When I read that City Council Chairman Yusuf Hakeem threatened not to fund the city's transportation department because he said transportation officials were opposed to funneling money into a private taxi company my blood "boiled."
This taxi service is primarily used by the black community. Currently most of our tax money is going to subsidize their (black community) rent, electricity, food and money for street drugs. I have had enough.
I came from the driver safety inspection facility on Riverfront Parkway yesterday and took a wrong turn into the ghetto and onto a dead end street. This was the time of day when people who are able to work should be at work. I noticed a group of at least six black men (of working age) standing on the sidewalk listening to very loud music coming from several of their cars. There was nothing about their appearance which would indicate that they were too infirm to pursue gainful employment.
It is written "between the lines" in the Ghetto; Give me more and I will give nothing in return. If we do not give them what they want they will take it.
I am not prejudging and I am backed up by the statistics which bear my thesis out to be valid.
Charlie Benson
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My guess is Mr. Charlie Benson never heard of such a thing as second shift, third shift or swing shift jobs. Not everyone is lucky enough to land a 9-5, Mr. Benson, and those young black men could very well be holding down jobs of different hours outside what you consider the norm.
You should watch that "boiling-blood" too. You could very well pop a major artery and end up in MICU, CICU or something over your "prejudging."
Brenda Manghane-Washington
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I think our eyes need a wide angle lens here. I pulled into to the BP the other day behind a shiny new $40,000 Chevy 4x4 crew cab. Big and black and I guess it would cost $40,000, I don't know. I do know it's worth a heck of a lot more than my beat up but paid for 150. Anyway, the guy's a young man in clean working man's clothes and he's on his way to work, I assume. I'm a petty jerk because my first thought was "How does that young wage earner pay for a giant new truck like that?" I went for the coffee and he went for two honey buns and a Mellow Yellow. I followed him up to the counter and he dug for his wallet. The cashier said "will that be all?" He said yes and handed him his...... EBT card.
What the heck, man? A single mom or an entire family buying food at Wally World? All day long fine with that. I don't know their situation and kids must be fed. But a white boy with a $700 a month truck payment and we all pay for his honey buns? Why can't every person involved with that man see what's so nauseously wrong with this picture?
The guy may have a legitimate reason for this, maybe three kids and a woman back at the trailer, but I think he could do his image, and everybody else on the planet, a huge favor if he did his life's toil in a S-10 while on assistance. Ya think?
Talk about blood boiling. Who's fault is this? Everybody's.
Moral: Don't just point fingers at black folks. Entitlement stupidity is quite color blind.
Savage Glascock
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Well, Brenda is at it again. If they were working a different shift, they would be eating, sleeping or prepping for work. You can't deny the crime issues in the area he addressed, but you, Brenda Washington will deny it. Don't worry about Mr. Benson popping an artery, he's just sick of the statistics that you ignore.
I understand what Charlie Benson is feeling. Regardless of the skin color in those "bad" areas, the loiterers usually are up to no good. I also agree that, rather than hangin' and bangin,' these young men should be lining up for employment or, if already employed, they could be helping to stop the rampant crime in these areas by mentoring, addressing the gang issues, ensuring the community is communicating and finding ways to empower the youth "pre-gang."
Savage Glascock, you hit it better than you do a tennis ball. The issue today with welfare isn't the skin color, but the blatant abuse of the system by all colors/creeds. I was behind a lady with three kids under the age at Bi-Lo. The cashier asked her the usual questions "paper or plastic," "do you have a bi-lo card," etc. to which she replied with giggles while speaking spanish into her phone. Not a word of English did she speak, but she promptly whipped out her EBT card.
Glad the founding fathers aren't here to see the mess we've allowed our country to become.
Netta Dean