Three weeks ago, on Tuesday, April 3, Aprili Faggins, Kayla Polite and Mark Williams went to Barrister's in Southampton to celebrate Aprili's new job at Dan's Papers. Aprili is not a frequent visitor to Southampton's nightspots -- she is a proud mother of three -- but her friend, Kayla, is a regular at Barrister's and wanted to take Aprili out for a celebratory beer. From the moment the three friends entered the bar, however, they could feel that something was not right. "I had a weird feeling as soon as we walked in. Everybody who worked there was staring at us," Aprili said. While the girls went over to the bar to order their beers, Mark went to use the men's room. Kayla said, "when we got to the bar, the owner came over and he asked us not to stand over there." When they moved to the other end of the bar, they said that a man who was sitting on a barstool next to two empty seats started moving his coat so Aprili and Kayla could sit down. Kayla said that, as he was moving the coats, "a lady who worked at the bar came over and said 'Oh, no. They can't sit there.'" Aprili added that, "the woman stood by us the whole time we were at the bar." When Mark returned from the bathroom, he told his friends, "I have to get out of here." When Aprili asked him why he was so upset, "Mark told me that the owner had followed him into the bathroom and asked him 'are you from the rez" and when he said, 'yeah,' the owner said, 'I don't know you and you don't know me, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave.'" Aprili said that, as Mark was telling them what had happened in the bathroom, "the owner came up to us and said, 'I just have to let you know that we've been having problems with people from Shinnecock and I'm not letting any more people from the reservation in here. So spread the word.'" When Aprili asked the owner why he wouldn't exclude only the people who had caused trouble in the past, she said that, "he told us that his back was against the wall and that the staff of Barrister's had a meeting, and they decided not to allow anyone from the Shinnecock reservation to come there anymore." Mark, flustered by his experience, told the owner, "You might as well put up a sign on the door that reads, 'No Coloreds Allowed'." Aprili said that the owner then answered, "I have to start somewhere." When Kayla asked, "How did you know we were from Shinnecock?" She said that he replied, "You fit the profile." Kayla said, "When I asked him, what's the profile? He said, 'young, you know, with a do-rag and a hat.' And I said, are you telling me that you're gonna ask everybody with a do-rag and a hat on that they can's come in here? He just said, 'I've gotta start somewhere.'" On that note, Aprili and Mark left the restaurant. Aprili said, "I was so upset, all she could do was sit in the car. My hands were shaking." She called her mother, who told her to contact the NAACP. Kayla said that she stayed behind to ask a bartender she knew, Ed, if he could stop the owner from asking everyone from the reservation to leave. "The bartender, Ed, just said, 'He's the owner -- there's nothing I can do,'" Aprili said.

Later that evening, when Theresa Williams and her two cousins arrived at Barrister's after Kayla, Aprili and Mark had left, Theresa said that they received similar treatment. "It was about nine p.m. when me and my two female cousins were walking through. I'm 28, they are in their thirties. We went to the bar and the owner came up to us and he said, 'I'm not allowing people from the reservation in here -- your people have got my workers hooked on drugs. You're making me lose my regular customers.' When I asked him, how are you going to know who is from Shinnecock, he said, 'any person of color who walks through the door, I'm gonna ask if they're from the rez.' Being that we were older, he also told us that we should tell the younger people from the rez to 'quiet down and behave.' I told him that, maybe if he didn't let underage kids without IDs into the bar, he wouldn't have a problem and he told me, 'white people don't cause problems.'"

Barrister's owner Mike Ferran has claimed that a majority of the young people from Shinnecock who come into his bar after hours cause problems by not either not paying their tabs, breaking things and getting loud or using foul language and doing drugs in the bathroom. He openly admits that he followed Mark Williams into the bathroom and kicked him out, based on the fact that he was from the Shinnecock reservation. He also admitted that he told the women to leave. "I have the right to protect my business," he explained. "This guy had all of the signals, he had a sideways cap and went straight for the bathroom and I was just sure that he was going in there to do drugs. It's called profiling. I didn't know him, but I knew he was going to be a problem. I live in the real world and I'm sorry, but I can't stand it anymore." Although racial profiling is illegal, it is clear that Mr. Ferran does not feel that he was breaking the law. "My property is private," he said. "I have the right to allow or not allow who I want into my building. If you drive to the Shinnecock reservation, it says in big letters 'No Trespassing.' How come I can't go there, but they are allowed to come in here and cause all this trouble? I've gone the distance with these people. My partner and I didn't build a business for thugs and drug dealers."

After a tribal meeting on Saturday, where the young people who were kicked out of Barrister's told the tribal leaders what had happened to them, a tribal Trustee visited Barrister's dressed in business attire and was not asked to leave. "The people I'm not letting in are the people that are causing problems and the people I know will cause problems," Mr. Ferran said. "I'm letting plenty of Shinnecock people in there, just tonight I can tell you that Shinnecock people ate at my restaurant. They know who they are, the ones that are respectable people. But these young Shinnecock kids that come in here and do drugs and are simply not decent people are not allowed in my building."

In other bars and restaurants in the United States, there are dress codes in place to try to control the type of clientele that are allowed to enter. Every bar has the right to refuse service to people who are violent -- these people are often forcibly removed from even the most welcoming of establishments. Mike Ferran is known for not tolerating poor behavior at his bar and has kicked many a respectable person out of his bar because of their behavior, Shinnecock or otherwise. However, kicking people out of a bar due to inappropriate behavior is legal -- kicking people out simply because of the color of their skin or the community to which they belong is not. Since segregation was banned in all fifty states in 1968, it has been illegal exclude people from any place open to the public because of their sex, religion or ethnic background. In such a diverse community as Southampton, it is imperative that this law be upheld.