Originally posted by Time Immemorial
Blacks are lazy for one reason, because they have been taught that everyone owes them something especially the government. And what does the government do? Keeps on giving.
Bullshit. I have yet to see one black person who is on welfare because they view it as some kind of reparation, and I know quite a bit. True welfare is abused for drugs and such, but that is done by people of all races. The problem isn't that blacks are relying on the government for resources. It's that they are relying on criminal enterprises and humiliating minstrel show-like entertainment because for so long it was their primary and sometimes only method of high-end income, causing them to ignore higher education and thus high paying professional careers.
Your viewpoint is rather myopic and ignorant of the sociological factors in play.
Smh...
I must be a unicorn then, because I'm black and from the ghetto, and even spent some time both on welfare (unemployed mother who spent 19 months between jobs when I was 13) and homeless in my youth (dropout my sophmore year due to domestic issues in my home after my parents divorced and my Mom began dating an addict and former convict, so I wound up on the streets at 15 until my Dad got custody of me by court order). That was not because of laziness or feeling entitled to someone else's money, it was a matter of circumstances. I went to college and am now an accountant at 34. It really comes down to the values in each household, and personal responsibility of the individuals. My Dad was a dick and evil Uncle Phil clone (literally, my dad looked almost identical to Uncle Phil), but he made sure we valued education and worked for what we had as kids, and to varying degrees that instilled an ethic of accountability in myself and my two siblings. That was coupled by me taking the despair of my childhood, growing up in a dysfunctional home with an abusive father and aloof mother, and turning that into motivation to make sure when I reached adulthood I was in a position where I DIDN'T have to rely on others for my well being, government or otherwise. Societal factors certainly play a role to an extent, but the most important factors are choice and effort in the end. You can't choose the hand you're dealt initially, be that family, financial status, or residence, but you can choose how you play it, as well as which game you play, when you reach adulthood, or sometimes even before then with proper initiative. What choices you're likely to make can be influenced by your environment, particularly if your household isn't an oasis from the poverty and criminality outside, but even then it comes down to choice. You can be an heiress and choose to be a drug addict and/or prostitute.
Originally posted by MF DELPH
You can't choose the hand you're dealt initially, be that family, financial status, or residence, but you can choose how you play it, as well as which game you play, when you reach adulthood, or sometimes even before then with proper initiative. What choices you're likely to make can be influenced by your environment, particularly if your household isn't an oasis from the poverty and criminality outside, but even then it comes down to choice. You can be an heiress and choose to be a drug addict and/or prostitute.
You can't choose the life that was given to you, but you can choose to change your life.
No matter how much shit happens, you can either drown there in a rut or climb your way out of it.
I'd also like to add that I'm not an exception or a rule. There isn't a rule. The myth of the Black Monolith is just that. A myth. We don't all fall into the same category and you can't attribute mitigating circumstances to the whole. We're individuals, not a collective, just like all ethnic groups on this planet. We're humans. Generalizatons of any group of people simply because of a few similar or shared traits is idiotic. You deal with each person, just like you deal with each situation, on it's own circumstances and merits, not the stereotypes, preconceived notions, and misconceptions of similar people/occurrences.
Originally posted by MF DELPH
My Dad was a dick and evil Uncle Phil clone (literally, my dad looked almost identical to Uncle Phil), but he made sure we valued education and worked for what we had as kids...
That's pretty much the most important part. If your family, no matter how poor, stresses working hard and getting an education, you're much more likely to succeed, imo. My mother and grandfather heavily stressed getting a good education and working hard.
Originally posted by Bardock42
The issue is that being poor and black is considerably different and worse than being poor and white. And we should strive to destroy this inequality, rather than furthering it with bullshit like solely or even majorly blaming black people and black communities for the hardships they face.
A lot of what makes it worse is cultural/psychological baggage passed down within the household moreso than institutional racism. A lot of us have it in our heads that society is designed to cause us to fail and then a failure becomes confirmation bias and the will to push forward in legitimate channels seems less like an option. People like me are considered exceptions to the rule rather than evidence of the possibility of hardwork paying off. That perception of disenfranchisement and disillusionment takes hold and is very hard to shake off. People admit defeat before really giving it a try. I see it everyday with family members, former classmates, and friends. The obstacle isn't always actual racism, it can sometimes just be an obstacle that becomes infused with the spectre of racism where none actually existed. For example, jobs which require a degree or a certain level of language and literary aptitude are not inherently racist, but they get described as such because a predominance of Blacks come from areas with poor performing schools and as such lower academic standing. That doesn't mean a journalist can't come from the ghettos of Brooklyn or Baltimore, it just means it will require more effort. Another issue is the way schools are funded. It's based on property taxes and property values. If you're renting your home rather than owning there's less tax revenue. Couple that with the fact that if the neighborhood is crime ridden the property values will be lower and the tax valuation will also be lower. That means less money for schools in that area. Poor neighborhoods essentially cannibalize themselves with people chasing fast money, as in crime and drugs, versus long term investments in local businesses. That's not, at least entirely, the fault of people who don't live in the area.
The biggest privilege your average White Person has is that they aren't constantly worrying about being oppressed, whether that oppression is actual or contrived. They don't have a built in excuse for not taking personal responsibility. Moreover, they don't really have to worry about race relations at all, they just live there lives. I don't expect a husband and father of 3 making $41k/year to devote a lot of contemplation and effort on how to make my life and the lives of millions of other people of color better. He's trying to feed his kids and pay his bills. I've heard my whole life about elements in the system holding me back, and I've been racially profiled and even let go from jobs when I was just starting out in the job market as a temp because I "didn't fit". However, in spite of those actual, or perceived, race obstacles, I didn't wallow in it or see those outcomes as evidence that I couldn't advance in a legitimate way and turn to criminality or apathetic despair and dependence, becoming a pariah on my neighborhood. I kept trying and found my lane. That's where the personal responsibility and accountability comes in. I can't worry about, or wait for, the white community to change my reality. I have to do that on my own. And if that means I have to run in a lane with 13 hurdles when a white person only has 4, or none whatsoever, fine. I'll just have to be a better jumper with stronger legs running that same distance to the same destination. It's still up to me to get to the finish line and not quit the race. If I just stand there complaining about the hurdles in my lane most of the other runners will just keep passing me by and getting to their destination.
A lot of us in my generation are messed up, from both our parents and the people around us. It's hard to fix that and move beyond the bottom but we can make it so our kids have a better shot and we should. It's not as simple as not wanting to be poor or anything like that, but we can't wait on others to fix out problems and we should teach our kids to at least strive to do better then we are.
I think part of the problem is the more subtle racism against blacks. It's not as obvious to most people and I didn't realize it was racism until a black professor of history explained it to me (he specializes in African History, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Colonialism). He said that there is a 3rd kind of racism.
It is some of the racism I am seeing in this thread. It is the idea that black people are dumb, weak, and feeble and need help from white people to succeed. That they are incapable of succeeding without our help. Saying things like, "They have it so tough and cannot succeed with our help!" is racism. People don't realize it but it is. It is a subconscious racism and people mean well when they say and think those things. But it is patronizing. It diminishes the ability of black people. Not just their ability to be industrious, but their ability to think for themselves as full-fledged members of society. I used to be the type that thought the world was against black people and that they were doomed to poverty and stress their whole lives except for a select few lucky ones. I thought that, surely, I could help them, give back to the community, etc. That's racist. That's the wrong kind of thinking.
Also, Bardock42, I do not buy that poor white people and poor black people have it "radically different" from each other. In fact, it is easier for a poor black child to get out of poverty than it is a white person's simply because programs and opportunities are literally not there for the white children. I don't think you realize how tough it is for poor white people to break their poverty cycle compared to other race demographics in America. Spend some time in a DHS social worker's shoes to see what I mean (or ask them about it since neither of us will be social workers in America, any time soon).
I tend to think the problem black people have is very similar to what all poor people in America suffer from: poverty. Poverty in America is an American problem, not an African American problem. There are more poor white people stuck in their cycles than there are black people (but not by per capita, obviously).
Edit - I really think we should start a new thread and dedicate it to "Poverty and crime" or something. We have greatly derailed this thread. Mods don't care...
Your assertion is not correct. It is harder for black children to move up from poverty and it is more likely that they fall below again than white children.
Originally posted by Bardock42
Your assertion is not correct. It is harder for black children to move up from poverty and it is more likely that they fall below again than white children.
You didn't really understand my point. Social mobility has little to do with my point.
This is the central to what you missed from that post: "In fact, it is easier for a poor black child to get out of poverty than it is a white person's simply because programs and opportunities are literally not there for the white children." The key point being that if they try the same as their peers, due to the opportunities available to them that are not available to other races (besides, perhaps, Native Americans), they have a more are more readily available opportunity to get out of poverty.
I do not remember the two words being used but it is a similar point to having equal opportunity vs. SES parity between the genders in the work place. Currently, African Americans have more opportunities than white Americans. This is my point. If you want to explore why African Americans do not take advantage of those programs, I think Mr. Delph already covered that an Leu covered it in another thread. It is convincing them to move out of their crappy locations, applying for those programs, and staying out of trouble.
Edit - From your site:
"Raj Chetty and his colleagues find that 'rates of upward mobility are significantly lower in areas with a larger African-American population, such as the South'. Chetty argues that it is not race itself that is the causal factor, since he reports that whites living in the same areas also have lower mobility rates. But the children with narrower life chances in predominantly black areas are, by definition, predominantly black." That last sentence is tautological, imo.
Just need to convince African Americans to use the programs available to them and convince them to move away from those shitty locations. Recidivism is sharply decreased if the former criminals are not released back to their home neighborhoods, for example.
Damn, the above post sucks. I used voice to text to write that. I think the meaning can still be gleaned from it.
Basically, I think we both can agree that equal opportunity and even asymmetric opportunity in favor of African Americans is not enough.
Here is an article better articulates my point regarding the black communities:
"Upward mobility for low-income people of all races is negatively correlated with the size of the local black population."
A racist would take that to mean that black people drag everyone else down with them. A smarter person, such as you (Bardock42) would say that it is a chicken and egg fallacy. The author of that slate article believes, "If your poor population contains a very large number of African-Americans, then perhaps the only viable means of keeping the black man down are going to involve denying opportunities for upward mobility to poor people of all races. Strong public schools, economically mixed neighborhoods, dense cities, and other pathways of economic mobility would undermine the racial hierarchy, so they meet with unusual levels of resistance." I think that is a bit extreme as that would imply horrendously deep-rooted, state sponsored, racism. It would have to be so severe that it affected all races. I just cannot believe that. That's too far into tin-foil hat territory. But that type of racism WAS true such as poll-taxes and the Grandfather Clause. So I think there is truth, there.
I really hate to peddle Slate because I think that they often put forth an ignorant liberal bias in some of their writing, but I did enjoy this article by Matthew Yglesias:
"So equal opportunities might mean a meritocracy. A society in which the best people succeed. Sort of like what we see in the world of distance running."
America is not a meritocracy. It seems to be a hybrid of an oligarchy and meritorcracy with a very strong emphasis on the oligarchy part. This is part of why African Americans can't seem to get ahead (I disagree with that notion: they can and it is actually easier for them if they put forth the same effort as their peers). I worked for the Federal Government and I can tell you, first hand, that top-performers and the most accomplished explicitly DO NOT get promoted. You know what gets you promoted there? Being a minority and staying out of trouble enough to not cause a problem when someone promotes you to a job you are unqualified for. 10,000 bonus points to Gryffindor if you are a veteran.
Here's another article that talks about it:
"Another way of looking at equality of opportunity is to ask to what extent the life chances of a child are dependent on the education and income of his parents. Even in a more egalitarian society, the answer would be no. But the life prospects of an American are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in almost any other advanced country for which there is data."
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/equal-opportunity-our-national-myth/
Read that whole article. I think it really captures what both of us want to say. But what is the solution? The solution appears to be staying out of trouble and getting a decent education.
Originally posted by Bardock42
Your assertion is not correct. It is harder for black children to move up from poverty and it is more likely that they fall below again than white children.
My cousin is a division 1 basketball coach at a top school and my other cousin is a UC college recruiter. It's not hard if you apply yourself. They black and have better jobs then me.
You are so off base lately..