Oberlin College halted purchases from Gibson’s Bakery targeted by #BlackLivesMatter, but may reconsider
Gibson’s Bakery: “There was no profiling going on, unless you count profiling against shoplifters”
Oberlin College certainly is an “exciting” place to be these days.
Oberlin just fired a professor after antisemitic Facebook posts, students are petitioning to become a sanctuary campus, and the President of Oberlin just circulated an email about antisemitic vandalism at an unnamed professor’s house.
That come just after calls from Black Lives Matters supporters on campus to boycott Gibson’s Bakery, near the Oberlin College campus. The spark was the arrest of a black student for shoplifting and assault, and two other students for assault on the shop owner.
In response, Oberlin College appears to have ceased purchasing baked goods from Gibson’s, in apparent sympathy with the boycott call:
The college did not purchase its daily order of doughnuts and bagels from Gibson’s Bakery on Monday. However, a college spokesman said the decision should not be viewed as a boycott on the store.
“This is something that we did today as we evaluate and review what’s gong on,” said Scott Wargo, director of media relations. “We’ve reached out to Gibson’s to have a conversation and dialogue so we can work together moving forward.”
Wargo said students and faculty simply went without a morning pastry and did not purchase the breakfast foods from another location.
I asked Wargo to clarify that comment, but he simply repeated virtually the same statement: “The College is in dialogue with Gibson’s to discuss this matter and how we can work together moving forward.” He has not yet responded to a request to clarify whether, as of now, the purchases have resumed.
Gibson’s is more than a bakery. It’s more of a bakery plus general store. And it has been hit hard by shoplifting
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports on how the store rejects claims of discrimination and police stats support the store, Oberlin College protest at bakery over, students hope for peaceful dialogue:
Owner David Gibson Monday said allegations of racial profiling hurt. He said the store has been at its location since 1905, serving the community and the college, and that his great-grandfather started the business in 1885.
“My great-grandfather, Orcemus Cass Gibson, started this business with a pushcart,” he said. “We love this community. We have worked our lifetimes to help keep this community together. I want the students to come here, it’s not right to say we discriminate.”
David Gibson said the entire incident is about a case of shoplifting that has gotten out of hand
“There was no profiling going on, unless you count profiling against shoplifters,” he said. “We have a huge problem with shoplifting. We did an examination last year and found that more than 1,000 items had been stolen through shoplifting. We found empty boxes on the shelves and many missing items. We had to crack down on shoplifting if we are going to be able to survive as a store. But we would never discriminate against anyone.” …
Oberlin Lt. Michael McCloskey said he did not believe that Gibson’s discriminates based on race, but he ordered his officers to do some digging.
“We looked at arrests for shoplifting at Gibson’s for the past five years to see if there was evidence of racism,” he said. “Since 2011, there have been four robberies at the store, including Aladin, and he was the only black person. There were 40 adults arrested for shoplifting in five years, and 32 were white. There were six black suspects arrested and two Asians, and 33 of the 40 were college students.”
He said that Gibson’s has the largest number of shoplifting cases in the city, right after WalMart.
As we further reported, the community has rallied around the bakery, Bakery targeted by Oberlin College #BlackLivesMatter fights back:
I’ve seen many online comments about people placing orders to be shipped from the store. Here is their phone number if you want to order: (440) 774-2401
This video calling on the community to rally around the bakery has over 500,000 views.
[Featured Image via Instagram]
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Comments
No donuts for the knuckleheads? Won’t they need that sugar high to be able to protest? smh Hopefully a donor will make a call to the president and end this crap.
How could there possibly be such evidence?
That’s useless unless you know how many shoplifters there were, and how many of them were black. Since most shoplifters didn’t get caught, it’s impossible to know.
The thing is that they probably do engage in racial profiling in order to catch shoplifters. They have to. Every shopkeeper does, or else goes out of business. Because everyone knows that there is a profile for shoplifters, and race is one factor in it. If you ignore it then you will misallocate your enforcement resources and lose more inventory; that’s just a hard fact.
that’s just a hard fact.
That’s not a “fact” at all.
The persons I personally know who apprehend shoplifters in retail settings have told me some interesting stories … not a single one of which involved race.
They base their suspicions on behavioral cues.
Yes, Israelis also infer orientation based on behavioral cues. Unfortunately, liberals and progressives in American civil rights businesses and the State-established Church elected to embrace institutional racism under the [class] diversity doctrine (i.e. judgement by “skin color”), perhaps informed by their Pro-Choice quasi-religion that reduces human life to colorful clumps of cells.
I spent several years working in retail security and I can tell you that if you want to catch shoplifters you watch merchandise, not people. Shoplifters come in all ages, races, genders and social classes.
But if we assume, arguendo, that the store was “racial profiling” black people that only means they were watching black people more closely than white people. That doesn’t address the key issue – was the arrested student (Aladin) innocent or guilty?
I once arrested a young black man for stealing some tools from the store where I was working. As I was leading him back into the store he said, “It’s because I’m black, right?”
I told him “Yeah, we let white people steal anything they want.”
Democrats’ class diversity schemes that judge people as colorful clumps of cells… I mean, that judge people by the “color of their skin”, rather than by the content of their character, have achieved great strides to reconstitute institutional racism, sexism, etc. under the State-established Pro-Choice (i.e. selective and opportunistic, unprincipled and vindictive) Church with a quasi-religion pulled from the twilight zone.
There certainly is profiling going on here, but it’s the racists at Oberlin College who are doing the profiling.
But how can they think straight without their morning pastry? I know that I’m really confused until I get my breakfast burrito. Heck, one morning I even thought Hillary looked honest.
Just for fun they should call out the Ohio National Guard and play some Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young for the kiddies. Okay, I do have a twisted sense of humor, but I’m six hours away from my burrito.
Many years ago, my late uncle fired a black employee for stealing. His was a union shop (the last of its kind in his industry) and the union did not support its member. Fired employee filed a complaint with human rights commission claiming he was fired because of his race. After all, he said, whites were stealing too. My uncle’s response was tell me who they are and I will fire them too.
My point is that good businessmen care about protecting their businesses and do not consider race in making decisions. The race claim is a cheap way an offender has of changing the subject from his behavior to that of his victim. It is not different than blaming a rape victim for what was done to her.
33 of 40 (83%) were Oberlin Students. I guess the next question is what is Oberlin college doing to prevent student shoplifting? Oberlin must be held accountable.
I retired from a large police department. The area where I normally patrolled was heavily populated with minorities. This demographic limited my ability to arrest other races/nationalities since I came in contact with fewer of them. I frequently was told by the arrestee that I was only arresting them because of their race. *sigh*
One day I was filling in for another officer and working in a different section of the city inhabited by mostly younger white folks. When I eventually arrested someone from that area he told me that I was only arresting him because he had long hair. *sigh*
Finally one day I was working in the upscale, conservative part of town and wound up arresting a white male with a conservative hair cut and clothing. I couldn’t wait to hear why I arrested him. It turns out (according to him) the only reason that I arrested him was because “he drove a nicer car than I did.”
I just couldn’t win.
Some people just need a piece of wood upside their head to get their brain housing group functioning.
Gibsons should tell them to Foxtrot Oscar….
Oberlin…..not worth an airstrike and too far inland for naval gunfire. Bummer!
But imagine what the Seabees could do to the place with their armored heavy equipment.
http://www.seabee-rvn.com/The-Next-Generation/MCB-74-Afghanistan-09-10/i-d7N6dfL/A
If Oberlin College ever wants to have a bakery deliver a pastry or bagel again the local bakeries need to form a guild that agrees to:
a) only enter into a contract at at least ten times what Gibson’s charged them and
b) subcontract to Gibson’s