David K. Ford: Latino event sounds exclusionary, bad for business

Re “Latino group to hold first business expo” (Page 4A, Sept. 16): When I owned a business in Modesto (a beauty salon) for seven years, the last thing I would have ever done would have been to take part in a “Caucasian Business Expo” or stated that my salon would sell “specifically to the Caucasian community.” That would have been business suicide and rightfully so! I wanted to attract all human beings to my salon regardless of skin color.

Reading about National Hispanic Heritage Month and the Latino Community Roundtable makes no sense to me, since this is about as segregated and targeted as it gets. Businesses wanting to target only their own communities are not seeing the bigger picture. If I were Latino, the last thing I would want to do, as a business owner, is cater only to Latinos. But that’s the message I’m getting from this “Expo” – loud and clear.

Your businesses are in America, the melting pot, remember? Participating in exclusionary events are a guarantee of getting no business from people like myself. All they do is divide the valley and segregate it more and more than it already is. Sad.

This story was originally published September 16, 2015 at 11:39 AM with the headline "David K. Ford: Latino event sounds exclusionary, bad for business."