By Michael Smith | Reflective MVS
There is a reason Black folks still remember that “Hurry up and buy” line from Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood.
It was funny because it was absurd. It was sharp because it was familiar.
That little corner-store scene worked because it exaggerated something many of us already knew: the strange experience of spending money in a neighborhood business while being treated like a problem that walked through the door with exact change. You came in for chips, hair grease, incense, a lighter, a pack of noodles, or whatever else your mama sent you to get. Before you could make it to the second aisle, somebody was watching you like you had Ocean’s Eleven hidden in your hoodie.
“Hurry up and buy” became a joke. But like most Black jokes, there was a receipt under it.
Now, years later, that old line is being dragged back into the conversation because another painful story has reopened an older wound: the Black dollar, Asian-owned businesses in Black neighborhoods, anti-Black suspicion, immigrant respectability politics, and America’s favorite hustle, getting wounded communities to fight each other while the real power structure sits in the skybox eating popcorn.
The recent South Carolina case involving a Black teenager killed after being suspected of shoplifting became more than a criminal trial. It became a symbol. A child was dead. A community was grieving. A jury said what it said. Then social media did what social media does: threw gasoline, lit a match, and asked everybody to pick a side before asking who built the room.
Some Black people called for boycotts of Asian-owned businesses. Some Asian voices responded with anti-Black arrogance, including one viral dare that told Black people to go ahead and boycott, as if the Black dollar were decorative. That was not just tone-deaf. That was historically illiterate with Wi-Fi.
Because if there is one thing Black people know how to do, it is boycott. That word has a church suit in our closet.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was not a hashtag. It was discipline. It was elders walking miles. It was domestic workers, preachers, students, organizers, drivers, cooks, and mothers turning exhaustion into strategy. So when anybody dares Black people to boycott, they are not throwing a challenge. They are accidentally calling up the ancestors like they know the password.
But this moment requires more than anger. Anger is easy. Analysis is the heavier lift.
Because yes, anti-Blackness exists in parts of the Asian community. Let’s not put lace curtains over that window. Some Asian immigrants and Asian Americans have bought into the same poisoned American story that says Black people are lazy, dangerous, criminal, loud, uneducated, ungrateful, and somehow both powerless and responsible for everybody else’s problems. Some will sell Black hair products, Black beauty supplies, Black culture, Black swagger, Black music, Black slang, and Black aesthetics, then look down on actual Black people like the culture arrived without a body.
That is not solidarity. That is extraction with a receipt printer.
We have seen it across immigrant communities too, not just Asian ones. People arrive in America, study the racial ladder, and some decide the safest thing to do is not to dismantle it but to climb one rung above Black people. They learn quickly that proximity to whiteness pays better than proximity to justice. So they mimic our cool, sell to our communities, borrow our cadence, package our defiance, profit from our style, then repeat the same tired lines white supremacy wrote on the bathroom wall.
That is the part that stings.
Because Black culture is treated like public property, but Black people are treated like private risk.
Everybody wants the sauce. Fewer want the struggle. Everybody wants the rhythm. Fewer want the history. Everybody wants the fashion, the language, the humor, the resilience, the edge, the soul, the remix, the defiance, the Sunday plate and Saturday-night cool. But when Black people ask for respect, suddenly the same people who were two seconds ago selling “urban” become accountants of Black failure.
That is not cultural appreciation. That is colonial sampling.
And still, this cannot become a lazy “Black versus Asian” sermon. That is exactly how the trap works.
The Asian community in America has its own history of state violence, exclusion, and white supremacist abuse. Chinese immigrants were not welcomed into this country with a fruit basket and a soft hymn. They were exploited for labor, blamed for economic anxiety, attacked by mobs, and then targeted by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, one of the clearest examples of America turning racism into paperwork. Japanese Americans, many of them citizens, were forced into incarceration camps during World War II because the government dressed racism up as national security. Filipino, South Asian, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, Pacific Islander, and other Asian communities have all faced their own forms of exclusion, war, displacement, labor exploitation, and suspicion.
So no, the Asian American story is not a simple story of privilege. America has never fully handed them the keys either.
But here is where the history gets inconvenient for the folks who want to look down on Black people while standing on freedoms Black people helped expand.
The Black Civil Rights Movement did not only change life for Black Americans. It changed the moral and legal weather of this country. Black people marched, bled, organized, sued, boycotted, voted, buried children, faced dogs, faced fire hoses, faced jail cells, and forced America to pretend, however briefly, that democracy meant something. That pressure helped create the environment that made major immigration reform possible in 1965.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ended the old national-origin quota system that had favored European immigrants and restricted immigration from much of the nonwhite world. That change helped open the door for more immigrants from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. It did not happen because America woke up one morning with a clean heart. It happened because Black freedom struggle exposed the hypocrisy of a country selling liberty overseas while practicing apartheid at home.
So when some Asian Americans talk about Black people like we are an obstacle, they are not just being racist. They are being historically ungrateful in surround sound.
That does not mean Asian Americans owe Black people silence. It does not mean Asian-owned businesses deserve blanket punishment. It does not mean every Asian person operating in a Black neighborhood is an enemy. That kind of thinking is sloppy, and sloppy thinking is where bigotry rents a room.
But it does mean we are allowed to ask hard questions.
Why are so many Asian-owned businesses concentrated in Black neighborhoods? Why do some owners profit from Black communities while treating Black customers as presumed thieves? Why do some immigrant communities arrive in America and adopt anti-Blackness like it came in the citizenship packet? Why are Black neighborhoods often expected to sustain everyone else’s businesses while struggling to get capital for their own? Why is Black spending welcomed, but Black dignity negotiable?
That is the real conversation.
Asian-owned beauty supply stores, nail salons, liquor stores, corner stores, takeout spots, and convenience stores did not appear in Black neighborhoods by magic. They appeared inside a larger system shaped by redlining, white flight, disinvestment, segregation, and unequal access to capital. Banks starved Black communities. Major retailers ignored Black neighborhoods or treated them like risk zones. Black entrepreneurs were blocked from credit, leases, supply chains, and distribution networks. Into those gaps came immigrant entrepreneurs, often working brutal hours and facing racism themselves, but also sometimes becoming the face of commerce in places where they did not live, did not worship, did not send their kids to school, and did not always respect the people keeping the lights on.
That is a recipe. And America has been cooking with it for decades.
It puts one marginalized group behind the counter and another marginalized group under suspicion in front of it. Then it lets every tense interaction become proof of somebody’s prejudice. The store owner sees danger. The customer sees disrespect. The system sees profit. And white supremacy sees Tuesday.
This is what I mean when I say the fight gets pushed sideways.
The same America that excluded Asians, incarcerated Japanese families, bombed and destabilized Asian countries, mocked Asian languages, fetishized Asian women, and turned COVID into anti-Asian street violence is the same America that enslaved Black people, lynched Black people, redlined Black people, over-policed Black people, underfunded Black schools, and turned Black childhood into probable cause.
That is not a coincidence. That is architecture.
White supremacy does not need every nonwhite group to love whiteness. It only needs them to distrust Blackness. It only needs them to believe there is a reward for not being “like them.” It only needs the immigrant shop owner, the model minority striver, the conservative uncle, the respectability preacher, and the scared suburban voter to agree on one thing: whatever happens, blame Black people first.
And plenty of folks buy the package.
Some immigrant families arrive with anti-Black ideas already packed in the suitcase, courtesy of global white supremacy. Others learn it here, because America is generous with racism. It teaches anti-Blackness in schools, banks, movies, hiring offices, police departments, newsrooms, beauty standards, neighborhood associations, and immigration politics. You do not need to be white to carry white supremacy’s water. Sometimes you just need a cash register, a camera, and a little too much confidence.
That viral dare to Black people was revealing because it did not just say, “We do not need you.” It listed all the ways Black people supposedly rely on Asian goods, Asian labor, and Asian-owned businesses. Hair. Nails. Takeout. Electronics. Shoes. Cars. Liquor stores. Dry cleaners.
That was supposed to be a flex.
It sounded more like a confession.
Because if Black people are so irrelevant, why is so much of your argument built around Black consumption? If Black neighborhoods are so beneath you, why are so many businesses built inside them? If Black customers are so terrible, why does their absence scare the parking lot?
Pick a struggle. Preferably one with a business plan.
This is where the boycott conversation gets complicated.
Black people absolutely should be more intentional about where our money goes. We should support Black-owned beauty supply stores, Black farmers, Black restaurants, Black banks, Black contractors, Black media, Black bookstores, Black wellness brands, Black tech, Black everything that is competent, ethical, and rooted in community. The Black dollar should not have to beg for respect after it pays the rent.
But we also need to be careful that “support Black” does not become “hate Asian.” Those are not the same sentence. One builds power. The other feeds the machine.
A strategic boycott has a target, a demand, a discipline, and a moral frame. A rage boycott can turn into racial revenge shopping, and that helps nobody except the people who already want Black and Asian communities locked in permanent suspicion. If a business disrespects Black customers, organize. If an owner has a history of mistreating the community, expose it. If a store criminalizes the very people who keep it alive, take your money elsewhere and tell your neighbors why. That is not bigotry. That is accountability.
But if the analysis becomes “Asian people are the enemy,” then we have let white supremacy ghostwrite the ending.
The real target is anti-Blackness wherever it lives. In white institutions. In immigrant communities. In Asian-owned businesses. In Latino communities. In Arab communities. In Black people who have internalized it. In policing. In media. In schools. In courtrooms. In banks. In beauty aisles. In campaign ads. In the casual little comments people make when they think they are among friends.
The target is not a face. It is a system.
Still, we should not soften the truth to protect anyone’s comfort. There are Asian Americans who understand this clearly and have said so. They know their communities have benefited from civil rights victories Black people fought for. They know anti-Blackness exists in Asian families, churches, businesses, schools, and online spaces. They know silence is not neutrality. It is permission.
That is the kind of allyship that matters. Not the “we all need unity” greeting card version. Real unity requires correction. It requires calling out your cousin, your customer base, your business association, your auntie, your uncle, your group chat, your favorite creator, your own reflection. Otherwise, “solidarity” is just a word people use when the protest flyer looks diverse.
And Black people have a right to be tired.
Tired of being told to calm down after a child is dead. Tired of being treated like suspects in stores built on our spending. Tired of watching our culture get copied by people who would cross the street if our sons walked toward them. Tired of being blamed for Asian exclusion, Asian admissions anxiety, Asian hate, Asian business tension, or any other problem we did not create. Black people did not pass the Chinese Exclusion Act. Black people did not incarcerate Japanese Americans. Black people did not bomb Vietnam, abandon Hmong allies, colonize Hawaii, or turn “Kung flu” into a presidential applause line.
So when anti-Black voices aim their resentment at us, we are allowed to ask: Who trained you to shoot sideways?
Because that is what this is.
A lateral war.
One community wounded by America looking at another wounded community and mistaking them for the architect. Meanwhile, the banks keep banking, the courts keep courting, the police keep policing, the landlords keep raising rent, the schools stay underfunded, and the politicians show up with a microphone only after the blood dries.
“Hurry up and buy” was funny because we recognized the scene.
It is less funny when a community starts asking why it has been hurrying up for decades to spend money in places where respect moves slower than the line.
The answer is not to pretend all Asian-owned businesses are enemies. The answer is also not to pretend anti-Blackness is just a misunderstanding with subtitles. The answer is to get disciplined. Build Black economic alternatives. Support businesses that respect us. Stop funding people who despise us. Demand Asian American accountability where anti-Blackness shows up. Reject blanket hatred. Study the history. Follow the money. Watch who benefits.
Because the oldest trick in America is convincing the people in the basement to fight over who gets the better corner, while the landlord lives upstairs off everybody’s rent.
We do not need that script.
We need memory. We need strategy. We need self-respect. We need allies with backbone. We need Black dollars moving with Black intention. And we need to stop mistaking access to our money for permission to disrespect our humanity.
So yes, hurry up and buy.
But this time, buy from people who know your life is worth more than the transaction.
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