"WHITE MAN'S ICE" . .

. . .Is "Colder"?? 

My grandfather opened his dry-cleaning and tailoring business in 1907 on the north side of East Main St.  He struggled to keep his doors open for just short of fifty years; until the local politicians destroyed (razed to the ground) all black businesses on the north side of that block (to include the historic Maple Leaf Club).  The white-owned businesses on the south side of that block were left un-touched.  He weathered periodic thefts of funds from his accounts in the white-owned banks, and being burned out by his white competitor, but his most difficult business threat was the buying habits of his "Colored" customers.

 

We had customers of all colors, but the majority were from the north side of town where the "Colored" people were segregated.  The white customers  and some non-whites paid cash for their drycleaning or tailoring.  But the majority of "our people" asked for, and got credit.  We had to institute a "30-day" rule of confiscation to keep up with the drycleaning waiting for the owners who could no longer get credit from us.  We became their "closet".  When times got better, however, those same customers took their trade to our white competitor.  Some-how the white man's services were preferred.

 

From my experiences and conversations over many years with people from a wide portion of this country, I found that this phenomenon is common among segregated communities, and a surprising parallel exists within immigrant communities (many of them also segregated in their beginning).  The need to display economic advancement among oppressed and poor peoples takes on an exaggerated expression in this country -- it persists until this day!  This behavior leads to poor economic choices because they are driven by social, not economic, needs.  I saw this most recently in Miami among the Cubans.  Tom Wolfe brilliantly displays this phenomenon in is recent book,  Back To Blood;  shows how this thinking has spread to a wide range of behaviors among persons of color of all economic levels. 

 

Since the 1960's, when pressures from Integration led the more educated and economically advantged "Negros" to leave the ghetto to pursue white suburbia, this phenomenon has contributed mightily to the grossly over-leveraged financial conditions suffered by all of us.
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