Jesus Christ, Chronos. I’m persecuting an ethnic group because I asked a question about their culture. Got it.
I will say this… Facebook is saturated with duct cleaning scams. In fact, just a few weeks ago I created a topic about it right here.
I’ve never paid much attention to the scammers’ ethnicities, though. Nor do I care about it.
Yeah, just asking why they’re such scammers. Never said they were, just wanted to know why they were.
You’ve made blatantly offensive statements in these two threads and continue to double down on them.
Even after the first thread was locked, all you had to do was rework the OP and post it again. Instead you did…whatever this is.
Take a breath, lay low for a day and stop reminding people why they’re mad at you.
Why are Mexicans so lazy? I’m not saying they all are, but why is it such a part of their culture?
Why are Jews so greedy? I’m not saying they all are, but why is it such a part of their culture?
Do you see what is wrong with these statements? Or do you think that this is just asking questions about their culture?
@HeyHomie, I wouldn’t have a problem with your OP if you had done the following things differently:
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Made your OP an inquiry of whether traveling communities commit more fraud than does the general population, as opposed to declaring it as established fact. We’ve all heard lots of anecdotes about such incidents by travelers. But as noted, that doesn’t prove they happen more with travelers than with non-travelers.
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Placed more emphasis on the itinerent nature of traveler communities as the (possible) source of higher rates of fraud, as opposed to the cultures of those communities. You did address this, which makes me think that you’re not prejudiced against these ethnic groups, but may have just stated some things clumsily.
AIUI, the Irish travelers are pretty much the same ethnically as other Irish-Americans. It would indeed show prejudice if you were to declare that all Irish-Americans were more likely to be crooks due to the travelers alleged misdeeds (sort of like believing that all Italian-Americans are in the Mafia). This is not the same as asking about the Irish travelers specifically.
IMO it’s not unreasonable to ask whether itinerent tradespeople are more likely to commit fraud than others, regardless of their ethnicity. It’s certainly easier to get away with fraud if customers can’t pick up the phone or walk over to your shop when things are in dispute. And this difference was even more pronounced before the telecommunications advancements of the last few decades shrunk the global community.
This topic interests me because I posted a similar question almost twenty years ago:
Why do you beat your wife? I’m not persecuting you, I’m just asking a question about your domestic habits.
How times have changed. Nobody was chastized for using the G word back in 2002. I think my first introduction to Irish Travellers here in the United States was on Dateline or 20/20 back in the 1990s where they went to a small town in South Carolina or Georgia where a lot of them had taken up residence. It’s been more than thirty years, so my recollection is a bit fuzzy, but they went over accusations of scams (the driveway scam in particular), claimed that single family dwellings had dozens of “residents” who probably just used it as a mailing address and were rarely there, the lack of formal schooling for the children, and their general insular nature. I don’t think any of their neighbors had any problems with them.
I find it difficult to separate good sources about folks like the Roma and the Travellers from bad sources. But I have to admit that I’m generally suspicious of anyone who knocks on my door asking if I need my trees trimmed, lawn mowed, address painted on the curb, etc., etc. But I’m not basing that on what I think their ethnicity is. I don’t think I’d know a Traveller or a Roma if they kissed me on the lips on the town square at high noon.
I, for one, think the OP’s thread can be fairly addressed in Great Debates, where the premise of the thread can be challenged.
I was going to write a reply with cites, breaking down how wrong you are, saying that the opinion of a small town sheriff is hardly enough to bolster your claim. I was going to prove how confirmation bias works and why it’s easy to jump to erroneous conclusions.
But when you used ‘wokeness’ I thought Fuck it, I ain’t gonna do your research for you. You can do it yourself by perusing this peer reviewed Harvard publication about persecution of Roma in the U.S:
Does this happen often?
BTW: The driveway scam has been an ongoing UL over here in Europe forever. If it’s the same in the U.S. it goes something like this:
Scam artist call on house A, offering to repave their driveway. They start tearing up the old driveway. In another part of town, they call on house B and make the same offer, followed by tearing up the driveway, and here comes the scam: They now use material from house A to do house B and in turn use material from B to fix house C. An added bonus is if they got paid upfront and never finish the job.
One moment of critical thinking will show how utterly unlikely this is. The UL got going in Europe when driveways where made from cobblestones, which is very rare. i don’t think I’ve ever seen it in the U.S. but since I’m not native, it might exist, though hardly in generic suburbia, where this UL flourishes.
When I’ve seen the driveway “scam” described, it’s different. A crew knocks on my door telling me that they have asphalt left over from a job down the street/in the area and give me a good price - my guess is too good. They want to be paid in cash, start on the work immediately and do such a poor job that the driveway starts to crumble soon, or maybe they leave a pile of asphalt that I have to hire someone else to clean up or sometimes they start the job, demand payment after they’ve dug up some of the driveway and leave. Since there aren’t any business cards or flyers or licenses or insurance , once the problems become apparent the workers can’t be found. I’m sure that really happens and I’m sure it’s often groups of people that have no fixed residence and travel from place to place. Whether it’s one or more specific ethnic groups I couldn’t say.
And I don’t have people knocking on my door offering to fix my driveway ( mainly because I don’t have a driveway) but offers to install solar panels, new windows , security camera etc happen about once a week. Although those are different in that no one is standing there with a truck and crew and materials wanting to start work immediately
At the risk of sounding like a junior mod, the cites and so forth shouldn’t be brought up in this thread, anyway. The belongs in the actual thread, and shouldn’t be brought into ATMB.
So I (and I’m sure for some mods and posters) appreciate you deciding not to bring that debate here.
The original thread is closed, and the OP started pulling out cites. I’ll await what e_c_g wants to do with this mess.
Yeah, I didn’t see that it was closed until after I posted.
It happened just yesterday before I posted in this thread. Two young men wanted to mow my lawn and they had a large mower on a trailer behind their truck. In recent months I’ve had people knock on my door offering to trim my trees, mow my lawn, install solar panels, install a security system, and on one memorable occasion offering to sell me meat from the back of their truck for a good deal. Are they all scammers? Probably now. The dudes asking to mow my lawn are probably already in the neighborhood on another job and figure they might as well try to pick up a few extra bucks while they’re here. They’ve already expended the time and fuel it takes to get here, so an extra $40 is an extra $40 to them.
Ours involves asphalt, but your description is close enough. (Most of our driveways in Arkansas and Texas are concrete and not paved.) I’m not so afraid of something like that, more that I’m afraid of paying someone who ends up doing shoddy work. A tradesman knocks on my door and I doubt he’s licensed and bonded.
You are correct about our lack of cobblestones. They’re not even very common on public roads.
I don’t think people can go wrong assuming that anyone who just happens to be in the neighborhood, or otherwise tries to drum up work based on knocking on doors is a scammer until proven otherwise. It’s a sleazy business model, although not one I’d associate with a particular culture/ethnicity.
At a house I once owned, I watched a work crew do a nice job paving a neighbor’s driveway. As they were finishing, the head of the crew came over and asked if I’d like my driveway done. He said “I ain’t gonna lie” then told me he had enough supplies to do mine and the cash would go right into his pocket. We went back and forth on price, and I gave him cash. It was a helluva deal.
They did a beautiful job. A few weeks later the owner of the company stopped and asked if he could take pictures of my driveway. Turns out he’d fired the guy for stealing from the company and he was getting ready to sue him. Never heard more. Driving by the house recently, I was impressed by how good the driveway looks over fifteen years later.
Sorry. Would be a hijack in AMTB.
We’re getting pretty far off topic for ATMB at this point.
If someone has a compelling reason to re-open this, send me a PM. Otherwise, this is closed.