Nathan Springman | Student Life

Avalon Exchange, which is located on the Delmar Loop, displays a Black Lives Matter sign behind a window.

At Avalon Exchange, a second-hand store on the Delmar Loop, it was common for employees to remove Black customers’ clothing tags only after they had paid, former employee Jack Wight said. With white customers, though, Wight said the tags came off right away. That discrepancy was just one of the racist behaviors Wight said they observed at Avalon.

Since the Instagram account @stlactivist posted on March 31 about a Washington University student’s experience of racism at the store, others have come forward with similar allegations. They describe a culture of casual racism and microaggressions, as well as management that refused to take action.

The Instagram post that prompted others to come forward described how a University student and her sister, who both remained anonymous, saw a jacket for sale at the store with a tag depicting a Black minstrel character. Minstrel shows were a racist form of entertainment that began in the early 19th century in which white performers in blackface caricatured Black people.

In the post, the student’s sister described being met with confusion, dismissal and victim-blaming when pointing out the tag to two white employees.

“The white male employee that was also there when we went to talk to staff asked ‘what’s wrong with it?’” the sister wrote. “I told him to look and see for himself. He then mumbled something rude [and] highly dismissive under his breath. My sister then turned around to confront him and they began a back and forth argument in which the white male employee tone-policed and was extremely dismissive to my sister. He tried to gaslight us—portraying us as the crazy Black women who were upset for no real reason.”

When the customers asked for the employee’s name to call management and complain, the student’s sister said staff members refused to comply.

“They said that they’d handle the problem internally, but it was clear that they didn’t truly care about how he acted and how anti-Black women he was,” the sister wrote.

Avalon Exhange’s Instagram account commented that they would be happy to discuss the situation over direct message on Instagram. The customers declined and requested that the incident be addressed publicly.

In response, Avalon Exchange posted an apology on their St. Louis Instagram account.

“This tag doesn’t represent the company or our values,” the company wrote. “It was immediately removed from the floor when it was brought to our attention. We try to vet the thousands of items we see each day. The tag was on the inside of the jacket and unfortunately got overlooked when assessing the item. We are addressing the situation with the employees involved. We sincerely apologize and we will do our best to ensure that it doesn’t happen again in the future.”

By the beginning of May, Avalon had deleted the Instagram account. Student Life reached out for a comment through direct message, email, phone calls and in person, but store representatives declined to comment further on the event described in the @stlactivist instagram post or on any other allegations in this story.

Eight customers detailed negative experiences at Avalon in the comments of a subsequent @stlactivist post about Wight’s experience working at the store.

One of them was Chase Davis, a frequent Avalon customer, who spoke to a negative experience applying to work at the store.

“I called them [to ask about applying], and they were so excited when I was on the phone with them,” Davis told Student Life. “They were like, ‘Yes, come on down, we are hiring.’”

Following the phone call, Davis, who is Black, said he immediately went to the store to fill out an application.

“They were really reluctant once I came in,” he said. “When I was like, ‘hey, are y’all hiring?’ they were like, ‘ummmmm, yeah. Let me go get you a paper.’”

Davis did not hear back about an interview, so he soon followed up. “I called them. I said, ‘hey, I’m Chase, I heard y’all are eager to fill spaces. I’m just letting you know I put in my application like a week ago,’ and they were like, ‘okay well you should be hearing back with some feedback soon,’ and I never heard back any feedback.”

Wight said they witnessed a similar experience to the one Davis described.

“A Black man asked for an application, and we had hiring signs everywhere and we had been looking for people to apply, and he kept asking for one, and [the manager] was like ‘no we’re not hiring,’” Wight said.

Prior to applying for a job at Avalon, Davis had sold clothes to the store.

“[One time] I had a pretty good collection of clothes, and when I tried to give them the clothes, there was this sense of reluctance, and I didn’t really understand why…. They were kind of taking everybody else in line when I had been waiting longer,” Davis said. “They were taking white people before me basically. All I know was that the disposition that they had [with the other customers] was better, more excited to look at their clothes, more excited to handle them.”

Nathan Springman | Student Life

Some of Avalon Exchange’s merchandise is displayed as customers browse through the store

When customers of color would come into the store to sell clothes, Wight said that the store would often reject their clothing and would only accept it after allegations of racism.

“When buying clothes, people won’t necessarily go through Black people or people of color’s orders as much, as thoroughly or as seriously as they would a white person,” Wight said. “We’ve had customers blatantly be like ‘why aren’t you taking any of our clothes, are you just racist or something?’ and then another person will have to go through and they’ll be like, ‘oh, actually we do want this.’”

Freshman Abdou Kane said he is unsure whether he would continue to shop at the store after learning about the occurrence described in the first @stlactivist post about Avalon.

“I don’t know if I would continue to shop there,” Kane said. “I haven’t been there since I heard about [the incident detailed on Instagram]. After other people said that they had bad experiences with employees, I don’t know if I’ll go back.”

Junior Naomi Horsford, who studies fashion design at the University, previously frequented Avalon, but also said she has been less inclined to go to the store since viewing the Instagram post.

“One time I went with my friend, and both of us had our backpacks, or maybe I just had my backpack,” Horsford said. “They told us to put our backpacks behind the counter, like we couldn’t bring our backpacks in, which was like the first time I’ve ever heard that. I’ve been there several times, but then other times they don’t [do that], so it’s kind of like they pick and choose when to do it.”

Along with Davis, Horsford described the Black Lives Matter sign in the window of the store as performative.

“Avalon puts Black Lives Matter in front of their building when it’s pertinent to them for their safety, like for example when riots happened over George Floyd,” Horsford said. “That’s when they put those signs to protect themselves from getting vandalized and stuff. I think they just use [the sign] to their advantage when necessary.”

Wight said that Avalon’s appearance as an ethical store is misleading.

“I think that Avalon creates this illusion of really being a store for the people,” they said. “You are getting something that’s kind of masquerading as ethical. It is a resale shop, but, honestly, the store is owned by a white man who underpays his workers, the staff is mistreated, the management is complacent in racism. There’s other ways to support your community and look fabulous by supporting Black people who own closet accounts or Etsys.”

Wight pointed out that Avalon Exchange is not a local business but a chain with other locations in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.

They also elaborated on Avalon’s mistreatment of workers, saying that there have been numerous occasions when large groups of employees quit all at once.

“There’s been mass exoduses of employees. They’ll have employees who work there for years and years and years, and they’ll all quit at once,” Wight said. “A lot of it has to do with mistreatment of employees.”

Wight spoke to a lack of accountability on the staff. When employees have been accused of racism, Wight said, it would not get written down or ever discussed. “It’s something that’s kind of like brushed off in the moment,” they said. “It tends to be really dismissive of the customers if that’s ever an issue that’s brought up. They will be like, ‘Oh, we’re not actually doing anything wrong. They’re just like being crazy, or weird or just causing problems.’”

According to Wight, a manager of the store has explicitly expressed racist sentiments.

“She has been discouraging of dating Black people and sleeping with Black people,” Wight said. “She said Black women aren’t as pretty as white women, white people are just more beautiful. I can’t even repeat some of the terms that she said.”

Wight said that when they confronted a different manager about this manager’s racism, there were no consequences.

“I went to the other [manager] and I was like, ‘so I’ve heard this has been an issue; these are things that I’ve heard and seen in the store,’” Wight said. “She basically said she never heard of any of it before, which is not true, because I got information that another person brought up all the same things to her before when they quit.”

“I know for a fact nothing happened to the manager, and there [weren’t] any repercussions for what she did,” Wight said.