Sometimes, you just know it’s racism.

The most insidious thing about racial profiling, outside of the racism itself, is that white people can do it at will while relying on the plausible deniability they’re afforded because the white majority, by and large, is never readily willing to believe Black people when we say racism happened.

Take, for example, a recent video that has gone viral on social media, featuring two Black girls at an H&M store being told by an employee that service is being refused to them with no explanation as to why. The girls said they were accused of repeated shoplifting by a security guard at the store, which they denied, saying they hadn’t even been to the retail location in some time, but that didn’t matter because the Karen who works there had out her foot down and demanded the girls leave whether they had actually done anything wrong or not.

The video begins with a white male security guard escorting the girls, who reportedly are sisters, to the store employee.

“We’re gonna go ahead and just refuse service. There’s no reason — that’s what we’re gonna go ahead and do today,” the employee declared as she proceeded to grab clothing items from them.

“So why do we have to leave the store?” one girl asked.

“Because we’re just refusing service, we don’t have to have a reason,” the woman replied.

Naturally, the girls, visibly bewildered by the treatment they’re receiving, press the matter for answers as to why they’re being made to leave when all they were doing was shopping, but that only resulted in the apparent head Karen in charge repeating her response that she can refuse service to them for whatever reason she wants or no reason at all.

“This is ridiculous,” one girl says. “This is really happening.”

But the girls continue to press, at one point, turning their focus toward the security guard, who apparently claimed that they were once caught shoplifting at the store.

“So you’ve seen us steal before? Is that what you’re saying?” the girl asks.

“Nobody said that at all,” the employee said.

“That’s what he said,” the other girl noted. “That’s what he said. That we’re repeat shoplifters?”

“We’ve seen you in here before,” the employee states.

When the girls stated they hadn’t visited the store in a while, the employee told them that the staff members had seen them “plenty of times before.”

The girls continued to insist they hadn’t been in that store recently, and they certainly hadn’t been caught shoplifting their, and, at one point, one of them challenged the employee to show them surveillance footage proving otherwise, to which the employee predictably responded, “I don’t need you to show you guys.”

These are the responses of people who are lying.

These are the responses of people who know they’re lying and that they don’t have a leg to stand on.

These are the responses of people who have no respect for the dignity and emotional well-being of these young Black women.

And, again, we’ll never be able to prove what we saw in that video was racism, but let’s just say what was displayed to these Black girls by these white people in positions of power is an attitude and demeanor generations of Black people across America are familiar with: when we’re treated as nuisances by people who have no discernable reason to think we’ve done anything wrong, but just don’t like the look of us. And if nothing in the above dialog has made that perfectly clear yet, what the white woman employee said next should drive it home (unless your idea of “plausible deniability” is truly just white and eternally fragile delusion).

“I’m refusing service to you guys today. I’ve asked you guys to please leave the store. I don’t need you guys to get violent or anything like that,” this reprehensible white woman said to two young Black women who had not even remotely indicated that they had any violent intent whatsoever.

“Violence?!” one girl exclaimed before deciding it was time to leave. “Let’s go.”

“How are we getting violent?” the other girl asked while they were being escorted out by the guard.

“Violence is crazy,” the other said. “I can’t believe this is actually happening.”

Unfortunately, it’s the kind of thing that happens to young Black people all too often. However, these days, we have at least one source of recourse: social media.

From Atlanta BlackStar:

The viral clip has drawn reactions across the web. “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin commented on a the clip posted to Atlanta Black Star’s Instagram with a simple declaration “racial profiling is illegal.”

The sisters who confirmed the store which was located in Coronado Center shopping mall in Alberqurque, New Mexico received over 15,000 comments to their video on TikTok.

Many were eager to boycott the store and it to a growing list of retailers who are facing backlash recently for rolling back their DEI initiatives. Big box retailer Target has felt the greatest brunt of recent boycotts.

“H&M you wanna go hangout with target???,” asked one user. “Contact the store and management, send them the video, time to boycott H&M,” another user.

One user claimed to have filed a complaint, “I just called and filed a compliant and the agent let me know H&M has already FIRED the racist!”

Another added, “Wow, this was textbook profiling. I’m sorry you all experienced this. You handled the situation well and did everything right. The workers who profiled you need to be held accountable.”

Atlanta Black Star reached out to the sisters who confirmed they’ve obtained an attorney who advised them to refrain from making a comment.

We might not be able to prove it was racism, but we can know what we know and divest our dollars accordingly. We can call out the discriminatory behavior and leverage our outrage to hold people accountable for how they treat us.

We can at least do that much.

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