WaPo: Alton Sterling, Eric Garner and the double standard of the side hustle

[Algernon Moncrieff]

Garner and Sterling were, in fact, doing something that's now celebrated in very different forums by small-scale "entrepreneurs" who typically don't look like them. They were trying to earn income off what they had at hand in ways that are not strictly legal. The parallels to today's sharing economy aren't such a stretch, argued tech entrepreneur Anil Dash this week

...

In cities where short-term rentals remain technically illegal, we don't typically think of Airbnb hosts as operating in a black market. Nor do we consider Uber drivers skirting the law — making, for instance, illegal airport runs — to be "hustling." But the kind of parallel activities Dash cites have been heavily criminalized, with the further help of anti-loitering laws. Black children selling candy bars come to be treated as criminals.

In this video that went viral last week, an older woman scolds a black child for selling candy outside of a California Target, a practice she describes as seeing "all around the country." She demands to see the child's license to be there (an intervening man defends the young vendor and offers to buy all of the candy). The child's voice, at the 40-second mark — "excuse me, sir" — sounds painfully young

...

The larger cruelty is that, by excluding certain communities from the formal economy, society has pushed people who might prefer legal work into underground alternatives. Poor education, criminal records, discrimination and legal obstacles for immigrants have turned the shadow economy into a key means for how marginalized communities support themselves, whether driving gypsy cabs, selling street food or working restaurants under the table. This kind of activity is more often associated with developing countries, but it thrives in poor urban communities in the United States, too.

Link to WaPo article

[Algernon Moncrieff]

1. Kick for exposure

[uponit7771]

2. +1