WalterWilliams: A few years ago, BET had a commentary titled “Where Are the Grocery Stores in Black Neighborhoods?” One wonders whether anyone thinks that the absence of supermarkets in predominantly black neighborhoods means that white merchants do not like dollars coming out of black hands. Racial discrimination cannot explain the absence of supermarkets in black communities.
Compare the operation of a supermarket in a low-crime neighborhood with that of one in a high-crime neighborhood. You will see differences in how they operate. Supermarkets in low-crime neighborhoods often have merchandise on display near entrances. They may have merchandise left unattended outside the store, such as plants and gardening material. Often these items are left out overnight. Supermarket managers’ profit maximizing objective is to maximize merchandise turnover per square foot of leased space. The economic significance of being able to have merchandise located at entrances and outside is the supermarket manager can use all of the space he leases. more here
…not to mention the bars on the windows, etc etc.
“It is by no means flattering to law-abiding black people that “black” has become synonymous with “crime.””
Yeah, well…and the Leftist blacks project it all on “whitey.”
At this point, I’m 100% *YAWN*.
I’d tell them, “look in the mirror,” if it hadn’t been stolen already.
The author must be RAAACIST !!!, we can accept no other explanation for this !
The Albertson’s grocery store a couple of blocks away from my house on a busy intersection closed about 5 years ago for this very reason. It was getting run down was poorly lit and attracted a lot of customers from a local area we call felony flats with a lot of welfare people and some criminal types. My wife refused to shop there after a while and we did our grocery shopping else where. However the Safeway across the street has not had this problem. And now the lowlifes go to the Wally World up the hill a couple of miles away. It also didn’t help any when a retarded guy who was totally harmless and everyone knew was killed by a couple of punk kids for no reason behind the Albertsons about 15 or so years ago.
As I recall when I visited Watts some years ago that there weren’t any Grocery stores there due to the fact that the residents burned them down!
It sure would be difficult to run a successful business when it is on fire!
I’m waiting for the post office to close its doors. I can’t go in there without a homeless person sleeping on the floor. I have to call the police and have them get the guy out of there. The other day there were two sleeping on the floor. I had to go to another post office to mail something and a cop walks in and asks where the men are sleeping. I piped up and told him he was at the wrong post office! I shop at the grocery store that is more expensive because the EBT crowd can’t afford to shop there.
But the EBT crowd will willingly shop at a local stop and rob like 7-11. Circle K etc. that charge far more than a grocery store would for the same item just for the convenience. Who’s the one getting ripped off, it’s not people who shop at regular grocery stores. And besides I can’t even remember the last time I had a Slurpee, I stay out of so called convenience stores. Convenience stores are the equivalent of pay day loan places, they both rip you off.
I like Walter Williams writing style. You don’t have to stop to look up words, or strain to understand because it is in plain language. Seems to me the point of a lot of writers is be overly intellectual and use five dollar words when a twenty-five cent word will work just as good. That really assays my assiduity.
The biggest problem is NOT the rare “riot”,
but rather the slow, steady and CONSTANT
THEFT and VANDALISM.
It’s a “cultural thang”, baby.
This is the problem with events like Ferguson and the “news” media’s support of them. It renders a neighborhood into a bad investment. And the only people who knowingly make bad investments are the government. Once people who own the businesses declare a neighborhood to be a bad investment the businesses that are already there leave, and no new businesses will come in. “Race” has nothing to do with it. This is econ 101 stuff.
Currently witnessing this first hand. We’ve always had access to grocery stores nearby, 16+ years ago there was a Jewel, Dominicks and Strack & Van Til all within a mile of each other. Then about 5-6 years later they built a WalMart in between with a Target down the street. Since then Dominicks and Strack & Van Til have gone to Marianos and Tonys which are a little more upscale than their predecessors.
However that nice new WalMart was changed into a Super WalMart about 2-3 years later. Then the economy took a dump and people started foreclosing in large swaths, there’s currently 3 vacant houses within my block. The banks however haven’t unloaded these properties and those that did resell are now mostly rentals with banks also renting properties.
So in the past 4-5 years I’ve noticed some disturbing changes in the racial makeup around here. At the same time, WalMart is getting dirtier and dirtier and many times I’m in there, I’m the only cracker in the box. Carts are no longer left in cart corrals, they all have wobbly wheels. There’s garbage and shit all over the parking lot, I can’t even tell you how many black women I’ve seen spit on the ground walking in. I walk down the bread isle and there’s frozen food stuffed in between loaves of bread, because that’s how these black people roll. They fill up their cart and as they see better stuff or figure they’re short on money, they simply take something out of the cart, put it on the shelf and take the other item. They also stroll around the middle of the isle droning on and on to someone through a bluetooth device, I always wonder if they’re just talking to themselves.
I still go to WalMart for deals on stuff that’s priced higher at other stores, but I’m very selective in what I purchase. If it’s on the front of the shelf, I reach behind and grab stuff stocked behind it because it’s less likely to smell like dirty feet when I get it home.
A few years back the city shamed Publix into opening a shiny new store on MLK blvd, where else.
A friend I have known since grade school was the manager, his first chance in the big office, it’s closed now. He told me the theft was unbelievable, they didn’t even try and hide it, picked up stuff and walked out, no subterfuge.
They walked through the line, checked out using the EBT card, holding huge “purses” that clearly had groceries that were stolen. If they involved the law, the same people were in the store the next week, sporting a new weave, fresh nails and the same old attitude.
He is unemployed now, thanks America.
These stores need to grow a spine and simply say, “We are not gonna subject our employees to savagery, therefore we are NOT going to rebuild our CVS that was burned down by animals. They have now lost the privilege of having this convenience. If the public chooses to evolve back into a civilized community then we’ll be back. But, for now, our new policy is: We only operate among civilized Americans.”
Not holding my breath, but the national chain who did this would be championed by good people all over the nation.
I’m with Irony on this one. When I saw that they burned a CVS in Baltimore my first reaction was : “Now the people will whine if a new replacement isn’t rebuilt in a timely manner”.
How bout the Japanese stores where shoppers use touch screen monitors to select their items? Shoppers go to a check stand, pay, then are handed their bag of groceries. Obama’s sons have to go somewhere else to do their Christmas shoplifting.
They’d just steal the monitors.
“Why canst I get me some Netfix on this?”
Look on the positive side of experiencing all that there – What else can have you feel like your own life is pretty damn good AND you get free entertainment!
Take pics, write a book. Make money off them! lol
Irony, I believe Quik Trip refused to rebuild their convenience store that was looted and burned in Ferguson. It’s the only place I buy gas now!
awd
Sad, you just described most of Van Nuys, California which filled with illegals. It’s a slice of the filthy 3rd world. Last time I stopped by just for shits and giggles, there were people in a grocery store who had eaten straight out of the packages on the shelves and there were diapers on the ground outside. Not in the big trashcan in front of the store that wasn’t full, just outside on the ground along with empty food cartons in the parking lot.
A lot of supermarkets close because they have no cash. They take in EBT all day and they have no cash to operate with. It’s common in the ghettos and even in the nicer area surrounding them. Because eventually, shit slides outwards.
As for walmart, the crime associated with them is why a lot of places, including my town, won’t allow them in. They don’t take control of their store and allow too much crap to happen without standing up to it. They’re worse than Kmart used to be. Remember Kmart? Moms beating their wild ass kids in the aisles, men beating their wives while, ironically, wearing wifebeaters. lol.
You wouldn’t be able to read the screens after they’ve been scratch up with gang tags.
Today, Watts is Ferguson and Baltimore and Detroit.
When you have no self respect, there is no respect for anything else.
I saw a post somewhere about ghetto life, they had those anti-theft devices on Slim Jims!
Then I had had a thought.
There is no place that is conducive to becoming a ghetto.
It is the behavior of the residents that produces a ghetto.
My old man picked fruit and his occupation on my birth certificate is ‘Laborer’
My mom would not abide a dirty house. Even with no electricity and a hand pump in the sink.
I feel bad for the old people and the single mothers who can’t move.
Everybody else: Screw-em
First, I have to care.
When I worked in beautiful (huh!) downtown Cleveland I shopped at the only grocery chain that dared exist in the inner city, Dave’s. The parking lot had a lot of low lifes but the store itself was bright clean and appreciated by the locals from the 2 project areas. The cashiers were pleasant, courteous and efficient.
The store had everything for my husband’s much-loved Cajun cooking. Greens like I haven’t seen in northern stores elsewhere, every part of the pig and smoked too, really excellent meats and much lower prices.
They also had no-nonsense security guards. This was 10 years ago so maybe things have changed or maybe Cleveland was the anomaly.
I never felt afraid going there like I did in one of the pricey Heinen’s in the newly gay Lakewood neighborhood. No security, scum bums in the parking lot, huge bushes around part of the lot that encouraged lurkers, dirty, dingy store with high prices.
Now I’m in a semi-rural area I shop at locally owned or Ohio owned places. Too damn many Moslem trash bag wearers at Aldi’s and Giant Eagle.
MJA I’m afraid that is the case everywhere. I can’t go to Mexican vahalla as we call Walmart here even though they are island hispanic. Diapers everywhere, trash lined streets, free range kids, punka-chinka music blaring from cars, all seemingly screaming at each other. I’m looking forward to moving to small town America this summer a place I can shoot in the air to warn vegetable thieving bastards if they’re in the yard.
These last six years have been the tipping point where I live. Call me rayciss …
Walter Williams is black. He’s an Uncle Tom.
As to pizza delivery and Comcast refusing, we have a patient in the projects here who calls us to come see her but won’t arrange to let us in her building. She thinks it’s amusing, making us ask the other residents let us in. We told her we were going to stop coming to see her as it was too dangerous, and oh, by the way, no safe nurse visit, no refill on your pain meds.
Now she gets us in. However I have refused to see her again. Still not safe unless we go as a team.
Still SMH on that CVS. That store provided many of life’s daily necessities as well as jobs for members of the community. WTF were they thinking when they torched it? “Let’s burn down this sucker; that oughtta stick it to Whitey?”
Dumbasses.
Every property insurance I have had included a clause that exempted them form paying for damage done during civil unrest. I damn well better protect it during that time if I want to keep it from being destroyed.
I would be very surprised if rebuilding didn’t come at a direct cost to the company’s bottom line and not a penny form an insurance company..
Insurance companies are not stupid, but if you want to rebuild where the likelihood of being burned down again is high – well that’s on you, dummy.
I already refrain form doing business where interlopers interfere with my job and destroy my property. More than once some self righteous do-gooder has ruined a live trap to free whatever animal I’ve trapped overnight. I let the customer know they’ll have to buy me new traps if they want me to continue. Sometimes this has resulted in retaliation damage to my customer’s property once the city gets involved and reads the offending neighbor the riot act. I have trail cameras – we know who does what.
Speaking of cart corrals. I was at Homo Depot er Home Depot earlier in the week, witnessed a nagger empty his merchandise to his truck and leave the cart in the space next to his parked truck. The corral was a distant twenty feet in either direction with plenty of space in both. I can’t tell you how pissed I was after witnessing this lame act. Had I been packing, I may have shot the pos in the leg just to make a point.
Those fucks are so lazy it boggles the mind. Did said pos believe that the rest of us should have to move the cart so we can park our vehicles? Ir wasn’t bad enough that the designers placed the entrances/exits on the wrong side of the building so the customers couldn’t have to compete for parking with the social service dead?