Racist At The Coffee Shop Needs To Be Grounded

Ed. Note: This article is being reprinted in memory of Maya Angelou, who fought the erase the hate. May her legacy live on in us.

Dear Tazi:

I have a coffee-shop acquaintance that I will call "Archie". He is one of several who gather for caffeine and conversation, mostly political, at our local non-alcoholic watering hole. Most of us are white, retired professionals, but all races and walks of life are welcome and we do not discriminate on any basis - except for Archie.

Archie is a racist. The man jokes that he "won't even take his coffee black", and always quotes statistics on how the black people of this country are the root cause of all social ills. Abortion? [According to Archie] Black people have the highest rate of it. Poverty? [According to Archie] Black people make up the majority of the welfare rolls. Fatherless households? Well, you get the picture. Archie always has percentages and numbers to make his arguments sound believable; but is never able to remember his sources, always telling us that "the mainstream media will never tell you the truth. You need to read the alternate sources".

We - and other patrons of this particular coffee shop - tolerate Archie because he is the owner's father, and we do not wish to punish a young entrepreneur by withholding our business; but what Archie said recently about the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was out of control, and needs to be addressed.

As a group, we were discussing the Arab Spring, which led to a comparison of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's, and the question of whether or not the Occupy Wall Street movement could be as successful as either - typical political debate - when Archie claimed that Dr. King was a "reverse racist" who hated white people; that the FBI was investigating him; that his PhD was honorary; that he wasn't even a real minister, that he had dropped out of the seminary; and that Martin Luther King was not his father's given name, so "how could he be a 'junior'?". A stony silence was the response we all gave, and as a group we all got up and distanced ourselves from Archie.

As I have said, we do not wish to patron another coffee shop; but we can't see ourselves rejoining Archie - who comes with the place - in political debate. Do you have a rejoinder with which I might present Archie? Educated debate does not work on the man, nor does presenting him with academically acceptable materials (which he considers "mainstream" and therefore biased). As a retired college professor, I find the man's ignorance astounding. I would like to ignore him, but that doesn't feel right; yet I am unable to reach him through traditional means. Might you have some ideas that I am overlooking? I am in my late seventies, and admit that Internet research is not my forte.

Signed,
The Professor

Dear Professor:

You get one paw up on your desire to educate, for it was Dr. King himself who said, "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." (By the way, his doctorate was not an honorary; he earned a PhD in Philosophy from Boston University in 1955. His Bachelors in Divinity was from Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, 1951). The other paw stays down, due to your tolerance of racism up to this point.

Where Archie is getting his "facts" on issues like abortion, poverty, welfare, etc. is questionable. I would suggest that you ask him to produce his sources the next time he decides to sound off on something. Use words he will understand: Put up or shut up! Raw statistics never tell the full story, nor the reasoning behind the numbers - they are just numbers. Whereas there is a crisis in the Black community with regard to absentee fathers and abortion (might there be a connection?); according to the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, white people actually make up the plurality of America's welfare rolls. Is the U.S. Government Printing Office too mainstream a media source for Archie?

As for Archie's comments on Dr. King's credentials, it appears he gets his information from very questionable, completely un-sourced articles written by authors with no searchable credentials. When I Google searched "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." and "not a minister", I found a hate-speech links sponsored by the ironically titled website "JesusIsSavior.com". When I did a Google Scholar search for the same, I found nothing. Ditto with a Lexis-Nexis search, JSTOR search, and other highly respected search engines. Does Archie consider scholarly journals to be "mainstream media" as well? If so, it would appear that his mind is closed to all sources but his own.

Snuggles,
Tazi

P.S. As for not wanting to punish the son for the sins of the father: While this is admirable, I am sure that there are others who are not so sympathetic. You would do well to complain to the owner. If enough people start taking their business elsewhere, he will have no choice but to "ground" his father.

Re-Post: Tazi's Corner: Issue #3 - Thoughts On Payday Advance Lending Services

Dear Readers,

This week, I am re-running one of my previous columns for a few reasons. First, my secretary (aka Mommie) has been walking around like a zombie and grumbling about things like "final exams" and "senior portfolio" and "finding full time work" and other things that concern me not. However, these preoccupations have left me with out her typing services. Due to my lack of opposable thumbs it took me hours just to type this intro, at which point I decided a re-run would be best!

I chose the subject of payday lending services because once again the Rhode Island state government has introduced legislation that lenders claim would run these services out of town. Is this a good thing? A bad thing? Are you indifferent to the idea of payday lending services? Do you have experience with them? Please read my point of view, and share yours below, in the comments section! --T.K.

Tazi's Corner
Life As Your Pet Sees It!
Today I am going to ask you to join in the conversation by leaving your thoughts in the comments section!! First, though, please read what I have to say!

I think we have all heard the commercials and seen the stores for Check ‘n’ Go, Advance America, and other payday cash advance services. I have read the commentaries on such services, which have been both praised and vilified as God Sent or as a Financial Hell Hole. One thing I have never done though is pay much attention to them since I never had a use for such a service. Cats tend to be self-centered (on occasion) you know.

This past week I was reviewing the activity of my state legislature (because a politically astute kitty is a good citizen!) and I noticed a bill regarding the interest rates charged by these payday advance services. Although happy with the nature of the bill, the need for it my left my hackles raised. It turns out that Rhode Island is the only state in New England that allows payday advance services to charge a greater than 36% APR – much greater. In Rhode Island, the maximum allowable annual percentage rate for a payday loan is 260%. No, there is not a missing decimal in that figure; 260% APR is the rate for a payday loan in Rhode Island. I find the exorbitant interest rates allowed by law quite ironic, considering that loansharking is illegal.

For those who are not familiar with how a payday advance works, it is pretty simple: The borrower writes a check for the amount of money borrowed, plus the interest charge, which in Rhode Island is 5% of the total borrowed per week, or $10 on a two-week, $100 loan. The borrower has two weeks or until their next payday to repay the loan plus interest charges, whichever comes second. If the borrower fails to pay on time, the lender will cash their check. If the borrower’s cash is elsewhere committed when the loan comes due, they can pay the lender in full – including the interest charge – and take out a new loan, essentially revolving the debt. However, because the original loan was paid in full after only two weeks the additional interest charges to the borrower are not reflected on the lender’s books, just in the borrower’s wallet. Ergo, the interest is not capitalized, a selling point these lenders like to highlight. This all sounds pretty simple, but even the simplest things can quickly become complicated.

Payday advance services make money on high finance charges. The lender is not going to get rich off of the person who is borrowing $50 to cover the week’s groceries due to an unexpected car repair biting into their budget. This is why the lender does his or her best to up-sell the borrower into taking out a larger loan, explaining how the borrower can revolve the loan by paying only the interest. Most people who use payday lending services do not have good credit, otherwise they would be using a credit card; nor do they have anything of value to secure a loan through pawn. In short, they have little; and have little chance of changing that anytime soon. Their financial outlook is depressing and here is someone offering to help them improve their credit by offering them a loan in excess of what they need! So the cycle of madness begins…

Through vice; bad choices; poor planning; bad luck; or a combination of all of the above, many who use payday cash advance services do not have enough money each week or each month to pay for their basic needs, and have come to depend on payday advances as a way of extending their income. Loans are taken for an amount equal to half or more of their next paycheck – but when their next paycheck comes around, they need most or all of it to pay the rest of their bills and/or their lifestyle choices (I have received many a letter from heavy drinkers/smokers/gamblers who claim they are unable to make ends meet). The only immediate solution is to pay just the interest on the advance, revolve the loan, and hope that things will improve over the next two weeks. Rarely do these hoped for improvements occur, and the cycle continues, with borrowers paying double, triple, or more in interest on a loan that will never truly be paid-in-full, regardless of what the lender’s books say. The fact that the interest rate is horrifically high only helps to perpetrate this cycle.

One way out of this vicious cycle would be to put aside monies – even as little as $20 a week – to put towards the principle on the micro-loan. Give up coffee shop coffee, cable, or your mobile phone for a few months and the money will be there; it will add up rather quickly, allowing the principle of a $100 loan to be paid in only a few weeks as opposed to never. I realize this is something people who get caught up in these schemes do not want to hear – they want to hear words of sympathy of how they were victims of easy credit rip-offs (okay, all together now "Ain't we lucky we got 'em, Good Times!") and how the government should do something about these legal loan sharks (which legislators are attempting to do here in Rhode Island). These legal loan sharks, in turn, argue that they are loaning money to high risk creditors and therefore need to charge 250%+ in interest to stay in business, pointing to their default rate as proof of their losses. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

I do not disagree that the interest rates charged by these businesses is positively criminal, and that it should be drastically lowered and legally capped to, say, 52% APR which would be approximately 2% every two weeks on a short-term micro-loan – low enough to be manageable but high enough to create a profit. I also believe that there needs to be a certain level of personal responsibility involved on the part of the borrower. In other words, don’t borrow money that you cannot afford to repay; don’t commit yourself to contracts that aren’t in your budget to cover. I am amazed at how many “poor” people are walking around with smart phones, insisting that they “need” one (to the cost of $100 or more a month) in order to get by in life. I have received letters from the unemployed questioning why people do not understand that they “need a smart phone for work”. My little kitten mind is baffled at such logic!


Payday advance loans: A necessary part of our American economy; a necessary evil; or just plain evil? Discuss!

This is just my two-cents on the subject…which right about now is the balance of my savings account because I just spent my allowance on kitty snax. Woe betides the Mommie who thinks she can keep ME on a diet!!

Snuggles,
Tazi



Ask Tazi! is ghostwritten by a human with a Bachelors of Arts in Communications. Tazi-Kat is not really a talking feline.

Tazi's Corner #21 - Facebook Debate, Civility, and the Biggest Issue of All: What Are "Slacks"?

Dear Readers,

I do not usually poke around my Mommie’s Facebook page, except to see if she is posting any embarrassing pictures of me.  This week, I stumbled upon one of the stranger habits of you humans: debating the pointless and insolvable as a form of entertainment.  

Usually Facebook debates get quite nasty.  Participants generally do not know each other, so they have no qualms about offending a stranger.  Factual evidence is thrown to the wind as people support their argument with something they found on the Internet, and complete disregard is shown for the source by those looking to prove or debunk a point.  "The New England Journal of Medicine?  What do they know?"  This quote was an actual comment I read while perusing a Facebook debate on medical care.  Another favorite of mine is when people source commentators like Rush Limbaugh in their arguments.  The Rush Limbaugh Show is not considered reliable by standard journalistic practices.  Mr Limbaugh himself admits to being an "entertainer", not a journalist.  (Conservatives, please don't hate on me...I personally LOVE The New York Post, but would give my own Mommie a Paw Slap of Disgust if she cited them as a source of scholarly research!).

Anyhow, my distaste for Facebook debating was overcome this week when reading a debate about the definition of the word "slacks".  The debate below all started when Mommie reported having a dream that someone had stolen her “new tan slacks”, to which she has become quite attached.  (Note to self: Find said  tan slacks and barf on them, thus killing this attachment to something other than me!).  

Those slacks are gonna get decked, too!

It was over this status update that the debate over the definition of "slacks" started; it rolled over onto a friend’s page, where it continued in such a hysterical vein that I decided to share it with the world.  Without further ado, I present The Great Slacks Debate! Ready...set....GO!

Mommie’s Friend (the Moderator): OK - so I probably should NOT bring this up on Facebook, especially given the roll I am on lately with “effbee” fighting and controversial topics, BUT this one is SOOOO important and involves a really dear friend, so here goes: SLACKS = a pair of "fancy pants" for a woman....OR....something that someone over the age of 80 calls any waist-hip-thigh-leg covering??? (and please let's not bring up dungarees and just stay on topic) Thank You!!!

The responses ranged from the serious to the hysterical; a sampling is below:

• I call the suit pants I wear to work…slacks!! and I’m pretty cool so your friend must be cool too!!!  [Note from Tazi: My Mommie is da bomb!]

• Those a "Britches" in the South, son. 

• Haven't you ever worn slacks? I bet you do!! I bet you hide in the closet and glorify in your slacks collection!

• I picture slacks to be outdated with pleats and sold at Goodwill with stains

• Slacks are for grannies!!!!!

• Slacks are polyester and generally have an elastic - or adjustable - waist

• My slacks are a rayon cotton blend, no elastic waist, no stains, and rather expensive!

• I've only ever heard my Yankee Momma say the word slacks. Usually talking about nice dress pants....Or on Brides Maids referring to the mom as “Ham Slacks” bahahaha

• I wear dress slacks over my girdle but not when I take my bundles home from the supermarket. I also wear rubbahs on my shoes when it rains. They taught me that in the ol' country before I came here on a Cat-tle boat. [Note from Tazi: Most likely, only New Yorkers and New Englanders will get this joke...]

• OMG I have not heard dungarees in forever. That alone got me cracking up!

• I believe slacks are what you would buy in the slacks section at Ann and Hope or Woolworth's on your way home from the Five and Dime.

• The consensus at my house is that they are polyester pants worn by old people

Baby got slacks!

• …and you wear a blouse with slacks

• I don't think slacks are something just WORN by the elder generation ... I think any pant-like item touched by an elder magically becomes slacks. So you could go to the store and buy yourself some pants. Your grandmother goes to the same store, goes to the same aisle and buys the same item, but when she goes and gives them to you for your birthday... BAM!...they become slacks. "Here, I made you a sweater to go with these nice slacks."...I think the item of clothing in question undergoes some strange alchemical transformation in which your grandmother is some sort of unwitting magical agent.

• My grandma calls sweatshirts jerseys. I just needed to add that.

Mommie’s Friend (the Moderator): I think the results indicate that most believe the word "SLACKS" to be an antiquated term reserved for use by the Octogenarian-Ensure-swilling crowd.

My question for all those Facebook debaters out there is this: Why can’t all Facebook debate be so civilized?  

My question for all of you, dear readers, is this: What is YOUR definition of the word “slacks”?  Please post your thoughts in the comments section below (you can post anonymously)…this debate is too lively to let it end! Let's take it viral, so the world...may...KNOW!

Snuggles,

Tazi

P.S.  Someone posted a Photo-shopped picture of me in plaid slacks!  Know that the picture below is a FAKE!  No matter how many crunches I do, I could never get abs like that!

I prefer Puss in Boots "No Pants Pants"!

[UPDATE: An actual poll is now available on this site.  Click Here to go to the page directly].

Ask Tazi! is ghostwritten by a human with a Bachelors of Arts in Communications. Tazi-Kat is not really a talking feline.