Interestingly... I shop at a warehouse store that is primarily AA managed and staffed.
It is a policy that everyone show their receipts when leaving, and have it checked against their items. The AA "checker" routinely waves me on through while doing an "in depth" inspection of younger AA customers.
I feel so profiled!
In a ‘dead tree’ source I read pre 9/11, there was an article about airline security staff at several African terminals. It had been learned that they were routinely pulling aside black Americans for inspections, while waving through white Americans and Britons. When questioned, the staff came right out and said, the black people are here for drug smuggling and other criminal activities; the white people are here as tourists and missionaries. Not very PC, and certainly they were wrong about many of the black people they searched (and probably a few of the white people they waved through!) but it astonished me they’d be so blunt. (Where did I read this? Some magazine back in the mid to late 1990s ; what terminals? Don’t remember, but it was more than one African nation where this was going on.) All hell broke loose when this came out. Don’t know if the policy’s been changed-or if at least they’ve gotten sneakier about implementing it-but I have read no more about this issue.
I have to admit, it took me a minute to realize this wasn't a store staffed by members of Alcoholics Anonymous. I must be getting slow, or something! LOL (at myself)