Thanks Zuk, I appreciate that. I’ll try to keep them coming. 🙂

Reserve Corporal, that is exactly it. Your internal belief over-rode your ability to see the external reality. The stories we tell ourselves are very powerful.

Of course, it can go the exact other way, which is true racism. You let your internal story paint everyone with the same brush, but again it comes with a willingness to disregard the evidence in front of you.

Training and knowledge give you the power to recognize the behavior and identify it, then you don’t have to think it is any kind of racism saying “pay attention here- use caution.” Being able to say “He did these three things that indicated he was ready to attack me” is always going to be (and feel) better than “groups of black men acting together make me nervous.”

Chris, I always learn something from your “no sh!t, there I was…” stories. The little details and the picture you paint are almost as good as seeing it, and a lot less risky to life and limb. 🙂 Thanks,

zuk

My boss never forbid me to give checks or credit cards he Just asked me to be sure when i m doing it to black people from belgium.
I was blinded by my fear of looking like a racist moron and i wasn t aware about the intels he had
Sorry again for my English i m pretty sure i miss a lots of mistakes
Take care

Actually JUST received my permit in the mail today (i’m in New York State), and already have two different handguns lined up. Will be carrying everywhere i go from now on (where legal of course). Hoping to take some different courses that allow me to carry in almost every other state as well, since the reciprocity laws are so varying.

Imagine if you will…. Large university out west. Currently 62% white, 18% hispanic, 5% black. 25 years ago, I’d guess it was more like 80% 10% and 2%. Politics and social climate about what you would expect from a modern (non-ag, non-technical) university. Enshrines the ideals of diversity, tolerance, and inclusion.

Enter one “Gilbert R.” and cousin. Gilbert is a conservatively dressed, articulate, funny, shortish, slightly heavyset black man in his late 30’s early 40’s, cousin is a hulking 6′ 2″ or 6’4″ and younger, but seems fairly unthreatening, and is a generally affable guy. Gilbert and his cousin are in town, looking for ‘real estate investments.’ Somehow, they are introduced into my circle of friends and acquaintances. I have a vague memory of someone saying “hey I met this guy, he’s looking for investments, and he seems to be a pretty together guy, you should meet him.”

Gil has a pretty good line. He’s in town from Detroit, where he was a successful real estate investor, and he’s looking for help expanding. Among the flurry of papers and accolades waved in our direction, he had a magazine with his picture on the cover, and something like “Entrepreneur of the Year”. He’s specifically looking for young, energetic, college kids to help him out. (He is in a college town, and no one wants to hire old tired schlubs anyway, right?)

Well, I need money! So do some of my friends! Before too long, he has lots of kids working for him. My buddy and I are running a vending machine placement business for him. Several others are working in a pizzeria he’s talked his way into. He says things like “you guys are doing the work, I want you to be part of the business. Why don’t you get the phone and pager accounts in your names? I’m new in town, and …well, it’s hard for me to get treated fairly by people who don’t know me…”

Something about Gil just doesn’t sit right with me. I never really trust him. I keep working for him, but only because I’m getting paid. Turns out, lots of people WEREN’T getting paid. Some of those folks were even LOANING him money by covering business expenses out of their own pockets.

Time passes and Gil has expanded his pizza empire to several stores. As far as I can tell, he sweet talked his way into the first one, just taking over the day to day operation. Then he used that one, thru misrepresentation, to leverage his way into others. Before you know it, it’s the classic mob ploy of “busting out” a business– abuse the business’ credit line with suppliers, don’t pay them, get new suppliers, don’t pay them either. Don’t pay the rent or employees, but without fail, send your cousin to pick up the daily cash receipts.

Whenever someone says they “need a check or their not coming in any more”, or that there “won’t be any tomato paste or cheese today”, he’d give them just enough to keep them coming back. Until at some point, he’d gotten all the cash out he could, and too many people REALLY wanted their money. That very night, my buddy and I went to Gil’s apartment. After several EXTREMELY tense discussions around the dining room table, he cut us a check for what he owed us in wages. Happy that no guns had come out, and determined to be at the bank first thing in the morning, we left. That was the last time anyone in the state saw Gil or his cousin. When the check didn’t clear, we went back to the apartment, but it was empty.

I was left with a bad check for unpaid wages, as was my buddy. He was also out thousands for expenses. The business liabilities were all in our names too. All the pizzeria employees, and suppliers were left unpaid, as were the landlords, and the owners who sold their businesses to Gil. I think it might have taken six months total to play out.

And now we come to the relevance of this sad tale of woe. It was pretty obvious that things were coming apart. Missing payroll is a classic sign of a failing business, and Gil asking his workers to put stuff in their names instead of his should have been a HUGE red flag that some kind of scam was going on. Throughout the month or two when it finally fell apart, almost every one of the white kids, and the (white) suppliers I talked to, REALLY didn’t want to believe anything bad about Gil. NO one wanted to push him on honesty issues, or believe the worst about him. He got an extra “free pass” in the due diligence department, because everyone was falling over each other to assure themselves that any misgivings or doubts couldn’t be well founded, because that would just be racist. “Oh yeah, assume the worst of the black man…”

I know I haven’t really articulated specifically why I focused on the racial component of the relationships. I don’t remember any time when Gil overtly played the race card, but it was definitely there. (It was more likely to be his cousin making a joke or offhand remark that would remind you.) And talking with other employees there was a lot of subtle talk that all boiled down to “This black man who is acting like a criminal couldn’t REALLY be a criminal, could he? Because that would be too stereotypical, and I’m really just being racist, aren’t I?” I was definitely considered to be an @ssh0le whenever I raised the issue of his honesty or integrity.

And to bring it all back around to your post, which is about threat recognition. It seems that in too many cases people are willfully ignorant of the threat, based on their own desire to feel morally superior to someone who would make a snap judgement based on appearances, or based on embarrassment that they might be thought to be racist for doing so. I know that was true for me and my friends (less so for me, but it was still an element. He did get me for unpaid wages, and more than just one pay period.)

The truth is that sometimes groups of “x” people are dangerous to be around, and it is probably the other signals they are putting off, and not their skin color, that should be triggering your awareness. (I wouldn’t want to be around white soccer hooligans at the wrong time either, to name just one other group). Giving them a free pass based on your own INTERNAL reasons, while they are clearly broadcasting their own EXTERNAL signals could get you killed.

zuk

Thanks for asking Chris, I hope that wasn’t too long or uninteresting. BTW, as far as I know, no one involved ever filed any criminal complaints. My buddy and I looked into it and were discouraged from filing since Gil was no longer in town.