| Drunk
Until Proven Sober Racial profiling at the Brown Jug by Aaron Selbig If you're an Alaskan Native and you walk into one of the thirteen liquor stores in the Brown Jug chain, beware. There are eyes on you. You're being watched by employees and hidden cameras as you head toward the beer cooler. If you linger in the liquor aisle, a clerk is likely watching you, eager to catch you slipping a bottle into your pants. As you approach the counter, your gait, mannerisms, and speech are being closely scrutinized for signs of intoxication. Whether you are intoxicated or not, you are much more likely to be refused service here than a white person. Sometimes its because of the smell of alcohol in your vicinity or a discrepancy with your ID, but mostly its because you're Native. When I started working the night shift at the Fireweed store last year, I was unprepared for the climate of bigotry I would find there. On the surface, my co-workers seem pretty normal folks just like myself, all of us working a "joe job" for our own reasons. They're friendly, funny, and intelligent people, mostly young and mostly white. Too much time spent behind a liquor store counter in a sketchy neighborhood, however, has made them jaded and they are particularly wary of Alaskan Natives. Vigilance is the name of the game at the Brown Jug when it comes to enforcing Alaska's strict alcohol laws. Employees are rewarded by the corporation for seizing a fake ID (twenty bucks and a "Congratulations To Our Minorbusters!" memo) and summarily fired if they are caught serving a minor in an APD sting. The one-day training session clerks receive from Brown Jug hammers into them the legal responsibilities associated with serving intoxicated or underage people but fails to prepare them for the blunt realities that come staggering into a liquor store, reeking of cheap vodka, late on a Friday night. Duties at Brown Jug go beyond stocking beer and pushing cash register buttons. Clerks are required by company policy to bust shoplifters, seize counterfeit bills, patrol the parking lot for minors, and avoid confrontations with intoxicated patrons. They are also required to dutifully note in the "incident log" any unusual event which occurs on their shift, such as drunks who cursed and spit at them or young gangsta-wannabes who threatened to kick their ass after closing. The vigilance required by these responsibilities and the ever-present fear of a robbery lead to overwhelming pressure for someone working nights at just $7.75 an hour. It also leads to an instinctive "sizing up" of every customer who walks through the door and, unfortunately, racial profiling. Native Alaskans are ten times as likely to be denied service at the Fireweed Brown Jug as non-Natives. On a recent Saturday, I counted 533 customers who walked through the door during my shift. Of those people, 139 (or 26%) were Native. A quick check of the incident log shows nine entries that night describing customers who weren't served and the reasons why. Seven of the nine were Native. Further inspection of the incident log reveals that, from the beginning of this year to the end of March, Native Alaskans made up 194 of 372 "incidents" in the log. That's 52% of the trouble at Brown Jug being attributed to 26% of its customers. I've heard the argument from my co-workers that this disparity in persecution is merely the result of a widespread alcohol problem in Native communities. There may be some truth to that, but the sarcasm, disrespect, and undeniable racism that runs through the log entries themselves is also a part of this problem. " . . . drunk native . . . " " . . . two drunk native males . . . " " . . . wanted a pint under 5$ . . . " " . . . intox native male (I mean really drunk) . . . black trench coat, wet in the ass." " Native with a very bad ID card. No sale." " . . . intox native female wanted 'cheap vodka' . . ." " . . . short, drunk native had trouble opening door . . ." " . . . cab pulled up, intox natives climbed out . . . " " Native male intox . . . this guy always drunk." I cannot indict Brown Jug or my fellow clerks for targeting Native Alaskans, however, without indicting myself. When I first started there, I thought of the job as an entertaining kind of sociological study on people and their booze. Within a few weeks I could foresee ,as soon as they walked through the door, what type of microbrew or Chardonnay a particular customer would choose. These innocuous observations, however, led to others about our Native customers. Jokes go around behind the counter. Usually its an impression performed in sh-low sh-lurred sh-peech, something like, "How mush for G P Shee Lightsh?" I've shared in these jokes, performed the impressions myself. And the incident log shows that I've given my share of Native Alaskans the boot for being intoxicated. Further, I have a measure of sympathy for liquor store clerks hardened by nightly encounters with the same pathetic alcoholics and for a corporation which is responding to tightened liquor laws and public scrutiny. However, the argument that a few bad apples are spoiling the bunch misses the total equation. Ignorant fools who rejects all apples based on narrow experience play a part. Seemingly harmless ethnic jokes passed among Brown Jug employees accompany an intense suspicion of Natives. That suspicion then manifests itself into discrimination and even violence. I've seen plenty of Native folks harassed, badgered, and generally abused at the Brown Jug whether they were intoxicated or not. I've seen Native customers yelled at, cursed at, shoved, and punched. I once witnessed a co-worker hit a Native kid in the head with a bottle of Barton's vodka he'd tried to swipe. I've also seen plenty of young, white partiers stumble in from a night at Koot's, converse with a clerk who knows them, buy their beer, and drive off into the night. There is a cyclical chain of actions and reactions at work here which have lead to a problem between Natives and non-Natives in the Brown Jug and throughout the city. People see intoxicated Native people downtown and in city parks and are annoyed at being panhandled by them. They read in the newspaper about their crimes, their deaths, and their costs to taxpayers. Out of frustration, "white guilt", or genuine sympathy, government agencies like the ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control) board enact tougher alcohol laws and look for someone to pin the blame on. The liquor stores, already considered by many a sleazy vice-peddling industry, are held accountable and, out of fear for their liquor licenses, they react. The Fireweed Brown Jug has a wall of photocopied pictures and Polaroids of customers who've been 86-ed from the store. Its dominated by Native Alaskans. Brown Jug collects photos of homeless (mostly Native) public drinkers and turns them into the police. And they institute such a watchful, punitive atmosphere in their stores that their employees are transformed into vigilant watchdogs who react to Native Alaskans with force rather than compassion. The end result is a further blow to the pride of Native culture. Already struggling to keep a foot in two worlds, they know how they are percieved. They're made to feel like second-class citizens, thought of by the Empire as a once proud culture with an alcohol problem and something to prove. When they walk into a business or interview for a job, there is a sh-tigma attached to them by non-Natives. And when they walk into a liqour store, they're considered drunk until proven sober. |
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