Tarjah Jean, Haitian, 11th grade, 16 years old.

When you go shopping, what’s the experience like? Sometimes it can be normal and fun, but other times it can become stressful.

Have store employees ever suspected you of stealing? Yes. There have been times that people follow me and my family around the store or continuously they come and check on us but they don’t say anything.

Do you find these types of experiences to happen at stores with predominantly white shoppers? It definitely happens a lot at places where there’s a lot of white people in the store, but it’s not just those stores. I’ve been shopping in places where there are many black people and I know I’m still getting watched like a hawk.

How do you feel when this happens to you? It gets very frustrating and upsetting. I can’t even go out and treat myself to shopping without all eyes on me. I wish all of the stereotypes about black people would go away, because we are more than what you think to be thieves.

Jacob Johnson, Biracial, 19 years old

When you go shopping, what’s the experience like? A lot of the times when I’m in a store I feel like people are watching me.

Have store employees ever suspected you of stealing? Without a doubt. There’s times when I walk through the store just looking at things and every time I look behind me there was an employee or a security guy watching me from a distance around the store. One of the worst things I’ve had happen to me is an employee walk up to me and confront me because he thought I was stealing because I had a book bag on. He made me show him what was in it and there was only a charger, pocket knife, and a tiny gym clothes. It even got to the point that I had to prove to him that I had money I was going to shop with.

Do you find these types of experiences to happen at stores with predominantly white shoppers? It’s surprisingly at places that could be predominantly white or black.

How do you feel when this happens to you? It’s honestly so degrading. I can’t even go buy some groceries for my family or some new clothes without being a suspect in other peoples eyes.

Jessica Kane, 11th grade, 16 years old, White

When you go shopping, what’s the experience like? It's usually pretty fun.

Have store employees ever suspected you of stealing? No.

After looking over the interviews, the results were shocking, yet not. It is puzzling to think racial inequality is still occurring in 2018. On the other hand, microaggressions like this happen everyday, so the people who were interviewed answers were not as surprising. We look at people like Tarjah Jean, who have to deal with being followed around stores by employees with their said "suspicions", when in reality it is plain racism. We also look at those like Jacob Johnson, who store employees have gone as far as checking his bag for no reason. Once again, this is racism. White people see a black person and automatically assume they are this horrible person who does awful things, so they base their actions upon these assumptions and stereotypes others have created for them.

An interesting aspect that has been noted in these interviews is how similar of experiences Jacob and Tarjah have in stores, and this seems to happen to them all the time. Meanwhile, when Jessica was interviewed, her answers to the first two questions were completely different from the rest. Her first two answers were enough that the interview did not even need to be continued. While the people of color interviewed went through bad experiences shopping, Jessica described shopping for her as "fun." How are we all born equal if what daily activities that are easy for others, is a nightmare for the rest?