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Comment by x1798DE | Hacker News Reader

Not saying that this wasn't racially motivated, but aren't a huge proportion of people who use these check cashing places minorities? Looks like the store employee was black, too, based on the image.

It's definitely messed up what they did (and completely messed up that calling the police got the kids threatened with arrest), but I wouldn't be surprised if this boiled down to the stipend being for more than the normal amount that they usually see from people in his age cohort.

Either way, it's a good thing he had people he could call to settle this for him.

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>but I wouldn't be surprised if this boiled down to the stipend being for more than the normal amount that they usually see from people in his age cohort.

I would bet that this, together with the fact that it didn't show up in their system, was the cause, not predatory racism.

The article is claiming that the student was "being impacted by predatory racism." I don't see any proof of this. The cops are black, the employee is black. If everyone would have skin colour $skin_colour, would it still be racism?

Is it the result of racism that it is so unusual to see young black children with valid money orders?

We're used to seeing "racism" as the action of some individual bus driver pointing someone to the back of the bus, or some individual water fountain monitor pointing people to a different water fountain. But that form of racism was much more common two or three generations ago, and didn't just affect the lives of people who lived then, but also affected their descendants. There may be no racist bus drivers today (and even that story leaves out that the bus driver was undoubtedly under racist orders by their own employer), but we still have the lasting cultural impact of racism to deal with.

It's racism if someone is being treated differently based on skin color. It doesn't matter whether they have the same skin color.

>It's racism if someone is being treated differently based on skin color

Did that happen here?

Yes. If you think the same thing would have happened to a white student, you are nuts.

I think what he meant by "predatory racism" is the very existence of the check-cashing industry with predatory fees for cashing checks (in this case, 10%, which is actually a low rate for the industry). It used to be payday loans, but when Georgia ruled those illegal, the same companies simply changed their names to some variation of "check cashing" and continued to charge exorbitant fees to teens working through (or instead of) high school and immigrants, most of whom are minorities, who can't get a bank account because of their age and/or immigrant status.

Those workers are paid via check, and since they don't have a bank account to deposit the check into, they often resort to the check cashing robber barons who will do anything they can to take as much money as possible from their "clients". Holding a teen's ID and money order ransom because he "fits a profile" sounds like par for the course when it comes to those morally bankrupt businesses.

As for the race of everyone involved in this particular case, I take it you've never been to Atlanta. I live there, and I can say first hand that even black cops in the city will profile black youth.

"who can't get a bank account because of their age and/or immigrant status"

Or because of Chexsystems, which bars you from getting an account pretty much anywhere for 5 years. I was a victim of that years ago, and it really screws your life up. you have (or had at the time) no choice but to utilize check cashing services like the shady one in the article. It isn't always as simple as "go to the bank that the check was written from" either.

It can cost a lot to be poor in the US.

Yes, it would still be racism. As others have said, black people can be racist towards other black people and it's actually MUCH more common than you think, and is largely a result of growing up in a culture that teaches that "black is bad" and "white is good". It's impossible to escape all of those hidden subliminal messages in real life, on tv, etc. Here's an interesting article about it if you're interested: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/black-on...

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