During her recent visit to the retail store in Denver’s Montbello neighborhood, Epps was originally set on buying a scarf for her hair. While brand name products, such as Suave and Pantene, were out in the open on shelves, the multicultural hair care products were locked away. Epps had to wait for a Walmart employee to unlock the glass and pull out a portable case.
Before leaving the store, Epps shared a short video of the aisle on social media, with the hashtag #WalmartFinds, which caught the attention of CBS Denver reporter Tori Mason. On Monday afternoon, Mason shared the video on her official Twitter account, but the footage had a glitch.
Mason also shared a snapshot of the aisle from inside the Walmart store, where the multicultural hair products are on display. In that photo, one can see that they are behind a locked case.
That same night, Epps said to CBS Denver “I’m not going to be shamed into thinking I’m a criminal for just wanting to get a scarf. This is very blatant because the heading above that aisle says ‘Multicultural Hair Care.’ They are saying that people, who are a different culture, need their stuff to be locked up.”
Due to the backlash from Mason’s news coverage, a representative from Walmart reached out to the reporter. This practice of storing multicultural hair products in locked cases did not occur only in Denver, it had been done in several of Walmart stores. Walmart will not be doing this practice anymore.
The Emmy Award–winning reporter shared part of the email from Walmart on her Twitter account. The representative from Walmart wrote, “I wanted to let you know that while the practice was only in place in about a dozen of our 4,700 stores nationwide, we have made the decision to discontinue placing these items in cases.”
A spokesperson from Walmart released a statement to CBS Denver and acknowledged, “We do not tolerate discrimination of any kind at Walmart. We serve more than 140 million customers weekly, crossing all demographics, and are focused on meeting their needs while providing the best shopping experience at each store.”
With Walmart making the necessary policy change, Mason told Newsweek, “As a reporter, I’m not used to providing my own comment. I prefer to keep myself out of stories. If I have anything to say, I acknowledge that my report was not the first on this issue, but I hope that it’s the last. This story wasn’t news on Monday. I’m so grateful that it was news on Wednesday.”
