Racial Profiling?

This past Saturday, my mom and two friends of mine went downtown to see the annual lighting of the Magnificent Mile. Although we couldn't see much of the parade I believe I was sent down there for another purpose.

After eating our dinner, we walked to the Apple Store. Anyone who has been to the Apple Store knows the set up and how they have many displays for the customers to try out. While looking at the headphones, I noticed three black boys no older than 11 years old. The boys were playing with the iTouches and were very very well mannered. From looking at the boys, I could tell they probably didn't have much money, but they weren't causing any trouble. I'm usually not the one to bring race into things but I will for the next part of this story. After about 10 minutes or so of the boys playing with the iTouches, a security guard who looked to be of Arabian decent started questioning the boys about why and who they were in the store with. Mind you, these boys probably weren't even old enough to do long division. One of the boys said they were in there with their sister and she was downstairs. I reiterated to the man what the boy said, but he told me they were probably lying. After this, one of my friends asked me to help her pick out an iPod case, all of which were in the area by these boys. By the time she was ready to check out there was another security guard and a sales associate monitoring these young boys. Finally their sister did come to pick them up, but before she came I was 10 seconds away from telling the men the boys were with me.

I understand the man had to do his job and make sure the under aged boys weren't causing trouble. But after he did this, I felt he should have left them alone. There were enough people in the store that if the boys were gonna do something, someone would have seen it. It broke my heart to see the young boys being profiled at such young ages, they probably didn't even know what was happening to them. It has become a trend in our society that minorities are the ones followed in stores or pulled over by police, but not every minority is a thief or a trouble maker. I'm aware that there have been so many people to put the idea in peoples minds that blacks may be the bad guy, but in this case, we weren't. Its a chance I may never see those boys again, but it probably won't be the last time I see something like this. And that's what scares me.

I know many people may disagree with me on this subject, some may say it wasn't profiling. But there were many other kids in the store, with no parents in sight who weren't being watched. I wouldn't necessarily call this instance profiling either though. I just believe it was very suspicious and unfair that the security guard singled these boys out, when there were so many other people in the store. This is my first time ever dealing with something like this, so you can say I am very ignorant to things like this.