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Recently, a Chicago family decided to 'buy black', that is to only purchase merchandise from African-American vendors. By dictionary definition, racism means a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior; the support and promotion of one race over another/i]. This means, that in fact, this family is promoting racism in their home by technicality. Statistics show that black businesses fair worse on average than white businesses, so is this moral or not?

Article found here: http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2009 ... 444950.txt

No, no, Racism would be being the first person to respond to your post by saying that their kids will probably be saying, "Awwww, Watermelon and Fried Chicken again?"

Here's the thing I don't understand. In America, do they have signs above stores saying "BLACK GROCERY STORE", and so on? Or do these people just walk into the store and do a quick race check on the owner with their RaceScanner3000?

I'm not sure this is really the best way to go about things. I think the difference in business success would primarily be because of differences in education and other socio-economic factors, rather than because white people only want to shop in "white" stores or something like that. Donating to programs which assist black people in getting their business up and running smoothly - for example, providing capital, or access to training, or to computers and modern accounting software which they may not otherwise be able to afford - might be a better idea.

I also feel it's potentially divisive. For one thing, many non-black ethnic groups are also subject to discrimination - for example, if you're Hispanic or Asian and these people refuse to buy from your store because of your race, I imagine it would be very easy to take that as racism. I'm also not sure a mindset where everything is divided into "black shops" and "white shops" is necessarily helpful. Obviously as a member of the privileged group (and a non-American) I may be ignorant of the reality of these things, but it seems like only shopping at stores owned by your own race would encourage segregation and an us-and-them mentality which leads to further discrimination and prejudice.

Also, I have never seen anyone inquiring as to the race of a store's owner, and in all honesty I have no freaking idea who owns any of the stores I shop at. This makes it difficult for me to believe there is widespread consumer bias against black store owners (bias against shops with black employees might be another matter since they are often more visible than the owner). I suppose suppliers or financiers could be being bastards on the basis of race, since they might actually deal with the owner...