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Trying for Consensus RE:Inner City Issues (1 Viewer)

Individual values/behaviors

  • 0%

    Votes: 11 12.4%

  • 10%

    Votes: 4 4.5%

  • 20%

    Votes: 9 10.1%

  • 30%

    Votes: 6 6.7%

  • 40%

    Votes: 5 5.6%

  • 50%

    Votes: 14 15.7%

  • 60%

    Votes: 7 7.9%

  • 70%

    Votes: 9 10.1%

  • 80%

    Votes: 11 12.4%

  • 90%

    Votes: 7 7.9%

  • 100%

    Votes: 6 6.7%
  • Total voters
    89
mr roboto

mr roboto

Footballguy
Please be respectful and constructive in here  

I'm sure this thread will devolve into bickering and hand wringing, but I'd like to see if we can combine the two major sides of the debate regarding AA poverty, violence, over-policing and economic and educational disparity. The two sides I'm going to over-simplify as follows:

1. Decades of racist public and private policy and structural segregation have caused the situation we are in now. Blacks in poor/violent areas are victims of a larger, uncontrollable social scheme going back generations and are largely innocent individually for their communities' broader maladies. 

2. A lack of personal values, including family structure, low work ethic, low view of education, thug/criminal culture being lauded in AA communities and arts/music, and a personal sense of victimhood and entitlement keep the AA community from solving their own problems. Blacks are largely to blame individually for their communities' broader maladies. 

Poll - Please assign a % cause to each. You can vote 100% on one or the other or split your vote. 

Comment - try to sum up your thoughts in a sentence or two combining (or not if you have a 100% view) the perspectives. 

 
mr roboto said:
1. Decades of racist public and private policy and structural segregation have caused the situation we are in now. Blacks in poor/violent areas are victims of a larger, uncontrollable social scheme going back generations and are largely innocent individually for their communities' broader maladies. 
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You can believe everything up to the bolded part without believing the bolded.

 
proninja said:
The second option I'd say is completely caused by the first. I think it is unconscionable to suggest that black people are inherently less moral or have worse values simply because of the color of their skin. 
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Good point here. That's not how I meant (2) to read though. 

 
 Just to be clear I wrote the two perspectives to be very  absolute, cut and dry.  Yet like most issues whenever there is disagreement it seems that people retreat to extreme positions and feel the need to defend a position that they probably don't actually hold because there are only two clear options in polarized public discourse. 

 
Fathers are desperately needed to be involved and serve as positive role models for their children.

 
In any community you are going to have some bad apples.  Communities that have "social/structural" problems will make it more likely that someone becomes a bad apple.  That doesn't mean any bad apples are innocent of their behaviors.  

 
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proninja said:
The second option I'd say is completely caused by the first. I think it is unconscionable to suggest that black people are inherently less moral or have worse values simply because of the color of their skin. 
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this.

I believe it takes generations for cultures to shift - things like value of education, financial responsibility, etc.  The civil rights act wasn't all that long ago - it takes some time for things to even out.

I would also say that there are some misguided policies that are in place that contribute to #2 as an unintended consequence, including (but not limited to) certain political parties pandering and allowing the victim card to be played.

 
EYLive said:
Fathers are desperately needed to be involved and serve as positive role models for their children.
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This.  And black women need to stop viewing having kids as some kind of status symbol.  Greater than 70% of kids born out of wedlock is unconscionable. 

 
I think any understanding of brain science leads to the broader social/structural causes being the dominant factor.

 
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killface said:
I think any understanding of brain science leads to the broader social/structural causes being the dominant factor.
Click to expand...
Interesting point, could you expand upon this? What does neuroscience say about this topic that would lead you to believe it's mostly a broader social issue?

 
Good poll. 

I went 30% inherent issues / 70% self inflicted. I'd say one generation ago it was likely closer to 50/50. At some point you have to become the master of your own fate. 

 
The flaw in this logic is the assumption that "personal values, including family structure, low work ethic, low view of education, thug/criminal culture being lauded in AA communities and arts/music, and a personal sense of victimhood and entitlement" are a root cause, rather than a product of the things you describe in #1. 

To believe that to be the case, you'd have to think that another race subjected to exactly what African-Americans have endured over our nation's history would have responded differently.  And to believe that you'd have to think that there's something inherently different about black people vs white people or people of Asian descent or Hispanic descent or whatever. In other words, that people with black skin are inferior in some way that is independent of their environment.

I don't think the OP or any other person voting anything other than 100/0 thinks that.  I just think perhaps they're not thinking broadly enough about the source of the "values" issues described in the second option.

 
TobiasFunke said:
The flaw in this logic is the assumption that "personal values, including family structure, low work ethic, low view of education, thug/criminal culture being lauded in AA communities and arts/music, and a personal sense of victimhood and entitlement" are a root cause, rather than a product of the things you describe in #1. 

To believe that to be the case, you'd have to think that another race subjected to exactly what African-Americans have endured over our nation's history would have responded differently.  And to believe that you'd have to think that there's something inherently different about black people vs white people or people of Asian descent or Hispanic descent or whatever. In other words, that people with black skin are inferior in some way that is independent of their environment.

I don't think the OP or any other person voting anything other than 100/0 thinks that.  I just think perhaps they're not thinking broadly enough about the source of the "values" issues described in the second option.
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 I don't think that 2 implies it is inherently caused by the skin color. You can say that 2 was caused by 1 and still believe that in 2016, 2 is the primary cause of the issues currently without ascribing it to an inherent feature of a particular race. 

 
[icon] said:
Good poll. 

I went 30% inherent issues / 70% self inflicted. I'd say one generation ago it was likely closer to 50/50. At some point you have to become the master of your own fate. 
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Went with this as well.  Yes minorities face bigger obstacles than a typical white person but at some point an individual needs to control their own fate.  Seems like a convenient excuse to just blame societal issues.

 
mr roboto said:
 I don't think that 2 implies it is inherently caused by the skin color. You can say that 2 was caused by 1 and still believe that in 2016, 2 is the primary cause of the issues currently without ascribing it to an inherent feature of a particular race. 
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Sorry, I don't understand this.  If you think 2 is caused by 1, how can you ascribe blame for it?  Do you think other races would have responded differently to the exact circumstances of African-Americans dating from the 1600s to the present?

Saying that 2 is caused by 1 but nevertheless is an independent problem would be like saying a defensive lineman who is blatantly held is nevertheless responsible for failing to making a tackle.  If no other defensive lineman would have made the tackle after being held like that, how can you blame anything other than the hold for the perceived failure?

 
TobiasFunke said:
Sorry, I don't understand this.  If you think 2 is caused by 1, how can you ascribe blame for it?  Do you think other races would have responded differently to the exact circumstances of African-Americans dating from the 1600s to the present?

Saying that 2 is caused by 1 but nevertheless is an independent problem would be like saying a defensive lineman who is blatantly held is nevertheless responsible for failing to making a tackle.  If no other defensive lineman would have made the tackle after being held like that, how can you blame anything other than the hold for the perceived failure?
Click to expand...
 Your example of a defense of lineman is a very direct cause and effect that happens in a very short period of time and once the whistle is blown the play is over.  What we are talking about is a multi generational continuation of issues and I believe it's reasonable to say that given enough time the historic cause should hold less and less blame and the community and its values and behaviors  should garner more and more blame for the current issues. 

I personally don't believe that enough time has lapsed to shift the majority of the blame to the members of the community but it's not logically inconsistent to believe that that's possible given enough time.

 
Pipes said:
Went with this as well.  Yes minorities face bigger obstacles than a typical white person but at some point an individual needs to control their own fate.  Seems like a convenient excuse to just blame societal issues.
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The problem with this logic is that the failures being described here are not on an individual level.  They're societal issues.  Yes, it's reasonable to expect an individual to overcome obstacles, especially if they are minor. But if you place an obstacle in front of every single person in a particular group, that group as a whole will be less successful than the group that doesn't face the obstacle.  This is true no matter how small the obstacle (and hopefully nobody would argue that the obstacles this generation of African-Americans face are de minimis).

To continue with my weird sports analogies: let's say two million people run a mile.  One million of them have to carry a five pound weight with them as they run and the others run unencumbered.  Some of the people carrying weights will beat the people not carrying them, and a few will be near the front of the race anyway.  But on the whole their times will be slower.  Even if you keep running the race every few years and reduce the weight being carried each time until they're just carrying an 8 ounce weight, the average time will still be slower.  And while you can criticize the slowest of the weight runners individually for being so slow, and point out that many of the weighted runners were wildly successful and maybe one of them even won the race once, the unavoidable fact is that until the weight is completely removed or the group is given some other assistance that fully compensates for the weight, the average times of the weighted group will always be slower.

 
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proninja said:
The second option I'd say is completely caused by the first. I think it is unconscionable to suggest that black people are inherently less moral or have worse values simply because of the color of their skin. 
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:goodposting:

 
mr roboto said:
 Your example of a defense of lineman is a very direct cause and effect that happens in a very short period of time and once the whistle is blown the play is over.  What we are talking about is a multi generational continuation of issues and I believe it's reasonable to say that given enough time the historic cause should hold less and less blame and the community and its values and behaviors  should garner more and more blame for the current issues. 

I personally don't believe that enough time has lapsed to shift the majority of the blame to the members of the community but it's not logically inconsistent to believe that that's possible given enough time.
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Let me ask a question of everyone who answers with anything other than 100/0:

Do you think that if Caucasians had been placed in the exact same circumstances in America as black people (literally everything from the 1600s to present day), they would be more successful on average than black people have been?  If so, why?  If not, why do you ascribe some of the blame to the black community?

 
Sure there have been are are still obstacles, but there have also been tons of (tax) money pumped into education, public assistance, community programs over the decades, right? At what point does behavior begin to change?

 
TobiasFunke said:
The problem with this logic is that the failures being described here are not on an individual level.  They're societal issues.  Yes, it's reasonable to expect an individual to overcome obstacles, especially if they are minor. But if you place an obstacle in front of every single person in a particular group, that group as a whole will be less successful than the group that doesn't face the obstacle.  This is true no matter how small the obstacle (and hopefully nobody would argue that the obstacles this generation of African-Americans face are de minimis).

To continue with my weird sports analogies: let's say two million people run a mile.  One million of them have to carry a five pound weight with them as they run and the others run unencumbered.  Some of the people carrying weights will beat the people not carrying them, and a few will be near the front of the race anyway.  But on the whole their times will be slower.  Even if you keep running the race every few years and reduce the weight being carried each time until they're just carrying an 8 ounce weight, the average time will still be slower.  And while you can criticize the slowest of the weight runners individually for being so slow, and point out that many of the weighted runners were wildly successful and maybe one of them even won the race once, the unavoidable fact is that until the weight is completely removed or the group is given some other assistance that fully compensates for the weight, the average times of the weighted group will always be slower.
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This racing analogy is a very good one in my opinion.

 
TobiasFunke said:
The flaw in this logic is the assumption that "personal values, including family structure, low work ethic, low view of education, thug/criminal culture being lauded in AA communities and arts/music, and a personal sense of victimhood and entitlement" are a root cause, rather than a product of the things you describe in #1. 

To believe that to be the case, you'd have to think that another race subjected to exactly what African-Americans have endured over our nation's history would have responded differently.  And to believe that you'd have to think that there's something inherently different about black people vs white people or people of Asian descent or Hispanic descent or whatever. In other words, that people with black skin are inferior in some way that is independent of their environment.

I don't think the OP or any other person voting anything other than 100/0 thinks that.  I just think perhaps they're not thinking broadly enough about the source of the "values" issues described in the second option.
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The problem with this line of thought is that it robs people of their agency and their humanity.  

It's really just two different levels of describing the same thing.  Can only vote 100/100 here.

 
It's one thing to always run slower. It's another thing to run backwards or start fights with the other runners. If all the runners were forward focused, then we MIGHT be able to reasonably reduce those weights over time. But when there's a mosh pit in the middle of the race, everyone involved in it is screwing themselves.  

 
mr roboto said:
This racing analogy is a very good one in my opinion.
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Except it assumes every white person has an advantage over every black person...which isn't true.  A poor white kid maybe raised by a single mother is going to be facing a number but not all of the same disadvantages the an average minority faces. 

 
This is really a tough subject and is so hard to really find the right answer. I went 50-50.

Point 1: The issues we are seeing are not inherent to sub-Saharan Africans or their descendants as a race. So we have to look at place of origin to demonstrate this. While a racist might argue that sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) lags the rest of the world economically, and that they are basically tribal societies in nature, there are plenty of other places in the world that are similar, including New World indigenous people, the Middle East, Central Asia, etc. Yet, if you look at SSA, you don't see quite the same kind of social issues we experience, even in countries that had some form of systematic racial discrimination.

Point 2: This one will raise hackles, and I'm sorry,, but I think it is correct. In the two hundred or so years that slavery existed in the US, the strong survived and passed on their genes; the weak didn't. Strength has nothing to do with intelligence, but it does have a lot to do with physical stature. Also, we had massive amounts of rape of slaves by slave owners, no family stability, no education, etc.

Point 3: After the Civil War ended, the slaves were freed. The North punished the south somewhat severely during "Reconstruction," but nothing was done for the AAs. In fact, there were "black codes" designed to control the behavior of former slaves, rather than some attempt to educate them and adapt them to the new reality of being free. What social behaviors did AAs know? What they had learned: survival of the fittest, weak family structures, all of the social problems we associate with Aa culture today. Add to that reactionary movements like the KKK, Jim Crow, etc.

Point 4: The Sixties happened. In the 60s and early 70s, I was working in factories trying to save money to go to college, and worked side by side with AAs, Puerto Ricans, etc. I'd be invited over for dinner (some thought it was curious that a white kid liked Cajun food - I thought it was great.); or we'd drink together. I think there was a lot of optimism, even though there was still a lot of crime in black communities, and out-of-wedlock births were increasing. We had the Civil Rights Act; the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission - things were looking up. But there were also Black Leaders who believed AAs should go their own way: not integrate into white society. I think those leaders' ideas won in the long term, in part because white predictably reacted negatively against things like "forced busing" and hiring quotas (which were based on race rather than merit). In retrospect, many of those well-meaning programs had the opposite effect.

Point 5: AA's never really integrated into white society. Certainly some did, but for most, it was an impossible dream. Add to that, the recessions always seemed to hurt AAs the hardest, and they were least likely to recover. AA social problems increased, but it was not at the boiling point yet.

Point 6: Obama got elected. I'm not blaming what is happening on him, but his election was like "A NEW HOPE."  Well, he didn't turn out to be much of a savior, and to be sure that was never his intention. But going on eight years now with no change, I can see disillusionment that has led to anger that has led to striking back.

Here is where we are:

1.  AAs do have personal values, but they are the values associated with the tribe (or gang). Compare them to the European Bronze Age where tribes raided each other for cattle or women, the European Dark Ages or maybe the Viking era. The key is that they are not white values. Because they were taken from a tribal culture, brutalized by their owners and then subjected to further discrimination, AAs have never experienced a society that was anything different. In their collective unconscious, this is all they know.

2. After 200 years of rejection by white society, it is highly unlikely that AA society can integrate into white society, at least in the short term. Like some of the Black leaders were advocating after passage of the Equal Rights Act, AAs have to find their own way.

3. We have reached a boiling point, and there is no way out. Having said that, each of us, individually are personally responsible for our own actions, even if we were raised in the Ghetto. We cannot blame long-dead slave owners anymore. We cannot blame the Carpetbaggers who made things so miserable after the Civil War. We cannot blame the failures of programs that evolved pout of the Civil Rights Act. We can't blame Obama. We can only look in the mirror and blame ourselves. Because the only person we can really change is us.

 
Pipes said:
Except it assumes every white person has an advantage over every black person...which isn't true.  A poor white kid maybe raised by a single mother is going to be facing a number but not all of the same disadvantages the an average minority faces. 
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No, it doesn't assume that. The idea is that if you use a sample size large enough to eliminate every other variable (like the ones you list), the group that is encumbered by the one variable left will always fail relative to the unencumbered group.  That's the point of using two million people instead of two people.

 
TobiasFunke said:
Sorry, I don't understand this.  If you think 2 is caused by 1, how can you ascribe blame for it?  Do you think other races would have responded differently to the exact circumstances of African-Americans dating from the 1600s to the present?

Saying that 2 is caused by 1 but nevertheless is an independent problem would be like saying a defensive lineman who is blatantly held is nevertheless responsible for failing to making a tackle.  If no other defensive lineman would have made the tackle after being held like that, how can you blame anything other than the hold for the perceived failure?
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Jews have been persecuted the world over throughout history and yet to due their culture they have been able to be greatly successful.  The problem with black people is not race (I've said repeatedly that I don't believe in race) but a cultural issue that black people must overcome. 

I believe Obama's Presidency is going to have a tremendous impact on black people moving forward - there's no excuse for wallowing in self-pity once a black man has become President.  We're already seeing a large increase in the percentage of black people enrolling in college, in fact it's now higher than whites and latinos. 

BLS began publishing numbers on school enrollment of people between the ages of 16 and 24 in 1959. Black graduates first appeared in the data in 1976. At that time, 41.9% percent of graduates were enrolled in college.

The number grew steadily into the 50% range into the 1990s, and by 2009, it was virtually even with that of white graduates, at about 69%.
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From 42% to 71% college enrollment in just 40 years - that's a massive improvement.

 
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TobiasFunke said:
The flaw in this logic is the assumption that "personal values, including family structure, low work ethic, low view of education, thug/criminal culture being lauded in AA communities and arts/music, and a personal sense of victimhood and entitlement" are a root cause, rather than a product of the things you describe in #1. 

To believe that to be the case, you'd have to think that another race subjected to exactly what African-Americans have endured over our nation's history would have responded differently.  And to believe that you'd have to think that there's something inherently different about black people vs white people or people of Asian descent or Hispanic descent or whatever. In other words, that people with black skin are inferior in some way that is independent of their environment.

I don't think the OP or any other person voting anything other than 100/0 thinks that.  I just think perhaps they're not thinking broadly enough about the source of the "values" issues described in the second option.
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There are examples, but not exact. Blacks in Brazil for example, do not seem to have the same social problems as those here. I don't know enough about their history to know how similar that history might be. Similarly, if we look at Haiti compared to the Dominican Republic, we see two black cultures taking different paths post-liberation.

 
bueno said:
This is really a tough subject and is so hard to really find the right answer. I went 50-50.

Point 1: The issues we are seeing are not inherent to sub-Saharan Africans or their descendants as a race. So we have to look at place of origin to demonstrate this. While a racist might argue that sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) lags the rest of the world economically, and that they are basically tribal societies in nature, there are plenty of other places in the world that are similar, including New World indigenous people, the Middle East, Central Asia, etc. Yet, if you look at SSA, you don't see quite the same kind of social issues we experience, even in countries that had some form of systematic racial discrimination.
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Sorry for the hijack, but isn't there a major problem with civil war, warlords, children soldiers, AIDS epidemic, rape culture etc in that region? Hell, has Joseph Kony been caught yet?

 
TobiasFunke said:
Let me ask a question of everyone who answers with anything other than 100/0:

Do you think that if Caucasians had been placed in the exact same circumstances in America as black people (literally everything from the 1600s to present day), they would be more successful on average than black people have been?  If so, why?  If not, why do you ascribe some of the blame to the black community?
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We would have to look at history to answer that question. Rome enslaved most of Europe. After the collapse of that Empire, Caucasians behaved every bit as badly for a few hundred years. However, there was no other blueprint available to them.

 
Family and education is the key to any group of people succeeding.  Raise the importance of those two items and a lot of the "inner city issues" (as the OP states) will correct themself.  Broken windows is non-sense, as is trying to solve every symptom (predatory check cashing places, raising the minimum wage, etc)...how about we concentrate efforts and big picture items like family and education and see what happens?

List a demographic group of any type and then assign some best guesses on that groups strength of family structure and the importance they assign to education and you would have a reasonable forecast of how successful that group will be in the next generation.  From No Irish need Apply, Japanese internment camp attendees, or illegal immigrants entering the US from across the southern border...the groups that stress family and education will always end up better off than those groups that do not stress those two items.

Just my 2 cents.

 
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bueno said:
There are examples, but not exact. Blacks in Brazil for example, do not seem to have the same social problems as those here. I don't know enough about their history to know how similar that history might be. Similarly, if we look at Haiti compared to the Dominican Republic, we see two black cultures taking different paths post-liberation.
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I don't know enough about Brazil to comment on that. But comparing Haiti to the Dominican Republic absurd. For decades after the Haitian Revolution most governments refused to acknowledge Haitian independence or establish trade. Additionally, France extorted payments at gunpoint in exchange for recognition which further hobbled the Haitian economy.

Sure, it wasn't all wine and roses for the Dominican but no where close to the effects of international isolation on Haiti.

 
Murph said:
I don't know enough about Brazil to comment on that. But comparing Haiti to the Dominican Republic absurd. For decades after the Haitian Revolution most governments refused to acknowledge Haitian independence or establish trade. Additionally, France extorted payments at gunpoint in exchange for recognition which further hobbled the Haitian economy.

Sure, it wasn't all wine and roses for the Dominican but no where close to the effects of international isolation on Haiti.
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I wasn't trying to say the history was identical, only that different paths were taken. The differences, I don't believe are related to the nationalities of the original slave owners, or to the early economic issues each country experienced.

 
mr roboto said:
Interesting point, could you expand upon this? What does neuroscience say about this topic that would lead you to believe it's mostly a broader social issue?
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Well your genetics and your upbringing plays a massive part in how you react in the world.  The brain essentially creates learned neural pathways that essentially force your behavior in a certain way.  

Yes there is neuroplasticity that can happen but that is a lot of work and most people don't even understand what that is and what work needs to be done to re-wire those neural pathways.  

 
killface said:
Well your genetics and your upbringing plays a massive part in how you react in the world.  The brain essentially creates learned neural pathways that essentially force your behavior in a certain way.  

Yes there is neuroplasticity that can happen but that is a lot of work and most people don't even understand what that is and what work needs to be done to re-wire those neural pathways.  
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So you are saying #1 above caused the conditions, kids are born into those conditions, learned neural pathways and kind of a deterministic result?

i could see that. 

 
mr roboto said:
So you are saying #1 above caused the conditions, kids are born into those conditions, learned neural pathways and kind of a deterministic result?

i could see that. 
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Well that's not what I am saying, that's what science says on how our brain works to affect our behaviors, fears and desires.  

Free will is partially an illusion unless you are really willing to try and bend those neural pathways

 
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Next to being sure that women and men gaining equal footing to become the deliverance of personkind and finding the opposite to be true and confirming big money's utterly ruinous effect on all our institutions, the greatest societal disappointment of my life is how poorly black people have treated themselves in the last half-century.

Growing up in/next-to the hood in JamaicaPlain Boston, racial opportunity was my issue as a young man when most of my compadres were about Nam. When I moved out to the burbs - because the 'schwarzes' crossed Columbus Ave - i invited a Black Panther spokesman to talk at my HS that the school, to their credit, made a mandatory assembly out of, which ended in me being threatened by several groups of preppies (my bodyguard, Famous Wayne, decimated them all), joined the Communist Party, solely because i was 'phillin' Angela Davis and worked in the Panther breakfast program in three cities thru the early 70s. While i stipulate that NO white person has tru cred on race, i'll exercise the hubris of claiming more than most.

The evidence screams that, unlike most American immigrants, urban blacks - likely because of being a captive, rather than willing, class in their places - have done a piss-poor job of leggin'-up. Can't say, were I one, that "getting out, turning as much of the white man's money into MY black money as i possibly could and forgetting the whole damned thing" and, if i couldn't, help making BlackWorld a place no one else can go wouldn't be tempting, but it's been ruinous to their progress. I've heard black folk say "joining just ain't a thing with us", but it has to add up to more leadership than developed and shown in that community since it lost Malcolm, King, Fred Hampton and thousands of good soldiers to the gun all that time ago. Hip-hoppers & b-ballers who think success in their small arts makes them profound but do little that doesn't have to do with their brands and the insipid handslappers of the post-post-racial and Ferguson movements who replaced the JJackson/Sharpton Show-up Show being the pantheon of paragons is a sorry history for two generations that could have really mattered.

not near nufced, but a start. lemme have it - i wont fire back unless you try to get me to join your Poor White Club. which is even lamer.

 
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Also several have pointed out the difference between race and culture which is key IMO. The reason they get conflated is because usually in an immigrant-rich country like ours they are very much tied together. 

 
When uneducated children have children of their own the cycle will never stop. The rate of 13,14 and 15 year olds in the Detroit Public School system that are having children is a huge issue. The majority drop out and you have a child trying to raise a child.  The odds of success for that baby are very slim at best.

A lady who spoke at a crisis center was a grandmother at 31.  Had no idea what to do, had three kids before she was 18 and two of them had kids at 15-16. No fathers in the picture. Was worried about her son who was 15 and quit school and was running the streets. How can society possibly get a handle on that?

 
Community that do not value it's youth and the no fathers in the picture is the largest issue, and I do think those two situations are very closely related.

No proper role models, no way out of poverty, and excuses for failing all too convenient. 

 
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bueno said:
This is really a tough subject and is so hard to really find the right answer. I went 50-50.

Point 1: The issues we are seeing are not inherent to sub-Saharan Africans or their descendants as a race. So we have to look at place of origin to demonstrate this. While a racist might argue that sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) lags the rest of the world economically, and that they are basically tribal societies in nature, there are plenty of other places in the world that are similar, including New World indigenous people, the Middle East, Central Asia, etc. Yet, if you look at SSA, you don't see quite the same kind of social issues we experience, even in countries that had some form of systematic racial discrimination.

Point 2: This one will raise hackles, and I'm sorry,, but I think it is correct. In the two hundred or so years that slavery existed in the US, the strong survived and passed on their genes; the weak didn't. Strength has nothing to do with intelligence, but it does have a lot to do with physical stature. Also, we had massive amounts of rape of slaves by slave owners, no family stability, no education, etc.

Point 3: After the Civil War ended, the slaves were freed. The North punished the south somewhat severely during "Reconstruction," but nothing was done for the AAs. In fact, there were "black codes" designed to control the behavior of former slaves, rather than some attempt to educate them and adapt them to the new reality of being free. What social behaviors did AAs know? What they had learned: survival of the fittest, weak family structures, all of the social problems we associate with Aa culture today. Add to that reactionary movements like the KKK, Jim Crow, etc.

Point 4: The Sixties happened. In the 60s and early 70s, I was working in factories trying to save money to go to college, and worked side by side with AAs, Puerto Ricans, etc. I'd be invited over for dinner (some thought it was curious that a white kid liked Cajun food - I thought it was great.); or we'd drink together. I think there was a lot of optimism, even though there was still a lot of crime in black communities, and out-of-wedlock births were increasing. We had the Civil Rights Act; the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission - things were looking up. But there were also Black Leaders who believed AAs should go their own way: not integrate into white society. I think those leaders' ideas won in the long term, in part because white predictably reacted negatively against things like "forced busing" and hiring quotas (which were based on race rather than merit). In retrospect, many of those well-meaning programs had the opposite effect.

Point 5: AA's never really integrated into white society. Certainly some did, but for most, it was an impossible dream. Add to that, the recessions always seemed to hurt AAs the hardest, and they were least likely to recover. AA social problems increased, but it was not at the boiling point yet.

Point 6: Obama got elected. I'm not blaming what is happening on him, but his election was like "A NEW HOPE."  Well, he didn't turn out to be much of a savior, and to be sure that was never his intention. But going on eight years now with no change, I can see disillusionment that has led to anger that has led to striking back.

Here is where we are:

1.  AAs do have personal values, but they are the values associated with the tribe (or gang). Compare them to the European Bronze Age where tribes raided each other for cattle or women, the European Dark Ages or maybe the Viking era. The key is that they are not white values. Because they were taken from a tribal culture, brutalized by their owners and then subjected to further discrimination, AAs have never experienced a society that was anything different. In their collective unconscious, this is all they know.

2. After 200 years of rejection by white society, it is highly unlikely that AA society can integrate into white society, at least in the short term. Like some of the Black leaders were advocating after passage of the Equal Rights Act, AAs have to find their own way.

3. We have reached a boiling point, and there is no way out. Having said that, each of us, individually are personally responsible for our own actions, even if we were raised in the Ghetto. We cannot blame long-dead slave owners anymore. We cannot blame the Carpetbaggers who made things so miserable after the Civil War. We cannot blame the failures of programs that evolved pout of the Civil Rights Act. We can't blame Obama. We can only look in the mirror and blame ourselves. Because the only person we can really change is us.
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hey, old friend - good to see you here, back to stirring the drink. you had more or less stopped posting before i went off the grid and it's good to have conservatives who are more than wakkyakkers to knock it around with. did the cartels chase you out of Mexico?

 
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