Quite so. And therein lies the problem. If you fail to recognize that you have to cooperate and play by the rules at an early age, you are dooming yourself. Those who devalue an education, whether individually or as a cultural theme, are kidding themselves if they think that they can get away with it. Like it or not, if you are going to succeed in American society, you are going to have to possess the education and skills to be employed and the personal restraint not to break the law. If you choose to pick up a craxk rock instead of a text book or a gun instead of a pencil, you end up getting what you are asking for.
I was watching a comedy special on HBO last night with Chris Rock and he said something that I thought was interesting. Now, he was trying to be funny of course (the man is a riot IMO), but I still thought it was interesting. He was talking about black AND hispanics, and he said that white people think in terms of wealth (very broad generalization of course)…black and brown people thing in terms of being rich. People who generate wealth effect entire communities, build something to pass on to future generations, etc. People who are rich buy more jewlery, spinning hub caps, etc…and a single bad season can wipe them out and make them poor again (I’m of course paraphrasing what he said…for one thing, he was a lot funnier :)). Now, this is definitely hyperbole, no doubt about it…but there is a kernel of truth to it. I know a lot of rich hispanics…but very few wealthy hispanics (I hope to be one of these, one day). I actually DO know a few wealthy blacks…but there aren’t many. I know a lot of rich black though. Anyway, I thought it was an interesting insight coming from a comic.
Well, yes…that was kind of my point. I’m not saying this is a hispanic thing…its more a social class thing.
My point though was, throwing money at the situation won’t really help, as its the mindset that causes the problem IMO. You see, its easy to go along with what you know. Its what you are comfortable with. All your friends are there. Your family is there. There are rules, but you know them. Its harsh but its what you have known all your life. But breaking out is much more difficult…and more than a little scary too.
THATS the kind of thing that would need to be broken, and throwing money at it isn’t going to fix it. I have to admit, I have no idea myself how to fix it for people in general. I don’t think that it can come exclusively from the outside. ‘Community leaders’ can’t make this happen, its got to come from INSIDE the community itself. But how does one break a community out of such a collective mindset?
In the case of my family, it was my father that broke the cycle, on his own, that moved himself and his wife and kids out of the barrio and broke the barrio mindset and the grip of our family on him…most of which stayed. He ‘sold out’, as I’ve heard even people in my own family say. I’ve merely followed in his footsteps (kicking and screaming at first, as I didn’t want to leave myself and go to new places…and have to learn new rules, a new ‘acceptable’ way to talk, new way to think, and even a language I wasn’t very good at).
As for computers in schools…well, I’m of two minds on that. Certainly its a great tool, if used well, and it gives poor kids the oppurtunity to learn something useful today, as well as connecting them with vast amounts of information and new ideas and concepts. However, the main problem seems to be that the idea is to throw technology at the schools with no plan as to how to actually use it. The teachers for the most part are clueless about what to do with the stuff (at least thats been my experience). Not only that, they are clueless as to how to even work with the equipment. There is no plan, no training…no direction. So the kids sit in class and surf the web for rap sites, or anything that they can get too around the filters…or play games.
And the teachers are left with the job of A) Trying to figure out how the stuff works…and in a lot of cases it was designed and installed so poorly that it DOESN’T work properly, even if you know what you are doing. B) Come up with some kind of plan to use it, research software on their owe to put on it. C) Spend a large percentage of their time trying to train the kids to use the stuff, and supervising that the kids are actually using it for classwork and now playing games or surfing the web.
We won’t even get into the fact that each school is doing its own thing, that the various states don’t have any kind of centralization, no standards, no help desk support…no clue as to what to DO with the stuff from a SOP perspective. All this means that our tax money is litterally going down the toilet for this stuff. And this is just the technology side (I’m highlighting it because my company volunteers a lot of time to the schools on this, and its something I’m familiar with). Its really every facit of the schools…and its not just the poor schools either. My son goes to a solidly middle class public school and its really no better there than at the Charter Schools.
-XT
According to this article outlining a report done by a non-profit group in Washington – Blacks are not having problems getting into college, they’re having problems getting out.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=College%20Graduates
This is an interesting example of those who cling to Affirmative Action, the facts be damned. You can admit people all day long. You cannot instill in them the skills and the desire to actually succeed. If you set a color-blind admissions standard high enough, the graduation rates would increase dramatically.
Um,…Lessee,…Here are just a few of the positions I would call community leaders that Blacks seat. Police chief, Mayor, Super of Schools, Politician, Pastor, Journalist, Sports figure, etc. They don’t speak out enough on these issues. They don’t speak the truth that is. When was the last time you heard a prominent Black leader scorn the community itself for putting up with the crap that goes on in the community?
In D.C. we have Marion Barry (though he’s not mayor anymore, quite a few misguided souls still seem to think he should be in public office) and Barry’s puppet, the Rev. Willie Williams (who got quite a few votes as a write-in candidate for mayor last year thanks to Barry’s efforts). Nationally we have Maxine Waters and Sheila Jackson Lee, two particularly obnoxious members of Congress. And then there is NAACP legal defense fund head Theodore Shaw. According to the Newsday article on the recent Bill Cosby speech, “Shaw told the crowd that . . . many of the problems his organization has addressed in the black community were not self-inflicted.”
I’m not sure how some of these people get elected. You’d have to ask their constituents. I’d say one becomes a “black leader” by being someone whom a segement of the black community has either elected to speak for them or who is in the leadership positions of an organization that presumes to speak for Black America.
1 out of every 75 men in the U.S. are incarcerated! according to this: http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/PRISON_POPULATION?SITE=APWEB&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Actually, the report states that blacks are still less likely to be enrolled in college than whites. In 1975, 45% of graduating blacks enrolled in college, which rose to 56% in 2001, a change of 11 percentage points. In 1975, 49% of graduating whites enrolled in college, which rose to 66% in 2001, a change of 17 percentage points. Therefore, blacks are still not entering college in the same numbers as their white brethren, and in fact are falling behind further as time goes on. While it’s at least a possibility that AA might not be working, it’s certainly not from giving too many blacks opportunities, since that’s not happening.
The report also notes that a large number of minorities come to college unprepared for the materials, due to poor K-12 educations. They go on to note that poor preparation has a large impact on graduation rates.
Fix K-12 and even up the admission numbers, then we can talk about whether blacks can cut it in our universities.
It points out to me that this is a demographic group in our society that is raised with no regard for that society or its laws. I’m sorry - they are in jail because they belong there; they broke the law. And I’ll bet you that every single one of them knew they were breaking the law when they did it.
Giving them a university education is not the answer; it’s way too late by then. It will take a massive cultural earthquake. They need to learn at a young age that it is not cool to steal, drink or do drugs, knock up a girl and run off, and to generally be an asshole.
"…African-Americans made up 13 percent of the population and 15 percent of all drug users, yet they comprised 33 percent of people arrested, 55 percent of those convicted and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison for drug possession.
Simply put, young whites who use illegal drugs in the suburbs, on college campuses or in downtown nightclubs never get targeted by massive narcotics sweeps the way blacks and Latinos in the inner city do. So the jails fill up with young blacks and Latinos and nobody questions why."
"The ultimate policy irony at the heart of America’s passion for prisons is summarized in the phrase correctional Kenynesianism. The prison construction boom, fed by the rising “market” of Black offenders, is an often remarkable job and tax-base creator and local economic multiplier for predominantly white “down” or “up” state communities that are generally removed from urban minority concentrations.
Each prisoner represents an economic asset that has been removed from that community and placed elsewhere. …The removal may represent a loss of economic value to the home community, but it is a boon to the prison community. Each prisoner represents as much as $25,000 in income for the community in which the prison is located, not to mention the value of constructing the prison facility in the first place.
This can be a massive transfer of value: A young male worth a few thousand dollars of support to children and local purchases is transformed into a $25,000 financial asset to a rural prison community. The economy of the rural community is artificially amplified, the local city economy artificially deflated.
…willingness to enter the prison sweepstakes was validated by another small town mayor, Andy Hutchens of Ina, Illinois:
‘Before [Ina’s] prison was built, the city took in just $17,000 a year in motor fuel tax revenue. Now the figure is more like $72,000. Last year’s municipal budget appropriation was $380,000. More than half of that money is prison revenue. Streets that were paved in chipped gravel and oil for generations soon will all be covered in asphalt. An $850,000 community center that doubles as a gym and computer lab for the school across the street is being paid for with prison money,’ Hutchens said.
‘It really figures out this way. This little town of 450 people is getting the tax money of a town of 2,700,’ Hutchens said, and then added with a grin, ‘And those people in that prison can’t vote me out of office.’"
The point was that while enrollments are up Blacks are still far behind in the percentage of those who complete with a degree in six years. I can see how increasing the enrollment of Blacks will exacerbate that problem – not how it will fix that problem. I do agree that the problem lies elsewhere, and it may be poor education prior to entering college — which might be one of the unintended consequences of AA.
Marion Barry is a black leader, even though he holds no leadership position? Like the former mayor, Joseph Ganin?
Rev. Willie Williams is a black leader–a leader over people like myself–even though I’ve never heard of him? But okay, I’ll grant you Rev. Willie Williams if I can grant you Pat Buchanan as a “white leader”.
Maxine Waters and Sheila Jackson Lee are black leaders if you’ll then let me peg Senator Trent Lott as a “white leader”.
Oh yeah! I think Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly are definitely white leaders since they have a big following and are always speaking on the behalf of whites. Especially those racist whites who have big mouths.
Listen, maybe you don’t know this–but black people don’t get to vote on who’s going to be the next spokesperson. There is no election. There is no one who does the appointing. A black mayor is not a “black leader”…not anymore than that Bush is a “white leader”. The leaders of the community are those people who you don’t ever see, names you don’t know. I personally agree with many of Maxine Waters’ politics, but she’s not my leader anymore than than James Traficant was. It’s condescending for whites to expect black leaders to do anything more than what “white leaders” do to mobilize them. Black people are not a monolith. We have a diverse assemblage of leaders and politics to choose from.
It’s an outrage that time after time on the SDMB, the only “black leaders” people can think of are corrupt people. Actually, very few good “black leaders” are ever discussed. The reason for this is easy: the good people in a community never get mentioned on the news. But the thing is is that these nameless people are the ones who are doing the most work in the community.
People are tired of living in poverty and they don’t know how to escape legally. We have a mass culture that promotes materialism to the people who can least afford it, and unfortunately hip hop culture has perpetuated this disease with a throbbing bass beat and catchy hook. The successes of AA have not trickled down to lower-income brackets…it’s still something that mostly middle-income folks seem to be reeping the benefits of. The surge in criminality within the black community is a response to fatigue and frustration at still being at the bottom when everyone else seems to have everything.
It’s hard to love a place like Newark, NJ. Hell, sometimes when I’m on a “bad” street, I want to break something. It’s easy to tell a kid living in Newark just to work hard and one day, he can be a doctor or a lawyer. But who’s he going to look up to? How is this kid supposed to know it’s possible to move out of the slum when all he sees is the permanence of it all? To a kid like that, there are a myriad of black leaders, many of them “good”, but only a select few seem to have it easy in life.
I don’t know what the answer is but people shouldn’t think that blacks are sleeping on the problem. Just because Maxine Waters (or another Black Leader[sup]TM[/sup]) has controversial politics does not mean that she does not mentor children or donate money to causes or sponsor legislation that would have a positive impact on urban crime.
I agree, monstro…its got to come from inside the community. Its just tough to break the barrio mentality, or to explain so its understood that there are options to getting out…if they are taken. How do you explain this to a kid in the barrio who has no tangable examples to guide him. The only examples of people ‘making it’ in the black community are mostly sports, music or film type things. There are LOTS of other examples, but those are the visible ones. In the hispanic community its even worse really…because there aren’t as many hispanic sports stars, movie stars or musicians. So, there is even less incentive to break out. Again, there are lots of other examples of hispanics breaking out and doing well…but they aren’t visible to the average kid in the barrio. And to be honest, there is an air of ‘selling out’ when a hispanic from the barrio DOES make it (at least this has been my experience).
Its just a lot easier and safer to remain where you understand the rules, you know the people, and talk the same language (literally or figuratively), than to strike out into the unknown.
Well, I think you are getting into semantics. They ARE white leaders, in the fact that they are famous white people who are in the news, who’s views are listened too, etc. A ‘leader’ can be anyone famous…and most of them aren’t elected. I agree with you its kind of ridiculous to expect ‘black’ or ‘hispanic’ ‘leaders’ to do more than ‘white leaders’ do for THEIR communities…it smacks of either a misunderstanding or a double standard.
I think people who think there is an easy solution to this are ones who don’t understand the problem, at a fundamental level. They can’t comprehend the fact that staying in the barrio is a two way proposition. People aren’t generally FORCED to stay in the barrio…they CHOOSE to stay there, because its what they know, its their home, their families are there. Its hard to break out, especially as you said when to the average barrio kid there is no understanding of the advantage of school or breaking out.
Personally, I have no idea how to ‘fix’ this, and I’m from the barrio. I just don’t know what can be done realistically to break a mindset and a way of life.
-XT
monstro, I agree with you that it’s silly to label people “black leaders,” but for whatever reason they are presumed to speak for their community. If more black people would repudiate some of the odious characters (Barry, Sharpton, Jackson, et al) who are elected and happen to be black (as whites have rejected odious people who presume to represent us, like David Duke or even Trent Lott), then maybe we would be getting somewhere.
No, they know how to escape it legally, they just choose not to do so. It’s not hard to get a job, especially if you live in a big city like DC or New York (or Newark – NYC is very close). If you want to escape poverty you do what eveyone else does – go to work from 9 to 5. If you choose not to do that, I’m not going to feel sorry for you. Just to give you an example from your own state, as part of a government program to help the disadvantaged, casinos in Atlantic City bus disabled people from over an hour away to clean hotel rooms. When I asked why the casinos don’t simply hire TANF recipients from the area to do it, they replied that they have, but there are essentially no more people left in AC on TANF who are willing to work. They’d rather just sit around and do nothing, collecting their welfare. That’s pathetic.
Sorry, I don’t buy that. The surge in criminality is that people would rather steal from others than get a job where they may have to work. They want to take the easy way out. If you want something, get a job and earn money to pay for it. Don’t steal. What’s so hard about that?
Did you read my post/cites? Considering the documented racial bias of arrests and convictions, how can you assume that the rate of Black incarceration is purely an indication of a “surge” in black criminality? I’m not saying that blacks don’t commit crimes, or that all those convicted are innocent, BUT the targeting of minorities by the criminal justice system skews the numbers as to the white crime rate.
As for the ease of finding jobs, again the facts and figures refute your assertions. Blacks are the hardest hit group in a recession/jobless recovery:
“The last recession has had a severe and disproportionate impact on African Americans and minority communities,” according to Marc H. Morial, president of the National Urban League. In its January 2004 report on black unemployment, the Urban League found that the double-digit unemployment rates in the 14 months from late 2002 through 2003 were the worst labor market for African Americans in 20 years.
The 2001 recession was hard on African American workers both in relation to earlier recessions and in relation to white workers. Unemployment for adult black workers rose by 2.9 percentage points in the recession of the early 1980s, but by 3.5 in the 2001 recession. White unemployment, in contrast, rose by only 1.4 percentage points in the early-1980s recession and by 1.7 in the recent downturn. The median income of black families fell 3% from 2001 to 2003, while white families lost just 1.7%. Today, black unemployment has remained above 10% for over three years." Cite.
How many threads have been started here lately about unemployment and the jobless recovery? How come when large numbers of whites are unemployed it’s a depression, but when it comes to blacks it’s some kind of inherent social disease? (to paraphrase MLK)
This doesn’t give anyone a free pass into a life of crime, but this broad brush attitude about how “easy” it would be to -
-
simply get a job (as of 2001, black per capita income was 57 cents for every white dollar),
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move out of the barrio/ghetto (as if housing discrimination is a thing of the past, and the disparate income could support the idea), and
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avoid crime (ie the type of non-violent crime - drug possession - that whites commit in greater numbers with less arrests/convictions),
- is an avoidance of reality, and a slap in the faces of the majority of black people who are trying to better themselves.
I know a whole passel of people who graduated college last year with degrees- many in things like brain science and engineering. The most affluent of us is a waitress. Most of us are temp workers, customer service grunts or in other poorly paid part-time often temporary gigs. Almost all of us were unemployed for an average of about four months, during which we racked up debt, homelessness and health problems. We all remain uninsured and many are in tenous living situations and just plain don’t make enough money to eat and sleep under a roof at the same time.
I can’t even imagine what it must be like in this economy for someone fresh out of high school, perhaps with a criminal record and facing issues of racism.
And you expect them to move to NYC where the rents for a room are more than I take home from my three jobs?!?! I know someone that did that- a smart, attractive neurology graduate who was hoping to get a job in social work. She got cut a good deal on an apartment (only $700 a month to share a large studio with three people) and spent all her time going to interviews for all kinds of jobs. After three waitressing jobs where she got stiffed on paychecks she went back to Sacramento where she continues to bring home $30.00 a day waiting tables. And this is the life of someone who did everything “right”.
Recent college grads that are homeless? With phrases like “almost all of us”, you sound pretty sure about this claim, so please provide a cite for this epidemic of homelessness amongst recent college grads?
I believe his “almost all of us” referred to his group of friends from college. What do you want, written testimony from them?
No, but I find that the claim that “almost all” of her group of friends became homeless and/or ill after graduation to be highly suspect. YMMV.
Okay, but are the blacks and latinos in the inner city guilty? Or are they NOT using drugs but being thrown in prison? Are you saying that police should stop looking at inner city hangouts for drug use?? Sounds to me like your missing the point that maybe they shouldnt be using drugs in the first place!!! Just cause some white kids didnt get caught in the suburbs, doesnt mean its okay to break the law in the city.
This crap is why the problem will never be solved, people blame everything but themselves. Hey, dumbass, you were USING drugs, thats why you got arrested. Not because you were unfairly targeted.