When the first post on “BlackFriday (fake?) charity donations at Mall and Telegraph” appeared on the monroenews.com forums, I was tempted to delete it.

I knew the reference to “black people walking up to cars and collecting money” would offend many people. While I didn’t think it was intentionally racist, it clearly reflected a lack of sensitivity to racial issues.

As John Castellese, our online coordinator, and I discussed what to do about it, Monroe High School’s recent appearance on the Oprah show came up.

I had been tremendously impressed with the students, staff and coordinators of that show. It was built on the concept that the best way to overcome hatred and bigotry is to confront it, talk about it, search for common ground, and eventually replace it with love and respect.

With that thought in mind, we decided to leave the “BlackFriday” post on the forums and see what happened. Here is the link, if you haven’t seen it.

Thankfully, it didn’t take long before someone challenged the unnecessary inclusion of “black” in the description of the people. The color of their skin was irrelevant, as many people pointed out. There were 41 responses to the post over a seven-day period. Black people, white people, newcomers, oldtimers shared their views. Some were insightful, some were hurtful, but all appeared to be heartfelt. 

Race relations in America are complicated. It has been one of the most important issues of my lifetime, which spans the civil rights movement to the present. My first trip to Detroit happened to be as a child in 1967, the year of the race riots. My family just wanted to see a baseball game; instead we saw a war zone.

I suspect race and the tensions created by this wonderful melting pot we call America will continue to be one of the great debates of the next 50 years.

I don’t know whether our decision to leave the “Black Friday” post on the forums helped or hurt the debate. What do you think?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 at 4:47 am and is filed under Local issues, events, The Evening News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.