Restaurants, stores and shopping centers across the country are gearing up for the busiest racial profiling period of the year—the Christmas shopping rush.
“First and foremost, we’re urging people to get to businesses early so workers have the time to adequately peer around shelves and eye you like a hawk, or just outright ignore you in the case of restaurants and eateries,” said Ernest Sada, head of the Retailers League of Canada.
“I know some businesses are already hiring extra staff to follow Indigenous shoppers around.”
Sada said that because many consumers are doing their holiday shopping online, racial profiling is getting harder and harder in the digital age. However, he said the Retailers League is developing a bot that can appear on Indigenous people’s computers or even smart phones and watch them silently while they shop.
