Walmart, CVS End 'Out of Step' Practice

Drugstore chains will no longer lock up beauty products for people of color
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 12, 2020 10:54 AM CDT
Walgreens, CVS Follow Walmart's Lead
This June 25, 2019, file photo shows the sign outside a Walgreens store in Pittsburgh.   (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

Companies and brands are now making extra efforts to get rid of discriminatory policies after the killing of George Floyd, and drugstore chains are following in Walmart's footsteps in terms of one merchandise segment. Earlier this week, the retailer announced it would be taking hair and beauty products made for black people out of the locked cases a small number of stores kept them in. Now Walgreens and CVS are doing the same. "We are currently ensuring multicultural hair care and beauty products are not stored behind locked cases at any of our stores," Walgreens says in a statement to the AP.

CVS offered a similar statement to the Guardian, noting that after taking a closer look at its security practices overall, it decided to take "steps ... to ensure that no hair, beauty, or personal care products for communities of color are kept in locked displays or shelving units." A GlobalData Retail expert called the practice "out of step with the times we are living now." Digital marketing expert Kendra Bracken-Ferguson, who's black, says she no longer frequents stores that do this kind of thing. "It sends a message of being prosecuted as soon as you walk in, disrespected and generalized in a way that is [psychologically] troubling because it is based on the race of your skin or where you live and nothing more," she notes. (More Walgreens stories.)

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