|
"Two Wongs can make it white.''
This may be old for some
Retailer's image problem: Racism
Joan Ryan
Tuesday, December 9, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/12/09/BAGEM3J5H01.DTL
I didn't get her name, but I'm guessing Brittany or Jordan. She was standing at the check-out counter yesterday of the Abercrombie & Fitch store at the San Francisco Center on Market Street. She was blond, thin and wearing a spaghetti-strap camisole and a cutoff-jeans miniskirt low enough on her hips to reveal the waistband of her Abercrombie & Fitch long johns.
"Can I help you?''
"I'd like to apply for job,'' I said.
"Oh,'' she said, momentarily flustered. "You want to check on an application?''
"No, I'd like an application.''
She handed me the form, then at my request left to fetch the manager. Huge photographs of fresh-faced blonds covered the walls. As I waited, two actual fresh-faced blond employees, trying not to be obvious, peeked around the wall to take a look at me for themselves.
Word had spread: A middle-aged woman in a turtle-neck and slacks was asking for an application. To work here. With us. I must have seemed to them like a slab of headcheese trying to sneak on to a plate of petits fours.
The fresh-faced blond manager couldn't have been nicer. He said all the right things: The store was always looking for good people, so drop off the finished application any time.
But I haven't turned in the application. I don't need another job, and I know -- and the surely manager knows -- I don't embody the carefully and expensively created A&F persona.
Neither, apparently, do young minority applicants, according to a class- action suit filed against the 602-store chain. The plaintiffs claim Abercrombie & Fitch discriminates against minorities by pressuring stores to hire sales associates who fit the "A&F look,'' which from their catalogs, advertisements and looping videos in their stores, is white, young and preferably blond. The plaintiffs claim they were denied jobs or squeezed out of jobs because of their race or ethnicity.
But as I watched a "60 Minutes'' piece on the suit Sunday night, I wondered about the balance of private enterprise vs. public values. How do we weigh a company's right to maximize its ability to attract its target audience against society's obligation to protect its citizens against discrimination?
For example, I wouldn't have much luck getting work at, say, Yank Sing restaurant or Hooters. My age and/or ethnicity do not best reflect the image the companies want to project.
So isn't it simply good business for a company appealing to a certain clientele to hire a staff that will attract that clientele? And if it's OK for a Chinese restaurant to hire only Chinese waiters to create a certain ambience and for Hooters to hire only buxom young things to please its customers, why is it not OK for A&F to hire almost exclusively young, white employees to sell to a mostly young, white customer base?
As black talk show host and lawyer Larry Elder said on "60 Minutes,'' "This is about a business deciding, pursuant to its best interests ... that a particular kind of salesperson is more likely to generate more dollars. A&F ought to have the right to set their own policies for good or for ill.''
Well, no. Then it also would be OK for a restaurant owner in Selma, Ala., to claim he doesn't hire African Americans because white waitresses and cooks make his white customers more comfortable and are better for business.
"And that argument died a long time ago,'' said Garry Mathiason, a senior partner at Littler, Mendelson, which represents about 30,000 employers. "It's not only legally wrong, it's not accepted by society.''
According to the suit, A&F is "enforcing a nationwide corporate policy of preferring white employees for sales positions, desirable work assignments and favorable work schedules.'' The suit says the company recruits employees from colleges, fraternities, sororities and sports that are predominantly white.
"They aren't recruiting from the basketball team,'' said Tom Saenz, one of the attorneys who coordinated the suit.
One UC Berkeley student, who is not white, alleges he applied several times at the downtown and Stonestown A&F stores in San Francisco. Despite retail experience, he was told there were no positions. But several weeks after his first application, four white male friends applied and were hired immediately and scheduled for shifts.
"A company can project whatever image it wants, but it can't use it as a cover for race discrimination,'' said Elaine Elinson of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco.
Abercrombie spokespeople have said on several occasions the retailer does not discriminate. It rejects the accusation that it is a racist company. One could argue that at least it isn't as blatantly racist as the national retailer that sold T-shirts last year depicting two Chinese laundrymen with the words, "Two Wongs can make it white.''
Oh, wait. That was Abercrombie. Never mind.
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle |
|
Linear Mode
