Many years ago, I saw a video on Instagram of an experiment where the scientist put dozens of fleas in a jar and screwed on the lid. The fleas kept trying to jump out, but were unable to do so. For a considerable long time, the fleas continued to jump, bopping their little flea brains on the lid. After some time, the scientist took off the lid and while the fleas were definitely capable of jumping high enough to escape the jar, they continued to only jump as high as where the lid formerly was.
Then, the other day, I saw another video, again on Instagram, by a Chinese woman who talked about the Chinese were not allowed to open businesses in white neighborhoods because white people didn’t want them in their neighborhoods nor profiting off them. As a result, the Chinese were given loans to open their businesses in Black neighborhoods which has been detrimental to Black neighborhoods because the money leaves their neighborhoods twice. Once when the Black people in the neighborhood patronize their businesses, and a second time when the Chinese take the money out of the Black neighborhood, reinvests it in Chinese interests, and then doesn’t’ reinvest any of it back into the Black neighborhoods.
That got me thinking, about the fleas in the jar; if the Chinese are aware of this, then why are they still doing it despite there being no more redlining? Go to any Black neighborhood today and you’ll find a Chinese restaurant on just about every 5 blocks if not closer. I’m in the Bronx and there are 5 Chinese restaurants within two blocks in either direction of me. Not Japanese, not Indians, just the Chinese. So if they know this, then why are they willingly still doing it?
And then that got me thinking of all the other things specific groups do to other specific groups that they know are harming that group, but they still do it anyway. Now, I don’t honestly believe every Chinese person sets out to bankrupt Black neighborhoods, for the most part, I think they just don’t care, which is why they’re part of the problem too. So, at the end of the day, that’s exactly what they’re doing around the country in every Black neighborhood. I’ve lived on both coasts between New York City, Virginia and San Francisco, and been to Detroit and Chicago, and I’ve seen the same setup by the Chinese in every single one of them, everywhere I go. So then the question becomes, so why don’t Black people just stop shopping there? Well, that’s because the Chinese restaurants are also the cheapest in the neighborhood to get a hot fulfilling meal for only $5-$7. And when you’re running low on cash, that’s where you’re going to eat because it’s the cheapest. I guess now you’re asking yourself, “Well, why don’t Black people just cook at home?” Well, for the same goddamn reason many Americans don’t eat at home. Because it’s quick and just tastes fuckin’ good!
Just like the Chinese are fleas in a jar with planting their restaurants in Black neighborhoods, so are other groups of people who do the same damn thing; looking at the Arabs and Indians. And again, Black dollars are siphoned twice out of the neighborhoods and into someone else’s. Once when Black patrons shop there and again because both Arabs and Indians also do not reinvest back into black neighborhoods, not one damn bit. They don’t come in to start any community efforts; they’re there to take take take. Literally every non-white group has come int Black neighborhoods and siphoned money out, but Black people keep shopping there because they’re cheaper than the alternatives. It really is a messed up dynamic when every racial group has lived off the backs of Black people.
Conditioned behavior is certainly not a good thing because the group of people are doing it without realizing it, or realizing it and just not giving a fuck because, “Hey, it’s Black people.” But this is a huge problem among white Americans because they are also heavily conditioned, in fact- they’re the most conditioned group in the United States because they’re so easily duped and fight back at nothing. Especially once you put God in it, they’ll almost certainly just roll over for belly rubs without thinking twice.
Conditioned behavior among white Americans is pretty much intwined in every interaction when it comes to Black people. For example, white women will literally break down into tears or just flat out lie when they can’t get their way. It doesn’t matter if they’re poor or rich, they will devolve into big babies and have the same reaction. And if they feel like you deserved to be punished for transgressing them (because how dare you nigger!), they’ll even go as far as seeking revenge and call the cops or some other white meathead for a man that will hearken to their damsel in distress calls. I’ve literally had this happen to me from a white woman when I was a kid. I was alone at the playground, swinging on a swing when a white woman and her baby showed up. She saw me swinging but allowed her toddler to run around freely while her fat ass sat on the bench, so far away. And just like I feared, her toddler, still wearing diapers, runs out in front of my swing. I pulverized him and he laid on the ground screaming. She jumps up from the bench and screams, “I’m calling the COPS!” and I ran home. Another time a white woman did it, it was a coworker when she felt backed in a corner about something she did, and felt the need to blame me for it. I had absolutely nothing to do with the situation, hell, I wasn’t even around when it happened, and I didn’t even know what happened until rumors got back to me from other coworkers, yet because she’d been indoctrinated to think little of Black people, she felt comfortable just scapegoating me, the only Black person in the office. Especially when it comes to Black people, black men in particular, white women are conditioned to, when all else fails, to queue white woman tears to gain peoples’ sympathy. And with white men, if they’re losing the battle against a Black person, they’ll tell them how disrespectful they’re being and to lower their voice, or they just blow them off completely. That one is always a classic. Or another is when white men are losing the physical battle with a Black man, and the cops are in view, they run to the cops first, so they can tell them their side of the story first and act like a victim by appearing as “the good citizen”.
Without getting all into making this long, because I can keep going with the examples of racist behaviors white people are conditioned in doing, but I thought it was just something I’d write about since it bothered me so much. It’s very dystopian, disturbing and frightening that millions of people are trained to act a certain way towards another group of people on command when triggered even though the racist conditioning that created the behavior has been long since abolished. And when that mob has little to no resistance or pushback from their peers, it becomes so ingrained, that it morphs that group of people into a tribal, hysteric mob or rabid dogs. I think the most modern-day extreme example of it being the Palestinians and Israelis. The Israelis have engrained enraged hate into their hearts and religion so much, that they think of all Palestinians as being no more than animals. Even their President Netanyahu salivated at the thought of having all the Palestinians thrown out of Gaza, that he said the quiet part out loud that he wanted them all removed during a news conference with Trump. Israelis are like white women. They create situations, and then cry tears of woe when they know they’re the aggressors. Now, imagine that conditioned thinking going on for so long, that it becomes a habit among one group of people against another, so they continue to do it for years. For decades. For generations. And then it seems so normal, but when the people they are transgressing says they’re not going to take it anymore, the aggressors become angry and offended and actually defend their detrimental behavior. It’s hysteria. The people told you to stop, yet you keep doing it because you’ve built your life around a wrong and it inconveniences you when those you aggress pull the rug from under you. That’s so wild to me.
This is why white people aren’t going to stop with racism. This is why the Chinese, Arabs and Indians aren’t going to stop siphoning money out of Black neighborhoods. And this is why the Israelis are going to keep shafting the Palestinians. It’s why any aggressor is just going to keep stickin it to those who’ve they’ve been leeching off of. And they’ll all keep stickin it to those who they aggress, until they push back. The victims can’t legislate their way out of it, so the only way it’s going to end is either by stones or cash. And that’s exactly what happened here in the Bronx when the Chinese restaurant across the street disrespected the neighborhood somehow, that led to beef between the Chinese running the restaurant and the surrounding Black tenants. It ended in both “stones and cash” in that there were heated confrontations and then the neighborhood boycotted them and they went out of business. That all happened just before I moved in, but from what I’ve heard, it didn’t go down nicely.
That said, everyone wants to fight just racism but maybe we should be bringing awareness to more things because everything that looks like racism, isn’t always racism, but has the same outcome. As a result, those instances get blown off as whining or as being “woke” as what white people are calling it now (eyeroll). With racism, there is an intent to be prejudiced while with bad conditioned behavior, it’s just a habit because its what they’ve been taught or people they’ve known have always done. We should be pushing back on conditioned behavior too, but it has to be up to the family and peers of the groups doing it, to check their peoples because it starts at home and they’re certainly not going to listen to a Black person telling them to stop.
I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be Chinese, Arab or Indian stores in Black neighborhoods, I’m saying they need to participate, contribute and invest in the neighborhoods they’re in, because they’re here the same amount of days of the week and hours that we are, or they’re just proving white racists right by doing exactly why they didn’t want them in their neighborhoods in the first place; invading and profiting off them. Give back by hiring Black workers around the neighborhood, or participating in community cookouts, give back without expecting a kickback because Black neighborhoods are very family-oriented and built on helping one another. So for Chinese, Arabs and Indians to come in our neighborhoods and not doing that, and just being stand-offish, makes them look like an opposing force and that’s why there’s a barrier every time they pop up and confrontations don’t end well. After all, it was a Korean storekeeper in a Black neighborhood that murdered a Black teen over a bottle of orange juice. Had that storekeeper had a better relationship with the neighborhood, she wouldn’t have fell to her biases and felt comfortable attacking and killing a child over a $2 juice that the girl had already paid for. It’s not enough to smile and just be “nice”, they also have to physically show up for the hood other than just being behind the counter at their restaurant holding their hands out. At this point, they’re leeches and thieves being yet another group living off the backs of the generosity of Black people.
Groups who know they’re doing wrong against another group should unlearn their bad habits and take the onus on theirselves to just stop being fleas in a jar, so groups don’t have to resort to retaliating with stones or cash to check em. 🦉
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