What went wrong with Black Americans?

Great Debates
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In 2002, between 23.9 percent to 24.1 percent of blacks were in poverty, up from 22.7% in 2001. This is compared to the national average of 12.1 percent, up from 11.7%. Link

Blacks have a considerably higher incarceration rate than Hispanics and Whites. In 2003 748 of 100,000 blacks were incarcerated. This is almost more than the amount of Whites and Hispanics combined. The trend seems to hold through 1990, but the rate for Blacks seems to be increasing while the other two races/ethnicities are remaining relatively constant. Link Graph

A survey of 29 major U.S. cities in 1996 showed that 57% of the urban homeless are Black. Link

38% of Americans diagnosed with AIDS are black. Link

These statistics certainly must mean something. Considering that only 13% of the population is Black, why is it that Blacks are disproportionately “lagging behind?”

(Note that I largely agree with the “race is a myth” idea. There isn’t much distinguishing me, a Jewish white guy from Maryland, from a black guy from Alabama. I think a social phenomenom is the culprit, not scientific.)

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Splanky: (Note that I largely agree with the “race is a myth” idea. There isn’t much distinguishing me, a Jewish white guy from Maryland, from a black guy from Alabama. I think a social phenomenom is the culprit, not scientific.)

I agree, and we have to remember that the “social phenomenon” or “social construct” of race in this (US) society has for centuries included the systematic oppression and disfranchisement of people identified as belonging to the “black race”. It’s been less than 50 years since many forms of legal discrimination against black Americans were outlawed, and illegal discrimination and racism still persist.

Under those circumstances, should it really surprise you that black Americans are disproportionately poor, diseased, and incarcerated? Now, the legacy of racial discrimination against blacks is certainly not the only factor involved here, but I think it would be hard to deny that it’s had a powerful impact.

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A circular pattern of lower income, ghettoization, and worse education.

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IMO the black community as a whole bought into the various myths propagated about them. The biggest is that they CAN’T do the same work as whites, that they somehow aren’t as good, or that they just never get the chance. The blacks I know personally and professionally basically said (or their folks said) in essence…FUCK THAT! They went out and did it on their own and told both the white world and their own communities to kiss their ass. Most of them have nothing but scorn to throw at their own ‘black leaders’ like Jesse Jackson and company…and the same scorn to throw at most of the liberals as well with the same mantra. A lot of my black friends are WAY conservative because of this in fact…they make me look like a flower toting liberal.

The other big thing I think (again, this is second hand just from discussions over beers with friends who are black) is there there really is no Black Community. There is no sense of blacks bonding to other blacks outside their own families. If you look at other minorities that are successful in the US you will see that many of them have a huge ‘network’ behind them…they are close nit and they help each other out, not based on family but on their ‘race’. Even hispanics have this, though to a lesser degree than some others. The blacks for various reasons don’t seem to have this identity with their community in a positive way unfortunately. At least, again, not acording to my own friends who are black.

-XT

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I’m not trying to trap you in your answers, but these parts BEG for more explaination. I’m really not sure I get what you’re saying.

So, the poverty, crime, and homeless rates among black people are the fault of individual black people because they aren’t trying hard enough? Do you believe that there are certain barriers to the distressed black Americans acheiving success, or are the barriers to success the same for white, black, and Asian people?

Do white people have a network behind them that helps them succeed? If not, why is having a network necessary for minorities, but not for white people?

Again, I’m not trying to corner you, but your statements could use a bit of explanation before I really get them.

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xtisme brought up something I forgot to add- How much of the blacks’ situation is their own fault? Should they be doing more to try an better themselves? Bill Cosby has been castigated recently for criticizing blacks for not taking responsibility for his people’s shortcomings. A lot of blacks-- prominent and not-- were very angry about his statements, though many people think he’s right.

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I’m seriously at a loss hearing that. Where do you live?

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I don’t have to pretend to be surprised by this, right?

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Splanky: *xtisme brought up something I forgot to add- How much of the blacks’ situation is their own fault? *

Lucky he reminded you, eh?

  • Should they be doing more to try an better themselves? *

Well, I think we can all agree that everybody should be doing more to try and better themselves, can’t we? There’s room for improvement everywhere, and people who have been systematically disadvantaged are not exempt from the responsibility to put their own efforts into improving their own situation.

Does that mean that blacks are only or mostly responsible for their current disadvantaged situation? I doubt it. If Asians or Jews or Irish had been sold into slavery and kept as illiterate chattel laborers in this country for centuries, followed by another century of systematic discrimination and repression including formal segregation and frequent lynchings, I expect those groups would be disproportionately poor, diseased, and incarcerated too.

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In Brazil we have a similar problem… and I think its basically educational and racism.

Education isn’t only what you get in school though. If your parents are dumb and uneducated they tend to push you down. You don’t see people reading books at home… you tend not to read books either. Your friends and your “environment” can push you down in the same way.

Racism… in the Brazilian Civil service you only get a job by passing some hard selections based on tests. (no interviews). The number of employed blacks in the civil service is higher than in other high level jobs with similar requirements. The only possible conclusion is that something is stopping them from getting those other job positions: Racism.

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Over what time period are you talking about? I’m getting a much greater growth rate from 1990 to 2003 for whites than for blacks. What did I do wrong?

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Not at all…I think they are symptoms of a deeper problem though as I said. Its a community problem, and its individuals who are able to throw off the myths associated with their ‘race’ and rise above it.

I don’t believe that there are any more external barriers to black success than to any other minority in this country today, no. I believe that its a catch 22 for the blacks especially…a vicious cycle of reinforced poverty for a large percentage of their community.

I think ‘white people’ is too large a target. No, there probably isn’t any ‘white people’ networks. But there are certainly German, Greek, Italian, British, Polish, etc etc networks out there. I’m surprised you even have to ask this. So that makes the rest moot IMO.

No worries.

You tell me. I suppose you consider me a conservative as well so…

-XT

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OK, I’m going to reply to this without clarification from you because I have to leave for a few hours, so I apologize if I misread this…

But I’ve lived in Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, New York, Charlottesville, for a short time at Havasu (AZ), plus some time in D.C. Based simply on my personal observations (going against your personal observations, as you noted), black communities are very strongly entrenched. LA, Oakland, and NY all have very distinct black neighborhoods with strong communities based around them. There are activist groups both within and outside of these communities trying to make life better for other blacks (on that note, I do agree with the others that there is some degree of lack of goals, I guess, within the black communities, which I attribute to low standards, poor education, and increased poverty, which, as I said, are circular. It is well worth noting that college-educated blacks often look down on the rest of the community for this lack of action, and are sometimes embarassed to be associated with them. I take it that these are the types of friends you have, xtisme). I summarized this up in my first post to this thread as “ghettoization” (though that can not be a sole attribute, as other minorities are ghettoized but are more successful), and it is directly related, at least given my experiences here in California, to poor urban school quality. It is a vicious circle that most can not escape.

Another piece of the puzzle is crime. In many of these urban areas, it is far, far easier for young people to make a living via crime than “honest work.” Without being exposed to better education and not being given the chance, they start at a young age and get dragged into the system.

This is why I am against things like affirmative action. I think the change that needs to take place isn’t putting more into college, but rather at bettering their childhood years, mainly through improvements to the education systems in urban areas. My hypothesis is that better exposure to this will lead to increased college enrollment. I see affirmative action as a fly in the ointment that alienates whites from the idea of investing in their education. It tries to treat the symptom, not the disease.

I base the above, as I say, on my personal experiences in the educational world. You can see similar things with other minority groups - in Los Angeles and the San Francisco area and New York, there are hispanic ghettos with similarly suffering schools. Some of it is really ghastly, compared to the average white suburban kid’s exposure to learning, especially at very young ages.

The dillema of minorites is strongly reflected in the military; a disproportionate amount of blacks and hispanics enter military service at age 18, because they aren’t going to college and don’t have many better opportunities. I can’t dig up any cites (this post is already making me late for an appointment), but a quick cite, if you’ll recall F-9/11’s quick glimpse of Moore’s hometown, dilapidated, with a heavy percentage of the youths enrolled in the military. That is very common across the country, be it urban Los Angeles or small towns in Michigan.

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  • As a side note to this part, also recall that white kids in the same situations end up in similar places. It isn’t anything “racial” - it is social and economic. The fact is, it is damn hard to “pull yourself up by the bootstraps.” You have to have a strong will, support, and opportunity in order to do it. Lacking one of those things early on, you fall back down into the black hole of poverty.
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Well, a lot of it’s the embrace of crime & rejection of civil society as “white” & “oppressive.”

The perception of Blacks as uncivilizable, stupid, ignorant, criminal, & generally inferior became internalized by Blacks themselves. It’s probably sociologically worse in the North, where the very way a black man speaks marks him as “stupid” (whites with Southern accents get this, too). Until now many urban black youth don’t even try to be educated or honorable. They’ve accepted their “subhuman” or at least inhuman status.

Pity.

There’s probably a cool comparison to be done with Sicilian attitudes toward Italian government & society vs. the Mafia.

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I am black, and I tend to agree with a lot of this (although it hasn’t made me conservative). I think many black people have just grown tired of trying to play in a rigged game. I think it has gotten worse because many young people grew up in a world that preached equality, but often did not practice it. My parents never had the expectation that they could work as hard as the white guy down the street and get as far. I think most people, of all races, think they can. When they finally figure out that life isn’t the peach that it is made out to be, they become angry, hopeless, and disillusioned.

As an aside, my parents’ generation made a Faustian bargain with white America ~40 years ago. They felt that integration was a more noble and realistic goal than isolation. I think they did so with the hope that white America would, with time, accept them as equals. That, to this day, has not happened. Other cultures took a more multi-faceted approach, by enjoying the freedoms blacks fought for, and maintaining their own cultural identity/isolation.

What has happened is that many of the more capable blacks have moved to the suburbs, and have ignored all ties they had to the black communities they left. It is similar to the brain drain that many Asian countries have experienced. What has also happened is that the overt racism faced by the Black Americans of the 50’s is gone. As terrible as all of that was, it was a binding force amongst blanks, and many whites. It was something undeniable that blacks could point to as a clear sign of racism. The more subtle racism becomes, the harder it is to identify and articulate it to others. The problem is that it is no less vehement than it was back then.

I had a few other things to say but I have an appointent to keep so I will finish later.

17

A part of this stems form the way our economic cycles. During Booms periods more black people get jobs, when the boom busts Last Hired first fired kicks in and Presto more blacks unemployed. See my next point for addtional information.

Simple, Black people are paying for America’s drug problem. The hugest boost in Criminality of Black people is due to the drug trade. They aren’t selling exclusively or mostly to blacks but to white people. Find any urban center and you get open air drug dealing. These people enter the Criminal Justice System and effectively become permanetlly a underclass, being mostly unemployable/underemployable due to the Felon stigma.

No surprise here, more black poor = more black homeless. You also have to factor in the barriers to mental health and substance abuse treatment (the overwhelming majority of homeless) and you get statistics like this.

Cultural conservstism, turning around and biting us in the ass. For a long time, Church was the only place blacks could gather and it remains central in the black community (why do you think pols always go to church to see us black folk). Homophobia in the black commuinty is much more pervasive than it is in America at large. So enters the phenomenon know as the “Down Low” these are black men either Bi or in denial about there sexuality. These guys are married or settled with women but having trysts with other guys on the QT. The majority of Black women contracting AIDS got it through heterosexual intercourse. Guess with who?

In some ways even Welfare has contributed to the problems in the Black Communities. I’m probably going to catch some grief for my next comment but here goes: Welfare has made it easier for Black men to duck their responsibilites as Fathers. We have entirely too many blacks kids with no example of how a man is susposed to act, so they in fact become the predators in our communities, rather than a part of it. Now that’s not meant as a knock on single mothers, my Mom was a single mother and I came out fine, but my own family (two brothers who are Felons) shows it’s the exception rather than the rule.

Education is another factor, and more than I want to go into here as there’s a myriad of problems on just that issue.

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And a quick note as I run out the door - recall the more recent race riots, notably LA and Cleveland (IIRC)… and the protests in Florida by the black communities being disenfranchised. There are strong communities.

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And there is certainly an upper-class Anglo-Saxon network, which is more important than all the rest put together. That’s no secret, there’s a whole subgenre of American novels about the experiences of young men from old-money, D.A.R.-material families attending exclusive Northeastern prep schools – the kind who grow up to more or less inherit seats on the boards of major corporations, foundations, Congress, etc. It’s what people mean when they speak of the “Old Boy Network” without further qualification.

20

I think this hit the nail on the head. Poor people in America, regardless of skin color, face the same issues. Blacks have it somewhat tougher, but all impoverished people face similar obstacles.

Education has been mentioned. I’d like to add that in a lot of poor communities, there is peer pressure to reject schooling, along with parents who either don’t have the time or inclination to encourage and help their children with homework. (Some parents resent their children’s efforts to “better” themselves as the child saying they’re too good for the life that the parents have provided.) Perhaps there’s also a loud/distracting environment which would make doing homework difficult at best-- sometimes the children are expected to care for younger siblings or work odd jobs.

Higher education is even more of a struggle. A kid who’s not all that bright, and who can’t play sports really doesn’t have much of a chance at a scholarship. Even if he gets one, a scholarship often doesn’t cover all expenses, and if he’s not adequeately prepared (as most kids from bad schools are) holding down a job and catching up to his classmates can be nigh on to impossible.

Health and dental care are also factors. No one wants to hire a receptionist who’s missing all of their front teeth, or has a seeping eye infection. Many lower-wage employers offer no sick leave, so employees who have health problems are fired when they can’t come to work.

Lack of transportation also effects how far one can go in life. Not all areas are serviced by public transportation. Friends can be unreliable, and cheap cars break down frequently. In the area in which I live, the average wage is $7.00/hour. It’s a sixty five mile drive to an area where jobs pay better.

Then, there’s child care, which can eat up most of a low-wage paycheck. People on public assistance can live better than those who try to work and pay child care costs.

Lastly, the poor often don’t know how to budget wisely. Studies have shown that the poor often buy convenience-size packages of products, rather than the bulk economy-sized ones because it means less immediate cash outlay. They also may use check-cashing services rather than banks, and they tend to pay higher interest rates by buying appliances and the like from rent-to-own style places, etc. Frugality is not an innate human trait. It is something that’s usually taught by our parents, but if the parents were unable to budget, a child never learns it.

Some of these issues could be adressed with government programs, but Americans have a disgust for the poor. We see them as lazy, immoral people who get exactly what they deserve, and resent having to lay out a cent for assistance. We don’t want to deal with them, and we ceratainly don’t want to live near them. Hell, we don’t even want to have to look at them, except through the lens of our television sets which comfortably assure us that our predjudices and stereotypes are apt.