Wednesday, February 04, 2015

Employee of the year.

One of the interesting things about having a blog named The Field Negro is that on occasion when you check your stat-counter you get to see some of the search words folks use to click on your blog.

It's amazing how many times folks Google words like "lazy nigger" to ultimately end up on this blog. (That might explain some of the trolls that we have from time to time.)

One post I did  called 10 Myths About Black People  gets a lot of folks linking in to it.

Number seven of those ten things deals with the myth that black folks are lazy.

This is a myth because anyone who lives in any urban area where there is a large concentration of black people understand that black folks (especially poor ones) are some of the hardest working people in America. They just don't have anything to show for their hard work because when you are making $8 or $9 dollars an hour you are basically just working to buy food and put a roof over your head. You have zero chance of getting ahead and living the American dream.

Sadly, you were born in this environment, and you will live and die in it as well.

Anyway, whenever I hear about lazy black people, I think of James Robertson of Detroit, Michigan.

"America needs more people like James Robertson. Every place needs more people like James Robertson. But that doesn't mean his story isn't disturbing.

The 56-year-old Detroiter was the subject of a profile in the Free Press over the weekend. He walks 21 miles every day, part of a 23-mile commute from his home in the city to his factory job in Rochester Hills, a suburb. He's been doing it five days every week, ever since his old Honda bit the dust. His route takes him through rough neighborhoods and he leaves work well in the middle of the night. This being Detroit, he also reckons with snow drifts and sub-freezing temperatures regularly during the winter.

But Robertson is impressively upbeat about it:

I sleep a lot on the weekend, yes I do," he says, sounding a little amazed at his schedule. He also catches zzz's on his bus rides. Whatever it takes to get to his job, Robertson does it.
"I can't imagine not working," he says.

There are some fringe benefits. Robertson's boss' wife feeds him delicious home-cooked Southern meals. Still: pretty grueling.

The reaction has been appropriately positive. Robertson was already something of a role model for his co-workers, and readers responded to the story generously, donating $70,000 and counting to help him get a new car. That's great for Robertson. But this isn't a feel-good story—it's a story about policy failures, structural economic obstacles, and about what it takes to keep working despite those challenges. Robertson is no doubt deserving, but it'll take larger changes to help other people who face similar struggles.

Transportation

Let's start with the obvious problem here: lack of mass-transit options. Robertson used to drive to his job, but his 1988 Accord gave out 10 years ago. In car-obsessed Motor City, that's bad news. Robertson's $10.55 per hour pay is more than a buck-fifty higher than the living wage in Wayne County, but it's still not enough for him to get a new car and insure and maintain it. The Freep's Bill Laitner reports:
Robertson's 23-mile commute from home takes four hours. It's so time-consuming because he must traverse the no-bus land of rolling Rochester Hills. It's one of scores of tri-county communities (nearly 40 in Oakland County alone) where voters opted not to pay the SMART transit millage. So it has no fixed-route bus service.
Once he gets to Troy and Detroit, Robertson is back in bus country. But even there, the bus schedules are thin in a region that is relentlessly auto-centric.
Detroit has never been big on mass transit—car companies helped hasten the demise of streetcars—but it's gotten worse over the last five years. Even as the city shrinks and people struggle, there are fewer options for transportation. But with unemployment rates inside the city at nearly 25 percent, workers have to leave the city limits for work. The Detroit area overall has a much rosier 7 percent unemployment rate. (A transportation official told the paper that Robertson might qualify for a special service for low-income workers.)" [Source]

It's nice to see that this story has a happy ending.

Shout out to honorable Field Negro, Ivan Leedy, for stepping up to help Mr. Robertson after hearing about his story. Dude is 19 years old and has already raised over $200,000.00 for the hard working man.

There still might be hope for America.




  











37 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:37 PM

    Nice story and thank you.

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  2. "It's amazing how many times folks Google words like "lazy nigger" to ultimately end up on this blog"

    I found it by Googling "lying liberal".

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  3. Let's start with the obvious problem here: lack of mass-transit options

    Yes, let's start with the obvious: Detroit is run by black people.

    Detroit has been run by black people for over 40 years now.

    Nothing works anymore. Mass transit, street lights, police and fire services, the water system.

    Sure some white kid can get some white people to donate some money and help out the hard working Mr. Robertson, but Detroit and every other city where corrupt black politicians have taken over will be dead in the water until the white people come back. And the white people aren't coming back until they can have their own neighborhoods and their own schools.

    White people are not going to put their life savings into home where the value could evaporate over night. They are not going to send their kids to schools where they are going to be victimized and where teachers have to spend 90% of their time trying to maintain some semblance of order.

    You want a bus for Mr. Robertson? Then allow restrictive covenants and neighborhood schools with no forced integration. Abandoned streets will be gentrified. Tax revenues will go up, businesses will open, the trains will start running on time. No one will have to walk 21 miles to work.

    Everybody wins when you face reality.

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  4. The Field Negro said...
    Let's start with the obvious problem here: lack of mass-transit options


    If a socialist like hitler could get the trains running on time it shouldn't be that hard for Detroit.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous10:51 PM

    This story makes me want to move to Detroit. It sounds like some really good people live there and they take good care of their people. Now that's the kind of city anybody could live in.

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  6. Sad that even a feel good story gets infested with racist trolls. Some things never change.

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  7. Dred Scott11:46 PM

    Honkies like "Shit" Romney, over a period of 40 years systematically deindustrialized Detroit and the rest of lily-White Amerikkka turns around and laughs at Black Detroit for being unemployed.

    White racists are inherently evil and should all be killed.

    ReplyDelete
  8. StillaPanther211:55 PM

    The chicken or the egg... which came first, the corrupt politician or the shrinking tax base due to lose of jobs/fleeing businesses?

    Trust me there are more corrupt politician with white skin by virtue of sheer numbers. Being my age I have read about and witnessed many pols of the majority being charged with maleficence of duty, only to have some judge of the majority throw the case out.

    Think about the amount of chicanery imbued in systems whereby crooks spend millions to obtain jobs paying low thousands.

    I offer one system where the whites have misused by being crooks that fsr exceeds and crime in Detroit. And that would be your stock market that have been gutted by people that are not Blacks. In support of Detroit, I can only say that if the Newport News Shipyard (recognizable name) leave my city will be like Detroit regardless of who is at the helm. Cities with solo major employers are subject to struggle when they shift their jobs to Mexico.

    There are truisms in America and one of the main truism is that the white man will NEVER allow anything of value to leave his hands. As a people that is just them.... I think it is good for them to take and HOLD the wealth on this globe. It would be quite satisfying when my people TAKE what they need, in lieu of waiting for the leftovers (Detroit).

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  9. I saw him on tv yesterday. He said "do you have any idea how long it took me to get that job in the first place? I could never quit trying if I had any chance of keeping it." That's pretty heroic dedication. He's my age and I couldn't do what he's doing when we were half as old.

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  10. Anonymous12:25 AM

    StillaPanther2 said...
    Trust me there are more corrupt politician with white skin by virtue of sheer numbers.
    ---

    Yes, that is true. The difference is black voters will support a criminal forever, as long he is "their" criminal.

    And the people who run the stock market don't consider themselves "white".

    Regarding cities with solo major employers, Pittsburgh lost its steel industry, but the people there adapted and today the city survives. There was a lot more to Detroit than the auto industry.

    Detroit fell apart because the people who took it over couldn't maintain what they had conquered.

    Good people like Mr. Robertson live diminished lives so that crooks can run the city.

    Black Detroit is dead. It's time to rebuild it. But the people there would rather live in ruins, as long as they run the show.

    Somethings gotta change.

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  11. Limpbaugh2:14 AM

    Sometimes the trolls do have funny comments.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I would suggest those who equate troubled areas with blackness visit rural W. Virginia, Kentucky or Mississippi. I would live in the D before habitating in the aformentioned places.

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  13. am i the only one that read this story and wondered where the educated, living the dream, Black folk are at times like these?

    guess so.

    it defies logic that folk expect others to care more for us as a nation than we do for ourselves.

    i will not ever believe there were no brothas in Detroit qualified to have this man's back.

    nope.

    not ever.

    hat tip to the teen's parents + eternal gratitude that it was not an image of a little white girl with pigtails. lol. all reminiscent of the elder Black man that used to sing and dance with Shirley Temple back in the day. i was probably the only soul wondering what was up with that, too. lol.

    so the image of the teen tapping into greater resources/power than the elder BM is able to do for himself, ok. do for self. meaning to help/do for one another. until the Black nation gets that message...

    side note: i agree with Limpbaugh..

    some of the hateful devilish comments are funny. all one can do is laugh + wonder if folk are for Real.

    Blessings all!

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  14. Pilot, I was thinking the same thing. Some if these trolls don't get out much. They see the world through their own racist tainted glasses.

    BTW, I do agree that some of the black politricksters and leaders in Detroit should be in the house.

    (I see you Kwame) But there are some white crooks in Lansing who are living large because of the downfall of Detroit as well.

    ReplyDelete
  15. lilacpr2000 said...
    And don't forget, that I therefore "push nonsense"

    Ahahaha! You know what I say to that right? x*D

    Because to me all of the rabid pro vaxxers, especially the ones that have no children, are pushing much more non-nonsensical rhetoric! If you can't do the walk, don't talk the talk! and I say this to him and all ;D

    and to me this is too serious of an issue to just blindly walk in lock step with anybody!




    No deje um preocupes eres mi isla princesa. SĆ³lo los dĆ©biles no logran cuestionar y seguir ciegamente.


    Espero que el aƱo nuevo te encuentra feliz y seguro.

    ReplyDelete
  16. PilotX:Freeing slaves from the Republican plantation since the 70's said...

    I would suggest those who equate troubled areas with blackness visit rural W. Virginia, Kentucky or Mississippi. I would live in the D before habitating in the aformentioned places.


    That's because you are looking through your own racist tainted glasses that field speaks of.


    There's not one. not one, rural majority white area in this country that has crime rates even remotely close to that of a urban area.



    ReplyDelete

  17. field negro said...
    (I see you Kwame) But there are some white crooks in Lansing who are living large because of the downfall of Detroit as well.


    Statement analysis tells us everything before "but" is to be ignored.


    These white crooks you speak of, elected dumbocrats?

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  18. Imagine the left-wingnut outrage if hannity/rush lied about being shot at or lied about military service.

    Lucky for brian williams no one expects better from dumbocrats.

    Dumbocrats, the party of lowered expectations.

    Dumbocrats, the party of lying about military service and being shot at.

    Richard Blumenthal
    Ron Dickey
    Hillary Clinton
    Brian Williams
    John Kerry
    Ken Aden
    Bob Levy
    Tom Harkin

    ReplyDelete
  19. You've gotta feel sorry for Bill.

    ReplyDelete

  20. The Purple Cow said...
    You've gotta feel sorry for Bill.


    Still thinking of me?

    How special.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Cletus Van Damme1:10 PM

    Only in Obana's Amerikkka. This is what liberal polices force people to do.

    He should have started slinging rock. He would have made mo money and saved the wear and tear on his legs.

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  22. Dan Rather Supports Brian Williams: He's an "Honest, Decent Man".

    Well that should settle it. If you can't take the word of a fellow anchorman who had to retire in disgrace after pushing fraudulent documents in an effort to sway a presidential election, whose can you take?

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  23. Dan Rather was right.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Hey Cletus, u are a wingnut, and therefore not very smart, but u do realize that this started 10 years ago, right?

    That would be during the time of W's America.

    ReplyDelete
  25. field negro said...
    Dan Rather was right.
    --

    Fake but accurate.

    Liberals have no need of truth.

    ReplyDelete
  26. NBC news is the same outfit that edited the audio of Zimmerman's 911 call to make him sound 'racist'.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Anonymous5:06 PM

    As a white person. I can attest to the fact that many of us are extremely lazy people. Yes, I am among them. I have no shame about it either. I'm lazy, my forefathers were lazy. All of my ancestors were probably very lazy. That's why it took them thousands of years to move out of caves and into the first house. Houses are hard to build.

    Why do work you don't have to do? That's the key question.

    I've discovered one truth in life. Let things go long enough and they finally don't matter. Take, for instance, the giant stack of papers on my desk at work. I just keep adding to it. Then, when it looks like it might fall over, I go through them. With great joy, I find it's too late to do anything about them. Then, it's just an easy matter of transferring them to the trash. That makes room for more papers I will never have to worry about.

    See how much stress was avoided by simply doing nothing? It really is the best way to a happy life. Trust me. I know what I'm saying.

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  28. field negro said...
    Dan Rather was right.


    If he was, why did he need to use fake documents?

    ReplyDelete

  29. President Obama: 'People Committed Terrible Deeds In The Name Of Christ'
    "Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place," the president said, "remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/05/obama-crusades-christ-_n_6623962.html


    When you need to compare Christians 1250 to ISIS 2015 you know you lost the argument.

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  30. You've gotta feel sorry for Bill.

    Poor old Bill.

    ReplyDelete

  31. The Purple Cow said...
    You've gotta feel sorry for Bill.
    Poor old Bill.


    Why is that?

    ReplyDelete
  32. Anonymous7:56 PM

    Bill said, "When you need to compare Christians 1250 to ISIS 2015 you know you lost the argument."

    Other than time, what's the difference? You want to justify your rationale because this is 2015? Get real. Spiritual Principles are timeless and human lack of understanding of them is timeless.

    For instance, the recognition of the wretchedness by Christians in 1250 did not prevent the evil of slavery centuries later in America.

    More currently, racism in America still reigns supreme centuries later. Nothing has changed, including ignorant views of what's wrong like Bill who thinks humans have changed over time... They haven't.

    “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”


    ― Albert Einstein

    Bill, try to remember this quote because the truth is profound and does not change with time.

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  33. SuzanMe8:02 PM

    Thank you Field

    ReplyDelete
  34. "Bill said, "When you need to compare Christians 1250 to ISIS 2015 you know you lost the argument."

    Other than time, what's the difference? You want to justify your rationale because this is 2015? Get real. Spiritual Principles are timeless and human lack of understanding of them is timeless.

    For instance, the recognition of the wretchedness by Christians in 1250 did not prevent the evil of slavery centuries later in America.

    More currently, racism in America still reigns supreme centuries later. Nothing has changed, including ignorant views of what's wrong like Bill who thinks humans have changed over time... They haven't."

    That was a terrific response.

    Sadly, when you are blinded by your O jones you don't see the obvious.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Anonymous9:23 PM

    "More currently, racism in America still reigns supreme centuries later. Nothing has changed"

    Well, if that's really the case, let's just re-institute slavery. We may as well get something for our money.

    ReplyDelete
  36. "Well, if that's really the case, let's just re-institute slavery. We may as well get something for our money."

    I know you would love that, but.. well let's just say that you have gotten more than your $ worth.

    Is there some brown sugar that you want but can't get? ;)

    Sounds like it. Why don't you try flowers and being yourself. Wait... scratch that....don't be yourself. You wouldn't have a shot.

    ReplyDelete
  37. DIE, WHITE DEVILS!!!1:47 AM

    @4:59 PM...

    No, you stupid, racist KKKochhole; The Sanford Pig Dept. tampered with evidence by overdubbing the word "PUNKS" @2:12 of the 911 tape of George Killerman grunting under his breath: "These f*cking 'COONS' always get away!"

    This was audible, rock-solid proof of racial profiling. Killerman's racism was successfully covered up by the White Honky Racist Media and Porkchops!

    Killerman got away with murder.....BIG SURPRISE!!

    ReplyDelete