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Go Home Man Jailed For Cashing Check

JONATHAN CHAIT JULY 8, 2011

Man Jailed For Cashing Check

BY JONATHAN CHAIT

This horrific story offers a window into the reality of life for low socioeconomic status minorities:

Ikenna, a 28-year old construction worker, went to deposit a $8,463.21 Chase cashier's check at his local Chase branch, only for the teller to decide that neither he nor his check looked right and he got tossed in jail for forgery, KING5 reports. The next day, a Friday the bank realized its mistake and left a message with the detective. But it was her day off, so he spent the entire weekend in jail.

By the time he got out, he had been fired from his job for not showing up to work. His car had been towed as well. It ended up getting sold off at auction because he couldn't afford to get it out of the pound. He had been relying on that cashier's check for his money but it was taken as evidence and by the time he got it back it was auctioned off.

All this while the cashier's check had been issued by the very bank he was trying to cash it at.

Chase didn't even apologize, not even after a year.

Something like this would never happen to me. I'm white, which makes me far less likely to be accused without evidence of trying to cash a fake check. And if I were so accused, I know enough lawyers that somebody would save me very quickly. But, say, a black construction workers lacks that kind of protection.

Cracked, of all places, recently published a very good -- though highly profane -- piece about being poor. The best way to think of its is that middle-class people enjoy all sorts of protections against misfortune. For poor people, a single thing going wrong can lead to a life-altering spiral -- they lack the social and financial resources to overcome one problem, so a flat tire become a late day at work which becomes a lost job, an overcharge fee busts a checking account, which in turn becomes a ruined credit rating.

It's worth keeping all this in mind when you consider the common conservative view, expressed most recently by Orrin Hatch, that people in the bottom half of the income distribution are getting a free ride off the rich. The underlying assumption here is that market income reflects differences in merit, and that exceptions to this rule are primarily limited to cases of political manipulation of the markets. In the real world, class is very sticky. You have to be very smart, hard-working, and/or lucky to move from the bottom to the top, and very dumb, lazy, and/or unlucky to fall out of the upper tier if you've arrived or even been born there.

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19 comments

But, Jonathan, Dinesh D'Souza insists that racism has ended.

- liberalref

July 8, 2011 at 10:52am

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I hope this guy finds a great lawyer, sues the shit out of those shits at Chase, and collects a million dollars, net. We have class warfare in this country alright, the rich making war on the poor, with no shame and no mercy.

- roidubouloi

July 8, 2011 at 10:58am

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Well of course, Lib. Because the easiest way not to have racism, is to insist it's already ended. Anything that LOOKS like racism after that is simply the victim's fault for being poor, poorly educated, or having made bad choices. Thus justifying the moral judgements that blame the victim for where they are.

- AllanL5

July 8, 2011 at 11:05am

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We can only hope this story gets plenty of attention.

- robertgorton

July 8, 2011 at 11:09am

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Don't worry, Roid. He can't afford a lawyer. And if he finds one to work without money upfront he probably won't get a dime unless the attorney can work in his own fees in addition to the award for damages. I wonder what mr rat-for-brains would say...probably blame him for not being born white and wealthy in the first place. And, of course, he probably doesn't have the resources to navigate the legal system and do it himself.

- GSpinks

July 8, 2011 at 11:13am

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I'm with roi on this. I'd love to sit on that jury. I've written in this forum many times in response to the Randian rants of seattleeng and others that unless you've been truly poor, you cannot understand just how brittle life is for those without their own safety net. The psychological toll, the constant opportunities to fall into the kind type of trap described here, and wear and tear on time and energy that being poor entails cannot be grasped unless you've been there. I have, and while I never tripped into a hole like this (in no small part because I'm white, and knew how to look, talk and act middle class even when I lived so close to the edge that one missed paycheck would have ruined me), I have friends who have. Not stupid or lazy friends, just people who drew face cards to a 12 or 13 hand three times in a row in the game of blackjack that is life. Add in being a minority, and it takes a miracle to pull yourself out poverty.

- IowaBeauty

July 8, 2011 at 11:14am

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With all those obstacles, how have so many people escaped from poverty? The ideology and the reality don't quite square up. Again.

- liberalref

July 8, 2011 at 11:17am

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exactly how many have escaped the poverty, libref? I hate to break this to you, but these days there aren't many people making it up the socioeconomic ladder period, let alone any massive surge of minorities breaking free of the grasp. And the few that did, like my ex's mother and her family, did it through education and untold volumes of hard work and no shortage of stories like this.

- GSpinks

July 8, 2011 at 11:34am

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I think even you can figure out what I mean, GS, and therefore, you are being coy. I meant over time. If poverty is such a hellish self-perpetuating trap, how is escape possible? I know very well that times are difficult now. We are in a weak, relatively jobless recovery, which has worried me right along. When you are not being dense, you are disingenuous.

- liberalref

July 8, 2011 at 12:02pm

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libref - I find GSpink's question pretty clear. How many people escape poverty? And of those, how many permanently escape it, and how many fall back in from being "only" poor. The data I'm familiar with ain't pretty. Of course there are plenty of notable exceptions, but they're still exceptions.

- Nari224

July 8, 2011 at 12:16pm

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Lib, what are you getting at? If we take a race as an example, there are a substantial number of middle class blacks, professionals and the like, today, but they're still very much the minority among the black population; it's been a slow movement uphill, over the course of two or three or four or six generations, depending on how you count, and as far as I understand, that movement has stalled. Are you really suggesting that these liberals are ideological fools for suggesting it usually takes a pretty tough mix of hard work, talent and luck to make it up the ladder from poverty, these days? Don't mean to create a false dilemma, but are you suggesting these Iowa, et al are anything like as deluded as the right on this subject? What's with all the antipathy?

- Curran1

July 8, 2011 at 12:43pm

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liberalref, Disruptive economic transformations create the conditions for mass movement out of poverty. Thinks like the opening of the American west, the massive expansion of skilled manufacturing jobs in the first half of this century with the related rural->urban migration, or the current Chinese expansion and migration - all these things create new opportunities that can make it easier to radically change one's position and relative wealth. And I certainly wouldn't claim that absent these kind of disruptive conditions, poverty is an absolute trap. Some will escape from it. But there is a huge difference between having to be smart and lucky, and with that given getting a 1 in 500 chance of hitting the opportunity in any given year of effort that will lift you out, and having to be smart and lucky and having a 1 in 10 chance per year. Most people will never succeed, and they many will certainly give up in the first case, most people who keep trying will succeed in the second, and probably won't give up. For most of the past 3 decades in the US, we've been in 1 in 500 territory, frankly.

- IowaBeauty

July 8, 2011 at 12:55pm

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A true story: The 16-year-old son of a friend of mine made out checks to Cash for $600-$700 on his dad's account, and forged his dad's signature. The bank cashed these checks without question, not once, not twice, but half a dozen times. This is the same bank that called my friend to confirm that the $50 check he had written to his Hispanic gardener was legit.

- koppgeo

July 8, 2011 at 1:06pm

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"For poor people, a single thing going wrong can lead to a life-altering spiral -- they lack the social and financial resources to overcome one problem, so a flat tire become a late day at work which becomes a lost job, an overcharge fee busts a checking account, which in turn becomes a ruined credit rating." This reminds me of my Big Brother experiences; at the time I had signed on to mentor a young black kid, and instead ended up practically being the big brother for the entire household. It completely changed my view of race and poverty in America. You see, I had emigrated to America believing in Randian objectivism (that's a whole 'nother story), only to find out that life doesn't work that way. I recall a particular incident when the grandmother's car failed the state mandated vehicle inspection and was given 60 days to fix the problem at the cost of $250, which she couldn't come up with. The grandmother, fearing a run in with police simply decided to park the car in the garage until such time that she could afford the repairs. Unbeknownst to her, her 18 year old grandson who had a job working 4pm - 12am shift got tired of taking the bus (slower bus schedule around closing time), and decided to drive the car to work anyway. Grandma found out only after the grandson got pulled over by police and received a phone call. The car got impounded, by the time we got it out and had the state mandated inspection done, the total bill came to almost $700 (yeah, I decided to foot the bill, even though the Big Brother program had made it clear to me I didn't have to get involved at that level). What should have been a $20 state mandated vehicle inspection turned into that life-altering spiral, including a traffic citation (which I suspect would raise the cost of their car insurance).

- wkwami

July 8, 2011 at 1:18pm

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"For poor people, a single thing going wrong can lead to a life-altering spiral -- they lack the social and financial resources to overcome one problem, so a flat tire become a late day at work which becomes a lost job, an overcharge fee busts a checking account, which in turn becomes a ruined credit rating." This is true and believe me it doesn't just happen to black people. Poverty is near-criminal in this society. Medically, people are beginning to see poverty as akin to an illness; it certainly raises the risks. Indeed just being poor puts one at risk - example you live in an iffy neighborhood, take public transportation and walk at all hours because that's when your work is and obviously you have no car; so maybe you get attacked on the street. And it's very difficult to climb out and stay out. Also it leaves a lot of scars so you're dealing with that too - psychological damage and trauma.

- Sophia

July 8, 2011 at 1:42pm

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I also have to say, for people who grew up in this situation, and have escaped, life feels really dangerous long after the danger is past. It's really hard, as someone who has made it out, to fully embrace and take advantage of, the new found freedom.

- miceelf

July 8, 2011 at 2:52pm

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I also have to say, for people who grew up in this situation, and have escaped, life feels really dangerous long after the danger is past. It's really hard, as someone who has made it out, to fully embrace and take advantage of, the new found freedom.

- miceelf

July 8, 2011 at 2:52pm

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miceelf, the danger has never really passed though, as I recently discovered. There is a constant downward pressure generated as people continue to scramble for higher and higher economic levels. Or, to put it another way, for every Madoff that gets put away, there are 1000's of wanna-be's ready to learn from his mistakes and give it a try when they think no one is looking; just think of all the moderately wealthy families Bernie destroyed in order to gain more wealth for his own. I don't know about anyone else, but it's obvious to me that we are approaching a time of have's and have-not's, with no middle ground, remniscent of France a la Les Miserables. It's not a question of "if", just "when".

- GSpinks

July 8, 2011 at 3:44pm

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GSpinks, O, sure, I agree. I guess I was just trying to say that the majority of the upper middle and upper put away/invest something, but those new to the class forego this opportunity to increase their security by doing such investing, because it feels scary. Agree about the centrifugal forces on the middle class, as well.

- miceelf

July 8, 2011 at 5:00pm

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