Mount Vernon, NY Mayor Richard Thomas has filed a formal complaint against JP Morgan Chase citing that he was racially profiled when he visited the branch in White Plains, NY. Mayor Thomas was at the Chase bank accompanied by his chief of staff and a Mount Vernon detective to review the city’s financial records when the police was called by an employee stating that at least one person “had a gun.”
Although the bank branch was given prior notice of the Mayor’s arrival and his security staff, he still faced difficulty in obtaining the financial information after being granted access to the records by a judge. The police was called on the trio, whose cultural backgrounds were of African and Latino descent, and who did not cause a disturbance whatsoever. But one of the responding officers on the scene recognized the detective, possibly preventing another profiling tragedy.
A judge had ruled in Mayor Thomas’ favor for the city controller Deborah Reynolds to disclose financial records.
Thomas insisted that neither himself nor staff ever brandished a weapon nor caused any scene and while one JP Morgan representative denies that the mayor was racially profiled at all, Mayor Thomas has filed a complaint against Chase.
The mayor stated in a letter:
“As a mayor and as a young, well educated black man living during this turbulent time in society where police are being called on black people for going about everyday life, this is unacceptable. We’ve seen this happen to two black men at a Starbucks in Philadelphia. We’ve also seen this happen to Oregon Rep. Janelle Bynum while she was campaigning. Now it happened to me.”
While expressing his disgust over the way-too common incident that has claimed lives in many cases, The Mayor was very fortunate that things did not escalate from bad to worse. The label, “profiling” is just another word for the deeply-rooted racism that allows for prejudiced folks to smokescreen their hatred. It does not matter what “class” black people come from in this society, in the mind of a true-blue bigot the “you are still a nigger” mentality is still in full effect.
This is 2019 and though some things have changed, the rule of white (non) supremacy and the spirits spawned from those roots will not “turn over a new leaf’ no time soon and with that said, I will not personally patronize a business that tolerates biased practices that put lives in jeopardy. Therefore it is time to be more mindful and aware of where and who our community dollars go to and support.
A rep for JP Morgan, Joseph Evangelisti, stated that “our staff acted appropriately”
…….Right, and that just proved my point!
Queennandi Xsheba, PNN KEXU