Shouldn't ghetto folks be given a break?

I’m not sure I agree with this. I’m 42 - I’ve no idea how old you are, though I’d guess mid-to-late 20s based on some of what you’ve said here. I am struggling with the idea that YOU have issues to overcome. Certainly we are all influenced by our parents’ and even our grandparents’ experiences, and I’m not denying that racism and classism exist. I’m just not convinced that the current generation of black adults have so much more to overcome than, say, second-generation Italians.

Someone upthread said that statements along the lines of “my grandparents came to this country with another language and no money and THEY managed” was an unfair comparison. Why?

I think we should consider the legacy of racism. We didn’t ‘come to this country with another language and no money’. We were born into a system that actively enslaved us, and then actively oppressed us until relatively recently. The propaganda was strong also.

I am not blaming anyone for slavery. I am aware of my own African ancestors’ role in slavery. I am saying that it makes the American experience different for the descendents of African slaves, than it is for immigrants.

The idea that one could be beautiful, smart and black was just not impressed upon us. My dad told me I was beautiful, but the American society told me I was the opposite…my butt was too big, my hair too kinky, my lips to fat, my skin too dark, my mind too feeble, my work ethic too weak. That kind of propaganda can really have an impact.

I remember when I first read 1984 and realized just how effective that kind of propaganda could be!

Thank you. I knew something was evading me - I was not getting the difference between regarding America as a land of new opportunity and seeing it as a nation of slavers. When my grandparents came here, they did live in ghetto areas and encounter prejudice, and were, for all intents and purposes, forced to give up their language and their culture to make any inroads here. They did not get a hand up. Still, they did come here with the idea of America as the land of opportunity, and perhaps that mindset is what sets the immigrant apart from the native whose people have been kept down by the very same society.

Now, of course, the question is this: how do we change that mindset for the children of those who experienced that prejudice and oppression? I do not believe it is impossible to break the poverty cycle that keeps people in the ghettos; as tomndebb pointed out, it happens every day, and I’d find it very difficult indeed to believe that every single one who made it out did so with a hand up or was given a break. Some of them surely worked their way out of it on their own.

Heck yeah! Heck yeah, I believe it is possible to break the poverty cycle, but I am afraid I haven’t quite figured out the best way to do that overall. I am doing great with my daughter. We speak all the time about the importance of education. I am involved in her learning. I expose her to art and culture. I express to her what I see in her…brains, beauty and talent. I know she will teach her children the same.

I cannot log onto the Dope at work, so I couldn’t get all into the nitty gritty of the conversation like I wanted to. But I sure am reading all of the posts, and have a few comments.

To the mod Tom, you said spoke a lot of my thoughts that I could not lay out as nicely. Thanks.

To Fessie, Whoa! I think we have a misunderstanding here!

I brought up my race only in regards to the topic, poor, ghetto blacks. I certainly don’t feel my race is why I am not as good at laying down my thoughts on this message board! Oh no! I came on here knowing precisely which posters I respect as great posters, and I wanted to be clear to them, and the general audience that I may make some errors (technical and otherwise) due to my general green-ness, as well as my lack of formal education. Be careful when you use the words, “us”. With all due respect, you weren’t one of the posters that had gathered my attention as far as me thinking, “I would like to learn to debate as expertly as them.”

I don’t apologize for my lack of formal education. I am smart, I did get educated, (trade school), and I am naturally curious about my world and how it works.

To Omega, the reason I chose my username is a long story. Suffice it to say, I believe Sarah was a beautiful woman.

If you want to argue that the current plight of black Americans is fundamentally the consequence of American history and forces external to the black community, it should follow that black populations elsewhere have had successes equal to every other population. These successes should have occurred in every country where black populations have emigrated to by free will, as well as in their native homelands in Africa.

You may make your own judgments about whether or not that is so. If your judgment is that it is not so, you might consider looking internally to the “ghetto” community for answers that are rooted within the population itself rather than playing the victim to external circumstance.

That seems fair.

Let’s see: where have any significant number of blacks migrated of their own free will? Oh, yeah, until very, very recently, exactly nowhere. On the other hand, of those blacks who have begun to migrate within the last 30+ years, the majority are doing quite well, indeed.

On the other hand, when we look at their native homelands, we have rather different issues with which to deal. No black homeland has been allowed to develop in its own way and the vast majoity of them have been explicitly disrupted by the actions of Europeans and North Americans. Following that theme would be a serious hijack to this thread, but I am pretty sure that arguing that any black culture or society has “failed” on its own is going to find significant information arguing the contrary.

I love how he tried to intimate otherwise with such conviction as if he was really making a point. I just can’t figure out who and where he was imagining when writing that post.

Posting a rebuttal would, indeed, hijack the thread. I’ll let my comments stand as written.

Perhaps we can at least agree that “ghetto folks” do deserve a break, as per my prior post.

I still believe that any outside (well intentioned) actions to accommodate the ‘hand up’ will simply become re-victimization, in some form the creators could not have imagined.

(Since you decided to pile on…) :slight_smile:

Europe, e.g.

But I’m delighted to hear from Tomndebb that the impressions I’ve had from cities I’ve visited and the stories I’ve read must be in error, and that of the African populations which have voluntarily emigrated there “the majority are doing quite well, indeed.”

I’ll let Oslo…Paris…London…etc know.

Score one for Venus, I guess.

My experience with recent immigrants to London and Paris, (and I will grant that I have no experience with those in Oslo), are that they have rarely been purely voluntary immigrants. Nearly every one I have met from an African nation has been a refugee from lands disrupted by either/both colonialism or Cold War shenanigans. Of course, the majority of blacks I have encountered in either London or Paris (or Birmingham or Marseille) have not even come from Africa, but have been people fleeing the poverty of the Caribbean colonies based on their claims or petitions for British or French citizenship. Many of them have suffered from the sort of anti-immigrant prejudice that dogs so many people these days.

In contrast, the immigrants from Africa I have encountered in Detroit, Cleveland, Akron, Washington, New York, and Atlanta, have been folks who came over for education, decided to not go home, settled, and are doing quite well. (In fact, they are often held up as examples of what “blacks could do if they ‘wanted’ to.”)

I have so much I want to reply to, that I don’t know where to begin.
I agree with monstro and An Arky a community of support is needed to rise above your circumstances. I think when the OP refers to herself as being an exception she isn’t claiming to have done it alone or that it was a fluke. It’s just that many people get beat down by what they see around them.

[QUOTE=Venus Hottentot]
I was born and raised in the ghetto. My mom was poor, my dad was poor, as were my grandparents. All the way back to at least Jim Crow, if not back to slavery.
It is not the lack of education alone that holds us back. I think it is more to do with the mental chains that clamp down in our psyches. We have a very hard time teaching our children that they can be doctors and lawyers and scientists, because we don’t believe it. And we don’t believe it cause our parents didn’t believe it. All the way back to our probably very smart and proud ancestors who were broken and forced to begin a legacy of a certain form of self hate.

[Quote]

and many people don’t have the support (or community as other posters call it) of people pushing them to rise above their situation and ‘make it’.
To me the root of the problem lies in education. I agree with what RedRosesForMe and Hippy Hollow said on this topic. It’s someone’s best chance at acquiring a sense of self-worth. If your parents can’t give you that, if your circumstances make it impossible to believe you can achieve, then you often have only your teachers to believe in you. I really could go on and on, but then I’d be hijacking the thread. I think that finding away to improve schools in poor neighborhoods in the key to the ‘break’ that is needed. And I don’t look at is as ‘break’ either. I don’t think our public education system is equal despite its intention to be. Again, I’ll leave it at that, no tangents.

There’s an interesting book called YO mama’s disfunktional! by Robin D.G. Kelley that, among other things, look at America’s ghetto.

I’d like to say something about Affirmative Action: First blacks were brought over as slaves. Slavery was abolished but until the civil rights movement our laws supported keeping the black man down by denying an equal education, equal opportunity to good jobs, and even the right to own a home (which, correct me if I’m wrong, was how the average working american was able to obtain wealth in our country). Well now the laws are different, but that doesn’t make things equal. Let’s say you are playing Jeopardy and your buzzer is broken and your mic is off and you can’t answer any questions. Then halfway into the game the host realizes this and he has two choices, start the game over with everyone at zero or he can give that player the missing points in hopes of making the rest of the game fair. I don’t view the guy at zero as asking for a hand-out, just an equal shot and playing the game, but that’s just my opinion here.

i’m having problems posting :frowning:

I believe that would be me (both that I said that, and my grandparents did).

The point I did not succeed in making was that the difference lies in the community- a point which has been debated quite a lot in this thread. Immigrants came to this country knowing that they would have to work hard to succeed, but chose it because there were opportunities here that they did not necessarily have in their native country. They arrived in a country where they were discriminated against and had difficulty finding work, but they settled with other immigrants from their native country who supported each other.

To take the Irish as an example (my great-grandmother arrived at Ellis Island speaking nothing but Irish Gaelic): though many, many Irishmen got jobs building the railroads or working as common laborers, quite a few got jobs as firemen and policemen and an awful lot got into machine-based politics (or if they didn’t, their children did) simultaneously raising their status in the community and giving them more control over their destinies. Yes, machine politics were corrupt, but it allowed people to look out for their own.

I think therein lies the difference. Previous immigrants to this country had a much higher value of the family and the community, and that is why they were better able to succeed than modern poverty-stricken African Americans. I do not think that the breakdown of the family and community is peculiar to African Americans, I just think that they do have more obstacles to overcome (i.e. racism) and that without a solid support system a lot of them fail.

Think of it this way: both immigrants and African-Americans face/d poverty, poor education, and discrimination, along with other problems. The differences between them are a stronger community and sense of family, perhaps a better work ethic (although I think a strong work ethic has gone the way of the 8-track among today’s younger generation, myself included).

You have a lot of factors conspiring to keep you down. If your family and neighborhood aren’t working even harder to help you succeed, you won’t.

I agree with another poster upthread who said that if you’re only looking at the ghettos, you don’t see the success stories. The ones who have a strong support system and parents/aunts/grandmothers/older brothers to keep them in line and push them to succeed end up moving out of the ghetto, so all you see are the ones unfortunate enough to still be there.

okay I fixed my posting issue so if a mod wants to delete my empty one, feel free :slight_smile:

I have so much I want to reply to, that I don’t know where to begin. I agree with monstro and An Arky, a community of support is needed to rise above your circumstances. I think when the OP refers to herself as being an exception she isn’t claiming to have done it alone or that it was a fluke. It’s just that many people get beat down by what they see around them
Venus Hottentot “I was born and raised in the ghetto. My mom was poor, my dad was poor, as were my grandparents. All the way back to at least Jim Crow, if not back to slavery.
It is not the lack of education alone that holds us back. I think it is more to do with the mental chains that clamp down in our psyches. We have a very hard time teaching our children that they can be doctors and lawyers and scientists, because we don’t believe it. And we don’t believe it cause our parents didn’t
believe it. All the way back to our probably very smart and proud ancestors who were broken and forced to begin a legacy of a certain form of self hate.”
and many people don’t have the support system (or community as other posters call it) of people pushing them to rise above their situation and ‘make it’.

To me the root of the problem lies in education. I agree with what RedRosesForMe and Hippy Hollow said on this topic. It’s someones best chance at acquiring a sense of self-worth. If your parents can’t give you that, if your circumstances make it impossible to believe you can achieve, then you often have only your teaches to believe in you. I really cold go on and on, but then I’d be hijacking the thread. I think that finding a way to improve schools in poor neighborhoods is the key to the ‘break’ the OP speaks of. And I don’t look at is as a break either. I don’t think our public education system is equal despite its intention to be. Again, I’ll leave it at that, no tangents.

Side note, there’s an interesting book called Yo Mama’s Disfunktional! by Robin Kelley that, among other things, looks at America’s ghetto.

I’d like to say something about Affirmative Action since it’s been brought up. African Americans were first brought over here as slaves. Then slavery was abolished, but until the civil rights movement our laws supported keeping the black man down by denying equal education, equal opportunity to good jobs, and even the right to own a home (which, correct me if I’m wrong, was the first way working americans were able to gain wealth in this country). Well now the laws are different, but that doesn’t make things equal. Let’s say you are playing Jeopardy and your buzzer and mic are broken and you can’t play. The host realizes this halfway into the game and he has two choices, start the game over with everyone at zero, or he can give that player the missing points in hopes of making the rest of the game fair. I don’t view the guy at zero as asking for an unfair advantage, just an equal shot at playing the game- just my opinion here.

I don’t think you’re trying to be offensive, but the suggestion that European immigrants had a stronger work ethic than African Americans is ridiculous. How does one even begin to make such an assertion?

I’d like to expand on a point made upthread. We as Americans like very much to think that people go as far as their talent will take them. Quite simply, that’s not true. Intergenerational transfer - the ability to pass along social and intellectual capital - is concentrated among the upper and middle classes in this country. Furthermore, few African Americans come from families that have the kind of resources to rescue those members who lose their way or make mistakes.

Institutional racism, prejudice, and poor educational opportunities are curses I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Yet still people are attempting to make individualistic arguments ignoring the reality of life for low-income people of color in America. Bill Cosby’s complaints, for instance, are only the most recent iteration of a dialogue in the Black community about the need for people to rise above their circumstances. I have no problem with this argument - at some level, everyone can do something to improve their circumstances - but I have a problem with making this the only tactic used to address inequity.

I am fairly certain that this nation will never do the necessary things to address past injustices to several of the ethnic and racial groups who have been subject to legal and societal evil. That would involve tactics such as ensuring that inner city schools are the absolute highest quality, effective, community-based policing, and financial compensation for members of these groups (in the form of cash, educational grants, or real estate, for instance).

I couldn’t disagree more with this statement. The overwhelming majority of American do not spend a second of the day thinking about the plight of low income Americans of any race. That’s why we have concepts like White flight, redlining, and gentrification. We live in a culture of fear, where we believe the solution to problems is to move away from them and ignore them. How can the richest nation in the world allow communities like East St. Louis, for example, to exist? Instead of putting our best minds to work solving the problems in that city, the best minds are involved in keeping places like East St. Louis as far from the public consciousness as possible.

The funny thing is, is that if we somehow could reach the realization that a rising tide rises all boats, we could do so much to eliminate inequity in 25 to 50 years. We had a half-assed attempt during Reconstruction, and another half-assed attempt in the late 1960s to early 1980s. I’m not denigrating the efforts of the policymakers who implemented affirmative action, but rather the way it was characterized as a quota system and scapegoated for all social ills. As a college student who attended a state university of an affirmative action scholarship, I can’t tell you how many people I met who had an uncle, or a neighbor, who was the best qualified person for a promotion, but were beaten out by some unqualified Black or Mexican due to affirmative action. Funnily enough, when I inquired about the status of these friends and relatives, they all somehow managed to keep their jobs, or even move on to better positions in other organizations.

No, that wasn’t my assertion at all. It was that the work ethic of America’s younger generation, which includes young, poor African Americans, is not as strong as the work ethic of previous generations, which include immigrants (such as my grandparents and great-grandparents).

I believe I used the word possibly, since I have no quantifiable data to support such a statement, just personal experience.

And I included myself in that statement, because I know I am totally capable of being a lazy bastard.

I wanted to add this to my previous post - but the edit window closed…

When we do pay attention to the problems of low-income, poorly educated people of color, we have outcomes like the expansion of the prison industrial complex, mandatory minimum sentencing, and three strikes laws. As a quick aside, a town south of my hometown was lobbying for the state to build a minimum security prison in the mid 1980s. Because it meant more jobs. Why weren’t we building afterschool activity centers or community colleges instead? They’re actually cheaper and better in the long term. But appropriations for corrections increase, while appropriations for higher education decrease.

The Great Society programs such as Head Start have good track records regarding helping kids from low-income families. Why are Head Start and programs like Upward Bound constantly scraping by for funding? Why is the Pell Grant program on the decline, when we know the most salient factor for low-income families pursuing higher education is cost and the availability of grants?

If we really care about ending the cycle of poverty, why is there not the political or popular will for universal health care, for free drug and alcohol treatment instead of incarceration? Pretty soon we’re going to run out places to build gated communities. If alcohol treatment worked for our president, shouldn’t everybody get the same shot? Why are we clamoring for tax cuts when in fact, an apt appropriation of funds for such programs is actually what is needed?

This nation has no problem sending a disproportionate number of young men and women from disadvantaged economic backgrounds and communities of color to war. But there isn’t the will to help their siblings or parents with excellent schools and excellent health care. I suppose if those options were more readily available, you might see many of these kids opt for college instead of the military. My dad was one of those kids, and went to Vietnam. I was almost one of those kids - I did JROTC through HS, but luckily for me a scholarship opportunity came up. My dad, the 26 year veteran, did not hesitate when he told me to go to school.

I don’t necessarily think that government is the best vehicle to deliver the services necessary to help economically disadvantaged people move up the ladder, but there is an infrastructure and oversight mechanisms to at least keep an eye on how it works…

Thanks for the clarification. I should point out, though, that comparing the lack of effort in the current generation to previous generations is a pretty consistent behavior throughout history. I remember reading a rant in an education journal about the lack of seriousness and effort in the current generation of college students. It was published in 1937. Essentially, some old prof was whingeing about the group that we now know as “The Greatest Generation.”

I’m inclined to think that we are all prone to laziness, and the work ethic is probably fairly normally distributed from generation to generation. I also think it’s likely that our grandparents are more likely to tell us of how hard they worked, instead of how much they slacked, because they want us to do better. But I study the history of higher education, and I can assure you, things like wild parties, fighting, slacking, and so on have a very long history.

I imagine we will say the same things about our kids and grandkids. But there is more leisure time and free time because somehow, each generation of lazy bastards innovates and creates more time-saving efficiencies.

Welcome to the Straight Dope, strawberrygirl!

The desire for instant gratification (which includes frivolous spending) and the tendency toward aggressive behaviors are generally natural in children until they are learn that other ways work better. You have only to observe any two or three-year-old.

But who is discouraging learning and teamwork? As for eloquence and manners, I’ve seen kids turn them on and off at will.

I’m not going to take that personally. Will not…Will not…

Well, actually, I think there is probably a general misunderstanding about teachers in inner city schools. You can’t pay us enough to teach there. Either we do it because we are new to the system and don’t have enough seniority or we do it because that’s where we want to teach. We had some teachers there who were not so good and we had some who were quite gifted.

The biggest obstacles that I saw over the years were administrators who refused to enforce reasonable academic standards. It was more important for the students to experience success than to have honest feedback.

The generations of Black teachers who were truly victims of discrimination in public school systems are ending their careers now. With only a very few exceptions, today’s classroom teachers did not attend segregated schools. The same is true of the parents. Maybe some of the negative thinking has ended too.

No offense to you intended at all, but the notion of “throwing money” at public schools is so unreal to me that you might as well be talking about throwing water on a desert. Perhaps it is different elsewhere, but what I have seen is terribly broken and beyond repair. We need a new concept for public education.

Don’t want to hijack, please.

In my experience, 95% to 98% of “ghetto” kids are just nice, normal kids. Aren’t they the ones that we are talking about giving a break to? We’re not talking about rewarding bad behavior. But what if a kid has a bad home situation and not much reading material and encouragement? What if he comes to school almost every day and has good testing scores. Maybe a little AA would be appropriate.

Venus, I’ll bet your English teachers loved you. :wink: