Jamai Abdi for the New York Times:
Apple has not been taken over by xenophobes. The discrimination is one result of trying to enforce flawed and haphazard United States export controls against countries, like Iran, that are under sanctions. Retail employees are left to interpret and implement federal policy, and racial profiling results.
I think Abdi’s conclusion here is reasonable. I live by a precept known in some circles as Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity,” and that’s exactly what this sounds like to me. Replace “stupidity” with “ignorance” if you want to soften the message a bit.
Abdi goes on to explain that this has happened, at least in part, because of “flawed and haphazard United States export controls.” What’s bizarre to me is that these retail store employees would take it upon themselves to try to enforce such regulations, which are clearly beyond their judgment or control. I’m unclear on whether this is just overzealous enforcement on their part, racial profiling or what. What I’m certain it’s not is any sort of corporate policy, spoken or unspoken, that says “if a tanned person speaking what sounds like Farsi comes in, don’t sell them anything.”
Abdi goes on to pontificate that Apple must “enact policies to prevent discrimination,” and this is where he goes off the rails. Apple already does a huge amount to prevent discrimination, and has a much better track record than most other companies its size, I would venture to guess.
I don’t think Apple deserves to be singled out for special scrutiny, or should be held to some higher standard than it already is, notwithstanding the misguided attempts of a a few of its retail store employees to protect national security, or whatever-the-heck they had it in their heads that they were trying to do.
If there is a rule/legislation that says, the seller or its employees are not responsible for flouting this law, only then Apple can be expected to treat everyone entering its stores equally.
It seems a no win situation because you know that there are some wing-nuts out there who would scream bloody murder if they found out that Apple employees sold computers to “Iranians”. If you think you are being discriminated against complain to the store manager. If the store manager doesn’t do anything about it go higher. I can’t see Apple condoning this on a corporate level.
And yet, is a store manager or store employee typically knowledgeable enough of export law to be able to think “hey maybe I need to police these people in my store to make sure I’m not selling to iranians.” Some people may know how to speak Persian, but are they thinking about trade law? I’m having a hard time believing a situation where something like this didn’t come down at least from someone higher than a store manager. But I could have my tinfoil hat on too tight.
good god why is this being dragged out again. The girl that screamed racism admitted in one interview that she said she was from Iran and taking it home. This columnist claims that that was a lie from the press but we have no proof to back up that she was misquoted and was very very clear that home wasn’t Iran. Not to mention that she claims this outrage over being asked and yet she answered. It was none of his business and she had every right to say so. Ask for a manager if the staff person insists and the manager will tell him to stop and just ring up the damn sale.
According to my sources, Apple has a policy that if someone blatantly says to you that they are taking it to one of the embargoed countries the sale is not to be finished. The only thing the kid did wrong was not taking the matter to the management to handle the rejection given that it would piss off someone regardless of whether they were Iranian or American of Iranian descent.
And Apple isn’t likely the only company with such policies but the rest aren’t such great hit fodder that everyone talks it up, customers and blogs. Even to the point of exaggerating or even flat lying if it gets one some attention. Like the kid that claims he was kicked out of an NYC store because the staff are flat out racist and hate blacks and that he had video but it has yet to be posted anywhere (he claims cause he doesn’t want to expose his evidence for his lawsuit that still hasn’t happened months later). Real event, totally exaggerated or flat out lying. Who knows at this point. same with all these cases in this article. There’s zero proof any of them happened.
Please read http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/iran.txt
I’m not a lawyer, but it a appears to hold the seller responsible and offer penalties of up to $1 million and 20 years in jail.
Hard to blame the employees or Apple for being risk averse.
I don’t really know what would be the best thing for a retailer to do here. I mean, if you’d spent hundreds, potentially thousands of dollars and then get buggered trying to get your new shiny through customs wouldn’t you be pretty pissed off?
Obviously, refusing to sell to a customer based on a bit of amateur racial profiling is simply not on, but simply advising them of something important that they may not be aware of might even be appreciated by many customers.
You’d probably still offend some people, but that will always happen and if you really don’t want to run the risk of that then you may as well not get out of bed in the morning*.
Sam
*This probably offends those who work nights, and also those who physically** can’t get out of bed.
**Or mentally—I myself have mental health problems and sometimes (rarely, these days, thankfully) just can’t get out of bed in the morning.
In my opinion, this is an out and out discrimination issue although it’s likely the result of an individual employee’s own discrimination rather than Apple store policy. I have witnessed similar discrimination at my local Apple store against a lady wearing a head scarf who received very dismissively rude treatment by an employee (embarrassingly obvious discrimination to anyone within listening distance) – she followed up with Apple customer service who behaved the opposite of the employee and were aghast at the treatment she received.
It’s not up to stores or their employees to enforce export regulations. Or to use concern over export regs as a justification to exercise their blatantly unacceptable personal or ideological bias.
Any export enforcement will happen at customs by the decision of custom’s officers if the person is traveling outside the country.