Continued from What a nightclub can tell you Part 1...
That‘s not to say that just because someone looks like a convict, excuse me a thug, that they are one. It just happens that most of the guys I spoke with, that had the more expensive items and buying $130 dollar bottles of liquor they drank without glasses, had all been convicted of offenses with drugs and/or assault. What can I say, if it looks like, sounds like, and acts like a duck then it’s a duck.
As for the other guys, I just wonder. If they make the average salary in America for Blacks then $2000 for clothes and at least another $2000 for rims are worth about 20% of their annual salary. That’s before taxes. Does that sound like a particularly good way to spend money?
So I just wonder, is it really worth looking like a thug? Is spending $130 on a $40 dollar bottle of liquor smart? Is a guy sexier to a woman if he lives in the projects, owns nothing but a bunch of clothes and spends a large portion of his weekly check on a bottle or 2? Is there some loss of blackness when you don’t go to jail at some point in your life?
I can’t help but laugh. Much like those that snickered at me for wearing a suit. Or those that had to say loud enough for me to hear, “who does he think he is? I bet he doesn’t have any money?” Or the best yet, “You’re not Black. Look at how you dress and speak. You think you are White.”
Yet for all the odd looks, laughs and snickers, I know nearly every owner of the restaurants, bars, and nightclubs I go to in several states. I’m a respected business owner. And I have enough money for my needs and more. I’m not sitting on Snoop Dogg’s money, and it doesn’t upset me that I don’t.
Perhaps the biggest questions are the worth of the cost of chasing the Jones’ and living up to the image of what is Black that corporations have decided. Maybe if I just wanted to be a drone, wasting my money and my life, I’d chase this same image and buy the same goods. But as a man with a mind and will of my own I have chosen a separate path.
This is what I think, what do you think?
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