What do you say?

I'm writing this post at the Berkeley public library, I should be at work right now, but I'm just wondering about the futility of it all. Being African-American I really chafe at the changes taking place in America, particularly how this have effected African-Americans. We've been displaced in employment, and incarcerated, and left treated less than third class citizens, in a country we helped to build.

With role-models like Martin Luther King jr, I tried to conduct a little contructive change myself, by protesting businesses I thought were unfair to Blacks. For instance go to your local hamburger joint , in a city like Oakland, California which majority consisted of African-Americans, how come more of the people working behind the counters in these places are Asian, or Latino. You see few African-Americans. This is made worse by the bad treatment I get when I go to these places. I used get a choice if I could have by burger " for here" or to "go". Mostly I get my food served to go, by your friendly Latino or Asian. What ever happened to having it your way!

I got fed up with this and protested "ala" MLK style, with a poster , only to find out that the manager of that business is African-American.

Businesses that cater to African-Americans , ( Hair products) are run by Asians...Driving the African American businesses out. But African-Americans do a lot of business at these places. You figure we be able to do the math. Blacks shopping, but not working, neither do we own a lot of the businesses. More and more youth get discouraged or cannot deal with the competition in the work place.

I met this one Black teenager who used to work in a Burger joint, a sweet girl. a black teenager girl working around a lot of Asian, Latino youths..in a town and customers who are majority black. ( At least Back then) I saw her, one day in the local bookstore crying, I asked her why, She said," I quit my job", why I asked, "because they were ragging on me too much". And then another black teen girl got fired in the local bookstore, practically right in front of me, for just " talking back to her boss alittle". I know the owner of that store, a nice guy. He was probably in a bad mood, or had longstanding problems with her, but it seems like a petty reason to fire her. Oh the problems of these black teens.

I 'd take some ideas to these businessmen , like in the case of the Black manager who runs a burger joint, but mostly seems to hire latinos and Asians. I'd ask him why? "WHY? "because Black teenagers don't want to work"! He says. Or the Koreans who run a Hair shop, selling hair products that cater to Blacks. I try to tell some of the other blacks catering that shop, to go spend their money on a hair shop that caters to black people , run by Black people. The only problem with this is that this shop rents out a small barbershop that's run by Blacks. So what do you say? If I hurt the Korean s running that shop, its affect the poor brothers renting out that place. So I kind of gave up the idea of canvassing, or protesting businesses. But it gives you the idea of the state of African-American businesses in Oakland, there aren't very many. And the primary ones who do own business hiring Black American youths doesn't seem to be a priority.