By: Keith

Keith
Thu, 26 Oct 2017 08:37:40 +0000

This is quite delayed response, but just stumbled on your piece. As a hispanic, yes, the name is insulting and our community and those of my friends were probably more incensed than our ” white, middle-class metropolitan” friends. You see, our anger doesn’t bore that they are taking away beloved institutions that a primarily white or middle class group seems to be incensed about on blogs, but rather the disdain. If you admire, then discuss it in admiration. But it is also the idea less about convenience and more about jobs: working 12-16 hr shifts at a bodega is not beautiful, but it is a job. A job many of those we know have had to take because of the complexity that comes with being an immigrant. I wouldn’t have a problem with convenience, but at some point we need to ask what do we think about as far as employing folks, and this is about employing people. The increase in costs to the consumer involves employing real people and not a coder. And that is where Bodega becomes far more sinister and tone deaf. It isn’t about it being a cultural staple, it is about displacing work, and doing it far away from where it happens. That is what minority communities think about when they see startups that try to penetrate. Not just because these startups rarely create vehicles to make life easier for our communities: where we are less banked (can buy less online), or often lack multistage identification verification, and sometimes are just more wary of putting our information out there for some computer to keep. Because if Bodega would serve the poor first, giving us cheaper products, and yet solving the problem that we continue to be highly cash oriented parts of the world, that would be a revelation.

You see, it is far more than a name or cultural misappropriation, at least for us. It is about a way of thinking that seems to not only want to take what we have, admiration you might say, but to step on it, change it, remove from it what seems authentic, and to repackage it as a fantasy that doesn’t include us. No startup founder would ever admit racial bias in their actions, of course Paul has no intention! But it is in their not thinking that matters most. It is their sin of omission that matters most. And a haphazard apology will not suffice.

Who is your target market – and appeal to them.