One of my kids attends
Bay Aerials Gymnastics in Fremont, CA on Saturday mornings. The faces you see there represent the cultural diversity of my community -- black, white, Indian, Asian... you name the cultural group, you'll see it represented there.
I was startled and dismayed to see this sign posted on the low wall facing the parents' benches:
...continued...
Ironically, I was reading Zinn's
A People's History of the United States, and in fact was reading the section on indentured servitude and slavery in the early days of the Colonies. I believe that this may have pushed me over the threshold of tolerance for affronts to my sensibilities. After a few uncomfortable moments thinking about what I was seeing, I went in search of a responsible party in the front-office area.
When I spoke with the gentleman behind the desk, who I understand to be one of the proprietors, I was polite and conciliatory. I expressed my concern that perhaps there were other ways to convey the message intended by the sign. When this clearly failed to make any impression with him, I then pointed out that I, and likely others among his customers, have ancestors who were sold into slavery and might find this offensive.
I then made a minor tactical mistake. In my attempts to be polite, I stated (somewhat apologetically) that I was not trying to be uptight about the issue. The manager responded by saying that I did seem to be uptight about the issue, and that he didn't see the harm in the sign. Needless to say, I found this pretty upsetting, as he was not only rejecting my premise that the sign was offensive, but that I was being uptight by saying so!
I reiterated that there were other ways of expressing the same sentiment, and in fact suggested several non-offensive alternatives. His final response was that he was sorry it bothered me, but (tellingly) made no statement that the sign would be taken down, nor did he make any move to do so.
I put the question to you, dear reader:
What would you do?
What would you consider an appropriate next step, short of terminating my son's membership at this facility? He very much enjoys his Saturday morning gymnastics classes, so I have an obligation to exhaust other means of expressing my displeasure first.
Update [2005-7-16 21:27:45 by AlphaGeek]: Thank you for all of the comments so far, on both sides of the discussion. I'd like to note for the record that I am not easily offended, and in fact tend to be strongly libertarian in my approach to free speech. However, I think there's a difference between laughing at the history of slavery as a means of healing, and laughing at the idea of slavery in the here and now.
What bothers me more than anything is that there are any number of ways of making the same joke without invoking slavery.