Friday, July 8, 2011

The Perils of Appearing Prosperous While Being Black

If you patronize Chase Bank (or any of their offshoots), you're participating in this shit, too. The "help" doesn't do what there is not at least tacit permission from the "Top" to do:
Ikenna, a 28-year old construction worker, went to deposit a $8,463.21 Chase cashier's check at his local Chase branch, only for the teller to decide that neither he nor his check looked right and he got tossed in jail for forgery, KING5 reports. The next day, a Friday the bank realized its mistake and left a message with the detective. But it was her day off, so he spent the entire weekend in jail.

By the time he got out, he had been fired from his job for not showing up to work. His car had been towed as well. It ended up getting sold off at auction because he couldn't afford to get it out of the pound. He had been relying on that cashier's check for his money but it was taken as evidence and by the time he got it back it was auctioned off.

All this while the cashier's check had been issued by the very bank he was trying to cash it at.

Chase didn't even apologize, not even after a year. A lawyer volunteered to help write a strongly-worded letter requesting damages. After trying hard to get a response, they sent KING 5 a two-sentence reply: "We received the letter and are reviewing the situation. We'll be reaching out to the customer."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I heard this story on the Young Turks. They share your opinion that this was racial. I don't. I think that this would have happened to him no matter what his skin colour. (Its probably relevant to say, I'm a white (Scottish) Canadian.)

This is how the banks treat people, this is how the rich treat the poor/prior middle class, and this is how the tellers are trained.

The teller here was brainwashed to think in terms of what would save the banks money. She did so regardless of the cost to this poor soul. She did what they wanted her to do and I bet she was rewarded for it. But it's not like she really made the decision. She like the rest of the robots that work at a bank, she just listened to to almighty voice on the phone and obeyed.