Laziness vs. enterprise

Kevin H. writes:

Several months ago I visited Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. As I drove through a small town called Bremerton, I noticed a group of high school girls offering a car wash in exchange for a donation. They were trying to raise funds for a soccer team trip to the East Coast. I pulled in and got an excellent car wash and made my donation. A mile up the road there was another car wash being held, also for girls soccer. I noticed that every one of the girls at each car wash was white.

Later the same day I had occasion to stop at a giant WalMart store in Silverdale, Washington. As I exited the store there was a large black man, perhaps in his early twenties, lying on the concrete, actually lying right down on the ground, not sitting, with a sign asking for donations for his basketball league. As I walked by he asked me for money in an impolite way, kind of mumbling, “Wanna give money for such and such basketball league?”, with no greeting or saying please or anything else. I said, “No,” and he cussed me out as I walked away.

Since then I have noticed, indeed watched for, the racial makeup of these fundraising efforts. I’m not surprised that young white persons offer to earn the donations, and others simply ask, as if we owe it to them.

LA replies:

Well, you’re forgetting New York City’s famous squeegee men, who would offer to clean the windshields of cars stopped at traffic lights approaching the city’s tunnels and bridges. But they were so intrusive and in some cases threatening that the police under Mayor Giuliani stopped the practice.

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Kevin H.. writes:

We had the squeegee people where I live in Vancouver too. They were mostly drug addicts who beetled around intersections trying to make a buck. I never found them intimidating or even annoying though. I heard that in New York City they were almost shakedown artists and that Giuliani had to do something about them.

Paul K. writes:

Ridding the city of the aggressive squeegee men was one of Giuliani’s commendable accomplishments. Whether you wanted them to or not, these miscreants would slosh dirty water on your windshield, give it a swipe or two with a squeegee, then demand a dollar or two for their “service.” If you didn’t pay, they sometimes broke your side mirror with the metal bar of their squeegee.

DJM writes:

My local WalMart has the occasional youth group doing fund drives at the entrances. Yes, I know. WalMart. I generally go at early hours, or on days just before the EBT cards are recharged; this way the ferals are generally not there.

I live in Alabama where the main reason for the fund drives are to send this or that athletic team, band, or cheer-leading squad to some competition somewhere. There is never a fund drive for things like lab equipment for the science labs or to send a smart kid to a regional science fair or the like. Such things mean little or nothing to Alabamians.

What I have noticed about the fund-raisers is: the non-black kids are always polite, always smiling, and always courteous even when one says “no.” They don’t push and just go on to the next shopper. They also stay a good distance from the doors.

When the football team is there—with their thuggish behavior and peacock strutting—they parade back and forth in front of the doors and wear a scowl-with-a-grin when asking for contributions. A “no” to these people gets a question. My reply is always that I do not support school athletics and never will. I then stare them down, and go about my business.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 12, 2012 02:46 PM | Send