Comments on: Andrew Young and Urban Economics

By: Majikthise

Majikthise — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 03:55:13 +0000

Corner stores, ethnicity, and economics

Andrew Young, a civil rights activist turned mouthpiece for Wal-Mart, who was forced to resign after making racist remarks about corner store owners: In the interview, published yesterday in The Los Angeles Sentinel, a weekly, Mr. Young said that Wal-Mart

By: Lindsay Beyerstein

Lindsay Beyerstein — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 01:33:36 +0000

Furthermore, Nicholas, why would you expect black people to be more willing than their white counterparts to go into debt to start a corner store, given all the drawbacks you rightly attribute to the lifestyle? The whole point of starting your own business is to end up better off than you would be if you worked a job.
Running a corner store may be the best option for people who know very little the options available to them in mainstream American society, have poor English skills, and have a small army of extended family from whom they can extract free labor.
Otherwise, who needs the risk and the responsibility? If your goal is to improve your kids’ lot in life, why not let them focus on their studies instead of conscripting them into your unpaid workforce? Or, for that matter, let them work for real minimum wage at the local Blockbuster or Seven-11, which at least have safes, daily cash pickups, and video surveillance?

By: Majikthise

Majikthise — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 16:15:27 +0000

Corner stores, ethnicity, and economics

Michael Young, a civil rights activist turned mouthpiece for Wal-Mart, who was forced to resign after making racist remarks about corner store owners: In the interview, published yesterday in The Los Angeles Sentinel, a weekly, Mr. Young said that Wal-…

By: Nezua Lim�n Xoloquinta-Jonez

Nezua Lim�n Xoloquinta-Jonez — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 14:23:46 +0000

JR, you shouldn’t knock a little self-exploitation. When the day gets stressful, sometimes it really helps you blow off some steam, you know? Or just when you’re feeling happy.

By: Nicholas Stix

Nicholas Stix — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 06:04:35 +0000

The extraordinary thing is that he was caught out at all. He said what he believes, and what millions of other blacks believe. (That�s the least of it. They are getting �rich� through �tricks.� They are backed through �drug money� from “the Rev. Sun Myung Moon,� etc., etc.) It’s ugly stuff, and it’s been that way for generations.
Young never thought he would get in trouble for anything he said to a racist black newspaper, because there has always been an unwritten rule whereby white-owned newspapers and TV news operations don�t touch anything published by black media.
Back in 1989, when the woman known as the Central Park Jogger was singled out, based on the color of her skin, and was beaten, raped, and left for dead by a black and Hispanic mob (mostly black with two Hispanics), the white media protected her privacy. But New York�s black newspapers printed her name repeatedly in every single article of the countless ones they devoted to the story. They declared war on that poor woman. As a result, while virtually no whites outside of law enforcement and the media knew the victim�s name, every black in the city of New York knew it. (Although I ran my own magazine at the time, I learned her name through the black newspapers.)
But white-owned media never criticized the KKK-style racism of the black media. Years later, the victim revealed her identity to the non-black public: Her name is Tricia Meili.
Young�s diatribe is such a longtime black clich�, that Spike Lee devoted a running dialogue to it among three black men in Do the Right Thing (1989), who while sitting around doing nothing, constantly complain about Korean shopkeepers. Or rather two complain; the third criticizes the other two.
Such immigrant shopkeepers are part of the phenomenon Thomas Sowell has dubbed �middle-man minorities,� and their lives are hell. In addition to working up to 100 hours a week for less than the minimum wage, they suffer abuse, assault, shoplifting and robbery by the scum of the earth, and are lucky if they get out alive.
No one is keeping blacks from running such businesses. They simply have no stomach for the hours, the abuse, and the low hourly returns, but they won�t admit it, so they cry racism instead.

By: mr.ed

mr.ed — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 01:48:34 +0000

New York is not the rest of the country. Many of the groups mentioned were evidently shut out of the coffee shop business elsewhere by not showing up or taking another path. Numbnuts!

By: Lindsay Beyerstein

Lindsay Beyerstein — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 00:39:52 +0000

It’s the corner store business model–not the ethnicity of the people who run it. When I lived in Boston, our corner store operators were predominantly Boston Irish.
On my new street in Brooklyn, I count two Middle Eastern, one Korean, one Anglo-American, and three Hispanic-run convenience stores. They all suck, if you want to buy groceries.
All the owners/managers work as hard as any hedge fund manager or doctor I know, and they’ve got their kids learning the family business, too. Running a corner store is a nasty business–you get all the hassles (FIC, annoying neighbors, etc, etc), all the risk of robbery (without the fancy electronic safes like at Seven-11), extortion from the local mob, and zero prestige. Don’t kid yourself. Being a corner storekeeper is not considered a high-class job in any culture that I’m aware of. And, in my neighborhood gives all due respect to pipefitters, drywall hangers, the owners of greasyspoon diners, etc. Running the corner store is a thankless job.
I have enormous admiration for the families that survive in the corner store business. It’s a harder job than I could ever do.
These folks aren’t getting rich by any stretch of the imagination. They’re just trying to get by like anyone else. The service they provide is convenience–at considerable risk to themselves. The Korean grocery story on my block got robbed and the clerk/co-owner was severely beaten. I think she was back at work in a sling the very next day. But it was weeks before her face was recognizable.

By: Lindsay Beyerstein

Lindsay Beyerstein — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 00:26:01 +0000

Fishbane’s right. This is classic pandering. As someone who lives in a dense urban area, I know that corner stores usually have crappy groceries at high prices.
It has nothing to do with the race of the owners, it’s pure economics. These little stores pay relatively high overhead for minimal space. The bulk of their profit comes from prepackaged snack foods and alcohol.
Nothing wrong with that, intrinsically. That’s what convenience stores are for. Where are little corner stores supposed to put fresh meats, produce, and low fat dairy products? Which high quality distributors would supply 15 different quickie marts with eight fresh tomatoes per day when they could deliver the equivalent inventory to one huge supermarket?

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 22:55:32 +0000

JR, what does it mean to say that someone exploits himself?

By: Bizzyblog

Bizzyblog — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 21:41:20 +0000

Weekend Question 1: How Did Wal-Mart Allow Itself to Get Embarrassed by Andrew Young?

Okay, I’ve moved this up from when I planned to post it because:
- A lot of people are covering it.
- I want to glom some traffic from them.
- Not necessarily in that order.
__________________________________
ANSWER TO QUESTION: It’s part o…

By: JR

JR — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 20:33:05 +0000

The ethnic shopkeepers stay in business because they exploit the hell out of themselves and their families. Next time you shop at a Korean greengrocers or dry cleaners, ask the nice young woman behind the counter how many hours she works. Chances are she works for her parents 12 hours a day 7 days a week, with a half-day on Sunday for church and a full Sunday off twice a month. But she’s not earning less than minimum wage — in fact she doesn’t get paid at all and lives at home, where she sleeps on a sofa bed in the living room. Eventually, by working themselves to the bone and living on rice, the family will able to buy a 4-unit apartment building. That’s how a family moves from poverty to the middle class in one generation.
African-Americans don’t have the family structure and they don’t have the culture of self-denial that some immigrant ethnic groups do. This doesn’t mean they don’t work hard, because they do, but it does mean that the willingness to exploit yourself and your family ruthlessly for years on end is not widespread.

By: Bernard Yomtov

Bernard Yomtov — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 19:53:07 +0000

If Young was simply expressing concern over the lack of black-owned businesses he did not need to talk about “overcharging,” and “ripping off,” and “bad meat,” etc.
That is the language of bigotry, not aspiration.

By: Nezua Lim�n Xoloquinta-Jonez

Nezua Lim�n Xoloquinta-Jonez — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 19:12:33 +0000

I agree with Brett Bellmore, the commenter above. More of the fallout from this incident needs to be laid at the feet of Tupac Shakur. And perhaps Eazy-E, too. I know they didn’t comment on the issue, and well…that they’re dead, but any thinking person can see their hand in this grocery problem. As well as the blue coffee-cup aspect of the whole affair. Wake up, America.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 18:13:00 +0000

A brief reply to serial catowner.
It’s not clear–I have seen no evidence–that Wal-Mart pays lower wages than the small stores that have been unable to compete with them. In many of these small stores, wages are at–or below–the minimum wage.

By: American Citizen

American Citizen — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 18:09:45 +0000

To me, it sounded naive AND racist.

By: Pithlord

Pithlord — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 16:58:20 +0000

Why is this racist? Young’s saying different ethnic groups have different interests, which is true, and the beginning of wisdom about politics. I suspect a lot of blacks agree with him, because they have bad memories of how they were treated by non-black store owners. They are treated better (as a general rule) by Wal-Mart, and the lower prices are nice too. Of course, those store owners have their own stories to tell, but are we really better off not knowing or talking about these conflicts? Should Amy Chua not have written her book?
It seems a bit much for America to respond to every black leader who speaks honestly about ethnic relations by denouncing him as a “racist.” It’s a neat trick, but it’s a bit much.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 15:21:38 +0000

He’s not angry with “the only people who are providing his neighborhood with a quart of milk”–he’s angry with the non-Wal-Mart people.
The difference appears to be that Wal-Mart offers higher quality for less money.
I think the investment Wal-Mart and other major retailers are making in urban areas around the country is a good thing, offering consumers in those areas better access to high quality goods at lower prices. That’d be true whether the current small-store owners were black or Jewish or anything else.

By: SamChevre

SamChevre — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 14:02:47 +0000

I have a theory of why African-Americans do not open as many trading businesses as some other ethnic groups, but I can�t substantiate it. That theory is that cultures matter. Africans, when they were brought to the Americas as slaves, were socialized into a particular English culture that considered shop-keeping low status�the high-status positions were the clergy, the professions, the civil service, and ownership of land. (For example�the big-name retailers in the plantation South are almost all Jewish�Thalhimers, Hechts, etc.) The alternative culture was the Scots-Irish hill country culture, which again considered store-keeping relatively low-status; the high-status positions were fighting-related�the military, the police, producing and trading in illegal goods�or, again, related to land ownership. Neither of these cultures values shop-keeping, and neither of them develop the character qualities suitable for shop-keeping�and so people from these cultures, black and white, are rarely shop-keepers.

By: serial catowner

serial catowner — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 11:58:30 +0000

When Wal-Mart comes to town it doesn’t matter if the residents are poor blacks who have a hard time earning enough for the rent, or third-generation storeowners who are white. The local merchants get driven out of business.
And, of course, it’s stupid to talk about the low prices when it means people make even lower wages.
The white merchants in our small town who were ruined by Walmart certainly weren’t listening to rap music.

By: Brett Bellmore

Brett Bellmore — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 11:00:26 +0000

Maybe a cultural effect of Tupac and Snoop Doggy Dogg? After all, African Americans aren’t only acted upon, they also themselves act… It can’t ALL be the fault of the “other”, some of it has to be themselves.

By: James Wimberley

James Wimberley — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 08:52:35 +0000

The scorched earth effect of Walmart and other large-scale retailers on Mom-and Pop stores means that this traditional avenue of advancement must have largely closed anyway. Are Hispanics opening corner stores?
But you are right: it’s an important and surely answerable question why African-Americans shun or are shut out of small-scale commerce. I think you see the same pattern in Britain, where (subject to correction) Afro-Caribbean Brits typically see the public sector as the avenue for advancement; but not in Africa, see the famous Nigerian market women. A long-run cultural effect of slavery and Jim Crow?

By: fishbane

fishbane — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 07:21:44 +0000

The racism is classic pandering. I’m not sure I agree with you about the rest of the analysis (although it is good), but we’re talking politics, and race is becoming (once again) an issue. Did he make a racist comment? I think so. Would it help his effort to get out the vote? Maybe. Was it a bad idea, now that all political races are national? Obviously.