Funny you guys should use the Chicago-Indiana example, as I live in one of those rural areas. People here are, shall we say, less than welcoming to Chicagoans seeking to better their lives. And perhaps their fear has some justification, as the crime rate has jumped (Chicago gangs have established territories here, too) in recent years.
Don’t try Wisconsin, either; up there you’re all FIBs. Cheeseheads changed the law years ago so that you have to establish 6 months of residency before applying for any kind of public aid because they were tired of “welfare mamas” coming in from the south.
Not that every Chicagoan needs aid or anything – merely that neighboring states are not necessarily the haven you described.
But I also agree with your central argument, Dangerosa; kind of ties into that thread on the value of faith from a while back.
Of course, there are arguments against delayed gratification if you’re black – life expectancy, for one thing, is not distributed equally.
I’m jealous. What I’d like to know is how the guys can afford a $5,000 car (like a ‘98 Camaro) then a $4,500 paint job, $3,000 rims and a $4,000 stereo system. You gotta pay cash for all that stuff, he ain’t floatin’ 4 loans.
Or worse, when they buy a late model SUV and spend $35,000 on the thing just to spend $15,000 to trick the shit out of it. Making it worth less than stock by doing so. Who has that kind of disposable income?
I don’t see any of these guys bumping their way out to the business parks in the suburbs on their way to work, making use of their associates/masters degree.
I realize I’m treading dangerously close to the condescending “those poor people can’t help it”, and that’s not where I mean to go at all.
People who grow up in privilege don’t even begin to realize how privileged they are. We make a thousand assumptions about life, ourselves, the world every day. It takes time and effort to understand that life is NOT the same game for everyone.
It’s ridiculous, arrogant, absurd to judge others for not choosing as you would choose without at least TRYING to understand them first.
Many many places in the South at least you can actually find a livable house for that, belive it or not, and for 150-200K you can get an enormous house.
Yag, if that’s your personal choice then more power to you. Cars are really important to many people.
So you start off this post apologizing for being condescending, and then you finish it off by being condescending. Because no one in this thread has ever tried to understand the perspective of a poor person but you, eh?
I’d agree to some extent that if you’re not aware of what opportunities may be open to you, you may end up staying where you are and just continuing to exist the way you have been, and maybe the way your parents did. That’s not a racial thing, that’s a class/educational thing.
It’s not universal though. There are and have been plenty of immigrants who have arrived here with not much more than what they had in their lone suitcase who were able to keep their “eye on the prize” and climb out of poverty to at least comfortable working class level. That includes my dad, who came here as a displaced person with no better than a 10th grade education. Both my brother and me have gone beyond what my dad was able to do in terms of education and careers. Same is true for many (though not all) of the kids in my old neighborhood.
I’m curious about something, Nzinga, and I don’t mean offense. How do you and your family view those people who leave your neighborhood in search of something “better”? Are they resented? Is there any attitude that would encourage people not to reach too far for “the American dream” because it’s somehow not the way of your neighbors? That if you do, you’re implying that you’re better than the rest?
The reason I’m asking is because among my working class acquaintances, there tends to be some dissing of financially successful people, whether out of jealousy or feelings of inadequacy I’m not sure. In some ways it’s a lot like the anti-intellectual attitude I run up against from time to time. FWIW I’ve always been a city kid but I’ve heard of similar attitudes from a white guy I knew who came from rural Arkansas, which is why I’m saying this is a class issue more than anything.
See, what I think we’re not acknowledging here is that we think Nzinga should leave her black neighborhood and move…where? To a white neighborhood?
When she gets to that white neighborhood, the whites will leave.
Happens all the time. Fozzie Bear can you really compare an immigrant’s experience with that of someone who grows up here? The starting with nothing part, sure, but people immigrate because they have hope (or a lot of fear). People who’ve lived in poverty for a long while lose their hope. If you were capable of doing more with your lives, why didn’t you stay where you were and do it there? Not to be insulting — but isn’t it possible that the mechanisms that held you captive where you were are similar to the mechanisms trapping people here?
I certainly haven’t described a haven. Its a CHALLENGE to move. Its a challenge for a middle class white person to move from a large city to a rural setting. And I’m not saying move and expect welfare. I’m assuming you’ve saved up for your house downpayment and are moving like middle class people do - maybe without an immediate job, but a pretty good idea.
But its the instant gratification thing. I once read somewhere (where? no clue) something along the line of “poor people plan for themselves today, middle class people plan to get their kids through college, rich people are planning for generations.” Whatever book it was seemed to be making a chicken and egg arguement - that poor people become middle class (with time) when they stop worrying about tomorrow and start worrying about their kid’s futures - and that the middle class (with time) becomes rich when they start planning for their grandchildren. It isn’t quite that simple, but you have to be willing to sacrafice something today for a grandkid you don’t even have yet. And even most of the rich need to do that to continue to get richer - very few rich people can truly afford to be completely thoughtless about their money - rich people go bankrupt too.
Give up the tricked out depreciating car (flat panel tv, fancy cell phone, kick ass stereo system) so that you can buy a appreciating home (or appreciating mutual fund) - even if you acknowledge that YOU may not be the one to get benefit, and you start changing the attitude of poverty.
Of course people attract scorn for their actions if those actions are deserving of scorn, that’s simply the nature of reality. The issue is whether some acts are deserving of scorn, or whether that scorn is undeserving in and of itself, because it is ignorant of circumstances or otherwise morally suspect.
You should separate out two distinct issues which I believe you have conflated:
“Scorn”, or rather a judgment about someone’s attitudes, expressions, or lifestyle choices;
and
Repression of those same attitudes, expressions or lifestyle choices.
In your post, it seems you think that because someone judges another person’s choices, that is literally the same thing as taking away that choice. For example:
Now, if a hypothetical person decided that “they deserve some luxuries in life” just like a rich person, and decided to buy a luxury car with their hard-earned money, rather than (say) saving, investing, and improving the lives of their children, that is indeed their choice, and I for one am not about to stop them; but I do think they are being short-sighted, foolish, and engaged in behaviour guaranteed to result in their staying poor, and probably their kids as well.
I would contrast this with the behaviour of my parents in law, who survived WW2 in Ukraine eating rats to survive as children, saved every penny (or the Russian equivalent thereof), used it to flee Stalinist Poland, came to Canada with literally nothing but the clothes on their backs and speaking no English, got crappy jobs in the face of intense discrimination, scrimped and saved, and fought their way into the ranks of the middle class.
To my mind their behaviour is “admirable” and something worthy of emulation. Maybe their attitude towards such things is why they are comparatively well-off.
Know what - here – let me give you an example of what I mean, Fozzie Bear. Because you just might have escaped some kind of dictatorship or junta, WTF do I know about that, you’re right.
Here’s what I’m talking about. Look at this thread, about this little boy who no one can stand. The kid doesn’t know how to behave. Nobody’s teaching him. He’s a brat. He can’t sit still, tears things up, talks back and won’t follow directions. His divorced parents have moved on with new babies who he hates (of course).
He’s 4 years old, and what does he know about himself and his world? That he gets punished. A lot. This kid’s not “winning” at anything.
How is his future in any way similar to that of a child with parents who are effective at meeting his needs?
Some kids grow up learning that they have value and other kids aren’t taught that. Of course their lives are drastically different.
Now you seem to have decided that lots of kids in the ghetto have parents who don’t teach them that they have worth. Heh. Keep on being defender of the poor, though!
If you actually read my post for comprehension, you would see that it was my father that immigrated, and the reason was that everything he had - and many relatives - were lost thanks to war. He wasn’t given a choice about staying, either, unless you view the choices as 1) leaving and hoping for something better, and 2) staying and probably getting shot. Of course, living through a war isn’t exactly like growing in the US in a ghetto, so the analogy isn’t perfect. But it’s not like my father was wealthy where he grew up either - just a country boy in rural eastern Europe - and he started with no money and no English. If you think those weren’t handicaps to his improvement, I suggest you try to put yourself in the shoes of someone like him for a minute or two.
My main objection is your comments in this thread, where you seem to have decided you are the lone white defender of the poor, and no one understaaaaands but you. That’s ridiculous, and condescending to boot.
Anyway, I have no desire to get into some dick-waving contest about who understands poor black people better, me or you. I’m still interested in Nzinga’s (or anyone else’s) thoughts on the other questions I asked.
If you must insist that I condone buying a luxury car over educating one’s child, then I am going to assume you can’t really challenge any of my true arguments.
Once my child is well fed, well loved and well educated, she can choose to make her fortune in life and move out to the nice safe neighborhoods, or she can choose to work and live in the inner city. Either way, I have ‘improved the life’ of my child. I think many people do that and buy themselves a really nice car too.
This is incorrect. My husband was raised in the house we now live in, we bought it when his dad passed away. It was appraised for $165,000. There are black people living down the street and an Indian family lives next door to us. No one has moved because there are blacks in the neighborhood.
Maybe it was that way in the '50’s and '60’s. It’s not that way now. And I live in the South.
Malthus, I apologize. You did not insist that I condone not improving the lives of children. I did see read into your statement that implication though, and I feel the need to be clear. I do not condone buying a car over giving your child a good education, a warm bed, good food and lots of love.
Take a look at West Chester, Ohio (white suburb of Cincinnati) and Fishers, Indiana (white suburb of Indianapolis). The places where I lived in the '70s and '80s have changed drastically and continue to do so.
Okay, I’m not taking offence at anything. I just wished to explain why I disagreed with this blanket statement:
By explaining exactly which types of choices are likely, in my opinion, to attract “scorn”.
To be totally clear, I am in no way accusing you or anyone else of making such choices. This is a hypothetical debate only.
Really a lot of this debate boils down to this: leaving aside the issue of “scorn”, which really relates to behaviour we both agree not to be proper, in my opinion at least some types of behaviour are strongly correlated (indeed causitive) to becomming (or remaining) middle class, or not. An example is the “live for today and not tomorrow” inclination mentioned above.
It is pretty natural in my opinion that those who are, or who wish to be, or who value achievement in this manner (becomming better off for oneself and one’s family) favour these behaviours over others. Is there a sense that they are incorrect to do so, and if so, why?
I would submit that such middle-class-friendly attitudes can be “trumped” by other values - say, philanthropic, artistic or scientific achievement. I would argue that the issues you have raised - loyalty towards one’s home turf, the sense of entitlement to luxuries - are not really sufficient to “trump” them; but I’m open to explaination and argument on that score.
My father was an immigrant to the United States from El Salvador. He literally had nothing when he came here, and he came from a house with a corrugated metal roof and a dirt floor. We had very little growing up.
Now, based on that, I believe I can say I did not grow up in privilege. Certainly I can say that my father did not grow up in privilege. Yet neither my father or I made such foolish financial choices.
As a result, I am comfortable, and my son IS growing up in privilege.
But the reason he is relates directly to the wise choices my father made, and the wise choices I made.
Since I didn’t grow up in privilege, why is it I was somehow able to discern the lack of wisdom in spending money recklessly?
I’m not talking about material privilege, Bricker, I’m talking about what we learn from our parents, our immediate environment, and the media about ourselves and our place in the world.
Well, I don’t like the phrase “loyalty to one’s home turf”. I am the first to admit that I have a soft spot for poor black people. I know them well. I work with them, I have taught them (ran a daycare center for 5 years) love them, been raised by them. They are me and I am them. *I don’t consider living amongst them to be a bad thing. * Period. If that makes me some kind of street gang minded woman being ‘loyal to my home turf’, then that is fine. But the wording sure does bother me there.
Also, I know this is an unpopular view but I will grit my teeth and stand by it. I *do * believe that hardworking people have an entitlement to some luxuries. Being born poor is hard work. Your parents were poor and uneducated, raised under Jim Crow, or raised under parents who were, and there is great pride in overcoming either oppression or the effects of oppression to educate yourself and buckle down to hard and smart work.
Struggling people have the right to some luxury just like anyone else. I promise you, not getting a fast car is not going to lift these families out of poverty. Is there wiser investments that could be made? Yes. Do I think they deserve to be looked down upon or mocked because they chose a luxury item with the money they worked for? No.