So, predictably (thus, often predicted) Darker Skinned Americans are now, in an unofficially official manner, targeted by “law” Enforcement once more merely because of our “dark brooding menacing swarthy appearance”. A matter of Fear which often visits the Ruling Class. I used to experience it every summer during Revival Season, because some preachers like to pump up the “Jungle Fever” Hamites-and-other-persons-of-color-being-born-evil blatant racism. Get down from the trees and onto your knees routine. For a while, too, in Ft Worth and a shorter while in El Paso, I had a job called “paperhanging”, putting advertisements on doors. There’s a lot of semantics involved in all of this, phrases and words which mean far different things to different social groups.
When we put out the Grocery Store circulars, weekly, we typically had 3 and sometimes 4 different circulars, Safeway, Buddies, Affiliated, Piggly-Wiggly… because in that long gone era there actually would be that many “super”markets in walking distance of a persons house. And they didn’t have an in-store StarBuck$ or MacDonalds either. Mind you, this was when I was young and Dinosaurs ruled the Earth.
We would put the circulars on doors or, if there was a fence, hang them on the gatepost.
Semantics 101 here, “paperhanging” also refers to Installing Wallpaper, an almost forgotten trade. If done right you would have a better-than-painted appearance to your interior walls that would last decades. If done wrong it would be an invitation to roaches.
It’s also a slang term for deliberately writing No-Funds Checks, like the Bush Regime with their “Check is in the mail” lie where a Bond Issue, mostly to foreign governments and foreign corporations (who want their money back now) insteading of taxing the Very Rich in America, the ONLY group who benefit from the so-called “patriot” act and the “war on terror”, in order to fund those very expensive enterprises. Without the Rich Pigs who started and maintain them actually having to pay for them. Or so the promise goes.
So, on this job, I walked all day. In all kinds of weather, mostly hot and sticky weather, and in many different neighborhoods. Some were a pleasure in which to work, usually, surprise, Minority neighborhoods, where the people tended to be a little further Off-White in skin tone. They had their own community enforcement, still do actually, and in reality a rich person would be safer walking in such a neighborhood than a Working Class person would in a Wealthy Elitist Neighborhood.
Semantics 101: when Rich people mug Working Class people who wander into “their” enclaves it’s usually done by proxy, the Police.
If a Wealthy individual has a crime committed against him in a Working Class “minority” neighborhood it would probably be by some social misfit who doesn’t get along with his own neighbors either. The Working Class independent contractor criminal would probably only take the money and dope the Wealthy interloper has on his person. The Police in the Rich Neighborhood have the power to introduce the Working Clase “intruder” to weeks or months or years of beatings, sadistic behavior being directed at him and forced Slave labor. It’s a prolonged drawn-out Criminal Assault called “jail”.
In Hispanic neighborhoods you have a much easier time walking the papers, “paperhanging” because there’s a cultural aspect involving fences.
Lots of fences. Means you don’t have to walk up on the porch and put the circular on the doorknob. Since in order to make that Minimum wage + 10 cents an hour you had to walk fast. Climbing steps makes your day more difficult. And, in the “minority” neighborhoods, one of the things people like to do is with the landlords permission, putting on a security door.
Semantics 101: In a Wealthy Enclave they’re called “security doors”. In “Lower” class neighborhoods they’re called Barricades and the Police feel threatened by them, because it makes it more difficult for them to pull off a heavily armed Home Invasion whenever they damn well please and when one of their “fair and impartial” judges gives them the Search warrant.
Fences around the property make it easier to hang circulars because you basically have to only walk in a straight line from gate to gate. Much like the Postal Service with the curbside mailboxes. Which, incidentally, the Postal Service doesn’t buy for you, but which other persons are forbidden to use. You can’t put a message or advertisement in or anywhere near the Mail Box, it’s a $200 fine for each paper.
The police don’t like Fences in a Not-Rich neighborhood either, because in order to cross a fence-line you need a search warrant. Used to need, the “patriot” act threw out all the freedoms delineated in the Bill of Rights.
Semantics 101: This is called “fighting for your freedom” and you’re supposed to thank them for it
In a Rich Neighborhood it’s called a Gated Community.
The Not Rich Neighborhoods welcome the paperhangers because Not-Rich households depended on the circulars when planning out their food budget. Not only the money to spend at which stores on which products, but also to budget their time, walking (or gas money) and of course get the lowest prices offered. Residents would complain to the store managers if they DID NOT get their papers. When you’re Working Class, it IS that important.
A $5 transaction isn’t a “casual purchase”.
The Rich Neighborhoods would have the police shadow you. The Rich teenagers would cruise by in the expensive toys Mommy and Daddy bought them and scream out the window “Get a Job!”
Explaining to these Morons that you ARE working is out of the question, they’re too stupid to understand the concept.
The only appropriate response is to render the one-finger salute and make a short statement concerning the Morally Deficient Drug Addicted Congenitally Syphilitic Creatures who spawned them. But then they would go crying to their Pig protectors.
Semantics 101: When Rich people harass, insult, curse and threaten Workers it’s “harmless fun”. If you return the favor it’s “Making Terroristic Threats”, no matter what actually gets said beyond “Thank you, Sir, may I have another?” and licking their boots in apology for not being Born With A Silver Spoon like they were. That, by the way, has ALWAYS been enforced by the Police and Courts
Now, to tie it completely to the Theme du Jour.
When the Minions of the Very Rich (and coincidentally Lily White) like the “Tea Party Patriots” hang congressmen and even the President in Effigy, carry Machine Guns to presidential appearances, the president they have proclaimed their Racist Hatred of many times and many of their “comrades” have said should be shot or (as in the Mock-Lynching perpetrated by their Klan errr… “Independent and Non-Racist Patriotic Rally” in Plains Georgia not even a month ago, The Police actually protect them. Racist Pigs stick together.
When a Black person carrying supposedly First-Amendment protected literature is pulled from a train and Arrested because the Rich White “W” Worshipping Wimps on the train are Frightened by an Uppity black person who “talks back to them”. Or, in this case, talks to somebody else on a phone… setting off a Bedwetting Hissie Fit among the Right Wing Racists, not ONE of the Tea Party Patriots stands up and mentions the blatant injustice of those actions.
Yeah, they really really really Stand For Liberty. Bunch of lying Racist punks, if you ask me. Even if you don’t ask me, they’re a bunch of Racist Lying Punks.
That’s the type of Cowardice that the “war on terror” and “patriot act” fosters.
Calls for MORE racist profiling from the Right Wing Media like Fox News and even Channel 5, our NBC affiliate in town… from the Fascist Rag called the “Colorado Springs Gazette”. Why? Because they’re Cowards and easily manipulated. They need to collectively grow a set.
How ’bout it, Sean Paige, Doug Bruce, Jeff Crank? Are you punks going to actually stand for Liberty for the first time in your Mis-spent lives? I bet you won’t.
