If the Term “Black Hole” is Racist, What About “Black Market?”
11 July 2008, me @ 0657

Things in "Big D" have made a strange turn with this:

County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts.

Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections "has become a black hole" because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.

Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole."

That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.

That reminds me of my second trip to the then Soviet Union, when my wife and I met two Francophone African students.  In conversation with them, one of them referred to shopping on the "black market" without hesitation.  The reason was simple: in the old Soviet Union, if you didn’t shop on the black market, you missed out on many things.  And, if we move in more of a statist direction here, people of all colours will find the "black market" a more attractive place.

That made me think: perhaps the black market needed an advertisement that went like this: "Le Marché Noir..c’est pour nous!" with one of these chaps photos.  I’ll leave it to my Francophone readers to catch the drift.



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