black faces with alarm or suspicion when none is warranted. We know the commonplace stories of women clutching their purses or crossing the street when they see black men. Store clerks around the country become extra diligent when particular kinds of people walk into their shops. Trayon Christian, a nineteen-year-old black college student shopping at Barney’s in New York, was cuffed and taken into custody because the clerk didn’t believe he could afford the $350 Ferragamo belt he had just bought. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 152

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete instance grounding the value gap / racial harm theme that also appears in the reader’s sacrifice and policing interest.