Lezlie Lowe, The Coast (Halifax, Nova Scotia), January 29, 2009
It’s almost impossible to see signs of racism in Halifax.
Not because they aren’t there—because they’re hidden in plain sight all around us.
Sure, we can convince ourselves everything’s just tickety-boo. We’re a cosmopolitan city with a healthy respect for Charter rights, aren’t we? Lynch mobs, last I checked, don’t roam the streets. So on the surface, it would seem, all is well.
Underneath? Not so much. And locked-up black hair products at a Dartmouth Shoppers Drug Mart might—key word: might—show that.
Maybe you heard the story last week? CBC reported the drugstore kept many of its black hair products under lock and key. A nearby salon owner spelled out in the report her take on what that implies: Black customers steal more than white customers.
The Shoppers franchise directed anyone seeking comment to its head office. CBC.ca readers, however, didn’t hold back.
There were 350 comments posted by the end of the weekend alone—the overwhelming majority decrying the mere insinuation that there was racism involved in the store’s policy. Racism? Well I never!
People were quick to draw parallels between the locking up of black hair-extension clips to car insurance rates for men. Meaning? Insurance rates are higher because men are behind more insurance pay-outs, just like black Dartmouthians must be behind more shoplifting. Other commenters made use of the logic theorem known as reductio ad absurdum—saying their local drugstores must be sexist, because they lock up men’s razor blades. In other words, if you agree that argument is absurd, it follows that the people alleging racism for locked-up do-rags are loonies, too.
What’s interesting here? Not that some people didn’t believe racism was the root of the store’s practice. I would realistically expect some people to say the act is discriminatory and others to argue that it isn’t. But what’s really interesting is the public’s automatic, overwhelming and in most cases vehement defence of the store. And not one of these people had yet heard the store’s reasoning.
That response only shows that Halifax’s ingrained racism—which may or may not have been a motivator in the store’s practice—is far from being on its way out the door.
No surprise. Africville and its destruction 40 years ago are still thick in the soup of this city. (The city’s wrongs won’t be erased quickly or easily; my personal dig is to say the bucking-up of long-promised government cash to rebuild the Seaview Baptist Church as a historic site would be a good gesture.)
Would the bulldozing of Africville happen today? Likely not. As a city and a province we’re been cured of our most obvious discriminatory missteps: from slavery and the lopsided Loyalist land grants of the 18th century to relatively more recent practices of prejudice like segregated schools, separate seating in public spaces and white-only clubs.
But generations of discrimination don’t disappear in a flash. Slavery was outlawed, segregation found itself on the losing side of our cultural norms and African-Nova Scotians began to take their rightful places in our classrooms, courtrooms and boardrooms. So where did the racism go? Into the catacombs of everyday culture.
Examples?
Consider the fiancee of a friend of mine, a 32-year-old human resources manager who is black and who has more than once been denied entry to a prominent downtown bar. Something about his clothing for a night on the town just doesn’t seem to make the cut.
My friend herself? She’s walked into stores and been ignored—not even greeted—while sales associates have helped the white friend she’s been shopping with.
Another friend? Her black 14-year-old son was stopped and questioned by police last month on his way home from his aunt’s. He matched the description of someone, the officers told him, who had been reported breaking windows in the area. That’s the MO of racial profiling everywhere.
And consider the black hair products at the Tacoma Drive Shoppers Drug Mart. Consider, for that matter, the placement of black hair products in any drugstore. Just go check it out. See if there are electronic theft-detection devices on the boxes and bottles. Is it racist if there are? Perhaps no one can say for sure. And that’s the problem.
A racial slur spray-painted on a building? Any idiot can recognize and label that kind of bigotry. But when there’s just a shade of doubt—a dress code, busy salespeople, eager cops, maybe randomly locked-up merchandise—it leaves just enough room for that subtler racism to stick around and fester.
Have you experienced racist behaviour?
Tell Lezlie Lowe what happened at lezliel@thecoast.ca.
Original article
Email
Lezlie Lowe
at lezliel@thecoast.ca .
(Posted on February 5, 2009)
Comments
It is just a fact of retail life that you lock up or otherwise secure what is most likely to be stolen. That is why electric shavers are in locked cases in most stores.
Blacks DO steal more then Whites. And Asians. Blacks steal MORE then holler “racism” when stores try to protect themselves. Only blacks can be so shameless and (unwittingly) hypocritical. When your dealing with blacks, you just can’t win.
This rag is essential a Creative Loafing type publication run by a group of dissident disaffected white dykes.
http://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/news/Section?oid=957802/Section?oid=957802
“Her black 14-year old friend was stopped and questioned by police last month”, blah, blah,blah,…
These stories about racial profiling used to bother me, but not anymore. Three years ago, I was questioned by the cops, in my own home, while suffering from the flu. I am white, with reddish brown gray hair, and 6’1”. The guy they finally caught who commited the crime was a 5’7” mestizo. Honestly, truthfully, I kid you not. This is the insanity of life in California, but I’m sure It will be spreading everywhere in the Western World soon. Racial profiling is an excuse used by leftits to continue to subvert western society and the position of the white folks that live in them. Not an easy conclusion to swallow, I didn’t want to reach it, but I’m satisfied with it.
“A nearby salon owner spelled out in the report her take on what that implies: Black customers steal more than white customers.”
That is not racism. That is sound, business sense, backed up by every single statistic about the overwhelming and massively disproportional number of crimes committed by Blacks.
This is no more racist than it would be to suggest that rain makes things wet, or that the sun makes things hot.
I can give you an example of a lynch mob in Halifax:
http://www.amren.com/ar/2007/02/index.html
So where did the racism go? Into the catacombs of everyday culture.
Oh, I see, so “racism” is just a code word for plain old common sense. I get it now.
As far as blacks being more likely to steal, I thought the left’s explanation for that was a “lack of opportunity” in society (the left doesn’t even deny, at least not when backed into a corner, that blacks steal more often). So how can they blame store owners for locking up black products? Store owners are just reacting to the “societal racism” that causes black misbehavior. As usual, the left is trying to have it both ways.
How about Halifax’s non-hidden racism ? Such as : disproportionate black social service consumption, here, like everywhere in a White Christian country; Disproportionate black on White crime of all ” stripes “; especially capital crimes of murder and rape; lesser crimes of ” shop-lifting “,burglary, etc. .
“CBC reported the drugstore kept many of its black hair products under lock and key. A nearby salon owner spelled out in the report her take on what that implies: Black customers steal more than white customers.
Every business keeps track of their high shrink items and keeps them where they’re inconvient for shoplifters. Are black hair care products high shrink items as are mens razors?
Lezlie Lowe needs to write 1000 times: “Blacks are far more likely to steal than Whites. Blacks are far more likely to rape than Whites. Blacks are far more likely to murder than Whites.” Whites who already know these things take the necessary precautions. It’s all very ordinary, very rational, very racist.
“It’s almost impossible to see signs of racism in Halifax.
Anybody that concentrates that greatly on racism has a screw loose somewhere and should see a shrink.
I’ve sent my experiences with racism and encourage everybody else to do the same.
Will the day ever come when being called a RACIST will be a compliment? Even the dictionary offers different information for the word than it did a few years ago, get an older dictionary and compare what it said to today. the new definition of RACISM is: Any negative comment made against a black (in particular) no matter how verifiable or true>
This tripe of unsupported and illogical conclusions is so very typical of Canadian leftist Marxists who use race, as they do in almost every Western country, to try and destroy the confidence and pride of a founding European descended people who carved a high civilization out of the endless forests and unforgiving nothern wastes. We are suppposed to be shamed out of existance. I don’t believe that Canada, as it exists, should survive. It’s too toxic to the sane White people who still try and make a life here. Exactly when did the White West become insane? It wasn’t gradual. As late as the mid sixties Canada had a sane immigration policy. In a historical time frame that’s not a significant span. It took Rome more than two hundred years to succumb. The West, with Canada taking the lead, is doing it in a generation.
What about racism, discrimination, theft, segregation and hatred against whites?. Every time a person of color interacts with a white person, there must be a white person too interacting with a person of color.
They never ask about racism against whites. Isn’t that racism itself. Is the underlying message here also that whites should just shut up and never complain because things couldn’t possibly be going wrong for them? Are they reducing white Nova Scotian’s to people who couldn’t possibly have concerns of their own, or if they do, we shouldn’t consider them? Are they in effect being reduced to less then persons? One persons experience matters, another persons does not. Conveniently along racial lines. We can’t have less important people or inconsequential ones, unless we have more important ones. What is happening to white Nova Scotians that they would prefer the public not know about? Or not be concerned with?
They are the experts on race. Could they just ask once, if whites might be victims of racism, at the very least as a rhetorical measure? Perhaps at the bottom of the page. Slipped in a way that allows the possibility that whites might even be 1/3rd or 1/4th of a person? Would this be too much?
Or must there be an immovable concrete barrier between the races and how they must be treated? An invisible barrier shall we say? One race we treat one way. Another race we treat another. Period.
Who are the bigger racists here, those who claim it is their 8 hour a day job to discover and expose racism, no matter the Herculean effort needed - those who’ve done this study, or the average Nova Scotian?
Blacks do steal more than whites. Detroit, MI. Blacks outraged by lack of grocery stores in the city. Grocery store managers say, “Blacks steal brazenly. Not sure if these are Black Americans or imported from Africa as immigrants, legal and illegal. Blacks have destroyed Detroit, Flint, and Saginaw, MI. I live in the suburbs and Blacks are moving in because of Section 8 housing and because the city of Saginaw is a deadly place to live. You guessed it, our crime rate is rising rapidly. A Walmart store nearby is considering not using the self-check out aisles because of theft. You guessed it, most of the customers are Blacks.
Here in North Carolina we had a big stink in the news about this exact same thing. A few local stores of a national drug store chain were placing security devices on Black hair care products but not on so called “White hair care products”(I’m sure that Asians and Hispanics use them just the same). So what is the oh so obvious reason? Racism! Those twisted and racist store managers must be evil bigots determined to prevent Black women from having “good hair”. If I remember right, heads rolled and the chain had to issue an apology. I think money was even given to local Black charities.
In 1985 when Richard Ramirez, “The Night Stalker” was terrorizing Southern California, a friend of mine was stopped in Pasadena by police. Despite the fact Ramirez was an Hispanic they stopped my friend who was pale white, with blonde hair! He’s about 5’ 11”! Richard Ramirez thankfully was captured and incarcerated. But this foolishness about “not profiling” started early!
Notice the author’s double standard. Even though well-known crime statistics show that Blacks are more criminal per capita than Hispanics, Whites and Asians in most criminal categories, Ms. Lowe considers the use of this sometimes painfully acquired knowledge of strongly disproportionate Black crime with simple logic to “show ingrained racism”.
So Whites CANNOT notice or apply a statistical group tendency (that’s RACIST!) BUT SHE CAN DO SO AGAINST Whites to declare THEM racist (which is NOT racist!). Oh, she bases her broad charge on a few hundred comments on the cbc.ca web site for a story for a city with population of about 400,000. Also, cbc.ca draws comments from ALL OF CANADA (not just Halifax).
BTW, it would be moronic for a business to lock up products for Blacks if there were NOT a higher rate of theft because it would needlessly waste staff time to unlock the products, which would eat into the profits, and disadvantage them against other stores that didn’t perform this supposedly unneeded inefficiency.
PS. I dug up the cbc.ca story:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2009/01/22/shoppers-haircare.html
It now has 360 comments spread across 72 pages of comments starting from the most recent (although you can choose how to sort them).
Now you would think based on Ms. Lowe’s comments like:
“That response only shows that Halifax’s ingrained racism”
that the comments were pretty much all from Halifax.
BZZTTT. WRONG!
A sampling of the locations of around 40 commenters across a broad spread of pages indicates the vast majority are spread across OTHER parts of Canada (I saw 3 or 4 from Halifax).
Second the comments are quite diverse in their sentiments (e.g. some insulted Whites, one insulted the origins of Whites in Halifax as tainted bigots from Virginia (HORRORS), many decried racism, many tried to be rational and point out how the store probably based the locking of the products based on shoplifting rates, etc). I didn’t even see that many that took an explicitly racial angle.
Wow. What an incredibly dishonest piece of agitprop!
(It’s almost impossible to see signs of racism in Halifax.
Not because they aren’t there—because they’re hidden in plain sight all around us.)
No worry as long as Marxists are around. They will always
Maybe they need to stop carrying these items and let a black open a shop and sell these products. I bet the black shop owner will be just as diligent not to let her products get stolen and won’t be call racist as a result. I have been in such a shop outside of Raleigh, NC.
Halifax is about the only place in Canada with a sizable old-stock, African-AMERICAN population. Almost all blacks in the rest of Canada are recent (post-1965) immigrants from Caribbean (and increasingly Africa).
Nova Scotia, however, was usually the last stop on the Underground Railroad — and so has the same sort of domestically-grown ghetto blacks familiar to Americans. The now-bulldozed “Africville” (sic) area of Halifax referred to in the article was, for over a century, the only place in all of Canada that could be called a ghetto.
That’s right: white abolitionists did the slaves the enormous favor of getting them out of Evil Amerika, transport them at great personal risk to safe, friendly, non-slaving Canada, and what do the blacks do? They form themselves into a typically dangerous, dirty, Harlem-style ghetto — one so bad that the city eventualy needed to level it (“urban renewal”) and attempt to start over.
Note to Halifax drug stores: while you’re at it, lock up your foot-care products too.
The truth is no defense when it comes to coddling oversensitive black crybabies.
“Halifax is about the only place in Canada with a sizable old-stock, African-AMERICAN population.”
I didn’t know that, but I actually spoke to a black woman from Nova Scotia several years ago, from one of those sites like Yahoo messenger. There seemed to be an underlying theme or she had some kind of unspoken feeling that ‘Nova Scotia is ours’. Definitely unspoken, but there. Perhaps Afro-Nova Scotians know something other Canadians don’t know? Maybe it had something to do with the singer Seal, and his song where he says “when it snows my eyes light up”
If you click on the Canadian flag on the front page it takes you to an excellent essay by Jared Taylor. The one where the kids roughed him up and wouldn’t let him deliver it in a speech. His best one by far, I think. I do also remember the speech where he said, something like, “lying politicians, cheating spouses, and depraved educators (switch the adjectives any way you choose)…” Haven’t seen that one in years. Would be nice to read it again.
I must have ‘missed’ something in this tale of vile racism. Like WHY is awareness that Blacks are known for shoplifting. That shop-owners selfishly locking up certain products appealing to Blacks should be considered a form of RACISM? I must be a dyed in the wool racist myself for figuring that locking up products likely to be shoplifted simply is good business sense! Guess it’s only a matter of time before some liberal gets the idea of telling ME that I’m a racist… for locking my doors and windows if I leave the house. (We have both BLACKS AND MEXICANS living in our community.)
Me, I am whatever I am… maybe a racist to wingnuts like this writer, likely enough I am a decent, respectable law abiding WHITE citizen to others. I’ve seen and read enough to accept the premise Blacks really do commit more crimes, per percentage of population than Whites.
NO, I emphatically do not accept the lame excuse “poverty causes crime.” Were there even a grain of truth to that liberalist claim, our White European ancestors would have been America’s arch-criminals when they set foot on land. After all most of them had little more than lint in their pockets on arrival. Here’s a heads-up for all liberals: GREED AND JEALOUS ENVY BREEDS CRIME! Translated to mean that too many minority members see how Whites live, what they’ve have, thanks to decades of hard work… and that those minorities feel they deserve a share of what we have… WITHOUT necessarily working for it as we did. Without bothering to ask Whites to share their perceived wealth.
If Blacks were not above a bit of shoplifting… why would a shop owner go thru the trouble of locking products up tempting to Black thieves? Would the average White woman be likely to steal hair products aimed at Black consumers?
I would love to know… is there any difference between the respective terms “liberal” and “fool?” In my humble opinion those terms can rightly be interchanged at will.
I used to run a convenience store in a predominantly black area, and I learned the hard way that blacks do indeed steal more than whites.
Sure, we can convince ourselves everything’s just tickety-boo.
OK, before I can address anything else, I have to tackle this one. “Tickety-boo?” What kind of imbecilic baby-talk is that? I don’t know what kind of paper The Coast is, but if I owned or edited it, I’d be embarrassed to have my readers find it printed on my pages.
Alright, now that that’s out of the way-
CBC reported the drugstore kept many of its black hair products under lock and key. A nearby salon owner spelled out in the report her take on what that implies: Black customers steal more than white customers.
Got any evidence to show that it’s not true? ‘Cause I’ve got plenty to show that it is.
There were 350 comments posted by the end of the weekend alone…
But what’s really interesting is the public’s automatic, overwhelming and in most cases vehement defence of the store. And not one of these people had yet heard the store’s reasoning.
That response only shows that Halifax’s ingrained racism…is far from being on its way out the door.
Definitely the bright spot of the article. It shows that there are still at least 350 Canadians who haven’t lost their minds.
Consider the fiancee of a friend of mine, a 32-year-old human resources manager who is black and who has more than once been denied entry to a prominent downtown bar. Something about his clothing for a night on the town just doesn’t seem to make the cut.
So? I got rejected from a club in Frederick MD once, for the exact same reason. They didn’t like the hooded pullover I was wearing (it was ten degrees outside). Can you guess what their reasoning was? Well, it had something to do with the ease of concealing weapons under such a garment, an occurrence which was becoming more and more frequent in that area.
What else had been going on in that area? An influx of black underclass from the DC area taking advantage of section 8 housing. Gee, I wonder if the two are related…
Now that I think about it, that would mean that blacks managed to get me rejected at a club because my “clothing for a night on the town just doesn’t seem to make the cut.” Irony, anyone?
See if there are electronic theft-detection devices on the boxes and bottles. Is it racist if there are?
Just so I’m clear: is it racist because store owners are insinuating that they believe blacks would steal the goods, or because they won’t allow them too?
Tim in Indiana-
So where did the racism go? Into the catacombs of everyday culture.
“Oh, I see, so “racism” is just a code word for plain old common sense. I get it now.”
Sounds about right. If there’s any one thing our everyday culture that has been relegated to the catacombs, “plain old common sense” would definitely be it.
This is a great opportunity. Lezlie Lowe needs to buy and operate a retail store using “non-racist” business practices. Any bets on how long it will take her to change some of those practices or go out of business?
As docile and obedient as Canadian whites are, no matter! It’s not enough. They still have to be whipped and beaten for their alleged white guilt and racism.
“Underneath? Not so much. And locked-up black hair products at a Dartmouth Shoppers Drug Mart might—key word: might—show that.”
Gee, I wonder why the most frequently stolen products are locked up?
Historically Nova Scotia - unique among Canadian provinces - did have a handful of blacks. They basically contributed nothing to Canada and caused many social problems there. Likewise Canada had a small (about 22,000) Japanese community on our west coast province of British Columbia. Despite being interned during the war and having some property confiscated and then scattered after the war, it is incomparably ahead of Nova Scotian blacks in wealth, education, all measures of socio-economic developments. Blacks only come out “ahead” - way ahead - in crime indices. Black pathology is universal.
Just use your common sense. Imagine every time a black(s) comes into your store and wants to see a black hair product and you have to stop what your doing, get the key, unlock the cabinet, wait and watch while they take forever to decide (“yo Shaniqala should I get this one or dat one”) then close the cabinet, re-lock it, put the key away and return to the counter. Multiply this by who knows how many times per day. Making it more difficult to do a business exchange with someone is not a good business practice. Store owners would not do this without a very good reason. Personally the store owners would probably be better off not carrying any black products at all. Doing business with them isn’t worth it. But the blacks would scream “racism” about that too. You can’t win with blacks.
I’ve worked in retail in Texas. While Whites did steal, Blacks stole at much higher rates. I can see, from an economic standpoint of locking up certain items that are more frequently stolen.
You’ve got it all wrong. In Canada blacks commit a disproportionate amount of crime but it is still lower than blacks in America. They are less than 3% of the population there so more than likely none of these stories about blacks in CANADA being a nussance are true. I was up there a few weeks ago and only say 10 blacks. Four of them were my friends I came up with.
Reply to “rational thinker”:
Blacks are INDEED a “nuisance” (not nussance) and they are now heavily concentrated in metropolitan Toronto (A.K.A. the GTA) and to a lesser extent Montreal. They have dramatically expanded the crime rate in both these cities. You only saw (not say) ten (not 10) blacks? I don’t know where you went but it must have been either a rural area or someplace off the beaten path. Assuming your story is not a fabrication.
“Imagine every time a black comes into your store and wants to see a black hair product and you have to stop what your doing, get the key, unlock the cabinet, wait and watch while they take forever to decide (“yo, Shaniqala should I get this one or dat one”) then close the cabinet, re-lock it, put the key away and return to the counter.”
Your story reminds me of the number of times I have encountered this same sort of thing at so-called “fast food” (!!) places when there’s a black customer at the head of the line:
Meanwhile, the rest of the line just stands there and waits while they debate what they would like. And they’re totally indifferent to everybody else. Couldn’t they have made their minds up BEFORE getting in line? Wouldn’t that have been considerate to others? Consideration is the last thing on their minds.
Here are the comments I wrote to the original Halifax article. If everyone did this as much as they can, it would really help encourage others. I’ll bet hundreds of people read the numerous letters against the reporter and said themselves, “Hey, yeah, this IS unfair! Maybe I shouldn’t take this anymore!”
There’s another kind of Hate in Halifax; the hate of ignorant people who slur and insult their innocent fellow citizens, accusing them of the dark and mysterious crime of “racism”. There’s always plenty of hate to go around. White people aren’t uniquely guilty of it. That’s a lie. Alot of people who accuse others of this subtle racism are really just projecting their OWN unconscious elitism, snobbery and…self hate.
Store owners that have been insulted by this article should pool their resources and buy hidden video cameras. Then, put all the hair care products on the same shelf in some hidden corner of the store. Film continually for several months. Then they will have PROOF of who may be really stealing what. If the reporter is wrong, they should write another article offering their profound apologies. Otherwise, the store owners can do so.
Halifax no longer has a slum called Africville. Instead they have North Preston, full of blacks trying to become pimps and gangsters.
Because of the hyper vigilance of anti-racists, whites are discouraged from laying blame on blacks. When a white girl is taken from Halifax and pimped in the strip clubs of Montreal and Toronto by a black from North Preston, there is no outcry that blacks are dangerous or that they target naive whites.
The concept of racial equality is akin to allowing ugly women to compete in a beauty contest in the spirit of physical equality…
I dunno, I see men’s razor blades locked up and I think “pfft, those are expensive and small…I can see why they’d be a target” and get on with my life. Try to get a set of Alan keys from Canadian tire without having to have a sales associate unlock a cabinet. I asked them why and they simply said people like to steal them. That’s why people are so outraged, nobody else questions extra security. Even if they do they don’t have racism to point to. It’s just frustrating for a lot of people of every gender and race to hear things like this being blown up into something they’re not. Accusing people of being racist when they’re not just fires people up, it promotes racism. That’s why there was an outcry.
