When Brian Johnson and Nile Charles visited Manhattan’s Upper West Side Apple Store last December, they were looking for some cutting edge gadgets and gizmos. What they got, they allege in a lawsuit, was some cutting edge racism.
Johnson, 34, and Charles, 25, claim a middle-aged white Apple employee booted them out of the store because they’re black. According to their lawsuit, the employee confronted them when they entered the store, walking up to them in an “intimidating fashion” and saying, “You know the deal. You know the deal.”
The “deal” wasn’t a free iPod nano with their purchase: The employee said they weren’t welcome in the store. “And before you say I’m racially discriminating against you, let me stop you. I am discriminating against you,” he allegedly said. “I don’t want ‘your kind’ hanging out in the store.’” Then another employee came up and told them “Now you have to go… if you want to know why it’s because I said so. CONSIDER ME GOD.” This isn’t so much racist as batshit insane.
Are Apple Store employees perpetrating a high tech Jim Crow? And this comes just months after they got rid of the black MacBook! [Apple Insider, photo via Matt Buchanan/Flickr]
Republished from Gawker