I guess I have to come and set the records straight. The issue at stake is not pitching blacks against whites nor raising a wall between the two. Neither am I calling for a ban on the use of the word black like some guys ignorantly choose to think or believe so.

The issue is over time this expression, Black Monday, Tuesday, Sunday, etc. have found its way into spoken and written English. (How unfortunate.) The problem is, should it continue to be used in a racially-mixed and sensitive age, considering the fact that any such day dubbed black implies something out of the ordinary happened, and it is usually bad or negative?

If the stock market crashes it is a Black Monday, Tuesday, etc. When prices are not freely determined by the forces of demand and supply and a parallel but illegal market develops it is called a black market. We all have black sheep in our families. Black cat, black plague, black knight, etc.

Is this the way to go forward with all these black “whatever”representing a deviant, a deviation, a negative event or the worst outcome?

I am not trying to raise a storm in a teacup, and I am not calling an anthill a mountain. The above examples show the association of those “Black …” to negative events. These expressions, or figures of speech or whatever they are, were not created in our time nor by Ms.Wirt, but should we continue to use them.

The problem is not the color black. It is a color like green, blue, yellow, red, etc. To Henderson, you can have a big black car (a Ford Expedition), a black toothbrush, black toothpaste (if any exist), black backpack, black pen, black everything, but you would not want to be the black sheep of your family. Neither would you like to have a black day in writing your finals.

To Evans, thanks for the support, but let’s not make this a black-white issue, but instead sensibly address the problem. That is why I still insist on an apology from Ms. Wirt (a genuine sincere one.)

Godfred Yeboah

Graduate student

Economics