Shouldn't ghetto folks be given a break?

Great Debates
21

[QUOTE=monstro]
::snip::

That’s what lacking in the darkest corners of the slum. A community. People who aren’t afraid to live next to each other. All the breaks in the world aren’t going to help ghetto dwellers if they don’t a community.
[/QUOTE]

I agree heartily. I think that sufficient education and job resources exist, but the lack of community/support systems for kids keep them from tapping into those resources and fulfilling their potential, and the cycle continues. How the heck we can fix this is the damn tricky part, though.

22

It’s not a black/white question and never has. It’s always been about money and poverty. Less affluent schools tend to do worse.

I saw a bumper sticker that said something like “You know the world’s running correctly when the Department of Education is well-funded and the Air Force is holding a bake sale to buy the newest fighter jet.” I don’t think we should get THAT extreme, but it seems to be a matter of priority. I’m not really even advocating throwing money at the problem either, just making sure that schools in the urban settings get the same chances that others get.

The entire notion of quotas make me oogy (yes, oogy). Any circumstance in which you say there must be one black person for every white person or one womens’ sports team for every mens’ sports team sounds like the issue is being too coerced.

Of course, if I had a perfect answer, I’d be trying to figure out how to spend my Nobel prize money. I do feel that adequate funding is definitely a step in the correct direction.

23

[QUOTE=An Arky]
I agree heartily. I think that sufficient education and job resources exist, but the lack of community/support systems for kids keep them from tapping into those resources and fulfilling their potential, and the cycle continues. How the heck we can fix this is the damn tricky part, though.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know if I buy the “lack of community” part. I think we should get some clarification on what we mean by “lack of community”. That’s also a pretty hard request. Is it togetherness? Is it civic pride? A case can be made that the biggest lack of community is in the suburbs where neighbors don’t know each other and the unifying theme would be to increase your property value and to live a more secluded life.
Another equally big and unwieldy flavor of this discussion is why females are doing better than males in school. So far, you don’t hear a lot of the “Save the males!”-speak.

24

This reminds me of an editorial cartoon many years ago, published in response to one of this country’s racist moments (the Rodney King beating?). It was a picture of was a well-dressed black woman eating her lunch on a park bench, and this white couple, full of angst and guilt, is leaning towards her, “Would you like some of our sandwich?” The black woman has a “WTF?” look on her face - from her dress, it’s implied that she’s succeeded at least as well as the white couple offering tribute.

The way you’ve framed your question, Venus Hottentot, is an interesting experiment in and of itself. You’re coming in here and saying “I’m not as good as you, but I’m trying, and here are my ideas, please discuss.”

It would be interesting if you could post essentially the same message again, but without the apology, without your race. Is it necessary for you to put yourself down in order to be accepted by us?
As to your question, I suspect that practices which reinforce inferiority (even indirectly) come at a high cost to those they presume to help. Some people offer help with exactly that aim in mind. At the same time, there’s no denying real benefits that have come from things like Affirmative Action.
“Giving people a break” is a good idea as a general practice, independent of racial and economic issues. Being a competitive society has high costs all the way around, and racism is one of them.

25

Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.

26

I don’t think Affirmative Action is intrinsically racist, in the condescending sense or any other.

As long as it is understood to be ameliorative and therefore of temporary scope. It is intrinsically racist (…sexist, etc, depending on context) and condescending to implement it, fund it, and otherwise treat it as a permanent restitution-in-perpetuity.

As a white male, it is of course easy for me to say “Hmm, looks like You People are doing quite well by yourselves these days”, but seriously it does look like a significant amount of progress has been made. Do I think it is time to shut down AA? No, not yet. We aren’t there yet.

It might well be time to examine and reconfigure it. To make it take on less of the lfavor of “Let us lower our standards for this population” and more of “For folks of this population who meet or surpass the regular standards, let’s see how we can peel back the ancillary barriers and costs”.

27

Does giving people something for nothing ever work? If a black person is given a break to get into college and fails, should they then be given another break at another college? How long should these breaks go on?

At some point you have to face the real world, where nobody gets nothing for free

28

[QUOTE=Least Original User Name Ever]
I don’t know if I buy the “lack of community” part. I think we should get some clarification on what we mean by “lack of community”. That’s also a pretty hard request. Is it togetherness? Is it civic pride? A case can be made that the biggest lack of community is in the suburbs where neighbors don’t know each other and the unifying theme would be to increase your property value and to live a more secluded life.
Another equally big and unwieldy flavor of this discussion is why females are doing better than males in school. So far, you don’t hear a lot of the “Save the males!”-speak.
[/QUOTE]

You’re right. The lack of community to which I’m referring is that there is an environment that encourages good behavior and achievement (those soulless suburbs to which you refer at least tacitly do this). Civic pride and a fairly predominant success-oriented culture are needed.

And yeah, it’s not like we can go out and buy these things for poor communities. As cold as it might sound, maybe we do need to just get the kids the heck out of places that drag them down. If their parents or other people in their proximity are the ones dragging them down, then get them to cut it the hell out. Somehow, some way, something needs to happen.

I know it’s wishy-washy of me, lacking Nobel Prize-worthy ideas to throw out into cyberspace, but at least clearly identifying problems and beginning to address them effectively is a start.

29

[QUOTE=Annie-Xmas]
Does giving people something for nothing ever work? If a black person is given a break to get into college and fails, should they then be given another break at another college? How long should these breaks go on?

At some point you have to face the real world, where nobody gets nothing for free
[/QUOTE]

Well said. The problem with giving out passes and breaks is that they encourage a culture of second and third chances. I normally detest slippery-slope arguments but in this case it is unfortunetly true. Consider that many of the behaviours that encourage success and wealth-building are actively villified by popular young black culture. Learning, teamwork, manners, eloquence, and diligence are discouraged; while instant gratification, frivolous spending, lone-wolf behaviour, and aggressive manners are idolized. This is a fundamental problem with american urban blacks in particular, though it has spilled over in into the latino community as well. A few posts up, an excellent point was made about the need for community. Children need to have a support base to keep them on the right path EARLY. It’s far too late to address this type of mindset in middle and high-schools.

As to giving someone a break, I feel that the “everybody gets one” rule is applicable to the situation. Arguing that self destructive, and rude behaviour is a “cultural” thing is idiotic PC glurge. Any recent immigrant can attest to the fact that they have had to adjust several behaviours to better assimilate into society. Sometimes it’s simple things like learning different table manners, or what gestures are considered offensive here. At other times, it’s more complex, like adjusting to the fact that most stores here do not haggle over prices. So while i’m willing to give somebody a pass once, i’m not willing at all to give them a consistent pass on life.

regards- Acid Lamp

30

I’m short on time, so I can’t say much. I like the fact that for the most part the posts in this thread have not descended into red vs blue or name calling; there’s an actual discussion here.

I agree with monstro. I know a lot of people who’ve pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, and in every case, including mine, there are some “breaks” that helped nudge things along that they fail to acknowledge because it makes their story less noble. My personal breaks: the NY public school system circa 1970, Pell grants, student loans, a couple of teachers who really took the time to point me in the right direction, and AFDC at the time when we needed it desperately. I only mention these because they were all the result of social welfare programs, paid by others’ taxes. Had they been absent, I don’t know how my life would have turned out. (Plus, I’m fairly sure my Hispanic surname helped grease my way into college).

Despite a well-paying, stable job, it’s taken me years to try to get past the world-view that I was destined for failure and that it was just a matter of time before I was out on the street, applying for public assistance. It’s not like my parent made it a point to make me think like a failure-in-training, but I had little exposure to any information other than what I saw in my immediate environment, so it was (and is still) difficult to wrap my mind around a tangible hope for the future.

31

In my opinion, and in the opinion of the people I work with, the problem is social and mental. People growing up in the ghetto don’t realize they can get out. It’s a sick culture. Bill Cosby is right. You have to make education a positive experience. You have to promote good behavior more than illegal and negative behavior. It’s not about color of skin or content of character, it’s about perspective and awareness of opportunities.
My mother’s people grew up in these same ghettos. They played basketball, worked as manual labor. But they valued education, they made their children study, and they got out, despite social stigmata almost as bad as black people face in present times. They had the gang-bangers, the drive-by shootings, the drugs and alcohol. But they worked through it. We need, not to make people feel better about themselves, but to feel better about achieving.

(The people I work with are substance abuse councilors. We do a lot of work with the homeless.)

32

Your station in life is pretty much limited by that of your parents. Giving breaks to the poor to bust loose is fair and logical. I am more appalled by legacies. Bush gets into ivy league and the land of gentlemans Cs.without really qualifying. It gives him and other legacies a step up that they do not need and have not earned. It is very hard to break out.

33

[Venus Hottentot=quote]
Is it possible that we should be giving ghetto folks a break? Should we actually expect them to get their shit together in the same way immigrants have been able to? I mean, Asians and Jewish people, or others who tend to do well once they get here; shouldn’t we give blacks in America more slack than them? I know it sounds silly at first blush, but hear me out.

[/quote]

Why? Are blacks stupider than everyone else? Do they lack the wherewithall to compete?

The reason Jews and Greeks and Italians and Koreans and other groups do so well is that they have stronger community and family. Go to any bodega or pizza parlor or dry cleaner or similar small business in New York and you will see the owners cousins and nephews and sons working the counter. It’s not as glamorous as being a rap artist or basketball player, but it pays the bills.
No amount of breaks or helping hands will fix the problem because they won’t change a mindset of failure and entitlement. Change must first start with the attitudes and mindsets within the black community.

34

[Quote=Eleusis]

Do you even realize that this is a very offensive racist remark?
[/quote]

[Quote=Shodan]

[Quote=Venus Hottentot]
I do wish to know what makes that a racist remark, though.
[/quote]
Because it implies that blacks are less capable of overcoming their cultural disadvantages than immigrants like Irish, Chinese, etc.
[/quote]
I notice that in this pair of exchanges, the topic is turned away from the OP. Despite a couple of sloppy phrases, the OP was specifically referring to the people currently trapped in the inner city ghettoes. Then the OP’s comments are attacked for race independent of location–which is an unfair change in the topic. I have not seen any evidence that the discussion was about all blacks or that there was any claim made that no black person could succeed.

The issue is that as most blacks have already gotten out of the ethnic ghettoes into mainstream America, (as their Irish, Polish, Jewish, Italian, etc. predecessors had done), a significant group of people was left behind who have not managed to do the same thing. The people left behind in the ghettoes, (not all blacks, so changing the subject as though we are talking about black people, in general, is counterproductive), are suffering a set of disabilities that differs from the experiences of previous groups and we need to look at ways to overcome that problem.

Prior to the 1960s, all the blacks were confined in ghettoes in the North and, while the South had more of a checkerboard pattern of black and white housing, they were clearly relegated to their “own” neighborhoods in the South. This meant that the poor lived alongside the middle class in those areas, kept together by housing policies (de facto and de jure) that prevented them from living elsewhere. Subsequent to the 1960s, the black middle class was able to escape out to other neighborhoods, but the poorest were confined to their old, deteriorating, neighborhoods. Industry followed the initial white flight from the cities while mass transit failed to make the more distributed industries available to inner city workers. The black middle class moved out to the suburbs (once they were permitted to do so) while the folks in the cities who did not have the money to move were left in locations with neither decent sources of income nor decent transportation to get to income. In a self-reinforcing cycle, the abandonment of one particular group of poor at a time when other cultural phenomena were coming together to limit opportunities for education, employment, decent housing, etc. put excessive burdens on the cities that are then less able to provide the services to maintain (much less improve) opportunities for education, employment, housing, etc.

The solutions are not simple, but it seems to be more than slightly disingenuous to take a discussion on poor blacks in the ghetto, then pretend that a statement is racist because one has chosen to redefine the statment to eliminate the references to poor and ghetto.
Similarly, it is more than a bit disingenuous to pretend that Affirmative Action is nothing more than quotas and reduced standards when neither of those aspects were even part of AA for its first ten years. AA includes an entire spectrum of activities that have nothing to do with quotas and lowered standards and defining it in that limited fashion is little more than a way to shrug and avoid doing anything to help the situation by claiming that that is AA and AA is condescending or racist.

35

[QUOTE=AHunter3]
I don’t think Affirmative Action is intrinsically racist, in the condescending sense or any other.

As long as it is understood to be ameliorative and therefore of temporary scope. It is intrinsically racist (…sexist, etc, depending on context) and condescending to implement it, fund it, and otherwise treat it as a permanent restitution-in-perpetuity.
[/QUOTE]
Well said. I’m generally in favor of Affirmative Action, at least as an alternative to simply doing nothing, but it is inherently a defeatist solution. We need to correct the unequal opportunities in public education for poor and minority students, and we’re not going to do that by simply lowering the bar for those who got screwed out of a decent starting education. Rather than AA in hiring and college admissions, I’d rather see a corrective focus on K-12 public education, with schools in poor and minority areas receiving more tax money and paying higher teacher salaries to attract better educators.

36

Thanks for having the courage to post. You’ve taken pains to post a solid OP…uh…I hope that doesn’t come off as saying it’s “clean and articulate,” a la Joe Biden. :smack:

To pick a minor nit:

[QUOTE=Venus Hottentot]
Jewish people, or others who tend to do well once they get here
[/QUOTE]

Isn’t ghetto itself a Yiddish term? Don’t the Jews also have legitimate claim to being a minority, sometimes despised, originally legally (in Europe) or extralegally (in the past in the US) discriminated against?

If so, how is their case different? Well, I’ll buy that the Middle Passage and the horrors of chattel slaverywere much worse than taking steerage class to Ellis Island. Does that account for the whole difference?

I’m not being critical, I’m mostly pondering at my keyboard.

Sailboat

37

[QUOTE=gonzomax]
Bush gets into ivy league and the land of gentlemans Cs.without really qualifying. It gives him and other legacies a step up that they do not need and have not earned. It is very hard to break out.
[/QUOTE]

…but he’s managed. :stuck_out_tongue:

Sailboat

38

[QUOTE=Sailboat]
If so, how is their case different? Well, I’ll buy that the Middle Passage and the horrors of chattel slaverywere much worse than taking steerage class to Ellis Island. Does that account for the whole difference?
[/quote]

What else do you think might account for the difference?

39

I was talking to my Chinese friend and I asked him how it came to be that he, a self proclaimed “average math student” from China could come to the US and jump into an advanced Master’s degree math program; going on to eventually become an actuary. He said that culturally speaking and in general, Chinese people value education highly and instill its importance in their children to an extreme (perhaps unhealthy) degree.
Among other significant disadvantages that many Black people face, it is my opinion that in general Black culture does not value education highly. In fact, just as in many subcultures in the US, there seems to be an undercurrent of anti-intellectualism that is detrimental to future financial prospects of many of those who embrace it, or even more tragically, were taught it by their family and/or peers.
I don’t think lowering expectations further will help. Instead black parents need to raise their expectations of their children and teach them to value learning and education. Easier said than done, I admit.

40

I thought that the Jewish people had a long history of pride, to the extent that marrying a non-Jew is still somewhat controversial and looked down upon. I thought that blacks viewed marrying whites as a status enhancer (at least, that seems common among celebrities).

I also think you guys are forgetting that racism is alive and well, and rampant. Plenty of white people want/need someone to look down on, and blacks are an easy target. In my lifetime, I’d guess at least 1/4 (1/3?) of all the whites I’ve known are actively racist. Racist jokes and stories, they’re common, they’re everyday reality.

OTOH, probably another 1/4 of the whites I’ve known are just about color-blind, and it does seem to be getting better (i.e., the younger people are, the less racist, in general).