I don’t think that’s a particularly good point, it is not a common thing to confuse shoplifting with armed robbery.
Shoplifters don’t wear headcoverings.
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Perhaps, but then who shoplifts at a store where everything already only costs a dollar and is kind of low quality to boot?
I guess you could stash an awful lot of loot under a robe.
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While they weren’t talking about shoplifting, low end stores still probably deal with a ton of theft. Horrifyingly, a grocery store near me has baby formula locked up because it’s a common item stolen 
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If some people come onto my front porch and ring the doorbell and they are covered head to toe in black, covering their faces, I will assume they are up to no good. Call me intolerant, xenophobic, whatever. I am going to tell them to get the hell off my property.
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Yes, I’ve seen this too, it’s been going on for several years now, there is a black market for Enfamil, it’s not a cheap item (in fact a local scam is for female panhandlers to hang out near a CVS and tell you “I have no money and my baby needs formula”-- you think you’re doing the right thing, but she may just be selling it and pocketing the money.)
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It’s a very effective scam. I’ve been nailed by it more than once.
No idea which store this occurred, but interestingly, when looking at Dollar Stores locations (https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=family+Dollar+store+gary+indiana&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=family+Dollar+store+gary+indiana&rflfq=1&rlha=0&rllag=41575102,-87364413,3706&tbm=lcl&tbs=lf:1,lf_ui:4) and areas with high crime (https://www.crimereports.com), there doesn’t appear to be overlap. Most crime looks like they occurred west of Purdue University, even when accounting for all the registered sex offenders.
I never said it did.
I just don’t have a problem with dress codes for stores. You may have heard of “no shirt no shoes no service”? Certain dance clubs also have codes to keep people from sporting clothes which may or may not have criminal gang affiliation.
Of course general dress codes and discrimination against religious dress are two different things, which I have said several times above.
“It’s only a dollar. What is the harm in stealing it?”
Although the FAMILY DOLLAR is just a cheap discount store. Things often cost more than a dollar.
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Star Wars seems a bit more plausible than those angry-invisible-dude-in-the-sky ones, though. It’s got midi-chlorians! Science!
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I don’t get it. I can be ejected from many stores for wearing a hoodie. Not just Indiana, but as national chain store policy.
Where are the marches for that?
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You’ve never seen a shoplifter with a hoodie on? Really? Good lord I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen a teenager with a hoodie on, their hood up and a backpack on trying to act sly.
I’m glad we backed off on the Indiana-bashing. I just spent a few days there visiting my parents. A long-overdue trip. I miss the place that will ALWAYS feel like home, even though it has become a place far different from the one in which I was raised. The all-white school I attended is now very diverse, and everyone seems to have adjusted just fine. That’s good progress. At the same time, there are still plenty of pickup trucks running around trailing huge US and confederate flags. This stuff goes on, and gets national attention, but it isn’t, for the majority, who Hoosiers are.
It is my hope that the rest of America will stand up to people like the employee, on the spot, and shut them down when they engage in behavior like this. England has it right - they enjoy a good shaming when folks need it.
As for religious wear, it’s not for you to decide what is and what isn’t. This group, especially, which has stood up for the worshipers of FSM who want to get their picture taken while wearing a colander, ought to fight equally for the person wearing a cross or a hijab. IF the KKK were formally designated as a religion, and not as a religious cult of assholes, I suppose we’d have to let them wear their hoods – wait, we already let them do that.
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?! I’m talking about religious observance, not hoodies.
Kids also shoplift in high amounts, and kids wear hoodies. That’s not a particularly useful correlation.
If only I was the energetic type I think this is perfect opportunity for the old candid camera gag, follow someone wearing street clothes and a full face mask around town recording their interactions as they walk into banks, boutiques etc. I think we’d fast discover this is not religious discrimination but standard human reaction to someone disguising their identity. If that person was large and black no doubt 911 would be the instant response.
BTW, I’ve lived 20 years in a city with a large Muslim population and have rarely seen a niqab worn.
I’m not Muslim so I can’t validate this … I’ve been told that Mohammed chewed some of his followers out for leering at pretty women.
I used to be Christian so I can say the parts of the Bible attributed to Jesus have a lot more to say condemning men lusting after women they’re not married to than what women wear. (I’m not really aware of any part of the gospels giving women a hard time for what they wore but it’s been *ahem* a few years.)
Between my former-Christian filter and the same number of years, I’m not willing to guess on what the Torah said or how much (if anything) Abraham specifically might have said.
Even if faiths in the past gave people reason in the present to do terrible things, the problem in the eternal-here-and-now is always how people behave and how groups give cover to their behavior. People on all sides of any debate involving religion talk about cherry picking and condemn it when it’s not them doing the cherry picking. 
From reading your posts, I’m pretty sure you know as well as I do that we’re all cherry picking something. 
One way or the other, we choose the things we draw meaning from 
and the things we ignore. 
Sarah Safi (in a country that prides itself on freedom 
) chose to wear a niqab and hijab as an expression of her faith and the store assistant manager decided to discriminate against Sarah for visibly expressing a faith she dislikes. Discriminating in a way we’ve all become very familiar with over the last 15 years.
Discrimination grows if people don’t get called on it. They start to think everyone is on their side. 
That’s part of why discrimination exactly like this has become so blatant and common. The collective-U.S.-we spent fifteen years giving cover to this kind of discrimination. It’s well past time for people to stop giving cover to it. 
Edit: Grammar fail caused by re-writes.
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A lot of the skeptic community uses it as a frontgroup for their own form of colonialism, like their idol “dear Muslima” Dawkins. They’re only concerned with women as applies to participation in Islam. How they treat women in their own culture is evidenced by his interactions with Skepchick and the MRA atheist/“skeptic” contingents.
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The area I live in hosts a very large percentage of African diaspora. Even though there are thefts, nobody complains when full body coverings are worn by women because drug and convenience stores here aren’t managed by hatemongering townie-bumpkins who abuse a store policy to achieve their cultural supremacy.
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Many states have laws against wearing masks in public. However, Indiana isn’t, to my knowledge, one of them. http://www.anapsid.org/cnd/mcs/maskcodes.html
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OK, I realize that as a dude, this is where I should shut up…
…but let’s be honest. How much agreement is there that, say, if a porn star has chosen that life for herself, and opted for higher-paying gigs–which means demeaning acts in most cases–that she’s actually empowered by her choice? I don’t have a problem with a woman choosing porn, but I’m going to guess there’ll be at least one, “Well, that’s different,” response.
There is one spot of blue: Indianapolis. The entire rest of the state is solid red.
I spend a lot of time there. It’s quite oppressive, considering how far north it is in the country.
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