If you don’t have a bank account and need to find the nearest place to cash your check, just find any black person and they’ll give you turn by turn directions to every check cashing location in a 50 mile radius.

More likely than not, a black person who’s ever had an account with a bank has forever ruined the relationship to the point of never being granted the right to have another in this lifetime. Give us access to our own money via the ability of check writing with the option to float and the relationship is terminal from the start. It’s what we do; we f**k things up. So once we discover that we have forever burned the bridge between ourselves and the high esteem of the banking world, where else can we turn to for financial savior as a low-cost, check cashing joint that will give you money right on the spot?

Oh how we love it, don’t we: the clean, sweet smelling buoyancy of money stiff as a board with newness? Counted in rapid succession and placed in our hands, save a few dollars and nickels, and away we go- free as a bird. No waiting a few days for the check to clear. It’s done and we got our money. It’s all we wanted. All we want in life is free access to the money we worked hard two weeks for and we don’t need anyone telling us we can’t have it on the count they stashing it for us. Nickel-and-diming us to financial death- we won’t have it. Can’t stand for it and it’s how our relationship with the bank quickly sours.

Of course, to better accommodate us, there have come into existence the bank without credit checks. They don’t bother to investigate our banking history although it comes at a much higher rate. Still, if we are ever in a place where we absolutely can not receive all of our money right then and there and especially if debit cards are involved, our diacritical union with even the no-credit-checking banks will come horribly to a crashing end.

There is no other way to put it- check cashing joints were created solely for us and systematically placed on every corner where at least five or more black people reside. They were created to maintain our very sanity. Without them, we would virtually have no relationship with money whatsoever. A pay check would simply be just another piece of paper with a random white mans signature on it: no use. No use at all. The denial of a check cashing place would literally and figuratively drive all black folks insane and into definite, irrecoverable devastation. We need check cashing joints to breathe, I tell you. It’s just the way it is.