Source: Black News

Detroit, MI — Ashanae Davis, a 20-year old Black woman from Michigan, is filing a lawsuit against Target after being a victim of racial profiling when she was falsely accused of stealing a bikini from a store in Detroit. She said that the security guards dragged her while yelling loudly that she stole bikini panties. What’s more, she was asked to strip to check if she wasn’t really wearing a stolen bikini!

Davis recalled what happened last May 22 on the Target store in Southfield in Detroit, Michigan. She said she was about to get out of the store when a security guard, who was Black, grabbed her and stopped her from leaving.

Another security guard, who was white, came to handcuff her and dragged her while yelling loudly that she was wearing stolen bikini panties underneath her clothing.

“He said that over and over. Loud enough for other customers to hear and loud enough to publicly humiliate our client,” Davis’ lawyer Jasmine Rand said. They called the humiliating practice the “Target Walk of Shame.”

Afterwards, Davis was escorted to a room where she was asked to pull up her shirt and bring her pants down. A white female manager was there with the two security guards. When they have proven that Davis didn’t stole anything, she was allowed to leave.

“At first I was in shock, of course, and it was just very humiliating,” Davis said. “I felt degraded. It was sad. I was very upset.”

On Tuesday, Target issued an apology statement and said that the Black security worker has already been fired.

“We want everyone who shops at Target to feel welcomed and respected and take any allegations of mistreatment seriously,” the company said in a statement. “We’re sorry for the actions of our former team member, who created an experience we don’t want any guest to have at Target. Upon reviewing our team’s actions, we terminated the team member who was directly involved and are addressing the situation with the security team at the store.”

Target also added that the reason why Davis was stopped was a bikini with tags still attached spotted in her bag. Apparently, it was from a different store and not from Target.

However, Rand thinks that how Target responded was not yet enough.

“If only one employee was held accountable for the incident, and that employee was fired on the day we held the press conference, I find Target’s efforts disingenuous,” she told the Huffington Post in a statement. “If Target fired only the African American male employee, I find the effort a compounding act of racial discrimination. Hate can’t drive out hate from corporate culture.”