CVS Is Facing Multiple Lawsuits for Racial Profiling

The crime of "shopping while Black" isn't just a myth—at least not at CVS, according to several former employees of the pharmacy chain. On Tuesday, former CVS security guard Sheldon Thomas filed a discrimination lawsuit against the company in Brooklyn Federal Court. Thomas, whose primary role was to catch shoplifters, alleged that he was given explicit instructions to target Black and Hispanic shoppers.

Thomas, who is Black, reported that a supervisor told him, “When you catch the black people, lock them up,” and, “when you catch the Spanish people, lock them up,” according to the New York Daily News.

This isn't the first time CVS has been sued for racial discrimination—or the second.
During his year-and-five month tenure at the store, Thomas alleged that his supervisor referred to Black customers using the N-word, and habitually let white shoplifters go without arresting them. Sound familiar? Thomas's lawsuit came only a day after two other former CVS employees filed a discrimination suit in the Bronx Supreme Court. The chain also faced a federal discrimination suit from four former employees in 2015 for essentially the exact same reason.

“While there have been many high-profile shop-and-frisk cases filed by customers of large retailers in recent years,” David E. Gottlieb, the plaintiffs' lawyer, told the New York Times at the time the class-action lawsuit was filed, “this is the first time a group of employees has banded together to provide an inside account and expose the blatant racial profiling policy at one of the largest retailers in the world.”

http://www.attn.com/stories/6934/former-cvs-employee-confirms-racial-profiling-customers

By Jeff Guo February 26



For as long as the government has kept track, the economic statistics have shown a troubling racial gap. Black people are twice as likely as white people to be out of work and looking for a job. This fact was as true in 1954 as it is today.

The most recent report puts the white unemployment rate at around 4.5 percent. The black unemployment rate? About 8.8 percent.

But the economic picture for black Americans is far worse than those statistics indicate. The unemployment rate only measures people who are both living at home and actively looking for a job.

The hitch: A lot of black men aren't living at home and can’t look for jobs — because they’re behind bars.

Though there are nearly 1.6 million Americans in state or federal prison, their absence is not accounted for in the figures that politicians and policymakers use to make decisions. As a result, we operate under a distorted picture of the nation's economic health.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/26/america-has-locked-up-so-many-black-people-it-has-warped-our-sense-of-reality/

By Jack Smith IV March 22, 2016




Matt Joseph has the kind of resume investors normally throw money at. His undergraduate degree is from Princeton University, he has a J.D. and an MBA, and his company was borne out of Y Combinator, the most prestigious tech accelerator in the world.

But lately, in the 40 to 50 meetings Joseph has had with investors for his company Locent — a tech startup he pitches as MailChimp for texts — he's been told he's not the right "technical fit" or that they "can't see [him] building this kind of business."

Matt Joseph is a black man in Silicon Valley, and for founders of color, the standards are set much higher than people who fit the classic (read: white, male) techie mold.

In the run-up to a new round of pitches to profit-driven venture capitalists, Joseph wanted to clear the air and talk about the ways he and other people of color face both unconscious bias and outright racism when speaking to potential investors.

"I didn't want to jeopardize our fundraising process by raising the alarm, but after more conversations with colleagues and other people of color, I knew we had an opportunity to shine a light on this," Joseph said in a phone interview.

With a new round of onstage demos only two days away, Joseph told his story Saturday night in a format that's classic Silicon Valley: a 30-part tweet storm.

http://mic.com/articles/138417/locent-founder-matt-joseph-tweetstorm-reveals-racial-biases-people-of-color-face-in-silicon-valley?utm_source=SonOfBaldwin&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=interest#.BmWi41AIs