U.S. blacks urged to join shopping boycott

ATLANTA (Reuters) – Scores of callers to black radio stations said they heeded a call to refrain from shopping Friday in a “National Blackout Day” to protest a rise in hate crimes but some African-Americans called the boycott a stunt.

“I won’t be doing any shopping today. Justice has to be done,” said Alan Whitaker, a self-employed Atlanta businessman.

The protest was called by Warren Ballentine, whose talk show, “The People’s Attorney,” is broadcast on radio stations across the country.

Citing a rise in reports of nooses being hung in parts of the country to intimidate blacks, Ballentine told listeners, “Until we have federal legislation … regarding these hate crimes, as African-Americans we need to band together to show our economic power by refusing to spend any money (Friday) from fast-food restaurants to gas.”

Nooses are a symbol of lynching, one means of enforcing a brutal system of racial segregation that prevailed in the U.S. South for decades until the 1960s.

The boycott, news of which spread through black radio stations and the Internet, was intended to build on the momentum within the black community by the recent “Jena 6″ rally that drew tens of thousands of people protesting what they called injustice against six black teenagers charged in a high school fight.

It was difficult to gauge how many people joined the boycott. Officials for major retailers did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Blacks constitute about 13 percent of the U.S. population of 300 million people and Ballentine said their spending power amounted to about $2 billion a day.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a commentator and author of books about black America, dismissed the boycott.

“These things never work. It takes logistics, time and organization and you have to have a clearly defined goal. It is too vague, too amorphous … and how would you measure its effects?” Hutchinson said.