Not cool at all

Ukiah Swain is the mother of four teenage boys who were harassed by a manager at a Kroger grocery store in Mesquite, Texas, last week. Swain told Dallas Fort Worth’s station KXAS NBC 5 that the manager at that store called the police on her teenage sons after they purchased snacks at the store. Why did he call them? For shoplifting. Why did the manager single out these black male teens? According to 16-year-old Zavarion Swain, the manager told him, "We've had problems with people like you before."

When the police arrived, the teens produced the receipts for their purchases, freshly printed, but still received a trespassing warning. This means that for one year, any one of these kids can be arrested at the discretion of either the manager or the police if they step foot inside of that Kroger.

Ms. Swain confronted the manager, who laughed and told her that he thought they looked like they could be shoplifters. After video of the aftermath was posted to Facebook, local news picked up the story, and Kroger has quickly gone into damage control mode, promising “sensitivity training” to all staff in Kroger stores in northern Texas and saying that it has “rescinded” the complaint against the kids: "We recognize these steps alone won’t change the broader systemic and cultural biases that plague our society, but we believe that together they demonstrate the seriousness with which we take these issues and our desire to be a part of the solution, Kroger said in a statement.