And the tax-time phenomenon of which I write, is the prevalence of the promotional employees for tax firms and accountants.
The men and women flipping signs, donning costumes, and busting a move with the promise of relief, just down the block, from the daunting task of giving up possibly hard earned dollars to a government you may or may not approve of.
But there is a specific sub-section in this profession which draws my curiosity, on which I would like to focus, and it would be those employees who dress up as assorted Statues of Liberty. And the fact that an incredibly high percentage of these vestiges of Lady Liberty are, as Peter Griffin would say, black guys.
Black dudes dressed as Statues of Liberty promoting tax breaks. Break-dancing, if you will.
Some fellow posted a photo series on flickr entitled... Tax Dance POSTCARDS in motion. Hopefully he's cool with me providing a link here cause it works really well as a paradigm for what I'm discussing. http://www.flickr.com/photos/patjarrett/4401463266/in/photostream/
If it's not chill with him, and the same goes for any material on here that I don't possess the rights to, I'll definitely think about taking it down. Just message me or whatever.
Here is a sweet video just brimming with some choice statue-esque dance moves. I like this guy's attitude and I really like that muppet looking costume in the beginning! BOSS!
The guy filming the video however... just listen to his "awesome" opinion of displaying the confederate flag and his not-patronizing-whatsoever attitude towards his video subject. Righteous, dude. Righteous.
Someone else made a blog post on these folks already... http://blog.christhedunn.com/2011/01/20/its-tax-season-again/
...but apparently failed to notice or comment on the black dude as lady liberty trend.
It's a trend that I've noticed develop over the past five years or so but it very well could have been developing a lot longer without my notice. In general, I feel the whole employee on the busy street corner dancing and flipping sign occurrence is something that has grown exceedingly more common in the past decade, would you not agree?
My initial intent of creating this post was to ask readers (if anyone actually reads this and gets this far, you probably deserve a medal or at least a drink of something) if they have also noticed something similar around tax time in their home towns.
I kind of figured that this was a regionally specific occurrence, not to just Los Angeles per say, but to urban centers as a whole. In urban centers (i.e. New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, etc.) where you have higher black populations compared to say Hershey, Pennsylvania (no chocolate pun intended) I assume you will see a certain niche of low wage, minimal experience jobs staffed predominately by said black population. It should go without saying this model excludes landscaping jobs and jobs in most kitchens.
Now understand this is not me being racist, this is our government and our society being racist.
It's a vicious circle of financial status determining education determining financial status paired with all sorts of other nasty variables like increased police presence/arrest-conviction rates/chance of imprisonment for populations in lower income neighborhoods, increased drug presence in said neighborhoods (quite possibly with government complicity if not outright direction), quality of public education, and also just plain discrimination/indoctrinated hatred. And that is just scratching the surface of this Benny Bendover of a situation.
If you think this is untrue, you probably need to remove your head from your ass. You probably don't believe in dinosaurs either.
But... beyond the economics and social programming, there seems to be a distinct pattern which has arisen, where most of these Statue of Liberty gigs are assumed by black men. Doing a general image search using the terms "statue of liberty tax", omitting "black" as a search term entirely, will yield a result pool which speaks to my point.
Of course, with any topic of this nature, it will never be entirely black and white. See the photo below for reference.
And so finally we get to my closing thoughts, which I assume will cause the greatest division on this particular matter. Thinking about how many black dude Ladies of Liberty are out there, dancing and listening to whatever is on the other end of their headphones (I hope for my own sake that it is, at least occasionally, AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted by Ice Cube), donning some sweet shades, just makes me laugh a little bit. Not in a condescending way but in a like this is really really bizarre kind of way.
This is only compounded by the fact I have never in my life seen a black man or woman dressed as a statue of liberty for Halloween, "sexy" or otherwise.
A symbol of freedom and liberty (whether you believe its an empty symbol or not) fashioned into a costume worn by a group of people who have, to a large extent, had many of their rights and freedoms compromised by that government/society, with the direct purpose of promoting help with said government's tax collection agency.
The weird levels of irony make me laugh. That shit is hilarious.
There are also a fair amount of black Uncle Sams who operate in the same line of work but for the sake of any kind of brevity, you can come to your own conclusions there.
So this is what I think about black dudes dressed as the Statue of Liberty and if you don't care for my opinion... well f*ck you. Lighten up already. This guy knows what's up.
