From the Senate Gallery, I was truly honored to watch the testimony of several impressive Senators whose knowledge and understanding of the complex issues surrounding Predatory Gambling was superlative. After more than three years of reading and listening to many speak about the community degradation caused by Slot Parlors, Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz's comprehension of the devastation Beacon Hill's Current Casino Folly will deliver to her district elevated my personal concerns about the regressivity of this "Folly" and the disproportionate impact borne by the 'minority' communities, as have the posts of Professor Adell.
Below, is the Professor's recent post and encourage review of the study provided in the link:
August Wilson, Radio Golf, and America’s Obsession with Gambling
In Radio Golf, the last play in August Wilson’s twentieth-century cycle of plays about African Americans in American society, a character named Old Joe Barlow sums up the economic situation of this country in the twenty-first century when he says to the black entrepreneur Harmon Wilks early in the first act: “America is a giant slot machine. You walk up and put in your coin and it spits it back out. You look at your coin. You think maybe it’s a Canadian quarter. It’s the only coin you got. If this coin ain’t no good then you out of luck. You look at it and sure enough it’s an American quarter. But it don’t spend for you. It spend for everybody else but it don’t spend for you. The machine spits it right back out. Is the problem with the quarter or with the machine? Do you know? (21-22).”
August Wilson was suffering from cancer as he completed Radio Golf. He died in October, 2006, so he wasn’t around when efforts later were underway to put a casino in the Pittsburgh Hill district made famous by his plays, a community of mainly poor and working class black people. Through the efforts of his niece, Kimberly Ellis, and a strong coalition of community activists, those efforts were defeated, but Pittsburgh still got the casino, two in fact.
Like most casinos in Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh casinos only offered slot machine gambling until last week when they included table games. That’s a lot of gambling for a city that boosts one of the highest poverty rates among African Americans in the country, according to a recently released study by Harold D. Miller, an adjunct Professor of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University. I’m sure that many of them are already dropping the “only coin [they] got” into the casinos’ greedy slot machines. Now they can try their luck on table games. The outcome for many of them won’t be happy, that’s for sure. They will lose. But whose problem is that? “Is the problem with the quarter or with the machine? Do you know?”
Below, is the Professor's recent post and encourage review of the study provided in the link:
August Wilson, Radio Golf, and America’s Obsession with Gambling
In Radio Golf, the last play in August Wilson’s twentieth-century cycle of plays about African Americans in American society, a character named Old Joe Barlow sums up the economic situation of this country in the twenty-first century when he says to the black entrepreneur Harmon Wilks early in the first act: “America is a giant slot machine. You walk up and put in your coin and it spits it back out. You look at your coin. You think maybe it’s a Canadian quarter. It’s the only coin you got. If this coin ain’t no good then you out of luck. You look at it and sure enough it’s an American quarter. But it don’t spend for you. It spend for everybody else but it don’t spend for you. The machine spits it right back out. Is the problem with the quarter or with the machine? Do you know? (21-22).”
August Wilson was suffering from cancer as he completed Radio Golf. He died in October, 2006, so he wasn’t around when efforts later were underway to put a casino in the Pittsburgh Hill district made famous by his plays, a community of mainly poor and working class black people. Through the efforts of his niece, Kimberly Ellis, and a strong coalition of community activists, those efforts were defeated, but Pittsburgh still got the casino, two in fact.
Like most casinos in Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh casinos only offered slot machine gambling until last week when they included table games. That’s a lot of gambling for a city that boosts one of the highest poverty rates among African Americans in the country, according to a recently released study by Harold D. Miller, an adjunct Professor of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University. I’m sure that many of them are already dropping the “only coin [they] got” into the casinos’ greedy slot machines. Now they can try their luck on table games. The outcome for many of them won’t be happy, that’s for sure. They will lose. But whose problem is that? “Is the problem with the quarter or with the machine? Do you know?”
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