A Mississippi woman claims that she was asked to leave Victoria’s Secret simply because she is black.
According to Kimberly Houzah, the management at the store asked her to leave after another black woman was caught shoplifting there. She claimed that both she and another black woman were asked to leave the store in an 11-minute video posted to Facebook.
“I never would have thought that would happen to me,” she says in the video. “They didn’t check my bag.”
She continues to walk out of the store before bursting into tears.
“I don’t feel like everybody’s racist,” she says. “I’m not understanding what’s the problem. It’s completely absurd. I got put out of Victoria’s Secret just for being black…I can buy anything in there I want. Are you kidding me?…I’m so upset.”
Houzah said that she received an apology from Victoria’s Secret after she posted her video online, and the company said that it would investigate the incident. They later announced in a statement that the associate who asked Houzah and the other woman to leave was ‘no longer’ with them.
“We take the experience of our customer at the Quintard Mall very seriously and have reached out to her directly to express our sincere apology,” the statement reads. “What happened at our store should not have happened and does not represent who we are or what we stand for.”