1619 Project writer Nikole Hannah-Jones tweeted last week about the “humiliating” experience of anti-theft measures in stores.
Hannah-Jones, a reporter for the New York Times, said she believes if stores include the items, they should at least be better prepared for the flow of customers.
“If you include everything in the drugstore, an already demeaning shopping experience, you at least have enough workers to open the cases for all the customers who just need a razor,” Hannah-Jones tweeted.
Stores like Walmart and Walgreens have begun locking up merchandise as part of anti-theft measures in recent years due to increases in shoplifting rates.
“It can’t be a financial winner. I spend a lot less because I don’t have to wait every time I need to get something from a different aisle or even a different shelf in the same aisle. They cannot read labels etc. I literally walked away. It’s just a terrible shopping experience,” she continued.
1619 Project writer Nikole Hannah-Jones tweeted last week about the “humiliating” experience of anti-theft measures in stores
This is Nikole Hannah-Jones’ tweet that sparked a backlash online
Stores like Walmart and Walgreens have begun locking up merchandise as part of anti-theft measures in recent years due to increases in shoplifting rates
This is the 1619 Project, the book by Nikole Hannah-Jones
Many on the social media app agreed with the author, with some even citing that they had to call store clerks for things like toothpaste.
However, others pointed to a rise in retail thefts that is worrying some stores.
Just last week, reports indicated that 2022 was New York City’s record-breaking year for retail theft.
In 2022, there were more than 63,000 shoplifting reports. That’s a 45 percent increase from 2021’s 45,000 and a shocking 275 percent increase since the mid-2000s.
The hardest-hit retailers in the Big Apple are stores like Target and Duane Reed.
However, Hannah-Jones admitted to those concerns.
The author and reporter cited a January CNBC article that discussed shoplifting.
“For the past two years, Walgreens has sounded the alarm about an increase in theft. As a result, private security guards were hired and goods locked up so they could not be accessed without a store employee,” reported Gabrielle Fonrouge.
‘[Chief financial officer James] Kehoe said the company spent a “reasonable sum” to deal with the thefts, but acknowledged the private security companies they hired were “largely ineffective.” There is very little these guards can do other than call law enforcement or hold a suspect until police arrive,” the article said.
Hannah-Jones said she believes the decision to lock up merchandise “cannot be a financial gain” because it prompts them to spend less overall
“When you include everything in the drugstore, an already demeaning shopping experience, at least you have enough workers to open the boxes for all the customers who just need a razor,” Hannah-Jones tweeted
Products are displayed in locked security cabinets in a Walgreens store
“It can’t be a financial winner. I spend a lot less because I don’t have to wait every time I need to get something from a different aisle or even a different shelf in the same aisle. They cannot read labels etc. I literally walked away. It’s just a terrible shopping experience,” she continued
Hannah-Jones also responded to another person by sharing a similar article, this one from The New York Times, citing that Kehoe said he may have “cried too much” about “organized shoplifting.”
Many in the comments agreed with Hannah-Jones on the measures, while others slammed her for the tweets. Others offered their own suggestions on how to solve both the shoplifting and locked cases.
“Or armed security forces shooting at looters,” replied one Twitter user.
The ‘1619 Project’ creator has been criticized for her involvement in crimes big and small.
In 2020, the New York Times reporter sparked outrage for saying she viewed the destruction caused by some protesters during the George Floyd marches as “not violence.”
“I think we have to be very careful with our language,” Hannah-Jones said at the time. “Yes, it’s troubling to see property being destroyed, it’s troubling to see people taking property from stores, but these are things,” she said.
“And violence is when a civil servant kneels on a man’s neck until all life is drained from his body. Destroying property that can be replaced is not violence. And to express those things — to use the same language to describe those two things, I really think — it’s not moral to do that,” she said at the time.
In 2020, the New York Times reporter sparked outrage for saying she viewed the destruction some protesters caused during the George Floyd marches as “not violence.”
Just last week, at an MSNBC event titled “National Racial Healing Day,” Hannah-Jones spoke about the backlash she was receiving in her “1619 Project” for what some have dubbed “revisionist history.”
Hannah-Jones founded the project with The New York Times in 2019 and used essays, photos, podcasts and eventually a book and educator’s guide in which she argued that America was founded in the year a group of slaves arrived in the country, and not when independence was granted in 1776.
The author said she believes in her project and the subsequent book of the same name was caused because Americans are “so poorly taught this history” and refers to educating the plight of African and Asian Americans.
“1619 Project” will continue to spread in media circles with the debut of a six-part documentary, which will air on Hulu later this year and will be produced by Oprah Winfrey.
“It aims to reshape the history of the country by placing the aftermath of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the heart of our national narrative,” NYT Magazine wrote on its website.
The project won a Pulitzer Prize that year.
Released in August 2019 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the English colony of Virginia, the work drew criticism from some academics for its claims – and angered many others who saw it as unpatriotic.
In December, Hannah-Jones told the Associated Press the ongoing debate was not surprising.
“We were taught the history of a country that doesn’t exist,” she said.
“We have been taught the history of a country, which makes us unable to understand how we get an uprising in the largest democracy on January 6.”
She said America “deliberately” avoids its complicated and painful past, and that’s why her work is so polemical.
“Steps forward, steps towards racial progress, always meet with an intense backlash,” she said.
“We are a society that willfully refuses to engage with the anti-Blackness that is at the core of so many of our institutions and indeed our society itself.”
Her work has sparked an intense debate about history teaching in schools.
1619 project of the New York Times
In August 2019, The New York Times Magazine published The 1619 Project, a collection of essays, photo essays, short stories, and poetry aimed at reshaping American history based on the impact of slaves brought to the United States .
It was published to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans in the English colonies.
It is argued that the nation’s birth was not in 1776 with independence from the British Crown, but in August 1619 with the arrival of a cargo ship carrying 20 to 30 enslaved Africans at Point Comfort in the Virginia colony, ushering in the system of slavery.
The project argues that slavery was the origin of the country and out of it grew “almost everything that has made America truly exceptional.”
These include economic power, industry, the electoral system, music, inequalities in public health and education, violence, income inequality, slang and racial hatred.
However, the project is debated among historians for its factual accuracy.
In March 2020, historian Leslie M. Harris, who served as fact-checker for the project, said the authors ignored their corrections but believed the project was necessary to correct prevailing historical narratives.
One aspect that is up for debate is the timing.
Time magazine said the first slaves arrived in a Spanish colony in present-day South Carolina in 1526, 93 years before the Jamestown landings.
Some experts say slaves first arrived at present-day Fort Monroe in Hampton rather than Jamestown.
Others argue that the first Africans in Virginia were indentured since life slavery laws did not appear until the 17th and early 18th centuries, but essentially worked as slaves.