Reporting Race

To the Editors of The Crimson:

In an article about the robbery of Store 24 that appeared in your paper on December 11, you mention that a store was robbed by approximately 35 people while "a predominately black crowd" milled outside waiting for a concert to begin. I personally fail to understand how the race of a crowd (or the looters or the store owners or anyone else involved) is relevant to the fact that Store 24 was robbed.

If the group performing had been Kiss and the same thing had happened, I'm sure you would not have been moved to write about a "predominately white crowd." This is because the race of the participants and/or onlookers is irrelevant to the crime itself. However, in your newspaper it seems that race suddenly becomes a salient when a minority group is involved.

In my opinion, the mention of the race in the article was very poor journalism. Leslie Walker '79-3

In The Crimson of December 11, a story under the headline "Concert Crowd Loots Store 24" contained the phrase "a predominately black crowd." The offending phrase appeared due to an error in editing. The Crimson regrets the error.