“Attention Wal-Mart Customers: All Black People Leave the Store Now…"

You heard it right! These words came out of a 16-year-old boy’s mouth on March 16that a local Wal-Mart in Washington Township, NJ. He grabbed a courtesy phone, made a racist slur, and was arrested for harassment and bias intimidation before being released to his parents. Needless to say, his remark was the source of a huge uproar in the store. Management hopped on the phone to assure disgruntled customers that "We have updated our intercom system at this store to prevent this from happening again. We again apologize to all of our customers and associates who had to listen to something so offensive." (CBS, 2010) However, it seems as though customers are still holding Wal-Mart management accountable for the racist view announced in their store. Click here to view full article.

What would you do if you were shopping in your favorite superstore and heard these words? I think I would be shocked, angry, annoyed and I too would have a few questions for Wal-Mart management. Unauthorized personnel should never be able to get their hands on a loud speaker to make announcements to customers, let alone offensive and racist announcements. It definitely makes me wonder about the types of employees at Wal-Mart who are hired to operate stores….especially in a bad economy where there are plenty more potential employees who, if hired, would never allow an incident such as this to occur. So thanks Wal-Mart for making a technical fix for a social issue.

I think everybody in their own way would like to blame Wal-Mart for being an enabler to this racist thought, but it must be said…racism is not going anywhere. Yes, shame on Wal-Mart, but the 16-year-old boy only said what thousands still think about black people. Progress is always in work, but I don’t think racism will ever die. It will only become more and more discrete and institutionalized, but it will always exist. Incidents like this one in New Jersey are only reminders to us to never forget the world we are up against.

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--Kyle Holland
Brownstone Team