Shouldn't ghetto folks be given a break?

Great Debates
41

It is Italian.

In the sixteenth century, a number of European cities decided to force all the Jews in their precincts to live in separate enclosures within the city, walled off from the rest of the citizens. The section in Venice in the 1510s was near an iron foundry and picked up the word ghetto for a slang term for the district. In 1555, when Pope Pius IV issued a truly hateful ruling confining Jews to a tiny neighborhood in Rome (with a clear indication that the Roman policy should be enforced throughout Europe), he used the word ghetto.

Since then, the word ghetto (in English) has broadened slightly to mean any ethnic enclave, frequently one in which residence is compulsory. While most ethnic groups chose to live near each other in the cities, there were also laws (or deed restrictions) written to prohibit blacks from moving into specific neighborhoods, effectively limiting them to their own ghettoes.

Throughout the twentieth century, blacks were confined to specific neighborhoods and (generally underfunded) schools. They were subjected to “last hired; first fired” discrimination in industry (often forced to surrender their jobs to immigrants) so that their overall wealth, never great to begin with, shrank in comparison to that of their white neighbors. They were barred from entering many unions, and so were not able to demand the same pay as their white counterparts. A second generation European immigrant, generally lacking an accent, could pick up and move to a new neighborhood, and not be denied a house. If there was a local prejudice against a particular ethnic group, the immigrant could change his name to that of a more acceptable ethnic group and simply blend in. Generally, blacks could not do the same thing, (although there are many stories of lighter colored blacks taking Italian or Greek names to “pass” for white and escape the ghetto).

When the U.S. began to pass social support legislation, much of it was written with a moralistic “we won’t support a lazy man at home” attitude, so much of it was written that it could only be used by single mothers–putting pressure on unemployed/unemployable men to abandon their families so that their kids could eat.

Despite the above conditions, the black community strove hard to adapt and they did build up a middle class. (It should also be noted that a number of the race riots of the early twentieth century were white-on-black riots intended to destroy black middle class neighborhoods, setting an example that if blacks got too well off, they would have it destroyed in front of them. Tulsa, OK, Springfield, IL, and several other locations come to mind.)
Once the laws permitting discrimination were overthrown, (with judicial rulings occasionally being followed and equal housing laws occasionally being enforced), the black middle class began to take advantage of the opportunities to escape their ghettoes, but the changing dynamics of American cities–in terms of the locations of jobs and the presence of transportation–left far too many blacks in the ghettoes.

42

To quote the master Chris Rock- black people get more respect getting out of prison than they do graduating college- your mr. college now, right? but can you whup my ass??

43

To the specific question of Affirmative Action…

Absolutely, give “ghetto folks” a break with AA. That is to say, if your background is disadvantaged you deserve a break. You deserve to have the playing field leveled by being able to offer fewer qualifications–grades; scores; job history; whatever–than those who were born into privilege. I sat on a Med School admissions committee for five years and I’m here to tell you: We and every other secondary school lowered the bar for black applicants out of absolute conviction they deserved a break. Current med school admission scores, for example, are a full two points below those of white applicants (this is an enormous differential).

Nearly every decent employer and admissions committee agrees with this, and extends this helping hand already. Most Americans I’ve met–and I’ve met a lot–are committed to bending over backward for someone whose birth circumstances chinced them.

Here’s what AA shouldn’t be:
It shouldn’t be based on the color of your skin, or your or anyone else’s definition of race or population. We need to get to a world where what matters is the content of your character and not the color of your skin. A lily-white boy from a West Virginia shanty-town should get more of a break than a black Doctor’s daughter.
It shouldn’t be based on whether or not your ancestors got a bum deal.
It shouldn’t extend past the first big break. It’s not a lifetime pass to be sub-par.
It shouldn’t be disguised as “diversity” where “diversity” is a code word for “African-American.”
It shouldn’t be considered a way to heal “mental chains” of a people who used to be “smart and proud.” That’s a bunch of ridiculous pap. If there were truth to that rumor, Africa would be flourishing.

No society anywhere is going to completely stop being clan-conscious. Our genes have programmed us to take care of our family first, our clan next, and outsiders last. Our intellect lets us get past that in the same way that a hot-tempered man learns not to shoot everyone with whom he disagrees. Get past your own color-consciousness. Get the chip off your own shoulder.

If you don’t think the overwhelming majority of Americans aren’t already aching for the ghetto class, and desperately wanting them to succeed, the mote in your eye is a log, and is blinding you. The notion that blacks are trapped in the ghetto because the majority of the country is racist is pure bullshit. There are many Americans who have overcome odds. The color of any of their skin is incidental to their success or failure.

44

This isn’t really off-topic, but I’d like to explore a couple side questions that have come up in this thread. There’s been some talk of community and culture, and I’m wondering if someone can shed a little more lights on these facets. (Disclaimer: I probably qualify for that annoying Earnest Middle Class Liberal White Woman stereotype in that I’m hyper-conscious of not offending to the point where I sometimes go way overboard. Finding balance is hard for me. I ask your indulgence here - if I fuck up, please don’t hold it against me.)

My admittedly limited exposure to the black community (and I’m going back to the racial issue only because where I live, there is a very clear demographic breakdown of affluent white and poverty-level black, with very little in-between) has likely caused me to form some preconceived notions, but - I have seen some of the poverty and education issues, as I mentioned. I really think we set lower standards for that demographic, and that’s a self-fulfilling thing. I don’t blame people for buying into that discouraging attitude. But culturally and community-wise, what I have seen is a very strong, matriarchal group with a very rigid religious upbringing.

There does seem to be a greater proportion of single parent households, but we have fewer “welfare moms” than what I would describe as aunt-cooperatives, where two or more single Moms and their kids live together, and one Mom is a stay-at-home who does the kid-wrangling while the other(s) work, or both work, but different shifts so someone is with the kids at all times. There’s a big Baptist church, an evangelical Christian compound, and a good-sized Catholic church here and much of the social networking seems to be very church-centered. Most of the parents I have met in this community are quite strict, making their kids do chores and homework and refer to adults as “sir” and “ma’am.” I see the kids often in the church parking lots jumping rope or playing basketball, and there’s always a grownup nearby in a lawn chair keeping an eye on things.

This long-winded post does have a point/question in it: what am I missing in this community/culture that seems to be dooming these kids and their families to continuing this poverty cycle?

45

In terms of money, most urban school districts get a lot of funding but do very poorly. Washington, D.C., has a very high per-pupil spending ratio and has some of the worst schools in the nation. The urban school districts in Ohio also have high per-pupil funding and do incredibly awful. It’s simply a myth that we are “underfunding” urban schools. We give them a ton of money and they still do an incredibly crappy job.

As far as giving ghetto people a break, I say absolutely not. This also extends to poor white people who have the same cultural patterns (I grew up in a poor rural setting, and the people there and the people in the ghetto have a very, very similar culture). People whose culture inculcates failure need to be told that this culture is crap and that the behavior that it spawns will not be tolerated. By trying to “give them a break” and indulge their bad behavior, we merely encourage it. Our media and our policymakers need to stop glorifying ghetto culture and providing excuses for it. Maybe then we can start trying to move people out of the mindset that traps them there for generations.

46

Same places. Same influences. Drug running is worse than hooch, but it’s darn similar.

Same darn love of the bling.
But, despite centuries of oppression, they made it out of the ghetto. It’s about the culture. Sure, Horatio Alger’s stories are a myth, but they’re a myth people can make real, through hard work.

47

What makes you think that the folks you’ve described are, indeed, trapped in a cycle of poverty? They sound, to me, like the folks of any ethnic background who are lower middle class. There are probably any number of them who are getting into college or trades and moving up. You don’t see them because the ones that move up don’t buy houses back in the same neighborhood. Unless the part of your description that got left out was that that neighborhood has ten times the drug busts and hookers than a nearby white neighborhood and that most of the houses are falling down around their ears, I am not sure that you are looking at the same people that the OP was discussing.

As I noted earlier, when we discuss the situation as if it applied to only blacks and to all blacks, we are simply talking in unreal stereotypes. 65% of blacks in the U.S. do not live in poverty.

48

Culture is a product of the social environment and history. Attributing the socioeconomic disparities we see to culture is disingenuously simplistic, since all culture is is the effect of a cause. “It’s about the culture” is an answer which says very little in these kind of discussions. Maybe I’m not getting your point.

Jewish immigrants, just by the very fact that they had the monetary means to immigrate–and the motivation to do so–have always been in a different social position than blacks. Sure, they played basketball and suffered from gangs and other ills. But these similarities do not make them comparable groups. For one thing, assimilation is a lot easier to acheive when you can change your name, peroxide your hair, and distance yourself from the customs of “the other” just as soon as you lose your accent. You still might suffer from persecution, but your chances of avoiding that are a lot higher the closer you resemble the ruling class. Blacks have always lacked that advantage.

But never mind all that. Jewish culture was not born out of dehumanization, the stripping of pre-existing cultural, ethnic, and tribal ties, internalized oppression, and legally-enforced illiteracy like African-American culture was. The cultures of the two groups are different, as you said. But that’s because of history, which really goes to answering the question that Sailboat asked.

49

Ghetto culture is not the same as Black culture and it is not really the result of slavery and years of oppression. Ghetto culture is a culture that was picked up from poor white Southerners and brought to northern ghettos when Souther blacks moved up there.

If you look at Rednecks and ghetto folks, you’ll see that their culture is basically the same. They are violent people who have too many babies, don’t think long-term, deprecate education, and do all the things that cause so many problems. This culture that so many now think of as the Black culture in the U.S. is, in fact, the culture of poor whites that blacks picked up in the South.

Thomas Sowell talks about this in length in Black Rednecks and White Liberals. He shows, historically, how the black part of Northern towns changed dramatically when Southern blacks started moving into them and bringing with them their Redneck culture. He talks about how Northern blacks didn’t get along with the new Southern blacks and how their cultures were quite different. He also talks about the roots of such culture in the Scots-Irish community.

So don’t make the mistake of equating the culture of the overall American Black community with the culture of ghetto people.

50

Nonsense.

This is the remark in question:

That’s because there isn’t any. No one ever said the discussion was about all blacks, or any of the other stuff you think you see but don’t.

Again, could you please point out where I said that AA is “nothing but quotas and lowered standards”? Failing that, could you please quit with the meaningless nitpicks?

So? The percentage of blacks living in poverty is much higher than for other disadvantaged minorities. What we are discussing is that disproportion, and whether or not we should be “giving people in the ghetto a leg up.”

Would you care to react to that, or would you prefer to argue against things no one has said?

Regards,
Shodan

51

Because many of them are (at least) second generations in those particular apartment buildings; because their children score consistently and considerably lower on standardized tests than even recent Hispanic immigrants (in every subject, including English); because they have a much higher high-school dropout rate, a higher unemployment rate and a higher crime rate.

Again, my neighborhood may be different than others, but here there’s a clear-cut demographic divide. Section 8 apartments on one street of a suburban subdivision that otherwise includes single-family homes in the $200-300K range. The racial divide corresponds almost exactly.

For comparison’s sake, we also have large immigrant Hispanic and Laotian populations in town, and for the most part they live in similar ghetto-like neighborhoods - highly concentrated ethnicity, poverty, and general “bad neighborhood” reputation. Gangs are a bigger problem in these groups than in the local black community. The Laotian gangs appear to be more prone to extreme violence (there’s gang fights among the black and Hispanic gangs, but gang fights in the Laotion gangs result in MANY more fatalities) and more of the drug-related crime tends to involve the Hispanic gangs. However, both the Hispanics and Laotians score higher on standardized tests than blacks, there’s a measurably lower rate of high-school dropouts, unemployment and single parent households, and the “time served” in the ghetto-like areas is shorter. Generally the children of these immigrants do NOT live in these areas once they reach adulthood, but buy houses and businesses in the surrounding community.

I’m trying to figure out if there’s a factor that I am missing.

Accepted and agreed - but far closer to 99% of the black families in MY neighborhood DO.

52

You, I’m saying that it is specifically a problem of the current ghetto culture, fatalistic in nature.

Bill says it right. He’s got the Educational Doctorate to back his words up, he is not simply a celebrity with a hobby of the week.

These people don’t know there is a way out. They just can’t conceptualize of it. That’s what the people I deal with tell me. We try to show them there is a way, and when we succeed, it’s a great thing. But we can’t do it alone. All we handle is our mandate, the substance abusers. We need people to get them earlier, in school and before. Show them the light before they get dragged into hell.

53

“Redneck culture” and “ghetto culture” are similar because they are both the outcome of social marginalization and poverty handed down through several generations. The idea that “ghetto” blacks got it all from “redneck” whites makes little sense to me.

54

I think we should de-emphasize the top-level professions for the group in question and streamline the process of moving them into well-paying mid-level jobs. They don’t need a plethora of choices or pie-in-the-sky expectations, they need a path to a solid career that’s doable. This is controversial, but the Community would be much better off if they were all nurses, computer programmers, mechanics, and middle managers than for a few of them to be doctors and lawyers and the rest dropouts.

55

No, they are not. They are similar because they are essentially the same thing. Historically, according to Sowell’s book, if you look at the patterns it’s pretty clear that Southern blacks picked it up from poor Southern whites. The ghetto culture did not start in northern black ghettos, such as those in Chicago and Detroit, until a large number of Southern blacks moved up there. The blacks who had been there (who were also poor and socially marginalized) did not exhibit the same types of behavior.

Ghetto culture is not simply a culture of poverty and social marginalization. It is the culture that the Scots-Irish exhibited before they even came to America. Because of our nation’s lack of historical awareness, however, we have come to see that particular culture as being authentically Black.

56

(bolding mine)

To which you replied:

And then went on to make the odd claim that

By dropping any reference to the issue of the topic beling limited to people in the ghetto, and supporting the claim of Eleusis that a statement about people in the ghetto was inherently racist you implied it was an issue of any or all blacks. Since there are many blacks who have made it out of the ghetto, the claim of Eleusis that a question about the ones who have not escaped is inherently racist is unsupportable. The original error was by Eleusis, but you were rather swift to jump in with your broad brush claim. From there you leaped to a claim that AA reinforced racist beliefs–by carefully delineating AA as only quotas and lowered standards, thus associating AA only with those practices and removing outreach and recruitment programs from any AA discussion.

My comment was that in two posts, the conversation had been interrupted by changing the topic from blacks in the ghetto to blacks (in the U.S.). Nothing you have posted changes that observation. Rather than complaining about nitpicking, you should, perhaps, try to make fewer broad brush claims that lack either accuracy or nuance.

57

The biggest problem here is that very few in this conversation, myself included, are able to comment on this issue from a deeply experiential perspective. I say this as someone who grew up in a middle-to-working-class neighborhood, went to school in the barrio, and worked in inner-city communities… ghettoes, if you will… and researches Black families.

There’s a lot of pathologizing behaviors that deviate from middle-class White norms, which in essence is what Moynihan wrote in his report back in 1968. There are commonalities between what poor Whites and poor Blacks and poor Asians do, because they’re poor. But each group has its own defenses and vulnerabilities, and we should be mindful that a class and racial identity does not determine how one will respond to the challenges of life.

We should also be mindful of how poverty and racism lead to other life crises, like chemical addiction, mental illness, disability, malnutrition, and chronic disease. Having these additional crises in your life or in your family makes it that much harder to focus on “movin’ on up.”

Anecdotally, I can recall two places where I’ve worked that had very similar types of aptitude, but very different life outcomes for the people there. I would say in both places, most people had high objectives for themselves. There were some amazing individuals as far as talent and drive, and some people who were clearly in the habit of just showing up and expecting life to unfold for them. One was the elementary-middle school where I taught in the inner city, and the other was the US News & World Report Top 10 selective private university where I taught and worked. Difference is, the middle class slackers at the university essentially bounced around majors until they found something they liked - or dropped out, and found a job or friend of the family to give them an opportunity. One of those kids I know became a very successful realtor. The kids at the school who were slackers were likely not going to even make it to college. The point is, I saw the exact same personality traits in the two different contexts, but very different outcomes for the youths involved.

58

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

No. I don’t think we are stupid. I know that we are a smart, talented people. But when you consider the history of Blacks in America, it seems totally different to me than that of Greeks. Witness pictures of people my mom’s age, (not my mom) getting hosed down in the streets, by the police!

Also, I know of many, many black owned businesses with blacks working together. I know of beauty salons, barber shops, fashion stores, spas, soul food restaraunts. So I don’t think that what you said really applies to my OP.

59

Sorry. I promise to get the hang of posting better than this.

I was trying to make the point to mssmith that our experience is very different from the Italians.

When you live in a country and even the law is against you as recently as a few decades ago…you tend to have some different issues to overcome than immigrants.

60

True, however I guess the question remains what “slack” should we cut blacks from inner city ghetto and how should we cut it? Should I hold my black employees to a lower standard than my other employees?

What responsibility should these communities bear for themselves?
On the other hand, I don’t think we should hold blacks (or anyone for that matter) to a higher standard. We are a nation of B and C students. Some people are at the top, some are at the bottom and most are in the middle. I wasn’t a particularly good student, but I’m good at networking and “playing the game”. I went to the best schools I could get into, got involved in a few sports, joined a fraternity, I get along with my coworkers socially. To succeed (at least in the business world) it is important to be someone who “fits in”.

I am not blind to the fact that these opportunities were available to me primariliy because they WERE available to my socioeconomic demographic. The inner city ghettos do not have those networking and support structures that allow people to be successful.

So, I guess, my off the cuff answer, is that the elements of the black community that are successful needs to take more responsibility in helping its own.