I saw an opportunity and I took it… 
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“You’d have to grow up a young black male in a place like Ferguson to
grasp why these stores are the immediate, prime targets for looting and
flames. There are 365 days in every year, and on every day of every year
of your life you’ve had to walk past these cathedrals of consumer
culture and see things you don’t have and can’t get because you have no
money, no real education, and very little hope of ever being employed.
Or you grew up seeing your mother, father, sisters or brother slaving
away behind the counter in one of these stores for minimum wage or
less, part time workers so no health benefits could be earned, and
bringing home a pittance for their family to subsist on. Maybe you’ve
been behind the counter at Mickey D’s yourself, and it did wonders for
your self esteem because you did that instead of going to school, you
did that to bring home a few dollars for food and rent. Dead end jobs
for dead end, unwanted lives. In the land of the free.
You grew up tagging along with your mother or aunt to shop in these
stores using food stamps, coupons, buying only things on sale, and
putting up with the stares of the people around you who have real jobs,
and can afford to shop without government assistance. And when you go
alone into one of these stores, you are immediately followed to see if
you’re going to steal anything. If you linger or look around at all,
pretty soon some bastard of a white cop will show up to take you outside
and check out who you are and what you’re doing in the store, boy.
This is normal times for a brother. And it wears on you, it really does. It gets bleak.
Before you’re ten years old you know right down to your bones that
you don’t belong to the America of white people. That your black life is
not valued at all. The America you read about in the papers or view on
television is not for you. It’s not ever to be yours. You’re permanently
shut out of that world. What you experience is quite the opposite. You
come to see that it’s there to feed on you. So the local car dealership
or chain restaurant or chain drug store is not “my neighborhood store.”
It is instead the most visible symbol of your impoverished options and
status that you see every day as you go without in white America, all
because you decided to be black.
Now, that’s a lifestyle choice that can eff up your whole life.”
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Can you dig it?
I’m not a member of those people. I am a minority, and did grow up in an area with mexican and asian gangs. I’m not sure where the media comes into play in my comments, as I saw firsthand how they suck the life out of poor neighborhoods.
It’s harsh, but not unreasonable. I have been in many extremely tough areas, in gang territories, and never once been hassled by these people. While cops have drawn guns upon me (while unarmed) several times. I know who I’d sooner take my chances with.
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Not in your neighborhood, at least.
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Gangs are a symptom of the life being sucked out of a neighborhood.
Not the cause. And in this case, they got together to protect private property. I suppose you can pretend they didn’t, because of your past, but in this present, it happened. It’s not ideal, but it’s also not an example of what you’ve experienced previously, so look at it for a damned second and think.
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Except f-ing CVS is probably the only drug store in the neighborhood so people have no options. I didn’t mean to infer CVS is “a neighborhood store” in any other sense or is serving any other purpose than to make money from the people who are captive consumers, so to speak. I still always assume a plant from the police department is the perp.
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Off-topic, but that illustrates perfectly why service in the public sector should follow eligibility, not personal preference. If the only CVS local to me won’t fill my prescription for birth control…
On-topic, why being poor is expensive.
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Agreed, Off and On Topic.
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I don’t have any reason to doubt the honesty of their intentions, but the cynic in me can’t help but note that riots and the corresponding curfews, influx of hundreds of cops, etc. are very bad for business. Nobody is earning while this mess is going on.
Radley Balko and Conor Friedersdorf agree with you that shutdowns have economic costs that should be considered.
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