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Students Support Changing The Name Of Black Friday Over Fears It's 'Offensive'

Students Support Changing The Name Of Black Friday Over Fears It's 'Offensive'

But they quickly changed their opinion when they were told what the origin of the day actually came from.

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie

Students at an American university campus have supported calls to change the name of Black Friday over concerns that it could be offensive to people of colour.

Ophelie Jacobson from the University of Florida's student reporting network Campus Reform wanted to get people's thoughts about the annual shopping day.

She was intrigued about whether people understood the meaning behind Black Friday.

Ms Jacobson was also reacting to an opinion piece in a Chicago newspaper that called for the name of the event to be changed because it's 'discriminating and profiling against black people'.

She wanted to see how far people would be willing to go with 'cancel culture'.

Pretty much all of the people the reporter spoke to said they weren't going to take part in Black Friday because they're either against the idea of rampant or unnecessary consumerism or they're just poor uni students.

They also didn't really have a clue where the name of the event originates from. However, when she asked what they thought of the Chicago opinion piece, many supported the idea of changing it.

One person said: "Honestly, I'm down to rename that. I don't like the name Black Friday. I never really have since I was small."

Another added: "I think that equality's important. I mean, I think it's definitely a valid opinion."

A third student remarked: "I kind of agree it should be changed just because Black Friday sounds offensive."

Alamy

The name Black Friday is based on the idea of stores getting their financial books back into the black (aka profit) and has nothing to do with race.

When Ophelie Jacobson explained this, people changed their tune.

One woman said we shouldn't 'over-analyse' the name of an event if it doesn't have bad origins, adding: "If it's not about skin colour then I don't see that there's a problem."

A different student quipped: "Knowing what it does mean, it just kind of makes me think 'okay this isn't something that's actually offensive'."

The Chicago newspaper opinion piece tried to claim that the use of the word 'black' in Black Friday was problematic.

The author, who remained nameless in the article, said: "The name of the shopping day after Thanksgiving should not be called by the name of a nationality.

"Black Friday should be called Holiday Buying Day, Spending Day, Charge Card Day, Green Backs or something other than black, which is discriminating and profiling against black people."

Featured Image Credit: Alamy

Topics: Black Friday, News