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Apple Only Wants To Put Its Stores Where White People Live, Investigation Reveals (theoutline.com)

Brian Josephs, writing for The Outline: New York's northernmost borough is the city's most diverse, has the lowest income per household, and is the only borough without an Apple Store after one opened up in Brooklyn's predominantly white neighborhood of Williamsburg last year. This trend holds true on a national scale. That means 251 of the 270 stores, or 93 percent, are located in majority-white ZIP codes. Of the 19 that are not located in majority-white ZIP codes, eight are in ZIP codes where whites are still the largest racial bloc. For context, Garden City, New York, a city with a population of around 22,000 that is 94 percent white, has an Apple Store. Lake Grove, New York, which has a population of around 11,000 and is 89 percent white, has an Apple Store. By comparison, nearly 1.5 million people live in the densely-packed Bronx, which is only 21 percent white. Bronx residents must travel either north to Ridge Hill or down to the Upper East Side to get to an Apple store. Apple told me it couldn't comment on the record about what criteria it uses to decide where new stores are built or the demographics of its stores' neighborhoods, but USC Marshall School of Business professor Ira Kalb reasoned that the company is "going after the high-end of the market, so their store location choices typically go after areas that are considered upscale."

69 of 497 comments (clear)

  1. Well by jawtheshark · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You go where the money is? Reasonable business decision, I'd say.

    --
    Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
    1. Re:Well by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Its not just that, its that the people who live in low economic areas make excuses as to why crime against "the man" is okay. So they have higher costs they have to pay, to pay for the crime that they commit. It is self fulfilling at some point. "These people deserve it, because they are ripping us off" vs "I need to make a profit, and have to cover the cost of the theft".

      Please note, I am NOT mentioning skin color/race (until here), because it doesn't really matter for this discussion. The greatest victims of crime in poor neighborhoods are the poor in neighborhoods.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    2. Re:Well by tripleevenfall · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Business locates itself near high concentrations of its most lucrative customers, film at 11.

    3. Re:Well by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You go where the money is? Reasonable business decision, I'd say.

      I'm guessing you'd find the same spread of stores vs neighborhood wealth with Ferrari, Porsche, Jaguar dealerships...

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    4. Re:Well by WCMI92 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Put one of those in da hood.

      --
      Corporatism != Free Market
    5. Re:Well by houstonbofh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The only color Apple cares about is green.

    6. Re:Well by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 5, Informative

      Crime? It's a rich man's racket. The numbers show it. Everything else is brainwashing about race and class.
      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DP...

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
    7. Re:Well by ScentCone · · Score: 3, Funny

      Never had your house broken into, your car windows smashed, a woman you know beaten and raped, your life threatened, your employer's warehouse robbed, your neighbor's kids threatened by MS-13 at school, or ... man, I don't know where those rich people get the time to commit so much crime. To say nothing of those rich men driving around Chicago shooting up gang members. Probably from their Bentleys, using gold-plated guns, I suppose.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    8. Re:Well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You forgot in this context asians are white.

    9. Re:Well by slowdeath · · Score: 2

      More correctly Cupertino is 98% non-black.

    10. Re:Well by naubol · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, that stuff happens. We don't notice when we make 50% of what we should because of the totality of white collar crime or other aristocratic bullshit. Nobody is angry that several thousand dollars have been stolen from them via their mortgage because of the LIBOR manipulations. Its invisible to us.

      Trillions have been stolen by rich men. People don't care because they don't understand or they've learned to accept the system as it comes to them. It's hard to get outraged about these things because it's unclear what to do. Our legislature seems captured by these fucks, on both sides of the aisle.

      It's worse than that, because much of the crime that we experience up front by the poor would be lessened if the economic situation improved for the poor. A rich man's crimes breed poor men's crimes.

      --
      Reality is a slackware box running on a 386 tucked away in god's sock drawer.
    11. Re: Well by saloomy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But all that doesnâ(TM)t matter. Do you really think Apple Co. bosses yelled âoeget me census data on race! Weâ(TM)re going to find the next most majority white neighborhood to open a store!â ?

      No. Of course not. They opened up their ERP system and looked at where most Apple IDs home or work addresses are locacted and though to themselves: would it be more convenient for our customers and better for our bottom line if this cluster of users had easy access to a Apple store?

      Just because something ends up a way doesnâ(TM)t mean it is because of it. Too bad, we have to teach that to this schmuck writing this study.

      Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc.

    12. Re:Well by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not even a hard question to answer if you bother to stop and think about it, but most people don't like to because they don't like the answers. But if you are poor, it's incredibly likely that your parents were poor, and their parents in turn. You don't have to trace back too many generations to see that in the United States you had the vast majority of blacks in chattel slavery where there was no ability to accumulate generational wealth, and even after that ended, a long period of time where the government had laws (Jim Crow) designed to disadvantage blacks. Since then, the welfare system is poorly designed and does not incentivize the type of behavior that will result in the impoverished improving their condition (this applies to any racial group) and the war on drugs has essentially destroyed the family unit in black communities which is another huge impediment to creating generational wealth.

      The same goes for Latinos as well. A lot of them are or had parents who were poor immigrants. If you look back historically, the same was true for a lot of Irish, Italian, German, etc. immigrants who came to the U.S. decades or centuries ago. The only real difference is there used to be land that the government would hand out to anyone who would show up and live on it so it was a bit easier to get started even if you had nothing if you were willing to at least try and make something of yourself. If you expect some arbitrary person who just came to the United States whether legally, illegally, or even as a refugee to have as much wealth as the average person living in the U.S., I'm not sure why you believed that way to begin with.

      As to the other points you raise, again just stop and think about it. Do you yourself live in an area with a lot of poor minorities? If you don't, then you probably already know the answer to why other people with more wealth don't either. There's your clusters right there. And when minority groups do get more wealth, they don't stick around in poor neighborhoods either.

    13. Re:Well by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

      Are they really? Damn. And here I thought I was a reverse-racist for thinking some asian women were more beautiful than most caucasian women.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    14. Re:Well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Asians are the elephant in the room, the model minority that the left doesn't like to talk about. They are about 3% of the population but make up roughly 30% of the workforce in computer technology companies, and in some they represent half of the management positions.

    15. Re: Well by Jake+Griffin · · Score: 3, Informative

      Plus, according to the site I linked below, 29,394 out of 31,799 US zip codes have 50% or more white population. That comes out to 92.4% of all zip codes. And they are surprised that 94% of apple stores are in majority white zip codes? It's simple statistics (and a bit of sampling error)!

      --
      SIG FAULT: Post index out of bounds.
    16. Re:Well by sexconker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hispanics are white, but the media treats them as non-white. Until you get a George Zimmerman nutjob incident, then suddenly Hispanic is white again to drive the narrative.

    17. Re:Well by swb · · Score: 4, Interesting

      My ancestors emigrated (actually escaped, from what my genealogically inclined uncle figured out) from somewhere in German-speaking Europe in the 1830s. But there's no real "accumulated family wealth" -- my dad grew up pretty poor in the Ozarks in a family of 9 kids. For a while in his teens they lived in a house built in the 1880s with no indoor plumbing at all, and this was the early 1940s.

      He got drafted into the army in 1953, and after that merely worked his way through a series of sales jobs until he retired. No college education, but he did finish high school.

      In theory, if he grew up poor, shouldn't he still be poor? As far as I know, the only low-cost land my ancestors ever had was a farm in eastern Kansas in the 1880s, but that's about 2 generations before my dad was born. The farm is still owned by a relative, but no "land wealth" was ever accrued or given to my dad or his dad.

      I'm inclined to believe in the cycle of poverty, but I don't think it's 100% of the story. It's almost like there has to be material poverty, extreme ignorance, and other factors as well. There's too many people like my own relatives who basically grew up with nothing who didn't end up in poverty themselves for just material poverty to be the only explanation.

    18. Re:Well by jedidiah · · Score: 2

      > Check out how many houses have been taken under foreclosures for terms of oppressive mortgages(and even fraudulently filed mortgages),

      You mean someone got a mortgage they couldn't handle because the rules were relaxed? You can blame the banker for writing a junk mortgage but that still doesn't get the consumer off the hook for their own stupidity.

      We're all adults here. That includes taking responsibility for your own stupitidy.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    19. Re:Well by farble1670 · · Score: 2

      Our legislature seems captured by these fucks.

      Our legislature IS these fucks.

    20. Re: Well by dirk · · Score: 2

      So you think there are more Apple IDs in Lake Grove, New York with a population of 11,000 than there are in the Bronx with a population of 1.5 million people? Even if 1% of the people in the Bronx have Apple products, that is more than the entire population of Lake Grove. So I don't believe that is how they are making their decisions.

      --

      "Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
    21. Re: Well by c6gunner · · Score: 2, Informative

      Counting minimum wage violations as "theft" is idiotic beyond belief. That graph provided no value to any discussion; it's only of value if you're looking to stoke a "The Rich vs The Poor" narrative. It's propaganda straight out of the old soviet block.

    22. Re: Well by c6gunner · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Where are all the Japanese slums, then?

      Or did you forget about the interment camps and the confiscation of wealth which effected that community relatively recently?

    23. Re:Well by sexconker · · Score: 2

      Hispanics came from Spain. That's it. It's what the word means.

      You can't call people of native Central American or South American descent "Hispanic" without ignoring what the word "Hispanic" means.
      There was much mixing, to be sure, but that doesn't mean Hispanic includes those other ethnicities, it just means people in general have a diverse ethnic background. In a Venn diagram, Hispanic intersects with those, it does not contain them. Thus Hispanic refers to the "white" portion of someone's ethnicity.

    24. Re:Well by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 2

      But see, we're being robbed by the State, so it's OK because it's altruistic!

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    25. Re:Well by jedidiah · · Score: 2

      Sounds like the Jews. They whine about their enslavement for half of their religious calendar. Yet they don't seem to be trapped by the idea of once being slaves.

      On the other hand, there is a thriving black middle class that liberals don't want to acknowledge. Like Asians, it interferes with the narrative.

      I'm not sure what value rebel songs and marinara recipes have when it comes to taking responsibility for yourself and going out and accomplishing something. A lot of Americans have no clue about their ethnic heritage. Plenty of people are broke regardless.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    26. Re: Well by Type44Q · · Score: 2

      You're both correct; is that really so fucking hard to see??

    27. Re:Well by es330td · · Score: 2

      The problem with the left narrative is that it is far easier to explain difference through any lens but effort. I grew up going to school with a number of literal Vietnamese boat refugees. These kids wore Kmart special hand-me-down clothes but busted their butts to excel in school. You might as well not even turn in your paper when the teacher asks the class to write an essay for a contest entitled "What America Means to Me." They earned scholarships to college and ended up being successful. One friend of mine (last name Nguyen) earned an appointment to the Air Force Academy. These kids broke the "cycle of poverty" in one single generation. The only thing they had going for them were parents who cared and insisted that they work hard in school. They even didn't all have two parent families because in some cases the fathers had been executed in their home country. To anyone who says a child born in the projects has too great a burden to overcome, please explain how a single parent in government housing and receiving welfare has it worse than an immigrant refugee with nothing who doesn't speak English.

    28. Re:Well by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      The U.S. Census Bureau defines the ethnonym Hispanic to refer to "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race", and that is how it is generally used in America.

      Wiktionary defines "Hispanic" as an adjective meaning "relating to Spain or to Spanish-speaking countries, especially those of Latin America." or a noun meaning "a Spanish-speaking person living in the US, especially one of Latin American descent."

      Few Americans would claim that Mexicans were non-Hispanic if they had no Spanish blood (as many do not). Every online definition that indicates an origin emphasizes "Latin America" rather than "Spain".

      The original Roman province of "Hispania" included Portugal as well as Spain. So even the Latin term "Hispanic" doesn't mean "from Spain".

    29. Re:Well by Kohath · · Score: 2

      But not Asians. Generational poverty seems to have skipped them. Why do think that happened?

      Either Asians randomly outwitted destiny, or there’s something about Asian culture that allows Asians to overcome disadvantages.

    30. Re:Well by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 2

      Actually, there is a really more basic explanation than yours, one which is backed up by actual numbers rather than conjecture. If you adjust for children raised by both parents who are still married to each other the economic differences between blacks and whites disappear. Interestingly enough, so do the differences in rate of arrests.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    31. Re:Well by dev-in-seattle · · Score: 2

      The problem with the left narrative is that it is far easier to explain difference through any lens but effort.

      People on the left understand that effort is a major part of being successful. But there's a lot more to it. You think Jared Kushner would have been successful if he didn't come from his background? How about our idiot national leader? My T would not have gone far in life with his ridiculous views and attitude if he didn't start our half way between third and home plate. That's what you are missing, coming from wealth and a well educated place really helps you.

    32. Re:Well by tehcyder · · Score: 2

      In theory, if he grew up poor, shouldn't he still be poor?

      No, there are always exceptions. Even in a class and wealth divided society like Victorian England you could make your way out of poverty if you were truly exceptional. Most people aren't exceptional.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    33. Re: Well by Cinnamon+Beige · · Score: 2

      TFA identifies an old, well known problem. Poverty creates a feedback loop that makes it harder to lift an area up.

      What's a shame is that it gets reported as a click bait headline attacking Apple. It would be far more productive to frame to as a request to Apple to consider doing something good for that part of the city.

      They are. They're not opening up an Apple store there, making it harder for them to exploit the customers by selling them a status symbol brand--one which mostly shows off that you've got the cash for the latest fashionable gadgets, with no care for getting the best value for your money.

    34. Re:Well by lucasnate1 · · Score: 2

      And today doctors and engineers make less than managers who don't know shit. Is it really that different?

    35. Re:Well by AK+Marc · · Score: 2

      I grew up in Texas. All the violent crime was by whites. It doesn't show in the statistics, because you have to charge someone for a lynching to link a suspect to a race of the perpetrator. When the black men are hanging themselves where there was no step to suicide from, but the obvious murder is ruled suicide because the cops know who did it and why, and that N**** shouldn't have been dating a white girl, the guy stabbed himself in the back 7 times as a suicide.

      But, thankfully, those crimes are never solved (and go in the books as "not crimes"), so we don't have to worry about throwing off the explicitly racist statistics when talking about racism.

  2. Rich by fluffernutter · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not an Apple fan, but really? Right or wrong, 'white people' tend to live in more affluent neighborhoods. Seems to be non-news to me.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    1. Re:Rich by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Where are the Apple stores in rural Appalachia?

      Where are the Apple stores in the trailer parks?

    2. Re:Rich by schnell · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Seriously. Whoever wrote this story and Slashdot's "editors" should both be ashamed of themselves. Really ashamed. Even more than usual.

      Apple makes expensive consumer electronics. They have stores. They put those stores where the people are who can afford them. If those happen to be in "white" ZIP codes, that's an inequity issue that can be chalked up to US society as a whole (and has been discussed ad nauseam elsewhere), not to Apple's store selection. The headline might as well be "People With Money Only Want To Live In Expensive Neighborhoods, Investigation Reveals."

      The implication that Apple is somehow racist because of where they put their stores is just flamebait/clickbait of the worst sort. As in, genuinely harmful to society to stoke false racism claims. Serious shame here for everyone involved in producing this.

      --
      "95% of all Slashdot .sig quotes are incorrect or completely fabricated." -Benjamin Franklin
    3. Re:Rich by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 2

      Where are the Apple stores in rural Appalachia?

      Where are the Apple stores in the trailer parks?

      Bingo. I had this "conversation" with a racist leftist lunatic on Quora. He claimed that Whole Foods was racist because, basically, they aren't building stores in the hood. I pointed out to him that Tractor Supply Company has the same racist biases, based on his "logic". I think he finally gave up and went to shit in someone else's punchbowl.

    4. Re:Rich by houstonbofh · · Score: 2

      Think of the poor white people that have to drive such distances to get a title loan!

    5. Re:Rich by liquid_schwartz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Where are the Apple stores in rural Appalachia?

      Where are the Apple stores in the trailer parks?

      The outraged class sees all whites as privileged and part of the upper middle class or better facts be damned. Facts like a huge number of white people are poor or disenfranchised don't count to them. SJWs are the useful idiots of the 1%'s to keep the 99% from ever getting economic justice.

  3. Color or money ? by religionofpeas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The article makes it sounds like Apple selects the store locations based on skin color, but I suspect Apple just picks places with high potential customer demographics. That those areas happen to correlate with skin color is not Apple's fault.

    1. Re:Color or money ? by ScentCone · · Score: 2

      It's time the nation ... did more to help people earn money during their lifetimes

      Like, forcing parents to stay together to raise kids? Because the single greatest determining factor in a household's prosperity and a kid's eventual standard of living is: having both parents around, pooling resources and responsibilities as they raise and educate their kid(s). And yet in places like Baltimore's or Chicago's or Detroit's roughest, poorest, mostly-black neighborhoods, kids are 7-out-of-10 essentially raised by wolves, with a single mother who often has multiple children by multiple fathers. A perfect recipe for exactly the results we see: uneducated, essentially illiterate, unemployable (at anything past entry-level jobs at the very best) kids who will go on to produce more kids in the same condition. The result is a high rate of crime, low employment, and generally misery and resentment ... none of which the government can fix, because the problem is cultural. Just like the somewhat different problems that plague insular local cultures like those in parts of poor (mostly) white Appalachia. The government CAN, however, make it worse, by handing out other people's money to those who live that way, rewarding the choice of household culture that creates and perpetuates it.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  4. Affluent black neighborhoods by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm shocked that a company isn't selling expensive overpriced items in any of those affluent black neighborhoods.

    1. Re:Affluent black neighborhoods by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because if they did it would be racist for thinking they could prey on the blacks with money, because in their racist mind they spend money inconsiderately and for worthless bling.

      Didn't you get the memo? No matter what you do, it's racist. Tell me anything you do and I can tell you why you're a horrible, racist person.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  5. Is this racist or economic? by xmas2003 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Are you sure that Apple isn't just plunking their stores in places where people have more money? From TFA:
    "Apple Store neighborhoods have a median household income of about $73,475 per year; black American households earn a median average of $38,555, according to the ACS estimate for 2016. The median household income in the Bronx is $34,299."

    --
    Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
    1. Re:Is this racist or economic? by AC-x · · Score: 2

      Lake Grove, New York, which has a population of around 11,000 and is 89 percent white, has an Apple Store. By comparison, nearly 1.5 million people live in the densely-packed Bronx, which is only 21 percent white.

      What is the average income of the top 11,000 earners in the Bronx vs the average income of Lake Grove?

  6. trolls by TimMD909 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seems that Slashdot is trolling us. Instead of realizing this is non-news, they're trying to race bait us.

  7. Correlation does not imply causation by Gerv · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Correlation does not imply causation. And in this case, it seems like there are pretty good candidates for the common cause. And the article even recognises that - the headline is clickbait.

  8. Wow! by nospam007 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Apple doesn't put stores in regions where people can't afford 1100$ phones?
    Who would have thought?

  9. theoutline.com, what a dumpster fire by grasshoppa · · Score: 5, Informative

    Another recent article on that website: https://theoutline.com/post/25...

    And I quote:

    Okay, so, here's a controversial opinion that will likely anger some people. You don't have to say anything. Ever. About anything. Ever. Especially if you're a man.

    --
    Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
    1. Re:theoutline.com, what a dumpster fire by Jfetjunky · · Score: 2

      I had to have a look myself. To be fair, she is responding to some pretty self-righteous men in her column. The only problem is she is responding ALSO in the most arrogant, self-righteous way possible.

      tl;dr douchebags being douchebags

  10. Yellow Journalism by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They used to call "baiting" articles like TFA here "Yellow Journalism". I'm not sure where the "Yellow" came from; but the definition is "Something published as 'News' that is actually nothing more than the author's Opinion, and generally published to further the author's agenda".

    Plus, as many others here have pointed out, Correlation is not Causation. Apple is studiously, almost fervently, ethnically and culturally-diverse in its policies, advertising, marketing and even product design. And they don't just talk the talk, they actually walk the walk, too.

    This article really should be taken down, and the Slashdot editor that approved it should be dismissed, with an Apology to Apple.

    1. Re:Yellow Journalism by Guybrush_T · · Score: 2

      Yellow ... like piss I guess.

      Actually, I found the title quite hilarious. The funniest part is "investigation reveals". You need to be quite an investigator to be able to "reveal" such incredible facts.

    2. Re:Yellow Journalism by cervesaebraciator · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'm not sure where the "Yellow" came from [...]

      In the late 19th century Pulitzer and Hearst were going at it hammer and tongs trying to outsell one another in the newspaper business. They ended up in a contest over who could come up with the most sensationalized headlines and copy to sell papers. One of the simplest going theories for the origin of the term in the use of yellow ink during this period of big, exaggerated headlines. There are, however, other theories as well.

  11. It's not racist, it's a fashion statement! by Opportunist · · Score: 2

    You see, black skin contrasts so horribly with the case... you can't have that!

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  12. This shit again? by blindseer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not that long ago I saw right here on Slashdot that we had (A) identified a gene for a kind of cancer that was very difficult to treat and (B) this gene was largely unique to people of African ancestry. So, because we have a high rate of people that die of cancer of African ancestry therefore racism. But we were just told this tendency was genetic! A + B = racism, that's the only way to add that up apparently.

    When I go to most any store to buy electronic the people at the cash register will ask for a ZIP code. I asked one day why they did this, it was so they could plan for more stores. I hated being asked for my address before, as that meant I'd get more crap in the mail from the stores. This practice is rare now, but they still ask for your ZIP code.

    When more minorities buy stuff from Apple, and give their ZIP code, then we'll see more stores in those neighborhoods.

    I remember seeing some comedy skit where Blacks were portrayed as paranoid about being tracked by the government. Is there some truth to this? I didn't get the joke. If this is true, and many minorities are reluctant to give their ZIP code then the people that plan where stores go don't know that people willing to buy their stuff are traveling so far to buy. Maybe this has something to do with the culture that comes with the race. Paranoid parents raise paranoid children.

    Another thing I see are neighborhoods that protest when someone wants to open a store there. Walmart is a popular target. Walmart, or whomever, wants to open a store because they think people will shop there. People in the neighborhood protest because they this this store will bring the "wrong" kind of people to the neighborhood, or there's some racist undertone to the store. (Selling chicken in a Black neighborhood? Are you racist?)

    Here's the deal, not everything is about race. If all people see is racism then I think they protest too much.

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  13. We are suppose to hate Apple. by jellomizer · · Score: 2

    I think the reason why this got in, is because we are suppose to Hate Apple, and we want to find every reason to hate Apple and prove how Evil they really are...

    Apple is the worlds largest company, they do a lot of nasty things... However compared to Microsoft during the late 1990's, Apple has been a relatively good company in terms of not forcing us to be locked in. There is a thriving android market, and if You don't want an Apple device you are not really stuck with a no name brand that everyone laughs at you for having.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  14. Lotta white folks in China? by kwerle · · Score: 2

    https://www.apple.com/retail/s...
    Beijing
    Chaoyang Joy City
    101 Chaoyang North Road
    Chaoyang District
    4006171284

    China Central Mall
    China Central Mall
    81 Jianguo Road, Chaoyang District
    4006171210

    Sanlitun
    Building 6, No. 19, Sanlitun Road
    Taikoo Li Sanlitun, Chaoyang District
    4006171363

    Wangfujing
    Beijing apm, No. 138 Wangfujing Street
    Dongcheng District
    4006171205

    Xidan Joy City
    131 North Xidan Avenue, Joy City
    Xicheng District
    4006171204

    Chongqing
    Jiefangbei
    108 Zourong Road
    Yuzhong District
    4006171224

    MixC Chongqing
    55 Xiejiawan Street
    Jiulongpo District
    4006171215

    Paradise Walk Chongqing
    8 Paradise Walk
    Jiangbei District
    4006171240

    Fujian
    Thaihot Plaza
    Thaihot Plaza
    6 Zhuyu Road, Jin’an District
    4006171354

    Xiamen Lifestyle Center
    SM Lifestyle Center
    No.399 JiaheRoad, Siming District
    4006171383

    Guangdong
    Parc Central
    No. 218, Tianhe Road
    Tianhe District
    4006139742

    Zhujiang New Town
    International Grand City L1
    222 Xingmin Road, Zhujiang New Town
    4006393601

    Holiday Plaza Shenzhen

  15. Few problems with this by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First, putting 93% of their stores in majority-white zip codes is meaningless without also knowing what percentage of zip codes are majority-white. Pulling some demographics out of a zip code database gives 17,409 zip codes which are more than 50% white. 2591 zip codes where whites are 50.0% or fewer. So white-majority zip codes comprise (17409)/(17409+2591) = 87.0% of all zip codes.

    That is, if Apple located the stores randomly based on zip code, you would expect 87% of them to be in white-majority zip codes. On top of that, there's a margin of error. 99% of the time, you'd expect these stores to fall within a range of (2.576)*sqrt((0.87)*(1-0.87)/(270)) = 0.0527, or +/- 5.3%. That is, 99% of the time you sprinkled the stores randomly in a table of zip codes, you'd end up between 81.7% to 92.3% of stores in white-majority zip codes. 93% falls just outside this range, so we're talking about just barely being 99% confident that this is a real deviation, not a random occurrence.

    Second, these are zip codes, not areas of equal population or population. Zip codes vary in population by about a 7:1 ratio. It's much more advantageous for a business to put a store into a zip code with a high population. So if there's any correlation between zip code population and racial diversity, it could be enough to offset the margin statistical significance we found above. I don't have time to research this, but my hunch would be that the low population zip codes tend to be skewed towards white-minority (e.g. remote areas like Indian reservations, sections of Alaska with large Inuit population, etc) compared to white-majority zip codes. Since a business is unlikely to put a store in an area of low population, that would erase a good chunk of the discrepancy between 87% and 93%.

    Third, related to the second, is that high population density zip codes tend to be smaller and near other high population density zip codes. So whereas a store in a medium population density zip code may be meant to stand on its own, a store in a high population density zip code may be meant to draw customers from nearby zip codes. That is, people in neighboring zip codes are expected to travel the short distance to the single store servicing all those zip codes. I also suspect that high population density zip codes tend to be more white-minority (e.g. the Bronx). If so, this would also skew the number of stores in minority zip codes down. Not because there are fewer stores within a x mile radius, but because there are more zip codes within an x mile radius.

    tl;dr - This looks more like just a straight random distribution, with some biasing due to how minorities tend to distribute themselves geographically compared to whites. Not some form of discrimination on Apple's part.

  16. You might not be mentioning skin color or race by rsilvergun · · Score: 2, Interesting

    but you're doing a bang up job of blaming the victim. You do know that poor people don't actually go after whitey, no matter what Charles Manson tells you (read the article, I'm not just trolling).

    Poor people overwhelmingly commit crimes against other poor people. That makes sense. I've experienced the reason personally when I moved to a well to do area after landing a nice job and got followed around by cops in my junker car for 3 weeks until they learned I was harmless. If you're poor in a rich neighborhood and you're not cleaning their pools or mowing their lawns you stand out like a sore thumb. If you keep showing up you're liable to get pulled over and have some trumped up drug charges thrown at you. Heck, our entire drug war is a combination of subsidies for private prisons (who couldn't survive w/o the huge numbers of non-violent drug offenders that are cheap to house) and excuse to screw with minorities. Ever look up the history of why Marijuana is illegal? Hint, migrant farm workers from a certain country liked it and it was a great way to kick 'em out of the country at the end of the season.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:You might not be mentioning skin color or race by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I am specifically not blaming the victim, but nice try. In fact, I specifically said " The greatest victims of crime in poor neighborhoods are the poor in neighborhoods."

      Being poor isn't a criminal act, and plenty of poor people don't commit crimes.

      Let me put it this way, if there was a natural disaster in your town, would your first thought be "Hey lets hit up Walmart for a Free BigScreen TV and some shoes"? Or would it be "what can I do to help my neighbors?"?

      How you answer might define why you are better off or worse off economically. Its the choices in life we get to make that more often than not, define our lot in life.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    2. Re:You might not be mentioning skin color or race by rtb61 · · Score: 2

      In the case of Apple products, overpriced Apple products (let's be honest) not picking on the poor, saves them from becoming victims of paying to much for over priced Apple products. Reality is they should have conducted a simple statistical test and compared Apple store numbers for rich pink skinned neighbourhoods (I don't get this white versus black shit, when it reality it is more pale pink to olive skinned versus light brown to dark brown, actual black people are really black not brown, once you are brown, calling yourself black or white is just silly) with poor pink skinned or more accurately distinctly red necked neighbourhoods.

      The are real cultural differences between people of different intellect, knowledge, emotional depth and empathic ability and those cultural differences are brought on by differences in behaviour. Now add in environmental issues like lead poisoning and you further complicate the analysis. So high lead poisoning communities versus low lead poisoning communities (taking into account the damage done by lead in fuels from decades ago, those victims are still alive today, especially those poisoned in the womb), fire arms use (specifically lead bullets), lead water pipes (WTF America) as well as remnant lead in the localised environment. The US does not just have the genetically deficient population, unsatisfied with that, they actually mass produce more by mass poisoning themselves.

      --
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  17. Re:What people call institutionalized racism by Dog-Cow · · Score: 2

    Just because racism is part of the underlying reason that Black neighborhoods are poor does not mean that economic decisions based on the reality are, in turn, racist.

  18. Purposely inflammatory headline by whyyisthissohard · · Score: 2

    Critical thinking:
    How does a question of
    What question led some one to ask "is Apple trying to sell only to white people?" and then 'investigate' that question?
    How did some one arrive at this question? What were they doing when this question struck them?
    And when they did, why did they think it was important?

    Can you answer these questions? As with any headline, such answers are absolutely necessary to understanding the message. The motivations of the speaking party provide the context for their words.

    From the article:

    âoeWhen my wife has to get serviced by Apple, she goes all the way to Ridge Hill, which is a 20-minute drive north of the Bronx,â

    Interpretation:

    My wife has to drive 20 minutes to the Apple Store, this made her angry, this made me angry, I bet the root cause is white privilege and the hatred of whites for us brown folk, because everything is white people's fault!

    At BEST it seems like a preoccupation with some perverted 'social justice' and a hatred of white people with a desperation to find any potential link to an 'important white institution' and 'inequality'.

    This isn't some funny silly thing that's happening. These aren't just stupid people not understanding economics. They are stirring up racial hatred that the people funding them hope to weaponize at some point in the future. Your reaction of indifference would be extremely unwise.

  19. Much ado about nothing by XSportSeeker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Apple is not obliged to put their stores in places chosen by anyone else other than themselves, this is pure speculation based on spurrious correlation, and it's just plain stupid to think they have anything else other than money on strategic placement of stores.
    And I'm not a fan of the company myself, but if you are gonna write some hitpiece article, you are gonna have to do better than this crap.

    This is the kind of stupid shit article that makes people create terms like SJWs and use it in a derrogatory manner.
    You are not contributing to the discussion here. Unless you found some internal memo stating that the construction of Apple stores needs to avoid black neighborhoods specifically or something like that, this is just bullshit. It's pure sensationalist use of statistics to bend the company image with some lame ass weak and indirect libel.

    I'd avoid posting anything from the source of this crap in the future, as it's no different than Breitbart pulling crap out of their asses.
    Fucking shame to put such piece of garbage here, I thought Slashdot was better than that.

  20. Just checked Bulgaria out of interest by cyber-vandal · · Score: 2

    Virtually 100% white, not a single Apple store. Must be racism.

  21. Correlation, not causation by thisisauniqueid · · Score: 2

    I'd wager that store location is more strongly correlated with income bracket than it is with skin color.