The media will try to spin this as racism, but it isn’t.
They aren’t refusing to do business with black people because of their race. They are refusing to do business with black people because they don’t pay their bills. That isn’t racism - that is common sense.
It’s similar to the ‘food desert’ phenomenon. Grocery stores stock what their customers buy; they do not omit fresh produce because of their race.
There are freepers, right here on FR, who will tell us this is racist.
We had a discussion about an earlier incident, and they insisted a similar situation was racist.
Gotta wonder about their thought process...
I’m sure many, if not most, black business owners would agree, at least to some degree. They may not admit it openly.
Bullshit. This power company can run credit checks on potential customers just like thousands of other businesses do, in order to determine if specific individuals have a history of not paying their bills. But to broad brush all blacks because some blacks don't pay their bills is absurd, and discriminatory.
This public utility company is going to get hammered for racial discrimination.
From the article:
"There are local ordinances, there are statutes and there are even federal laws that forbid this kind of discrimination based on race," Silverstein said.
He's absolutely right, and in the case of public utilities, this sort of discrimination is flat-out illegal, as it should be.
In such cases, account applicants should be judged as individuals, and I can't believe any patriotic American would assert otherwise.
It just goes to show the prejudice and hypocrisy of some.
That's nonsense. The assumption that all black people don't pay their bills, and the resulting refusal to do business with any black people, is most certainly racism. If they are afraid of people not paying their bills, then do what every other business does - run a credit check, check references, etc.