When Willie Mays played stickball with the boys in his neighborhood--Harlem--the media spun it as a story about his love of kids, and how they loved him.
While they certainly had affection for each other, the real reason "The Say Hey Kid" was hitting and catching what those kids hit and threw wasn't that the Polo Grounds, then the Giants' home field, was only a few blocks away.
Rather, he was on those upper Manhattan streets because, even with all his celebrity, he couldn't live anywhere else: Realtors in other neighborhoods, or other towns, wouldn't rent or sell to him, not because they were Brooklyn Dodger fans, but because he's black.
Although New York didn't have Jim Crow laws, there was nothing to stop them from such practices--or to charge a black buyer more than they'd charge a white client.
While it's not possible to change the past, some people are trying, in the ways they know how, to make amends. Grant Petersen, president and founder of Rivendell Bicycle Works, is one such person.
He's offering "reparations pricing" on some of the company's bikes and frames. In a way, it's a revival of a practice Rivendell engaged in for two years until the COVID epidemic: Black customers were offered discount for purchases in the company's Walnut Creek, CA store. Starting on Monday, 12 October, that discount will be offered on select bikes, nationwide.
Petersen's response to those who object that some customers will "pretend to be black" is, in essence, "I don't care." He's offering the discount to Black customers, he says, "not because it's a nice thing to do" but because "they're owed."
I'm not surprised that he's getting backlash about this: Some folks believe that others "deserve" similar discounts for all sorts of reasons, such as being first responders. I don't disagree with them, but Petersen says that he's trying to keep things "simple." How simple it will be to identify Black customers, I don't know. But I respect him for trying to achieve some measure of justice in some segment of the world.
