The US isn't France: My Jamaican friend at the mini-mart

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Tuesday, November 9. 2010

The US isn't France: My Jamaican friend at the mini-mart

My cheerful, voluble friend at our local Cumbie/24-hr gas station has been working the night shift for 8 months. He's about 25, a recent single Jamaican (legal) immigrant who lives with his Mom. He is not a Rastaman. His Mom is a hospital aide who also moonlights as a home helper. She sings in the church choir.

This morning at 6 AM he announced to me "Hey, Boss, good news. They finally agreed to up my hours. Now I'll be able to work a minimum of 55 hrs/wk instead of 45."

"Do they pay you time and a half for OT?" I ask.

"Of course they do, man. Every hour over 40. The good thing is, now I can begin to put some money aside. You watch me man, I'm gonna need an investment advisor soon."

I asked "How about 60 hours minimum? I did that when I was young."

"That's my goal." he replied. "If I keep doing a good job at 55 hours and don't make mistakes, they will let me have 60. I already worked 60 last week with my extra OT."

"Beats selling beads to tourists at the beach?"

"Oh man, I thank God every day that my Mom made me come to America with her. She forced me, man. I had no choice. She is fat and mean. I was a ganja beach bum. Next week, I'll be an investor. I'm thinking of buying some some Apple Computer."

"What's your goal?"

"I'm gonna have my own Cumbie franchise. Be my own boss. Work 100 hours if I want. Hey, do you think I should buy gold or Apple Computer?"

"I think you should buy your own computer first."

"Hey, I already have that. I am online, man. I taught myself. I read everything there. I read Bloomberg news. These old guys come in early, they say 'Are the papers in yet?' Behind the times, man."

A spirited young lad with Jamaican high school and no college, enthusiastically inventing and building a life in America from scratch, with unlimited opportunity in front of him. Ya gotta love it. I want this kid here.

Posted by The Barrister in Our Essays, Politics, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 12:41 | Comments (16) | Trackbacks (0)

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tell him to split the diff on the Apple and gold --and to think about tight stops on half of each issue --

#1 buddy larsen on 2010-11-09 12:56 (Reply)

We Farmers, like Surberbans, are all for anyone joining America who will become an American and contribute. Please come in the front door so we know you're here. That's all we ask: use the front door and find opportunity.

#2 Geoff Brown on 2010-11-09 13:38 (Reply)

I see just another cheerful, optimistic Conservative in the making. Freedom and opportunity go hand-in-hand.

"Inventing and building a life." Exactly right.

#3 BD on 2010-11-09 14:12 (Reply)

My grandparents used to be big on the idea that "attitude is everything". And wonder of wonders, of all the forces acting upon an individual's state of being --it's the one that individual can control --if that individual can muster the moxie to do so.

#4 buddy larsen on 2010-11-09 14:16 (Reply)

This is a very fine upbeat note to start the day.

#5 Guaman on 2010-11-09 15:05 (Reply)

Please give him a pat on the back and a sincere "Welcome to America" please.

#6 Dan III on 2010-11-09 15:25 (Reply)

There are reasons why blacks with origins from Africa and the Caribbean outperform American blacks academically . The "fat and mean" mother being one of those reasons. More power to him.

#7 Gringo on 2010-11-09 15:37 (Reply)

I don't have the link with me, but I have read that a lot of the "affirmative action" slots at American colleges and universities reserved for blacks are instead going to blacks of African and Caribbean origin, instead of blacks whose ancestors went through slavery in the US.

Attitude counts. Shirley Chisolm and Colin Powell have Caribbean backgrounds.

#7.1 Gringoe on 2010-11-09 15:43 (Reply)

one senses there is a gigantic wall of epiphany teetering over the general african-american population --the open recognition of what the democratic party has done to them. when the wall comes down --and it will because in the end the truth will out --there will be left standing that centennial realignment that the very earth of the nation is crying out for.

#7.1.1 buddy larsen on 2010-11-09 16:46 (Reply)

I don't know quite what to make of this, but it's true that Caribbean colonies became independent states with black majorities. Most have had government leadership that was mostly black for a long time and they didn't have our brand of Jim Crow. How much difference did that make in their people's attitudes?
Maybe more important, they never had the welfare state that Johnson and his cronies inflicted on America's poor, which meant it disproportionately affected America's black people.

#8 Geoff Brown on 2010-11-09 17:01 (Reply)

I doubt that.

America had a vast, thriving black middle class, family- and church-oriented, until the large black migration to the north during the war in search of high-paying wartime jobs, combined with de-industrialization shortly thereafter, followed by the catstrophic "War on Poverty," totally undermined millions of dignified lives. Jim Crow had nothing to do with that.

People tend to forget where the black family was, say, in 1940. It was in good shape, and, even without integration in some parts of the South, black culture was solid and "moving up." Poor blacks lived like poor whites. There were black doctors, lawyers, teachers, military offices (but segregated), and of course tons of preachers. There were no black crime-ridden, drug-ridden ghettos in 1930 - but there were black neighborhoods. Pleasant and safe working-class and middle-class neighborhoods with busy AME churches and aspiring, hard-working populations. I remember those neighborhoods - now all bulldozed for housing projects, which have now themselves been dynamited and replaced by weed-filled vacant lots in places like Bridgeport and Hartford.

When I was a kid, blacks were normal dignified two-parent families in their Sunday best, strolling home from church and stopping for ice cream.

I watched the whole thing unravel culturally during the course of my life. The victim-entitlement culture is/was the worst of it, and the most destructive.

#8.1 BD on 2010-11-09 17:55 (Reply)

Every word of that is true, the way i saw it too, growing up in the deep south. The government co-opted and subverted the black population, which was busily moving on up until the dogooders reached out their corpse tentacles.

#8.1.1 buddy larsen on 2010-11-09 18:40 (Reply)

I have read such statements before and I believe them, but do you have any info that can quantify the decline you speak of? I have been looking for some time to locate anything that I can use to reference as hard fact.
Any link or direction would be greatly appreciated.

#8.1.1.1 Dan III on 2010-11-09 20:11 (Reply)

social statistics? Rates of pathology and such?

#8.1.1.1.1 buddy larsen on 2010-11-10 04:03 (Reply)

Please encourage him to consider becoming a U.S. citizen. He sounds exactly like the kind of immigrant this country needs more of.

#9 Jim on 2010-11-10 01:39 (Reply)

25 years ago I was one of the last New York Jews to get a practically-free engineering degree from City College.

Most of the class were 1st-generation immigrants - including guys from Senegal, Nigeria, and Ivory Coast who were holding down security guard and taxi/restaurant jobs, living with roommates, and sending home money while working their way through the community college system.

Their girlfriends were doing the same - in nursing, information technology, and related fields.

We noticed that these fellows always tried to do labs and group assignments with the few Jewish/Italian/Irish students, or with the Asians.

Never with the "African Americans".

When I asked them about it, they said "Those guys think they have everything coming to them. They don't know how to work hard. They just want to play the system."

All these guys - black as coal, speaking accented English, in awful polyester suits - got snapped up by Pratt and Whitney, Xerox, IBM, Carrier, and the other big engineering firms that were then in the NY area.

The "African Americans" were consistently at the bottom of the class, and no doubt chalked up their poor prospects to "racism".

That was 25 years ago.
And the entitlement mentality is still going strong.

#10 Ben David on 2010-11-10 14:42 (Reply)

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Tuesday, November 9. 2010

The US isn't France: My Jamaican friend at the mini-mart