Déjà vu All Over Again

A few weeks ago I wrote a relatively scathing piece regarding payday lenders. I’d received an email inviting me to a “financial literacy educational seminar” that was being sponsored by, of all people, those nice folks who run CheckSmart, the outfit that found away around the law and continues to charge poor and working class Ohioans interest rates that amount to usury: APRs that can amount to 391 percent. A few years ago we voted statewide to limit how much these bandits could gouge folks for, but, alas, they found a loophole in the law and still continue their shady operations.

The bulk of my opprobrium in that piece however, was not directed at the payday lenders … Robber Barons are always going to do what Robber Barons are known for doing: Rob people. It’s in their DNA.

No, the group I took to task for allowing their logo to be used on the literature was the Ohio Black Legislative Caucus — the organization comprised of black representatives and senators from across Ohio. I admit that words like “prostitutes” and “whores” did slip into that piece, and I was roundly taken to task in a couple of phone calls and in a face-to-face meeting for using such strongly pejorative terms to describe the action of black elected officials.

I suppose I should, at this juncture, take the opportunity to apologize for using such language and I sincerely want to do so … but to do it now would be premature. My purpose in calling them out in such a manner was to get their attention; to let them know, in no uncertain terms, that they were being watched on this issue. In that I definitely succeeded, although I certainly didn’t make any new friends among that body. But, to paraphrase the rapper Chuck D., “I’d rather be hated for what I am, than loved for what I am not.”

The fact is, I knew a vote was coming up in the legislature in regards to closing the loopholes that payday lenders are using to continue to financially rape Ohioans. My column was intended as a shot across the bow of black elected officials, virtually all of whom have received campaign contributions from CheckSmart.

Many other states already have outlawed their despicable practices, and the federal government won’t allow them anywhere near military bases where they once preyed on our men and women in uniform. Loan shops can still operate for those who might need their services, but only at fair rates of return. In Cleveland, Faith Community United Credit Union has demonstrated that a profit can still be made while treating the people who need such financial services fairly.

If, for some reason, any black elected official votes in a manner that is diametrically opposed to the best interests of black folks, poor folks, and working class citizens of Ohio when this issue comes up in a few weeks, I’m going to start naming names. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve never called out any of them by name so far … but I guarantee you that will change once this upcoming vote is in. I will praise to high Heaven those who vote for the people, and call the rest of them names so ugly they probably have never even heard them. Perhaps I’ll even make up some nasty names for them. In fact, I just might even “play the dozens,” which, to the uninitiated, is — in the black community — talking about someone’s ancestors. As in “your momma wears combat boots.” I’m begging them — please, please vote the right way on this since I really don’t want to go there … but I will. I know that I’m on the side of the angels on this one.

This column wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention the other organization that had its name and logo on the email inviting financial lambs to a certain predatory slaughter (I had spies at the poorly attended “seminar” and none of the speakers ever mentioned how people should avoid being overcharged with interest and penalties by payday loan operators).

CORE, the largely defunct Congress of Racial Equality, was the third sponsor. This group, which got its start in 1942, and at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the early 60s staged Freedom Rides into the still-segregated South, has turned into a money-making front for Niger Innis, a right wing Republican consultant and the son of black sellout Roy Innis. CORE operatives now travel the country perpetrating this outrage... or, as we say in the black community, “fattin’ frogs for snakes.”

Trying to shame this group of moneygrubbers would be a wasteful exercise in futility; they have no shame. There always have been, and always will be, blacks who sell out other blacks. It started during slavery when “House Negroes” alerted their slave masters of any impending revolt or even unrest among the “Field Negroes.”

As a reward for their treachery, the House Negroes were treated better, got their heads rubbed, and even came to identify with the slave masters. So this conferring of illegitimate power on members of the black community by political forces from outside the black community is nothing new; it continues to this very day in other guises... all blacks have to do to verify this is to look around the political landscape with a watchful eye — lest we be sold down the river once again.

Hark! The bidding has already started.

From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier's From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.frombehindthewall.com.