Racism in Every Day - Tyronne Stoudemire
The new documentary, ‘What About Me’ discusses the hardships and realities Black men regularly face living in America. The documentary takes you through real stories and experiences that these men have had to endure because of the ever so present racism in America. Tyronne Stoudemire, a champion for diversity and equality, was featured in the documentary.
Tyronne discusses his own experience, in a store that he loved and was a frequent customer at.
“I have experienced direct racism. I can say I have almost every day, where I have been either pulled over by the police and asked the questions ‘whose car are you driving,’ ‘how long will you be in this suburb,’ ‘where are you going.’
“I’ll say a ‘funny’ joke. When I worked in in Lincolnshire, Illinois, which is about 43 miles outside of Chicago, I would stop and shop in order to beat the traffic. I remember often going to Nieman Marcus. I love Nieman Marcus, I was even trying to convince my wife to name my children Nieman and Marcus, but it just didn’t happen.
“The sales rep had called me and said ‘we have received some new items, you should come in’ and so I came in. I was looking at the items, I had made a purchase and then I began to walk around the store. While looking around, I noticed that this guy was following me. I knew it was security and I went back to my sales person, and I said, ‘listen, somebody’s following me, I think he’s going to try to rob me, can you call security?’ I played right into the game, knowing exactly what was really going on. She says, ‘oh my god Mr. Stoudemire, let me see what’s going on.’ She calls management and she says, ‘this can’t be, we don’t have that out here.’ She found out it was the security profiling me and they came and apologized.
“I returned every piece of that merchandise. I said, ‘I have been a stellar customer of yours for the last 35 years. I grew up on Nieman Marcus. My mother was a customer, my father was a customer and this is how you’re going to treat me? Take all this merchandise back and cancel my credit card.’”
