(ThyBlackMan.com) A petty merchant is a person (particularly an Arab or Asian) who comes from oppressed countries filled with colonial conditions imposed on them by the colonial social system by setting up shop in predominant African communities across the country to only parasitically extract resources from the African community, much like gentrifying parasitic white businesses and corporations.
These petty merchants are no different from these gentrifying parasitic white businesses and corporations that are deliberately put into our communities by corrupt city governments across the country under the facade of “economic development”, but petty merchants and gentrifying parasitic white businesses and corporations are NOT “economic development” for our community because they both represent parasitic capitalist extraction from our community.
Petty merchants are also very notorious for selling African Kids things that they clearly should not even be selling like drugs like
spice (which is another systemic attack on the African community) and much like gentrification and police containment of the African community, petty merchants and drugs go hand-in-hand. They are also notorious for having outdated food on their shelves that they would never sell to whites or particularly amongst themselves, but except to deliberately sell the nasty outdated food to African people which is also very reflective of the food deserts within our community where there’s no access to healthy foods within our community and that’s because of the negative policies of corrupt city governments that lead to food deserts within our community.
Whenever I go to certain predominant African neighborhoods in my hometown of Montgomery, Alabama, the petty merchants are present in the form of small business, hair & nail salons. When I walk by the nail & hair salon that’s owned by parasitic petty Asian merchants in the Vista View Plaza, most of the customers are African women that they love to parasitically extract their resources from the most.
These petty merchants have a vicious track record of disrespecting and attacking African people in this country and an example of that happened just recently in St. Petersburg, Florida where an African woman was disrespected by a parasitic petty Arab merchant and three young African activists who represent African working class people like myself confronted the parasitic petty Arab merchant who disrespected the African woman and he called the pig squad on the three African activists and the activists were violently assaulted by by being slammed to the pig squad cars and two of them had knees dug into their neck that made it difficult for them to breathe and one of the pigs slipped up by saying to the young African female activist “So, you must’ve ran for city council”. The pigs knew exactly who these three young African activists were and this to me was clearly politically motivated.
Petty merchants are also very notorious for having nasty stores that smell horrible and the food is just as nasty as the food prevalent in jails and prisons across the country as well as selling drug paraphernalia to underage African kids.
This ain’t the first time that petty merchants have disrespected and attacked African people. One of the most notorious cases happened in South Central Los Angeles, California in 1991 when a 15 year old African teenage girl named Latasha Harlins was unlawfully killed by a parasitic petty Asian merchant over a false assumption that Harlins was “stealing” and this was one of the main incidents that led to the beautiful rebellion by the African working class in L.A. in late April 1992 in which 65% of the business that were systematically targeted and destroyed by the African working class during the rebellion were owned by parasitic petty Asian merchants in South Central Los Angeles.
I also wanna note that in 1993, legendary rap artist Tupac Shakur did a song that paid tribute to Latasha Harlins called “Keep Your Head Up” and that song to this day is one of my top 5 favorite Tupac songs of all-time.
The Conclusion – When you see these petty merchants in our community, they are not our “friends”, they are our enemies that support police violence against our community and are also very reflective of the food deserts that plague our community.
Staff Writer; Kwame Shakir (aka Joe D.)