The Black community has Koreans, Indians, Chinese owning many neighborhood stores. Now, we can make a bunch of points re: they're hard-working, more energetic, etc. Let's just say that's all true, for the purposes of this argument.
The black community does not like this. Many think these natural gathering places of their community should be owned by their community. The shop-owners may be perfectly nice people. But they aren't part of black culture, and not having them as part of that culture means that culture is fractured and less unified at the local level. That fracturing, per Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone" etc., has downstream consequences that are bad for the community as a whole. So does the lost opportunity for the creation of more black kids growing up with the basics of business and competition ingrained in them at a deeper level.
This sense is is often felt rather than articulated. What if it isn't wrong?
Because it's definitely operational racism to disfavor others, and favor or require black-owned businesses in their place. And it may not be a bad idea.
What if individuals are important, but aren't all there is? What if there's a community level that does not simply reduce to individuals? What if its coherence is important? What trade-offs then become acceptable? Why?
Leftists attempt to weasel out of these questions by citing "power imbalances." Utterly dishonest bulls-t, invoked without consistency or principle. The right has lost the ability to even talk about this problem, except in the alien and bankrupt language of globalist corporatism.
So where do we go from here? I think we start by questioning our priors. Entire.
I think this is a good example. It immediately strikes me as the very first type of operational racism, that of constraint of this theoretical black community against the asian merchants. No matter how successful these businesses are, their owners will never attain a higher level of social acceptability within said black community. The interaction between the groups would be bloodless and transactional instead of mutually rich and complex.
But as we look the ideological side, it is racialist to be sure, but not to the point of driving an agenda. We can easily imagine that nothing colorblind is going on here, that race matters and it might be racist in the soft way. Perhaps black children are given special instructions on how to talk to the Indian owner of the shop. Perhaps in school, the Chinese kids are instructed on how to interact with the black majority. But if you said, such matters are felt are felt rather than articulated, there is definitely a racialist component to the thinking. Here it makes no sense to say 'feeling' is any different than 'thinking'. Racism in hearts and minds are of the same piece unless people are truly confused about why they feel as they do.
To the point of what I've actually experienced of this scenario in actual fact in Los Angeles, there was definitely an expansion of Korean businesses into Crenshaw, most notably the Crenshaw Swap Meet in the former Barker Brothers Furniture building. Relations were hostile, and I experienced that hostility. During the LA Riots that building was torched. This was very different from the congenial yet constrained relations between blacks and Japanese in the same neighborhood throughout the 1980s. The shooting of LaTasha Harlins by a Korean shopkeeper for shoplifting orange juice fueled a huge amount of racial outrage that was simmering. The attitude of the Swap Meet owners who would literally force customers to line up outside of the building so as not to have too many 'shoplifters' in the building at once.
But the matter of business competition was that of ships passing in the night. There were three black-owned McDonalds franchises on Crenshaw, a slew of night clubs, wig shops and restaurants. There wasn't any black desire to own liquor stores or stalls at the swap meets. As well, the prior ownership by whites and Jews was not heavily contested. The Schwinn bike shop on Santa Barbara / MLK was well respected (Japanese) as was Karl's Toys & Hobbies (white). Black owned Family Savings owned the tallest building around and Crenshaw Christian Church was by far the most profitable entity around, more even than KJLH and Angeles Funeral Home. So the influence of larger black-owned businesses were not in direct competition.
After Rebuild LA, and in the end, big shot black business owners and people who business directly in Crenshaw leveraged the politics of crisis to force the sale of a beer distributorship. I forget the name of that black business, but it was with Coor's(!). Coor's, whose white owners had a racist reputation to the point of boycott. So blacks were negotiating up the food chain. Nobody wanted to run a liquor store in the 'hood, not those business majors I attended college with. There was a legendary superstore on Crenshaw and Stocker, The Liquor Bank. It was *the* spot. My brother worked there for the very hardnosed, skinflint, uppity black family that ran the joint with a non-trivial amount of contempt for customers and employees alike.
So this has made me think a bit about the dynamic. And I think it is consistently true that black communities will accept graft that promotes the upward influence of their own elites when their poorest victims get worked over. And I have a lot of confidence that this is fairly well established. All due respect but what has the cadre of John Lewis and Maxine Waters done that compares favorably to that of Magic Johnson, who has never been racially contentious and has earned the respect of his generation doing business in a better way. I have ethical issues with the inherited privileges of black America's Talented Tenth.
I think it is important that where we go from here is in some ways complicated by the Obama phenomenon. He came out of nowhere to grab the attention and respect of a national black community that he put together and has since come apart. The coherence of black communities is almost always negotiated from the top down in politics. It still is a racket run by Democrats and a handful of legendary names. Black politics is nowhere near as competitive, fair and anti-fragile as black sports. But I do give Obama positive credit for busting up many of the radical rackets. There was nothing else that was going to shut up Jackson, Sharpton and the Hoteps...
I wish things were more democratic and organic. But I know better. An individual like Lee Atwater or Mitch McConnell or AOC will always be able to aggregate a following. Nick Cannon has been Nick Cannon since day one. Those communities are really consumer markets. That's a sad truth.
Ok. Let's get into operational racism.
The Black community has Koreans, Indians, Chinese owning many neighborhood stores. Now, we can make a bunch of points re: they're hard-working, more energetic, etc. Let's just say that's all true, for the purposes of this argument.
The black community does not like this. Many think these natural gathering places of their community should be owned by their community. The shop-owners may be perfectly nice people. But they aren't part of black culture, and not having them as part of that culture means that culture is fractured and less unified at the local level. That fracturing, per Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone" etc., has downstream consequences that are bad for the community as a whole. So does the lost opportunity for the creation of more black kids growing up with the basics of business and competition ingrained in them at a deeper level.
This sense is is often felt rather than articulated. What if it isn't wrong?
Because it's definitely operational racism to disfavor others, and favor or require black-owned businesses in their place. And it may not be a bad idea.
What if individuals are important, but aren't all there is? What if there's a community level that does not simply reduce to individuals? What if its coherence is important? What trade-offs then become acceptable? Why?
Leftists attempt to weasel out of these questions by citing "power imbalances." Utterly dishonest bulls-t, invoked without consistency or principle. The right has lost the ability to even talk about this problem, except in the alien and bankrupt language of globalist corporatism.
So where do we go from here? I think we start by questioning our priors. Entire.
I think this is a good example. It immediately strikes me as the very first type of operational racism, that of constraint of this theoretical black community against the asian merchants. No matter how successful these businesses are, their owners will never attain a higher level of social acceptability within said black community. The interaction between the groups would be bloodless and transactional instead of mutually rich and complex.
But as we look the ideological side, it is racialist to be sure, but not to the point of driving an agenda. We can easily imagine that nothing colorblind is going on here, that race matters and it might be racist in the soft way. Perhaps black children are given special instructions on how to talk to the Indian owner of the shop. Perhaps in school, the Chinese kids are instructed on how to interact with the black majority. But if you said, such matters are felt are felt rather than articulated, there is definitely a racialist component to the thinking. Here it makes no sense to say 'feeling' is any different than 'thinking'. Racism in hearts and minds are of the same piece unless people are truly confused about why they feel as they do.
To the point of what I've actually experienced of this scenario in actual fact in Los Angeles, there was definitely an expansion of Korean businesses into Crenshaw, most notably the Crenshaw Swap Meet in the former Barker Brothers Furniture building. Relations were hostile, and I experienced that hostility. During the LA Riots that building was torched. This was very different from the congenial yet constrained relations between blacks and Japanese in the same neighborhood throughout the 1980s. The shooting of LaTasha Harlins by a Korean shopkeeper for shoplifting orange juice fueled a huge amount of racial outrage that was simmering. The attitude of the Swap Meet owners who would literally force customers to line up outside of the building so as not to have too many 'shoplifters' in the building at once.
But the matter of business competition was that of ships passing in the night. There were three black-owned McDonalds franchises on Crenshaw, a slew of night clubs, wig shops and restaurants. There wasn't any black desire to own liquor stores or stalls at the swap meets. As well, the prior ownership by whites and Jews was not heavily contested. The Schwinn bike shop on Santa Barbara / MLK was well respected (Japanese) as was Karl's Toys & Hobbies (white). Black owned Family Savings owned the tallest building around and Crenshaw Christian Church was by far the most profitable entity around, more even than KJLH and Angeles Funeral Home. So the influence of larger black-owned businesses were not in direct competition.
After Rebuild LA, and in the end, big shot black business owners and people who business directly in Crenshaw leveraged the politics of crisis to force the sale of a beer distributorship. I forget the name of that black business, but it was with Coor's(!). Coor's, whose white owners had a racist reputation to the point of boycott. So blacks were negotiating up the food chain. Nobody wanted to run a liquor store in the 'hood, not those business majors I attended college with. There was a legendary superstore on Crenshaw and Stocker, The Liquor Bank. It was *the* spot. My brother worked there for the very hardnosed, skinflint, uppity black family that ran the joint with a non-trivial amount of contempt for customers and employees alike.
So this has made me think a bit about the dynamic. And I think it is consistently true that black communities will accept graft that promotes the upward influence of their own elites when their poorest victims get worked over. And I have a lot of confidence that this is fairly well established. All due respect but what has the cadre of John Lewis and Maxine Waters done that compares favorably to that of Magic Johnson, who has never been racially contentious and has earned the respect of his generation doing business in a better way. I have ethical issues with the inherited privileges of black America's Talented Tenth.
I think it is important that where we go from here is in some ways complicated by the Obama phenomenon. He came out of nowhere to grab the attention and respect of a national black community that he put together and has since come apart. The coherence of black communities is almost always negotiated from the top down in politics. It still is a racket run by Democrats and a handful of legendary names. Black politics is nowhere near as competitive, fair and anti-fragile as black sports. But I do give Obama positive credit for busting up many of the radical rackets. There was nothing else that was going to shut up Jackson, Sharpton and the Hoteps...
I wish things were more democratic and organic. But I know better. An individual like Lee Atwater or Mitch McConnell or AOC will always be able to aggregate a following. Nick Cannon has been Nick Cannon since day one. Those communities are really consumer markets. That's a sad truth.