This article proves that CNN is capable of getting it right:
"We were dressed professionally," Wells told me. "It was casual Friday. We had on dresses and casual office wear. We were racially profiled. It was as simple as that."
Wells says she and her friends were detained by six Gwinnett County, Georgia, police officers for "about an hour and a half" at the entrance of an Old Navy store, owned by Gap. Their crime, as Wells sees it, was being black in America.
In her letter to Murphy, Wells describes enduring "disdainful stares from the mothers and grandmothers and children entering the store." Police responded to a call from mall security about a gang of shoplifters in the store. They found no stolen merchandise on Wells or her friends. No one -- not the police, not the store managers -- bothered to apologize.
And, thankfully, rather than spluttering out on a some lame "on the one hand we have people who say racism remains problematic in modern American society, but on the other hand we have other people who say it's not--so who are we to know anyway?" note, it ends with a decisive call to address the real issues we obviously still face as a nation:
Wells has decided to not only get mad but get active, writing and talking about what happened to her and her friends on a day they just set out to do some shopping.
Making a change is not for the weak willed. Our documentary "Black in America" will make you proud and angry, hopeful and frustrated. Please, go out and DO something about what you're seeing and feeling. Give your money, give your time, write op-eds, commit to changing the part of reality that's not good.
Bravo, CNN, keep it up and I might start thinking about adding some of your RSS feeds into my reading list. But only if you syndicate your entire articles rather than just the first paragraph or two. Embrace the future, I can tell plenty of your employees want very much to do so.
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