Black community urged to stand against discrimination
Chapter President Ron Fails called a press conference Tuesday to address the most recent incident of alleged discrimination. He called Raymond Spears, a retired member of the Black community and a veteran of the U.S. armed services, to the podium.
Spears told of an incident he recently experienced at a Speedway gas station in Elida. Spears said he was declined service by a young, white woman for no apparent reason.
"She said I was being rude and told me I was not getting gas at the station. She told me to get off the property or she would call the police," Spears said. "And I knew I hadn't done anything wrong."
So Spears called the police himself. Officers from the Elida Police Department and the Allen County Sheriff's Office responded to the scene, "and they couldn't have been more respectful to me," he said.
Spears then reached out to the NAACP and Fails, who in turn reached out to the gas station's district corporate office.
"We filed a discrimination notice and let them know what happened," Fails said. "We felt it was better to expose the situation than to just walk away."
Two previous incidents of racial discrimination were addressed by Fails. In one instance, a Black female pastor who had been subjected to racial taunts took her complaints to Lima City Council. In another incident at a gas station at the intersection of Pine and Kibby streets, a Black customer who was subjected to verbal abuse opted for a different response and became physical with the station employee. Criminal charges resulted.
Fails said that type of reaction is not the way he hopes the Black community will handle racial discrimination. In the Elida case, he said Speedway has been asked to adopt mandatory diversity training for its employees, "and if the corporation does not respond we may be forced to boycott Speedway stations."
While violence is never the answer, the NAACP president said, neither is simply giving up.
"Walking away is something we (Blacks) have done all our lives. If we continue to walk away, will our kids have to walk away as well? Walking away is never the answer," Fails said. "This behavior (exhibited at a few local businesses) is unacceptable. If we don't stand together, we participate in the disrespect of all of us."
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