The Observation Deck

mahalls lanes on madison in lakewood is harboring at least one racist employee and numerous racist patrons... the first offense i noticed was when an employee( actually an owner probably) made a comment that was in very poor taste and degrading to asians... he made a racist joke to some person
( a white person natch) that he was ringing up while my asian girlfriend( born here) was about 6 feet away... he goes to ring me up like nothing happened... what a jerk and this is the owner!... i thought or hoped that this is not a common practice... nice thought... today( sunday afternoon) i go up there and thankfully not one asian slur was said... on the other hand though... the word of the day today was "jew"... or jewish... bowlers were yelling it across the alley at each other... mind you there were a ton of small children there ranging in age from infancy to 8 yrs old!... i'd like to see a story about this in the observer... the worst part is i have all these great memories of my grandpa taking my cousins and i out for bowling on saturday every few months or so when we were kids ...
was i just not hearing this stuff before?... anyway they lost my patronage and obviously i hope mom's and dad's don't bring their kids in this place...

Patrick,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I take my son over to Mahalls all the time, and I don't think I've ever heard such things.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid that the struggle against racism may only be won through attrition.

As for a potential story, I would suggest that if you are truly interested in effecting change, that first you need to address the problem head on when incidents like this happen. A polite conversation with the person who you feel is acting offensively has a better chance of correcting the behavior rather than starting with public accusations.

Even good people occasionally say dumb things (just ask my wife). That doesn't excuse what happened, but, be careful that the punishment (or corrective action) fits the crime.

Racism is born out of ignorant sterotyping.

As it becomes repeated, it becomes ingrained.

But this is a very hard subject for me. Vertical challenge caucasion with devil eyes, solid Irish heritage, with a need to exercise. I would encourage you to write the article, not just Mahalls, but the city. This is a very important issue and stricks deep into the essence of this town. I would prefer that it had insight into a psotove ways to move this along.

.

_________________
Jim O'Bryan
Lakewood Resident

"The very act of observing disturbs the system."
Werner Heisenberg

"If anything I've said seems useful to you, I'm glad.
If not, don't worry. Just forget about it."
His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Jim,

I went ahead and made an appointment for you at the tattoo shop down on west 25th. I think it will save you a lot of time if we just go ahead and have the words "you write it, and I'll print it" inked onto your forehead.

Either that, or perhaps a new tee-shirt design...

Lakewood Observer... You write it and we'll print it!

Bret i think you were short-sighted with Jim... wouldn't we have to consider a newspaper article as part of your aforementioned "attrition"... i think Jim would agree with me here...

I'm not suggesting that education isn't vital. However, from what I've seen, racism is mostly a disease of laziness in attitude. For those idiots out there that refuse to join the rest of society in the 21st century, not much will change their attitudes. It comes down to a matter of waiting them out and eventually overwhelming them with future generations that no longer give them an opportunity to voice such rhetoric.

That said, I look forward to reading your article.

Patrick, to clarify my earlier post. My comment about the tattoo parlor is more of a joke that addresses how often I have seen Jim invite people to write for the paper.

my writing for the paper started in about the same manner as what is happening here.