Being born in the ghetto = "being born into a version of genocide"?

I just read Roger Ebert’s review of a new movie, “The Boys of Baraka.” The movie is about a group of young, African-American boys from inner-city Baltimore who are taken to an experimental school in Kenya where they get to run around, swim in streams, pitch tents, learn self-confidence, etc. The school is closed after one year, and the children are sent home. Ebert has this to say:

Earlier, he cites a recruiter for the school as telling a school assembly that they have three choices: jail, death, or graduate from high school. A mother of two sons applying for the school says that if one of her sons doesn’t get into the school he’ll end up a “killer.”

To what can we attribute this extreme fatalism? How does becoming a criminal come to be seen as inevitable? There’s nothing out there for them except the new jail?? – how about the school library, for starters?

I had the great good fortune to be born into a stable family that highly valued education – my parents always read to me, and were as involved in my schooling as they could be. Neither I nor any of my siblings got into trouble in school, because of my parents’ influence. If I had been born into the same family with the same values but we lived in the ghetto, well…I’m not naive enough to think I would have ended up exactly the same (I don’t deny there are benefits to being born into a decent, middle-class neighborhood), but I also think I could have successfully avoided jail or death – or becoming a “killer” for that matter. (Admittedly, as for avoiding death, it’s hard to avoid being randomly murdered, though you probably improve your odds if you avoid hanging around certain people/places.)

I’m not trying to say that it’s completely these people’s fault that they’re in the situation they’re in. If the boys in the film (which I’ll admit upfront I haven’t seen) are from messed up homes where (as is the case for at least one of the kids) the parents are on drugs or are generally absent, they really might not have much of a choice about their futures. But is this really the fault of “the system,” or is it a result of the terrible culture of poverty that these people find themselves stuck in?

I’m reminded of a similar movie, “Hoop Dreams.” In that movie, everyone took it for granted that the young NBA hopeful’s “only ticket out of the ghetto is basketball.” Well…no. If those kids and their families had devoted as much energy to their education as they did to their basketball careers, that would have been a much, much more reliable ticket out of the ghetto – not guaranteed, but still far more reliable than pinning all their hopes to an NBA career. (As it was, those kids barely graduated from high school.)

Am I revealing my middle-class WASPiness too much? Given a stable family life, hard work, and a bit of luck, is life in the ghetto really so grimly fatalistic – so, dare I say it, “genocidal”??

Ah, in glancing at my post again, I forgot to note that the movie in question is a documentary, not a fiction film.

Genocide seems a completely inappropriate word for anything described here. Whatever you want to call it genocide it is not.

That said it is too simplistic to say it is all society or all the fault of poverty. It is a combination of both of those and they cannot be separated. The cycle of poverty is complex and has many reasons…some societies doing and some things people bring upon themselves.

There are certainly many people in these situations who are good people struggling to work their way out. There are others who seem to do nothing to help themselves. It is a continuum and you will find people all along the spectrum in there.

Certainly some few to manage to break out and some even do amazingly well. IIRC Terrence Howard, a current Academy Award nominee, is from the projects. What’s more not only is he doing amazingly well as an actor but he is a self taught musician (guitar and piano) and I think persuing a PhD in physics (already has a degree in chemical engineering or somesuch). Is it common or easy for someone to do this? Hell no…it is hard enough for someone from a wealthy family and good neighborhood. The point is though is the projects are not a jail/death sentence. Horribly and hard to climb out of to be sure but not hopeless.

I highly recommend reading There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz if you want a good treatment of this subject.

Genocidal is a completely ridiculous and absurd way to make the point, and just poisons the debate. I suggest we dispense with the inflammatory and absurd language to focus on the underlying issue.

Well, the jail, death, or graduating from high school is probably made to scare the kids into attending school. It’s not much different from a college professor doing the “look left, look right. One of those two people will flunk this class, and drop out of school” routine. It has some basis in fact, but the truth is secondary to scaring the kids into attending school.

Let’s talk about going to the library. I suppose we have to first assume that this library exists, and actually has decent books in it. I am not sure how accurate that assumption is, but I suspect the truth might be short of that. Anyways, it appears that your suggestion is that 13-18 year olds should spend extra time in the library studying. Let’s ignore the gang issue, racism, and other circumstances surrounding the situations for a second. Even ignoring all of that, don’t you think it’s a bit absurd to think teenagers are at fault for not spending their free time studying? I, like you, was raised by parents that valued education, but I sure as hell never spent any extra time in the library studying, nor did any of my friends. Sure, there are people both in and out of the ghetto that go above and beyond the norm to achieve. We could look at each person individually, and nitpick their choices to explain why they are where they are today. But that method fails to account for systematic effects.

For example, if we want to explain why the average kid from my high school went on to a mid-level state school, while the average kid in an exclusive private prep school goes to an Ivy League school, a system explanation is probably better than individual explanations. If every kid in my high school took your suggestion and spent more time in the library, the average kid would probably go to an Ivy League school. Looking at each individual’s reason for not doing so ignores the fact that nearly every one of them chose not to, while nearly everyone in the exclusive prep school chose to do so. That’s really the issue in play here, why is it that almost all kids in the ghetto choose to eschew the sanctioned path, while almost all of the kids outside of the ghetto choose the sanctioned path.

Let’s go back to the library example, but this time explore the circumstances around that decision. Probably the biggest factor in a given kid’s decision is what effect going to the library, and embracing education will have on his standing in his peer group. That is, what are the likely social outcomes that would stem from him working hard in school? The obvious one is that doing so will immediately differentiate him from the rest of his peers. Furthermore, he will do so in a way that does not conform with the norms of his peers. Anyone who has been a teenager knows that being different, in the bad way, is a ticket for harassment and a poor experience. In essence, a kid that studies like his counterpart in a middle class school does, is labeled “acting white” and ostracized.

The next circumstance surrounding his decision would be the perceived value that results from his choice. That is, what does he think getting an education will get him? You have to remember, we are talking about 13-16 year olds here. By the time they get to their Junior or Senior year in high school it’s probably too late to make up ground on a middle class student. Even assuming that they believe getting an education will mean success, how farsighted is your typical 13-16 year old? I know I wasn’t when I was that age, and again, I had the parents, and other social contacts that valued education. Again, that is assuming the education he would get has value. A diploma from a high school in the ghetto carries much less weight than a diploma from anywhere else.

Throughout this post there has been the unspoken assumption that a kid in the ghetto wants a middle class life. This is not always the case, the following quote is from “Prince” (no, not the singer), a gang leader in Chicago:

Pg 167 American Project by Suddir Alladi Venkatesh. (Very interesting book BTW. If you read Freakonomics, Venkatesh is the guy that did the study on gang economics).

That’s from someone who grew up in the ghetto, got a degree, and found your typical white collar job. Accurate or not, this perception of racism is prevalent in the ghetto. You also have to consider that a person is going to have to adjust, and go outside of their comfort zone to fit in at any sort of decent job. Imagine what would happen if you stood up in a meeting and said, “Those niggers at XYZ corp ain’t gonna deliver their shit on time, we gotta do something 'bout it.” Your coworkers would look at you like you’ve grown a second head, and you would be fired pretty quickly. Making that sort of adjustment again is labeled “acting white,” and discouraged. For a kid in the ghetto that means a job like this might not be the goal, whereas for a middle class kid it is.

To sum up, there are many circumstances that go into a kid’s decision to pursue an education or not. By simply doing what is expected of him in school will not allow him to compete with other more advantaged kids. That means a kid in the ghetto will have to go above and beyond for their education, a dubious proposition for any teenager. In addition, a kid in the ghetto will be much less likely to value an education due to ostracization by his peers, short sightedness, and a rejection of a normal middle class life.

Besides education, the other issue you brought up is crime, and for a kid in the ghetto that means gangs. I don’t know what perception you have of gangs, but the typical perception is a simple criminal organization. This is not the case, especially for younger teens. For these younger teens a gang is more of a social organization and one for protection, rather that a criminal enterprise. A kid doesn’t join a gang necessarily because he wants to commit crimes. Rather, he probably joins the gang because he wants friends, to feel acceptance, and to be protected from physical assault. Eventually though, as they get older some get sucked further and further into the criminal aspect of the gang. Breaking off contact with your entire group of friends, even if they are detrimental to you, is an extremely difficult thing to do for anyone.

In addition, you have to consider what a person’s options for survival are in the ghetto. Good jobs, which pay well simply don’t exist for someone in the ghetto. Employers see that you graduated from X high school in ghetto Y, and won’t hire you. Employers aren’t stupid, they know what goes on in the ghetto, and they know that they probably will get a better employee elsewhere. Plus, your typical person from the ghetto isn’t going to have any marketable skills. Those two facts mean that the typical job available for a person in the ghetto is the shittiest of the shit jobs. Not only in terms of pay, but in terms of degrading work and lack of respect at their place of work.

A kid in the ghetto is faced with a decision after he graduates, stick with the gang dealing drugs or find a legitimate job. In the first he probably has control over subordinates, is in a position of respect, and potentially can earn more money. In the second, he probably is going to get some degrading job, with no respect, and less money. Looking at it that way it’s not difficult to see why some, or even most, choose the first path.

Again, we are talking about averages here instead of individuals. Your average suburban kid would not see much benefit from a gang in terms of protection, or a social network. Your average kid in the ghetto probably would see a significant gain in those aspects if he joined a gang. In addition, for a kid in the ghetto life in a gang provides advantages over engaging in the legitimate economy.

What people who haven’t lived that life don’t understand, and I don’t believe they can ever truly appreciate, is the role played by expectations and an understanding of possibilities.

First some background. I’m white, or I should say I readily pass for white, I’m a total a mutt. I grew up in what is now commonly referred to as ‘the projects/estates’. Our family was anything but ‘stable’. I have 5 siblings, all of us ‘got out’. None of us turned to serious crime, none of us committed a felony. So it’s certainly possible. Is this normal ? Hell no, we all know it’s not normal. Why? that’s tough to articulate.

The thing is that children aren’t born society ready. They pick up social standards from society. In the same way that a middle class person expects a Father to go off to work people where I grew up expected that they wouldn’t and often weren’t even around. We didn’t expect yards to look neat, we didn’t expect the neighbours not to be involved in violent domestic arguments, we didn’t expect grown men not to be drunkards or criminals and so forth. We simply grew up with those things, they were normal and we accepted that as the way that society worked. Everybody lived like that and subconsciously we expected that we would grow up to be like that. Nobody told us they expected us to be like that when we grew up, quite the opposite, but children simply absorb there understanding of what is expected of adults by looking at adults. Telling children they simply won’t or shouldn’t be like all the adults they see around them is like telling them they will grow up to have 6 arms. It makes no sense. It’s a fairy story, something adults say that you don’t really believe.

And that is why it is so damn hard to get out. You become what you see. If you see criminals and drunks as your real life role models for what a young man is it’s damn hard to not expect to become a criminal and drunk yourself. Not that you want to, you simply expect to because that’s what everyone grows up to be. That’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t been there, but everyone who has been there knows that it’s true and will tell you the same thing. The idea that children seriously adopt TV characters as role models is total bollocks of course. Real role models are real people. If all the real people a boy sees are deadbeats thugs then you simply expect that when a boy grows up he becomes taller, grows a beard and becomes deadbeat thug. A deadbeat thug is part of what a man is just like man is tall and has a beard. You unconsciously model yourself on that.

The other problem that people fail to understand is just how narrow the world is for the poor. Poor parents can intellectually know that there child is heading down the wrong path, and that they need to study, but they have no way of knowing how to remedy that situation. I can look back at my own childhood and see now the huge number of opportunities my parents missed out on simply because they had no concept that the opportunity existed. For example I know now that I was eligible for free tutoring, but nobody ever told my parents this, and because they were poor and uneducated they didn’t even imagine that such a thing existed. So I never got it. Similarly I worked my way through university because, even in the late 80s, nobody in our family knew what a college scholarship was. I could certainly have qualified for numerous scholarships but I only realised that halfway through my final year.

And this is another thing that seems to be hard to grasp if you haven’t lived it. It’s easy from a middle class perspective to assume that the notices for scholarships and other opportunities are publicly available so everybody, rich or poor can read them. What you don’t understand is that such notices are for rich folks. Seriously, they apply to another world. When I grew up unless someone specifically told me I was allowed to do something it was assumed by default that only rich people were allowed to do it. And that wasn’t a foolish assumption, experience taught me, as it teaches all poor people, that most things required money and so were off limits.

I may have seen notices for scholarship programs on school noticeboards. I think some teachers may even have mentioned them to me. But teachers had also mentioned things like extracurricular activities to me as well. I knew form experience we couldn’t afford them so it was pointless. After the umpteenth time you ask about something have to experience the shame of explaining that you don’t even have the $10 for a field trip or similar you learn not to ask any more. It’s easier. And as a result poor people don’t even ask about the stuff that’s free, like free tutoring or college scholarships. Life teaches poor people that those things aren’t for them.

And as I said, my family is basically white. I can only imagine what it must be like for a poor black child. They get the double whammy of things not being for poor folk and things not being for black folk. Even if black kids today aren’t overtly discriminated against there parents will still be ignorant to opportunities, just as my parents were, because they experienced a lifetime of learning not to bother looking for opportunities.
I’m not sure if that cleared things up any, I hope it did. I’ve found it can be really hard to explain growing up poor to people who never have. People tend to assume that growing up poor is just like growing up rich, but with less money. It isn’t. It’s a whole other world, a totally different culture and it isn’t easy to explain a different culture.

So given a stable family life, hard work, and a bit of luck is it possible to get out? Of course it is. I’m living proof of that. Given hard work, and a bit of luck it is also possible to become a millionaire selling Amway. That doesn’t mean that these things are realistic expectations for the average person.

One of the biggest problems, and IMO it is revealing your middle-class WASPiness, is that you simply assume that ‘hard work’ as an automatically an option open to poor people. That might seem like a reasonable assumption, but in many ways it isn’t. If you are a teenager and have never seen anyone working hard in your entire life how can you choose hard work as a solution? How can you even understand that it is an option? I always compare this to taking George Washington and plonking him in the middle of modern Manhattan with 50 bucks and telling him to go to Newark. It’s easy to say that he can take the Subway, he has all the requisite skills and resources, but he doesn’t even understand that such a solution exists. It’s totally outside his frame of reference. And in the same way a teenager who has grown up never seeing anyone working hard, much less seen someone achieve recognition and social standing through hard work, is simply never going to include hard work on the list of options. Basketball? Sure, we’ve seen people make it through being good at basketball but in our entire lives we have never seen anyone succeed through working hard. As a solution it solves nothing for us and our kind.

I could go into more detail about the problems of being poor and using a library from personal experience, but this post is already too long, so I won’t. Suffice it to say it isn’t really an option in practice however it may seem in thory.

I agree with the others though. Calling this genocidal is equivalent to calling hunting murder or calling all heterosexual sex rape. It simply poisons the debate and make sit almost impossible to be rational. Hopefully we can all agree this isn’t genocide and move back to the original point.

Well said, Blake.

I’m living with a guy who comes from a very privileged background. When I tell him stuff about where I grew up, he says stuff like “Well, I’d sue them” or “Why didn’t your report them to the labor department?”, and it’s hard to explain to him that we had no concept of that. We simply had no idea what our rights were or how we could go about defending them. All we knew was lawyers were expensive and anything we did would put what little we did have at risk. You aren’t born knowing what you can achieve and how you can achieve it. It’s interesting here looking at the “other side” and seeing how upper-class parents are able to instill upper class values. My friend, for example, had a high school assembly where a stock broker came in and taught them about investing. He was never raised to be anything but a success (and is having to learn a whole new set of skills to fit in with his new job at the port).

It’s possible to make it out. But it takes a lot more luck than anything else. Some kids are born in to the perfect storm. Schools that don’t teach, that are too cash strapped to offer things like honors classes and extra-cirriculars, that don’t have enough councilors to guide people through the college application process. Families that don’t bring up their kids, parents in jail or on drugs or working three jobs or immigrants that have no idea how America works, sibling to raise when no adults are around, not enough love. And a million other little things- bad libraries, no access to internships, having to work instead of padding the college application after school to afford lunch money, undiagnosed medical problems, bad role models…Most people can overcome a few of these, but sometimes it’s just too damn much. Especially when the rest of society isn’t interested in helping you out, but indeed is kind of scared of you and kind of hopes you stay out of their world.

It seems like we’re all saying that children who grow up in a bad environment will themselves go on to become part of the bad environment that will raise the next generation of children. But what exactly is “the system” that supposedly is in play here? Who is supposedly doing this to these people? Let’s admit it; most of the damage being done to the poor is self-inflicted.

What’s the alternative? Does the rest of society tell poor people they can’t have children because we think they’ll be poor parents? Do we make up rules on how they should live and force them to meet our standards? Do we punish them and lock them in prison if they don’t follow the rules? How do you stop people from making bad choices without taking away their ability to make choices?

Some people have argued that one unanticipated affect of segregation was that it forced all Black Americans to live together. So Black doctors and lawyers and teachers and businessmen all had to live in the same neighbourhoods as Black people working menial jobs or no jobs. As a result all Black children had regular exposure to all economic classes. But when racial segregation ended, the Black middle class moved from Black neighbourhoods in to middle class neighbourhoods. The only people who remained in the old neighbourhoods were the poor.

Actually, it looks as though most of the damage being done to the poor is inflicted by their parents and neighbors, during childhood.

As Blake and sven have pointed out, the most crippling burden that poor children bear is simply their ignorance that it’s realistically possible for their lives to be different from the failed, dangerous lives that they see all around them. And the rest of society is not succeeding in counteracting that damage with education and other public facilities.

I teach in an incredibly diverse high-school, both racially and socio-economically (quite literally I have had a 17 year-old with a 51 year-old great grandmother, an Afgani refugee, and the son of a fortune-500 company CEO all in the same class) and my experience with kids from “disadvantaged” backgrounds jives pretty much exactly with that of Blake. It is amazing what many of the kids don’t know or don’t think of.

I don’t know what the answer is on a large scale. I know that we have a lot of success because of that diversity. We try to make activities economically feasible for everyone, and that pulls the kids together. It does the disadvantaged kids a world of good to see the practical effects of a college degree/professional job–it was a shock to me when I realized that some of our kids don’t know ANYONE that lives in a house, and may never have been in a private single-family residence. Diversity helps that. The reason they see “professional athelete” as the only chance is that they’ve never seen middle class–just “rich beyond the dreams of avarice” and “dirt poor”

As a teacher, I can do a lot, but I have to help them one at a time. I can’t think any bigger than that. Every year, there are a handful I take through college applications, scholarship applications, etc. Which ones do I chose? The ones that like me, honestly, and who don’t have anyone else. It’s not fair, or equitable, and I do try and do larger-scale stuff, but in the end I don’t have the finacial or emotional or temporal resources to do more than that, so I do what I can.

Oh, I see. So as an 8yo child any damage I suffered from being subjected to life in a traumatic and violent neighbourhood or from lack of resources was self inflicted because I was poor? I admit, you’re right. That was all self inflicted. :rolleyes:

What a crock of shit. The damage being done to poor children is not self inflicted, no damage inflected on children by their environment is self inflicted. Shit, even if children were choosing to live in these conditions it still wouldn’t be self inflicted because parents and society are supposed to stop people making decisions that will harm them.

Making opportunities available to poor people. And I mean making it truly available, not simply hypothetically available.

It’s all well and good saying that in theory my Father couldn’t be legally compelled to use the family car as a work delivery vehicle with no compensation. Sure he could have sued the employer. But as Sven points out, that option simply wasn’t available in practice. Not only didn’t he know that such an option existed, he couldn’t have afforded it even if it was. And even if he could he certainly couldn’t have afforded not to work for 5 years while the case was pounded out in the courts. So like many poor people he worked under conditions that didn’t allow money to be saved, or conditions that were unsafe and so on. Conditions that are guaranteed to keep you in poverty.

The only solution is making opportunities like the opportunity to enforce basic labour conditions or the opportunity to attend college truly open to poor people. Not just hypothetically available as it is today, not ‘avialable’ like the opportunity to become President is ‘available’. Truly and honestly available on the sense that if a poor person wants to do it they can do it.

Yep, eugenics, That’s the solution Nemo. Stop the poor folk form breeding. :rolleyes:

And how exactly do you intend to force people to meet your standards when they don’t have the resources and knowledge required to meet your standards? You might just as easily expect them to fly to the moon.

People need the opportunity to meet “our” standards to be able to meet “our” standards. I’m amazed that you overlooked that point. You can’t force people to do things they simply have no opportunity to do.

Once again though, you overlook the fact that people can’t follow the rules if they have no opportunity to follow the rules. I might just as easily make a rule that you have to become a world class pianist as make a rule that a poor child has to complete High School. In both cases you simply lack the basic skills and opportunities required to ever do that.

You don’t even try to stop people making bad choices. Instead you give people the opportunity to make good choices.

This is the one thing people who grew up rich almost never get. Most poor children don’t choose to do bad things. Poor children do not wake up one morning and decide they are going to sell crack on the streetcorner and more than you did when you were 14. But people do have to make choices, that’s what being human is. And teenagers make a lot of bad choices, that’s been true of teenagers since the year dot. The problem for poor people is that there are very few good choices available. When your only options are neutral choices and bad choices then of course you will make a lot of bad choices. That applies doubly when you are a teenager all your experience teaches you that neutral choices are unrewarded.

But as I say, this is something people who were born wealthy usually don’t get. Because you grew up in conditions where you had a genuine choice between good or bad you assume that everybody has that choice. You simply assume that if poor people can be stopped from making bad choices that automatically means they can and therefore will make better choices. That’s untrue. My father using the family car to just hold on to a job was a bad choice, no doubt about it. If you had stopped him doing that he wouldn’t have made a better choice, he would simply have been unemployed much longer. If you stop poor kids hanging around in gangs that doesn’t mean they will make a better choice. It just means they will hang out alone at home watching TV and getting ill.

And so on and so forth. Just because you grew up in a world where there was always a choice between “good and productive” or “bad and destructive” don’t think that everybody has the same choices.

Is this like Auschwitz we’re talking about?

Then yes.

Respectfully: Auschwitz is not the only, nor even the most pre-iminent example, of genocidal policies.

Realism ain’t fatalism if that’s how it is, bruh.

Is that school library gonna be furnished with relevant books? If not now, when? If so, well, will children actually be allowed to check out books from it? If so, how many at a time? And for how long? Will student’s privileges be suspended if they damage/lose books? What if their parents can’t afford to replace them? Are there mechanisms in place for the school to replace them so other students can? Further, will it have adequate computers? Will they have internet access and appropriate software? Will the students have been trained how to use them? For that matter, will the staff be trained how to use it and trained how to teach others to use it? Even if trained how to use it, will the students actually use the resources to better themselves or will they most likely goof off on some celebrity fan site because there are no volunteers or staff around to make sure students are spending time on task? Will it be closed promptly at the end of the school day or will students be able to avail themselves of the media there after hours? If so, for long? Is that long enough? Is that everyday or just some days? Will the librarian allow unescorted students to use its facilities, or are there school policies that kick students out af the end of the day? And assuming all that – what if this (presumably) poverty stricken school district has to make bugdet cut-backs and the big compromise to firings and layoffs is that the library gets restricted hours and is shut down three days a week?

It’s not enough that the equipment is there, it has to be used.

A bit, yeah. No family life, no amount of hard work, will stay stable and find its expected reward while surrounded by less industrious people stuck in American urban poverty. Eventually, the environment will win. There’s just too much environmental stress, too much frustration and class bigotry, too much pathological behavior, too much peer pressure, too much crime and too much temptation. The longer you stay surrounded by poverty, the worse the odds. You will eventually be a victim or part of the problem. I am NOT suggesting that the working poor or working class are the same as the poor, btw. Just that nobody I know with a job stays in areas of poverty-stricken areas.

Even so, there is a little thing called “personal responsibility” and “intervention of the law” and I do not automatically accept that ghetto life – in America, anyway – is genocidal. Potential genocidal, sure: Baltimore has almost ten times the national average of being murdered per 100,000 people. What little is done to curb that can be attributed to the cops, although I have seen/heard plenty of examples of police abuse and indifference, too. Ghettolife leads to a lesser quality of life. Thanks to jails, instead of being killed outright, you might just be in for a glamourous life of poverty-stricken recidivism and prison institutionalized mindset. Or you might be one of the few who actually use their mental talents or physical giftedness to get the hell up out of there.

In some ways its not fair. Apathetic bureaucracies, crime-ridden neighborhoods, racism, weary officials burned out from years of dealing with the problem. And, yes, many of the problems are self-inflicted: not by the individual, always, but by the surrounding poor (especialy criminal elements and apathetic or simply ignorant parents). It tends to become a vicious cycle.

And while not fair, there’s no magic solution for making it go away. Ultimately, there’s no other option except for individuals to go through the painful process of learning how to live outside the ghetto. Every other solution has been tried, generally without success. Some government programs have eased the pain for a little while, but I know of none which has ever really solved the problem. In the end, you just can’t legislate poverty out of existence, not that people haven’t tried.

It’s sort of the same problem you see on a national scale. Take Saudi Arabia. Back in the 70’s, it was big and rich. Money everywhere from oil. But all the fancy palaces and rich royals didn’t build any infrastructure or create fertile ground for a better economy. So as the markets waned and the oil money stretched thin, all the wealth dried up. You see this often in the Third World. It may not be fair but it’s real.

“The only solution to the problem of people living in the ghetto is for people to learn how to live outside the ghetto. Every other solution has been tried, generally without success.”

“The only solution to the problme of people getting HIV is for peopel to learn how not to get HIV. Every other solution has been tried, generally without success.”

“The only solution to people dying from lack of food is for people to learn how to get enough food. Every other solution has been tried, generally without success.”

“The only solution for America disengaging fro Iraq is for Americans to learn how to disengage from Iraq. Every other solution has been tried, generally without success.”

I’m sorry, but those statements are just trite truisms. Perfectly accurate and perfectly unhelpful Simply saying that the solution to a problem is for people to learn how to not suffer form the problem really isn’t helpful. You can’t say that every other solution has been tried because your statment isn’t solution at all. It’s a restatment of the problem at best, and at worst a platitude. It solves nothing. It doesn’t even cast any light on what the problem actually is.

How are individuals to learn to live outside the ghetto?

What programs are in place to educate people how to live oustide the ghetto?

How are they to obtain the extra money required to live outside the ghetto?

Those are some real questions, and those questions are what will alleviate the problem.

I don’t think you’re being fair to Little Nemo’s point here. You’re using self-inflicted to mean two different things—the individual and the group. I think it is a stretch to interpret his comments to mean that a child is responsible for his own situation. At least, that’s not how I took it. And doing so, the larger point stands: to a large degree the plight of the poor is self-inflicted.

As children, we all depend on the advice given to us by our parents. That advice is valuable because our parents have lived through things and can steer us to avoid making the same mistakes they’ve made, or seen. When people too young have children, they do not have the life experience to draw on to help their children make wise decisions. Add to that the incidence of single-parent households in many of these communities and it is not surprising that the situatiuon is so self-perpetuating.

Sounds great. But who pays for it? Why should Person A bust their ass and struggle to make responsible decisions—get maried when they can afford to, have children when they can afford them, and make sacrifices to make sure their children have opportunities—and then also pay for the children of people who did not make responsible choices?

I ask that rhetorically, to make a point. While it is truly a shame that a child should be asked to pay for their parents mistakes, and society benefits greatly from helping break the cycle, society can only do so much. The greatest change can be had from within: finish highschool (at least), don’t make babies when you’re 15 years old, and get married to do so. These things alone will do more than any government-made program, and the inclination to adopt them has to come from within the culture of these neighborhoods.

No. Except them to “breed” responsibly. Why is that not reasonable?

And did you really need to taint the point with the “eugenics” label. This is an interesting discussion. Let’s keep it that way. YMMV.

This is a good point. I’d say the first thing they need to have the opportunity is to not fall into one of the slots that almost ensure a downward spiral. As I said: encourage them to stay in school, not have babiesat a young age, etc. If they can make it through highschool and not have a baby to take care of, they immediately have many. many more opportunities than if they have a kid and a tenth-grade education.

If this attitude it adopted all is lost. We have lowered expectations enough—that is a big part of the problem. An old advertising giant once said: “Reach for the stars. You might not get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.” When the “goal” is : stay out of jail, or less, we give these kids no room to fail, even a little. We need to have them see that we expect much, much more of them. That alone does much for the ego and self-esteem: two necessary ingredients in healthy personal development.

Why is it either/or?

I think this attitude is unhelpful in the extreme. Kids of all ages should be taught that life is a series of decisions. They all have consequences. Some good. Some bad. And you’ll have to live with them all.

(Bolding mine)

A teacher? EEK!
:wink:

On re-reading I agree that’s a reasonable interpretation. If that was his intent then I withdraw my original comment.

OTOH if that was his intent then it is blatant classism at its worst. Blaming ‘the poor’ for the problems of ‘the poor’ as though the group is an entity meets the classic definition of classism: Bias based on social or economic class.

The damage we are discussing is not self inflicted. Poor people are individuals just as Americans are individuals. Saying that “most of the damage being done to the poor is self-inflicted” is as offensive as if someone said “Most of the damage done by childhood sexual assault in America is self-inflicted?. Would you honestly let such a statement pass unchallenged? Yet the intent and construction of both statements are identical. The group as a whole may be inflicting this damage on other individuals in the group, but in no way are the acts self inflicted.

All too true.

But how does that mean that the damage inflicted on those children is self-inflicted? How is damage done to a child self-inflicted simply because the child and the parent fall into the same social group? It would seem from this that we must conclude that any damage done by sexual assault of children by Catholic priests was self-inflicted. After all both victim and perpetrator were members of the same social group.

I agree entirely. My intent was to point out a solution. I never intended to suggest anyone be forced to implement such a solution.

Ultimately of course people should choose to fund these opportunities because they are saving their own children and grandchildren. Centres of poverty and crime are not helpful to anyone. The very fact that slum-dwellers are increasing in number faster than responsible people A who have chosen to have fewer children and later means that the problem is getting worse and is ultimately unsustainable. People who refuse to fund solutions to the problem are only pushing a worse problem on their children.

Unfortunately human nature being what it is we don’t think like that. We seek to, if not actually punish then at least not reward, “people who did not make responsible choices” by forcing their children to inherit all the problems of poverty. And as a result those children go on to become “people who do not make responsible choices”. And our children have to choose to deal with their situation or else to ignore it and so the cycle continues.

And every generation the problem gets worse and the pool pf poverty and violence becomes a greater drain on the ever dwindling population who “make sacrifices to make sure their children have opportunities”. Like it or not the ghettos are a drain, the only choice is whether they are small drain on the current generation in an attempt to solve the problem, or an unsustainable drain on the future when the problem is truly insoluble.

No, that’s one thing that all sociologists agree on. No culture ever develops an inclination to change from within (excepting cases of innovative technology, which are hardly likely to be invented in a ghetto). Such changes have to come from outside and be sold to the people in these neighbourhoods.

This all goes back to what I said above. A child growing up in these areas isn’t going to be likely to finish high school simply because he doesn’t see anyone else finishing high school so he doesn’t even consider it a realistic option for him. Real men don’t finish high school, it’s that simple. It’s all well and good to say that a 12 year old should realise all by himself that masculinity isn’t defined by educational status, but in the real world that’s not the case. And if a child of 12 fails every subject at school he’s not realistically going to finish high school at 18.

What is needed is for outsiders to educate these neighbourhoods that finishing high school is a realistic goal. For many kids it’s not even that. Then once we’ve achieved that then we need to educate them that finishing high school is path to success and respect (and make such a claim true). You can’t simply expect a community that has never seen any good come form finishing high school to spontaneously become inclined finishing high school. That’s totally unrealistic. The inclination to change has to instilled by education and propaganda. There is no way it can come form within.

It’s unreasonable for the same reason that it’s unreasonable to expect middle class America to simply stop using cars. It’s unreasonable because you are talking about an event that is totally outside the social framework of the people were are discussing. It’s perfectly possible in theory and very easy if you say it fast. In practice you have laid down an expectation that the culture simply can not incorporate. It’s not unreasonable from a practical or even humanitarian POV. But then neither is expecting Americans to give up private care ownership. It’s unreasonable to expect a culture to simply adopt a totally new system with no perceived benefits for no apparent reason.

There is a word for attempts to implement social change through selective breeding. Can you guess what that term is?

How is the suggestion to solve the problem of ghettos through preventing breeding of problem classes anything but a suggestion for the use of eugenics?

If Nemo doesn’t like the correct term being applied to his arguments he shouldn’t; adopt those arguments. The term ‘eugenics’ is only offensive if you find the thought of implementing social change through selective breeding offensive in the first place.

I agree wholeheartedly, as far as that goes. But there is a world of difference between you expecting these kids to succeed and Nemo’s suggestion that we simply make a rule that will force them to succeed. Expecting someone to finish high school is good. Simply making a rule (with punishment) for someone to finish high school is pointless. Making a rule that can’t be enforced with punishment is even more pointless.

I hope you can see that these are entirely different things. If you can’t I will happily elaborate on the difference.

Because we already know that we can’t stop people making bad choices. If incarceration and even the death penalty haven’t stopped these kids making bad choices what do you suggest would be bale to stop them?

I agree entirely, but that has no bearing whatsoever on my point (or Nemo’s).

Nemo said that if we simply stopped poor people making bad choices somehow that would solve this problem. That’s not true. We also have to ensure that they have the opportunity to make good choices.

If all we do is stop poor kids making bad choices and the only alternative is a neutral choice (eg watch TV all day) we haven’t gone any way at all towards solving the problem. The kid still has no future. She’ll still live out her entire life in the ghetto.

It’s a terrible cycle and I don’t really know of any magical system to fix it. I attended a community college and there were programs designed to help those with monetary disadvantages but they didn’t always work out. A large percentage took advantage of the system by staying in school until their money came in and then dropping. There are many others who went to completely inadequet schools and are trying to take college courses without knowing how to write a proper paper or do research. I’m talking about people who can’t type in complete sentences and don’t know that an essay should begin with an introductory paragraph and include a closing paragraphy restating their thesis. A lot of those people have a hard time and many of them never end up getting an Associates let alone advancing to a 4 year university.

I guess my point is that you can provide them with opportunities but that doesn’t mean they’re capable of taking them. I’ve read more than one article about black students doing well and being accused of acting “white” by their peers and I’ve had plenty of first hand experience with hillbillies who see no value at all in a formal education beyond basic literacy.

It isn’t just a matter of providing opportunities in many ways you have to change an entire culture.

Marc

Touchy issue.

First off to clarify some misconstrued things I wrote earlier.

Not self-inflicted on an individual basis. What I meant (and what should have been obvious from the rest of my post) was that the harm done to poor people is predominently done by other poor people. The middle class and the wealthy generally give the poor nothing worse than indifference.

Nor is this damage necessarily malicious. Parents may love their children but that doesn’t miraculously bestow great parenting skills upon them. Being a successful parent is like any other skill; you have to learn it from somewhere. Unfortunately, people who didn’t have good parents are unlikely to grow up to become good parents.

I agree. I personally think that education should be free and avalaiable to every person in this country. I think the same about food, shelter, and health care. These should be basic rights, paid for by the government if necessary.

But here’s the thing. The fight to make public education free was fought and won decades ago. The opportunity is there. So now the question is, how do you convince people to take the opportunity?

Here’s a tip for you, Blake. That little squiggly thing at the end of these sentences is called a question mark. It implies the writer is asking a question not making a statement of fact or expressing an opinion. Misunderstanding the difference between a question and a stement will lead you to attribute false opinions to and personally insult people, as you have done here.

Hopefully, nobody other than Blake thought I was presenting any of those things as suggestions for making the world a better place. I was giving them as what I thought were painfully obvious examples of failed ideas that haven’t worked in the past.

And now for my rebuttal.

You spoke earlier about the problems some poor people face; poor parenting, pressure to join gangs, an environment of petty crime, pervasive drug abuse, a lack or respect for the value of education and employment, the flight of role models out of poor neighbourhoods. And here’s the kicker; in all of these problems poor people are the victimizers as well as the victims. Obviously they’re all acting as individuals, but can you tell me how you’re going to address any problem without disturbing any of the individuals that are part of the problem?

One final note, Blake. You seem to think you know a lot about me from the way you declare what my beliefs supposedly are and what my background supposedly is. Perhaps you thought we had met somewhere and shared this information. But most of what you’ve said about me is incorrect, so you’ve apparently mistaken me for somebody else.

I think Blake’s original post (#5) was dead on.

Since then however, I think he’s at best 50% right—too much emphasis on characterizing the poor as victims,largely blaming both the problems, and the solutions on various part of the government.

That’s a distorted view and doesn’t present the issues accurately or in their correct context.