Black Friday and Meaning of Color Black

I don’t care what color it is, as long as it’s black.

Henry Ford (1863-1947), on the color of the Model-T

The color black conjures up different images for different people.

For retailers, it’s the day after Thanksgiving when retail profits for the year begin to turn from a loss (“in the red”) to a profit (“in the black.”).

For consumers, it’s an exciting night and morning with the risk of being turned black and blue in riotous sales openings.

For many American blacks, it’s about the gloom and dark rage following the failure to the grand jury to indict Officer Darrell Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri.

For progressives, it’s about the evils of huge corporations exploiting the poor for profits of CEOs and shareholders.

For American small businesses, it’s about a bleak future blighted by huge expenses and penalties of employer mandates.

For young Americans, it’s about finding a full-time job in an increasingly part-time economy.

For physicians, it’s about transitioning from an autonomous profession relying on clinical judgment to an employee dependent on data-driven algorithms.

For Democrats, it’s about finding a way out of the midterm debacle and crafting a new message to the numerous American middle class while being compassionate towards the less numerous uninsured and under insured.

For the majority of Americans, it’s about charting new paths to prosperity, opening up new opportunities, capitalizing on innovations such as fracking, engendering hope for the middle class, creating an environment consistent with the American dreams of freedom and independence and entrepreneurship, and recreating the image of America as world leader and beacon of light and liberty.

For all of us, it’s about a return to a more colorful future, for a redefinition of black from something lacking color, soiled, dirty, gloomy, dismal , sullen, hostile, pessimistic and dark to something more shiny, glossy, red, white, and blue.