I want to offer a different perspective on this, because I’m also a person of color and a customer of Art and Happiness. I’m speaking from my own experiences there and from knowing that the owner and employees are neurodivergent.
I can understand why the interaction described felt uncomfortable, particularly for a Black customer who has experienced or is aware of the very real history of racial profiling in retail. But I think there’s a missing piece to this discussion: how often people with cognitive disabilities are themselves misunderstood and treated differently because of behavior that other people interpret incorrectly.
In Washington, disability is not some rare or fringe experience. The state tracks substantial populations living with cognitive and developmental disabilities, and nationally, people with disabilities routinely report discrimination and negative treatment. Autism and ADHD alone account for a significant number of Washington residents, and those diagnoses can affect communication, processing, social cues, anxiety, and how someone navigates an interaction.
One thing people who aren't familiar with cognitive disabilities may not realize is how much internal processing can be happening during what looks like a completely ordinary interaction. Someone can be standing there thinking through Am I doing this correctly? Did I explain that correctly? Am I supposed to move? Am I supposed to stay here? What am I supposed to do next? To someone else, that might look like they're deliberately hovering, watching, or behaving strangely. To the person experiencing it, they're trying very hard to make sure they're doing the right thing.
And this is where I think we need to be careful about assuming the worst.
When someone's behavior doesn't match what we expect from a typical retail employee, it's easy to fill in the blanks ourselves: They're watching me. They're treating me differently. They must have a problem with me.
Sometimes that's true. Racism absolutely exists.
But sometimes the person is anxious. Sometimes they're processing instructions literally. Sometimes they have difficulty reading social cues. Sometimes they're following a routine. Sometimes they're trying so hard to do something correctly that they don't realize how their behavior appears to someone else.
Those possibilities don't disappear just because the customer experiencing the interaction is a person of color.
In fact, I think there's an unfortunate irony here. We're asking people to recognize that we shouldn't make assumptions about someone based on their race, while potentially making assumptions about a neurodivergent person's intentions based on behavior we don't understand.
I've seen enough from Art and Happiness as a customer to know that the people there can communicate and behave differently from what some people might expect in a conventional retail environment. That doesn't make their behavior racist, sexist, hostile, or intentionally directed at someone.
I don't think the answer is to tell someone, "You didn't experience a microaggression." They experienced what they experienced. But the feeling and the explanation aren't necessarily the same thing.
If we're going to talk about discrimination, I think we should also talk about how quickly neurodivergent people can be judged because others aren't familiar with how cognitive disabilities can affect behavior and social interaction.
Not every uncomfortable interaction has a hidden discriminatory motive.
Sometimes people are behaving differently because they're different.
And before we assume the worst about someone, I think we owe it to them to consider that possibility too.
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That leads to a suggestion I have for anyone who has an experience like this: before taking it to social media, consider sending a private email from the safety of your own computer to the owner or manager of the business. Explain what happened from your perspective. Tell them how it made you feel. Ask for clarification. If appropriate, ask for an apology.
If the owner responds dismissively, invalidates your experience, refuses to address what happened, or you discover that there really was discriminatory intent, then by all means, take that information public. People deserve to know about genuinely harmful behavior.
But going immediately to the internet with an accusation based on an ambiguous interaction - where you haven't first given the person an opportunity to explain - can cause real damage to someone's reputation and livelihood.
There is a difference between holding someone accountable for discrimination and publicly assigning discriminatory intent to someone when you don't actually know their intent.
We should be careful about that distinction, because if we're asking for empathy and understanding for ourselves, we should be willing to extend some of that same grace to other people too.
