Professor says he was racially profiled at Edmonton RONA

A Black Professor from the University of Alberta says he experienced racial profiling at a RONA store on Stony Plain Road in Edmonton.

He says it happened Tuesday evening when he was asked to leave his tote bag at the counter upon entering.

“It was a very horrible situation to be in. It was, you know, it was demeaning, dehumanizing, embarrassing,” said Ubaka Ogbogu, an associate professor in the faculty of law at the University of Alberta.

“As soon as I walked in, the cashier, a white woman, called out to me and asked me to stop and asked me to leave my bag at the till,” he explained. “So I asked her why I had to do that. And she said it was the store policy. So I asked her where that policy was written – where can I find the policy? I didn’t see it walking into the store.”

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Ogbogu says he brings his tote bag into stores when he’s shopping because it holds his wallet, his keys, his medications, and he sometimes uses it to carry items he purchases. He added he did not see others being asked to leave their bags at the counter while he was in the store.

“Even if there’s a policy, it is wrong for them to give discretion to their staff to decide who to apply it against, right? Because that leads to treating people differently.”

When Ogbogu asked the cashier previously to see the bags kept behind the counter, he saw none.

CityNews reporter Sarah Chew later went to the same RONA to see if the store would ask her to leave her tote bag at the counter. She was able to walk through without being stopped and noticed other women who were able to keep their large bags with them as well.

CityNews also reached out to Lowe’s, the company that owns RONA, and in an email, they said that they have no corporate in-store policy regarding leaving oversized bags at the front of the store and that the Edmonton Stony Plain Road RONA applied its own policy.

They added they’ll be working with the location to address the situation, remove any related signage and they apologize for the inconvenience it has caused.

In a phone call with the RONA store manager, they deferred to the media team’s response.

For Ogbogu, what the company described as an “inconvenience” is a wound of racism that will stay with him for a long time.

“I can remember the ones that happened to me years ago. And it just stays with you. And of course, you know, how many of these businesses am I going to boycott before I can go nowhere anymore?”