Note: This piece was composed a few weeks ago, but not posted because it didn’t seem… postworthy. But it makes a nice pairing with the San Francisco piece from earlier today; same theme, the idiotic economic practices of urban utopian progressives.
Trader Joe’s … which I believe is a well-regarded retail establishment among progressive lefties… wanted to build a new store on a vacant lot in Portland, Oregon and bring jobs, business opportunities, and revenues to an economically challenged area of the city. This made a group of grievance-mongers very angry, and so they rose in protest against the store’s construction.
The loudest complaints came from PAALF, the Portland African American Leadership Forum. The group sent a blistering letter to city leaders in December, demanding a stop to the process and calling it “fraught with injustice.”
“Injustice” meaning that jobs and opportunity were going to be brought into their community, apparently. Anyway, they succeeded,Trader Joe’s canceled their development plans. But the grievance-mongers … surprise surprise… still weren’t happy. And issued new demands:
PAALF leaders said the development commission should publish a comprehensive accounting of the tax increment financing and spending in the Interstate corridor urban renewal area and compose a legally binding community benefits agreement to ensure the employment of African Americans in the construction of PDC sites.
Gee, it’s almost as though they are more interesting in constantly airing their grievances than having actual economic development in their community.
Well, you see, they were afraid those Trader Joe’s jobs were going to go to whites, and you can’t have whites working in da ‘hood.
Think I’m kidding? Find a Trader Joe’s and notice how many blacks are employed there. Yes, some, but not all, you see.
Seems Trader Joe’s wants to hire people who are good at what they do, rather than having a sufficent amount of melanin in their skin.
But the PAALF isn’t racist, oh no…
I live in the Portland area, and followed this story with some interest. You can see what I had to say about it here: http://bkivey.wordpress.com/2013/12/27/prosperity-for-me-but-not-for-thee/
So freaking selfish. So basically, since some blacks aren’t intelligent enough to work for TJ’s because they think being educated is racial treason, or are too racist and prideful to take orders from white people, or think putting on a clean button-down shirt and slacks is oppression, they think it is within their rights to deny people who are intelligent, humble, and decent enough to work at TJ’s the chance to do so.
Sometimes, the hands putting you in chains are your own.
P.S. I don’t intend this to mean that all black people are too stupid or uncouth to work at TJ’s. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing some very intelligent and industrious black kids; warm and compassionate to a t. My favorite professor was a History teacher from Bermuda. I don’t want anybody calling me racist. Although, that word’s been thrown around so much recently, it’s basically become a sound, not a word.
Some would rather bitterly-complain about the blatant institutionalized-racism of their having to drive all-the-way-out-to-the-suburbs, …than allow a nice Korean grocery or Persian-owned liquor store to open right down the street.
I lived in Atlanta for a couple of years back in the 1990s. The tension between the African-American community and the rest of Atlanta was horrible. I was happy to return to the midlands of South Carolina were local politics, while still not perfect, is still much better. And, now South Carolina has an African-American Senator, the first since Reconstruction, in the United States Senate………….. and, he is a Republican!!!!!