Still No Respect In Return For Spending The Black Dollar
I thought about not buying the two items I held as I stood next in line. I wondered silently: “Should I buy this or just get the hell outta here?”
By John W. Fountain
I STOOD IN LINE at the local Korean-owned beauty supply store in my south suburban neighborhood this past Sunday afternoon when it happened. A group of sisters walked between the sensors on their way out. Suddenly, the alarm beeped.
An older Korean man who looked possibly to be the owner, at least a manager, rushed to the door, impeding their exit.
“You have something… What do you have?” he said to a young woman who looked to be in her teens. She denied taking anything.
He asked her to walk back through the sensors. The alarm beeped again. “You have something,” he insisted again, not allowing her to leave.
Finally, the young woman sheepishly reached into her clothing and pulled out an item she apparently had tried to steal. Busted.
The store manager simply confiscated the item and let the young woman leave without calling the police. He huffed with disgust, then posted up at the front of the store, hawk-eyeing the rest of us shoplifters, larcenists, vermin, and other assorted criminals—me included.
My eyes fixed upon him, standing there at the front of the store—the cashiers and the beauty supply store’s other workers all Asian. Standing in the line behind me was a chorus of beautiful Black faces, mostly women clutching assorted hair weaves and other hair care and beauty products. Something about the portrait in that moment incensed me.
Suddenly, my head was filled with visions of my time in Ghana, where at China Mall the Chinese owners stood like grand overseers at stores as Africans milled about the aisles, ran the cash registers under watchful eyes, or made purchases, all the while their every move studied and recorded.
In an instant, I flashed back to Palace Mall in Accra, Ghana, run by Lebanese. To visions of the same air of superiority and almost disgust, at least distrust, that shone on their faces like an inescapable African sun. It wasn’t what they said. It was how they acted; how they stood apart—aloof and devoid of pleasantries and niceness. How they seemed to look at the Africans, me included, as if we were less than, although bearers of coveted consumer gold.
I remember feeling like there was something very strange about the scenario. About the reality of major shopping malls or stores in Ghana being run by the Lebanese and the Chinese, and the sense that whatever the financial gain, it would least benefit the locals and more the foreigners.
I cannot afford to be judgmental given the state of African-American community, where foreigners—nonwhites who do not tarry, buy or sleep in our communities—have long set up shop to sell us everything from liquor and tobacco to hairweave, wigs and other beauty products, to jewelry stores, nail shops, pizza joints, fried chicken and fish joints to damn near anything and everything. And we oblige, walking in an almost hypnotic trance to fork over our dollars, oblivious to, or unconscious of, the ensuing economic drain of us—the Lost Tribe. My eyes water over the state of our lostness.
Not lost on me, however, is how easily foreigners—whether of Arab, Korean, India or Chinese descent—open establishments in Black neighborhoods, but rarely reside in our neighborhoods. Not lost on me is the fact that as a Black man I would be hard-pressed to find a community beyond my own, where I might be allowed to open a business, let alone a neighborhood where the same foreign folks who run businesses in my community would also patronize mine.
And why not? Ain’t I a man? Why does the economic stream run in one direction?
It isn’t the transaction of business itself that most disturbs me. It is the way they look at us. The way they talk at us. And too often, it is the way they treat us–coldly, as if we are outsiders and this is their neighborhood. Rarely as respected customers.
It is the fact that here—in this gargantuan south suburban beauty supply store in a barely alive strip mall in an establishment in my own neighborhood—was this Asian dude with the audacity to treat me as less than. This exacerbated by the fact that, in a sense, I was actually paying for his poor treatment and disrespect.
In that moment, I wanted to say something. To shout something aloud. Maybe scream something, like the Laurence Fishburne’s character “Dap” in the movie “School Daze” over and over again and ringing the bell: “Waaaaaake uuuuup!”
I thought about not buying the two items I held as I stood next in line. I wondered silently: “Should I buy this shit or just get the hell outta here?”
I stood frozen in my mental gymnastics, deeply in my consciousness asking myself whether if I chose to say nothing or do nothing, am I then a co-conspirator in my own mistreatment or my community’s economic draining?
I HAVE LONG WRESTLED with the realities of shopping while Black even in a Black community. Since the 1970’s when I lived on Chicago’s West Side, where I was born and raised, I have seen the continual influx of foreign-born entrepreneurs opening food stores and other businesses, replacing Ma and Pa shops that had long been a mainstay, even Egyptian-run beauty shops that now fry, dye and lay Black hair to the side.
How when I would come home from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the late 70s and early 80s, I noticed, for the first time, stark differences between stores in mostly white areas compared to the supermarkets where we frequently shopped in the hood. The ill-treatment of attitudinal workers and managers toward us; the types of products (for example the lack of fresh produce and salt-free snacks), and the overall poorer service, including the shortage of open lanes to check out, which caused ungodly long lines.
I have witnessed the way cashiers or managers sometimes barked or huffed at Black folk, often appearing distant and distrustful more than welcoming and respectful. I have witnessed the sometimes-subpar products, the pungent smell of dead or rotting meat in their grocery stores and the aged cornmeal or flour and other products on the shelves. The way nail technicians speak inside Korean nail shops while doing our hands and feet, laughing under their breath, as if they are talking about us beneath the cloak of their native tongue.
The way “they” drive in from their own suburban neighborhoods where there are few if any Black faces, and drive out at the end of the day with our dollars rarely to be recirculated in our own community. How even many police officers or other assorted public servants who make a living in our neighborhoods or municipalities make a living on us, retire comfortably on us, but choose to shop, live and commune in suburbs and towns far enough away from us. The way I get the sense, in the words of Michael Jackson: “That they don’t really care about us.”
Except I have long wondered how much “we” really care about us.
Not every one of these establishments or individuals renders the disrespect and ill treatment of which I speak, but far too many. And I must ask myself that if I say nothing or do nothing to address the issue whether I am a co-conspirator in my own community’s demise?
TRUTH IS, NO ONE forces us to spend our hard-earned money with the virtual carpetbaggers who exploit our community. We don’t have to buy haircare products from the Koreans or liquor, fried chicken and catfish nuggets or other products from Arabs.
We don’t have to buy their liquor or tobacco, or allow them to do our nails. We don’t have to purchase their kung pao or orange glazed chicken, or shrimp fried rice. But if we do choose to patronize them, we can also demand tangible reciprocity in terms of investment in our community, which feeds them.
Or we can create our own businesses. Seek to invest in our own community, in part, by demanding that chain stores, restaurants and other businesses, which have forsaken Black neighborhoods for white neighborhoods—assuming that if they abandon us, we will always like sheep follow—return if they want Black dollars. In terms of Black spending power nationally, it amounts to an estimated $1.6 trillion.
But as long as we are willing to go a whoring after Gucci, Prada, Fendi and other brand name products, or seek to satisfy our desire for fine dining at trendy restaurants and at shopping malls that lie outside the boundaries of where we live—thereby feeding the commercial tax bases of those municipalities—why would those businesses ever build in our community?
They won’t.
And we won’t stop going to Orland Park, or Tinley Park, or other various and sundry malls, restaurants and stores, but instead return home with our myriad packages, where we dwell in damn near economic deserts filled with fast-food joints and products that aggravate or excel diabetes, hypertension and obesity in our community—and that by our own hands drain our commercial economic base. Truth is, I have long realized that we hold our destiny in our own hands. That the cavalry ain’t coming. And that no one can save us but us.
For the record, I am not against Koreans, Chinese, Indian or Arabs owning and operating businesses in the Black community, and making as good living. I am simply pro-Black, pro-equality, pro-Black lives and pro- the uplift and posterity of my own community—just like every other group. And I am in favor of those who do business in our community treating us with respect and dignity. Not like niggers.
As I stood there in front of the female cashier whose hair was plaited African-American style in silken braids, the manager still keeping watch at the front door, something inside me snapped. I snapped.
“I was going to buy this but I can’t,” I said loud enough for the manager and the customers behind me to hear, though not shouting.
“I know that girl took something,” I said, “But he’s standing there watching us like we’re all thieves and robbers.
“…You don’t have no Black workers in here,” I continued in an unscripted monologue. “You come into our community and treat us like criminals. I just can’t,” I said, leaving the stainless-steel razor and beard grooming supplies I had planned to buy.
The cashier stood stunned and the manager simply kind of huffed, then moved away from the door. “I just can’t.”
I trudged out into the Sunday afternoon air and the surrounding ugliness of the beauty supply store.
Email: Author@Johnwfountain.com