vendredi 29 juin 2018

Mowing a Lawn While Black?

Here's an exceptionally silly story which Raw Story tries to build into a racist incident:

Quote:

News 5 Cleveland reports that 12-year-old Reginald Fields was mowing the lawn of Lucille Holt, a resident of Maple Heights, Ohio, when suddenly police officers pulled up near where he was working.

The police were on the scene because Holt’s neighbors had called 911 and claimed that Fields had inadvertently cut some of the grass on their property and they wanted the police to come ask him to stop.
First, if I was that 911 operator I would tell them that this is not an emergency. Second, unless he was really damaging their property, why would they complain that he "inadvertently" cut their grass? And third, did they ever think to come out and tell the kid where the boundary was?

But of course what makes this national news is that it happened to a black kid. However, there is one element lacking; we are not told the race of the complainant. I looked up Maple Heights, Ohio on Wikipedia. It's a suburb of Cleveland, and is 68% African-American. That means the odds are quite good that the complainers were the same race as the kid.

BTW, there is a happy ending; all the publicity has sent his summer lawn-mowing business through the roof:

Quote:

Even though Fields said he was initially discouraged that someone would call the cops on him for mowing a neighbor’s lawn, he has been encouraged by the support that he has received from people in the community — and he’s even seen his business orders pick up after his story garnered media attention.

“Just give me a call,” he tells News 5 Cleveland. “I will be there. On time!”
I can't help identifying with him; I worked summers mowing lawns at his age (it was one of the few jobs that a kid could get), and I loved having money. I had one guy paying me $2.00 an hour to maintain his yard (it was an easy three-hour job) back in the day when $1.30 or so was the minimum wage. He always had lots of other odd-jobs that he would put me to as well, so I was fairly swimming in money, an unusual situation for a kid whose allowance had been 50 cents a week.

The only problem with mowing lawns is that while you get a lot of work in April and May due to the rain, by July and August most of your customers only need you every 3 weeks or so.


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