Once while leaving a healthfood store, a fellow of African decent approached me, asking if I had a few spare bucks, I don't recall precisely, but possibly 'for gas'.

He then asked if I could drive him up the block a bit. I had the spare money and time, so I figured what the hell. (Me - 20-24, white, 125 lbs, him - 40-55, black, 190-225 lbs)

As we're driving, he points over to the left and says I can drop him off in this parking lot. I pull in. It's a liquor store's parking lot. He says thanks and heads in to the liquor store. I laugh and think, if I knew he wanted liquor, I woulda gave him more money and had him get some for me too.

How old is this phone that it doesn't have some sort of tracking built in? My phone's like 3 years old and can be tracked.

A couple of weeks ago in my local supermarket I saw a mid-30s Afro-Caribbean man get caught at the doors trying to shoplift a couple of bottles of wine. The security guard, who was of African descent, escorted the shoplifter to the back of the store, but then he tried to escape before the police arrived. He got to the front of the store, near the tills. However he'd earlier brought his bike into the store - presumably because he didn't have a lock for it - and the staff got hold of it. He became very angry when the wouldn't give him his expensive, and doubtless stolen mountain bike, and so he couldn't get away. He pulled out a penknife and started lunging at the guard. Old people rushed out of the way; young people rushed to see what was happening. The guard picked up a discus-like steel bin-lid and threw it at the shoplifter, who was at that point in front of a row of shoppers. It hit the shoplifter's forehead, but he carried on towards the guard. The guard ran away, hiding behind an Australian lady and a magazine rack, as the shoplifter came at him. The woman's husband then shouted "Don't you ****ing hide behind my wife!" and looked as if he was about to knock out the guard.

A few minutes later the police arrived and arrested the man. And for some strange reason I went up to the arresting officer and said, in front of the shoplifter, "Look, this guy's done whatever he's done, but I think the security guard was totally unprofessional and should lose his job. He threw a metal bin lid towards a row of shoppers, then ran away and hid behind someone's wife. We didn't even realise he was a guard, he was so useless." The shoplifter chimed in that he'd been hit on the head. The police said they might need to take a statement from me, took my number, and phoned me up the next day. And, again, I found myself curiously taking the side of the shoplifter.

I'm not sure why. Maybe I just felt sympathy for a busto cyclist stealing red wine.

Jim,

Stuff seems to happen when you go out. My advice to you is to take a trip to a third world country. I think it would be awesome.

ads.

...

"I'm sorry, but I don't feel comfortable loaning my bike."

When Maxim magazine first hit the stands in the late 90's, they had a feature along the lines of "Are You a Wuss?". The article was broken down into a few different sections, with categories such as "Wuss Activities" and "Wuss Sayings".

The wuss saying that stuck in my mind is "I don't feel very comfortable with that". (Wuss activities include tidying up and bleeding, fwiw.)

You didn't deny him employment based on his skin color. You obviously don't consider blacks to be a step behind on the evolutionary scale. Who ****ing cares how he feels? Or what anybody thinks about you for that matter?

Now go forth and be less of a wuss.

I live in Manchester, United Kingdom.

A chap regularly gets on the bus/tram claiming that he has had his passport stolen and the police cannot help him and he needs money to get to London (200 miles away) today to get his flight back to Canada. He has a North American accent. Well, he is rather accident prone as he repeatedly has his passport stolen.

Or he is a lying vagina.

I vote that he is a lying vagina.

BAN for being Anti-Canadian

I think people are missing the part where OP said he certainly would not have loaned the bike to a white person in this situation either, the difference being that he felt guilty not loaning it to a black person whereas with a white person he would have felt no guilt.

What would I need cash for?

artist's rendering of the op

Scam IMO. You dont have to give in to his weird reqest just because hes black, and he has no right to be pissed when you say no.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL7nX9W3aOU

Absolutely.

A normal person would/should say, "No problem. You don't know me and that's understandable."
A scammer who could very well have stolen the wallet from somebody else should be the only type to get mad here for not loaning him your bike.
I don't think a non-scammer would be as likely to stand there and stare at you and try whatever guilt/intimidation mind-meld games he was playing while you were locking it up either.

Being a nice guy and having whatever story to immediately getting angry at you when you understandably turned him down indicates that he was either scamming you or he is just weird.

lucky

i'm a minority and i'm more insulted by white guilt than slurs and nooses on trucks

this is the first time that the grunching answer isn't "yes". I wouldn't loan the bike. Then, i probably wouldn't let him get as far as he did explaining.

Yeah, I noticed that too. You shouldn't feel guilty either - you did what you thought was right, you did not make your choice based on the colour of his skin so you shouldn't feel bad just because you think black people get shat on by society a lot of the time.

100% this man was going to steal your bike.

I'm pretty sure he just stole that wallet too. He's trying to parlay the wallet theft into a bike.

Furthermore, value of bike > value of wallet. This is not acceptable colatteral.

Well done OP. I usually get super-uncomfortable in these situations and give in.

OP,

One time this black dude at the Safeway needed to borrow my car because he was taking his kids to the hospital and they ran out of gas and it was an emergency. He gave me his baseball cap as collateral plus he wrote down all his contact info, so I let him borrow my car while I did my groceries. Anyway, apparently he must have gotten in an accident or something because he never made it back to the store. Hopefully it was on the way back and his kids made it to the hospital OK. I tried contacting him, but his address wasn't a valid address, I think he was in such a hurry that he accidentally mixed up the numbers or something. Anyway, moral of the story is, you should help people out in situations like this unless you are a racist.

Who loans out their motorcycle to strangers? Or car?

Nobody, OK, thats what i thought.

Diablo,

Very funny.

Yes, you harbor the most insidious current form of racism imo, its the same thing democrats like to shove down your throats, and its sickening.

GIVE A BLACK MAN A CHANCE!

THEY PUT BRITNEY ON! THEY OPEN WITH BRITNEY AND CLOSE WITH JUSTIN! I'M NOT SAYING IT ANY WAY. IT IS WHAT IT IS.

was prob a scam... imo. once some black youth looked at my Bose headphones when i was in london. i felt uncomfortable.

Agreed guids, was about to post something similar.