The crazy things I find out about while doing thesis research

So I was on afropunk.com doing research for my thesis (I have now written 4 pages of the thing! Yes!!) when I came across this crazy story. Apparently, there’s been a lot of speculation about racial profiling taking place in CVS drugstore chains. The rumor is that in some CVS stores Black hair products are fitted with anti-theft devices while all other hair care products (regardless of price) are not. So, I did a little internet search to try and find out if this rumor is true. According to snopes.com, a website devoted to determining the validity of urban legends and the ABC Channel 5 Eyewitness News Team (lol, such a long name), it is.

I’m sure we’re all familiar with stories of people of color being followed in stores (or for my fellow POCs, have experienced it ourselves), and it’s interesting to see that rhetoric played out in a more high-tech way. CVS maintains that it puts anti-theft devices on these products because they're stolen more often, but both the ABC and the snopes article found that to be false. Also, it ignores the fact that shoplifting cuts across all demographics and that racial profiling is illegal. Some people on the afropunk board also said that they also noticed this practice at Walgreens and other stores. While there aren’t any CVS around my hometown, we do have a few Walgreens. Maybe tomorrow I’ll do some investigating….

Has anyone else heard anything about this? Anyone have a CVS near them they want to check out?