Traveling nurse Kimberly Houzah was told to leave an Alabama store after a black woman she had never met was caught shoplifting.
Photo Credit: CNN/YouTube
On Wednesday afternoon at Oxford, Alabama’s Quintard Mall, traveling nurse Kimberly Houzah was approached by a Victoria’s manager while shopping in the lingerie store.
“I just need y’all to go,” the manager told Houzah and another woman after a third African American woman, whom neither knew, was caught shoplifting.
Houzah broadcast an 11-minute video on Facebook Live, from when the incident began. Being a regular customer of Victoria’s Secret and a native of Calhoun County, she was appalled by the racial profiling.
“I wouldn’t dare step a foot back in. I’m so upset,” she said in the video as she broke down in tears. The video does not show the manager, who Victoria’s Secret says is no longer working at the company.
Victoria’s Secret was quick to contact Houzah and issue a response to her video.
“We take the experience of our customer at the Quintard Mall very seriously and have reached out to her directly to express our sincere apology,” the statement read. “What happened at our store should not have happened and does not represent who we are or what we stand for.”
But Houzah is still confused as to why it happened.
“I don’t feel like everybody’s racist,” Houzah said. “But I’m just trying to understand why, ’cause we just happened to be three black women in Victoria’s Secret … that we gotta be together.”
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Alexandra Rosenmann is an AlterNet associate editor. Follow her @alexpreditor.
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