ראסיזים און סופערסטישאן: א היימישע קוגל

[יואליש]

אין ניו יארק מאגאזין איז ערשינען אן אויסצוג פון א בוך וועלכע קאווערט די אישו פון זשענטרעפיקעשאן, ווען געגענטער ווערן צי טייער פאר פשוט'ע פארדינער. די אויסצוג דעקט א שמועס מיט א חסידיש'ער אינגערמאן, מיטן פעסודענים אפרים, וועלכע ציעט זיין חיונה פון די ריעל עסטעיט ביזנעס ארום וויליאמסבורג. די שרעק איז די ראסיזים וואס קומט ארויס אין דעם שמועס, און ווי שווארצע פארדינען, אין אפרים'ס אויגן, ווייניגער רחמנות פון א פרוכט בוים.

כי האדם עץ השדה? אתם קרויים אדם!

אפרים איז בלויז א פראדוקט פון זיין געזעלשאפט,און בכלל נישט קיין אויסנאמספאל. אבער מ'זאגט נאך פון פריערדיגע: "נעבעך א ראסיסט איז פארט א ראסיסט."


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נאדיר דאס לעצטע העלפט ציטירט:


My saying is — again, I’m not racist — every black person has a price. The average price for a black person here in Bed-Stuy is $30,000 dollars. Up over there in East New York, it’s $10,000 dollars. Everyone wants them to leave, not because we don’t like them, it’s just they’re messing up — they bring everything down. Not all of them.

Most of them don’t believe you at first. "Oh, you Jewish people you’re a bunch of thieves, you’re never going to give me my money." But once you start actually having a base of people who know you, who you actually gave the money, it’s better. Sometimes it’s really tricky because you’ll have one person willing to leave for $2,000 and another wants $20,000. And the second this guy finds out that guy is getting 20 he says, “Hell no, I’m not leaving. I want 20, too.”

They don’t know — here he lowers his voice — that even if they get the money and they left, they could always come back. They don’t know that part. And it’s so scary sometimes because they could come up in the middle of construction and say, “It’s my property, I didn’t understand what I was signing, and I want to come back.”

Some blacks have an attorney and everything. So I try to make them happy, even if they’re going to go for $7,000 or $8,000, I’d rather give them an extra grand so they’re happy and they’re not going to think about it too much. Again, I don’t want to be a racist, but when I have a building—I can’t even say it because it’s not going to sound right.

He lowers his voice again:

If there’s a black tenant in the house—in every building we have, I put in white tenants. They want to know if black people are going to be living there. So sometimes we have ten apartments and everything is white, and then all of the sudden one tenant comes in with one black roommate, and they don’t like it. They see black people and get all riled up, they call me: “We’re not paying that much money to have black people live in the building.” If it’s white tenants only, it’s clean. I know it’s a little bit racist but it’s not. They’re the ones that are paying and I have to give them what they want. Or I’m not going to get the tenants and the money is not going to be what it is.


The scary part about doing this is, if the black guys start to realize how much the property will sell for. This is a new thing now, the past year. A million, two million dollars—it’s crazy, crazy numbers. None of them realize yet—some of them do—the amount of money you can get. The scary part is they’re going to realize they can get the same exact house in East New York for $400,000, $500,000 and they can get paid $1.5 million for their home in Bed-Stuy, they’re going to start dumping houses on the market and the market’s going to be flooded and it’s going to cool down. It’s already cooling down.

It’s so hard to get empty buildings. When you have an empty building it’s like gold. So we never flip buildings. One building we sold because in the Jewish religion there’s a weird thing where you don’t cut down a fruit tree. Some people really don’t give a shit about fruit trees. But most of the Hasidic Jewish people will not cut down a fruit tree. There’s one house in Borough Park where they cut down a fruit tree and there was nine fires over there in the last two years. Sometimes weird stuff happens. So we had a building, and the only way it’s working for us is if the fruit tree comes down. We spent $50,000 doing the plans and then found out there’s a fruit tree. We didn’t know about it. So we had to sell the building. It’s the only way I’m going to sell a building. A building is not really a selling thing. Buildings are for keeping.