Black & White & dissed all over

In the three decades and change that I’ve been in this racket, I’ve had countless conversations with angry readers.

For the most part, I listen calmly as they express their outrage. Sometimes they have legitimate beefs with the newspaper. Other times they merely want to vent.

Then there’s the call I received yesterday.

It’s one of the rare times I’ve actually raised my voice with a reader.

The gentleman wanted to lodge a complaint with Tuesday’s front page. If you recall, we led the paper Tuesday with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s finding in favor of Chester resident Nicole Cogdell’s claim of racial discrimination against the Wet Seal clothing store chain.

But what set this particular reader off was the wording we used in our lead P. 1 hedline.

“Seal-ed With a Diss.”

Maybe I was a little sensitive to his criticism because I wrote the headline. I played off the name of the store. And even though I didn’t realize it at the time, using the spin off the popular saying “sealed with a kiss” by substituting the word “diss” actually ties back into the idea that this was a racial discrimination complaint.

That’s where I ran afoul of this reader.

But I’ll let you decide.

He objected to our use of the word ‘diss.’ Care to know why?

He ridiculed the word as “black language.”

“Now we have to have black language on the front page?” he bellowed into the phone.

Huh? Did I miss something here? Since when exactly did the slang word ‘diss,’ which seems to me to be an equal opportunity word used to respresent an act of disrespect, become “black language.” And what is black language anyhow?

I listened to this guy go on for about five minutes, my blood pressure rising by the second.

Finally, I asked the guy, admittedly with somewhat of a raised voice, why he really was objecting to the story on the front page?

The conversation pretty much went downhill from there.

The truth is I deal with this kind of thinking - from both blacks and whites - all too often in this job. Don’t believe me? Go to DelcoTimes.com, pick a story and check out the comments posted by readers. Yes, it seems as if every story eventually comes down to race.

“It’s embarrassing,” the irate reader insisted about our choice of words on the front page.

Oh, it's embarrassing alright, sir. But not for the reason you suggest.

So, readers, I will turn to you. What say you? Were we out of line with our P. 1 headline? Or was this reader just a guy who had a problem with us portraying a story of a black woman who had successfully argued to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that she was the victim of racial discrimination.

Post a comment and let me know.