This is a tale of two black people and one major city.
Within just the last week, Walmart closed half its store locations in Chicago, and the city police department instituted new curfew and bag-check policies at public parks and beaches following days of “reckless, disruptive and violent behavior.”
A sane person who prefers living in a clean, safe, and prosperous city would see that news and say things are going in the wrong direction, and the people who are responsible for it need to be held accountable.
That’s how popular TikTok user The Blaq Mamba reacted in a video she posted Sunday. “What really saddens me about this,” she said, referring to the closure of one Walmart location in the South Side, “is that this Walmart was built in a predominantly black neighborhood. This is probably about the only major resource as far as like, shopping and access to groceries and access to pharmacy within a 10-block, maybe even a 10-mile radius.” She added, “And what’s really sad to me is how us black folks, we done stole and robbed ourselves out of a f-cking resource that even the elderly people of this community will not be able to have access to.”
She said she was “ashamed and saddened” because “We blame everybody else for our sh-t but then when we are tapped out of resources in our own community, we don’t ever want to look at ourselves and point the finger back at ourselves, and say, okay, maybe
