I lean left and this is not an indictment of liberalism I just think in the 60's and 70's they might have tried to overcorrect when it comes to welfare and low expectations have something to do with that. Yes welfare mother and lazy welfare is exaggerated but it is real to a degree and its not just a black thing or even a lazy thing. Why work when you have 3 kids and can only get a minimum wage job and public assistance gets you the same thing especially considering child sitter expenses. I am more of teach a man to fish guy.
You seem to be basing your argument on a all or nothing approach when it comes to safety nets, that is not what I am saying at all. We are in agreement on the more targeted approach.
The thing is you can't really systemically change the behavior of adults so "teaching" them is a lost cause as once a human is over 25, their core traits are pretty much set in stone as their brain is fully developed at that point. Safety nets should be to support the children. We shouldn't see welfare as a means to alter behavior of adults. You want responsible adults, raise them with the resources need as children well as the ages of 0-10 are most important ages for human congitive growth that will most determine the mental health and productivity of that human when they are adults. But we can agree that a more targeted safety net that is directed at children's resources is the more optimal solution. Ya I don't want a system were adults can abuse welfare checks were the welfare doesn't help the children.
I'm well aware that we agree mostly on this. Just having a discussion on the slight disagreement here.
I agree, I am not advocating using welfare as a means of changing adults behavior, I just want to break the cycle.
This is the challenge of most all social services: aiding the children who are in terrible situations of no fault of their own to break the cycle. Your SES while you are a child is the most important factor in determining your future success. You’re more likely to be in a loving, nurturing, environment free of food and shelter insecurity and abuse. You are given responsibilities and freedoms at an early age and form strong bonds to your family and community which builds confidence and positive character traits. If you struggle in school for example your parents probably have the knowledge and resources to help you. Yes it does come down to money. But I doubt just handing out UBI will magically solve everything. Instead my solution would be an increase in WPA and blue collar type jobs with livable wages. STEM is great but if all of Gen Z wanted to be engineers there wouldn’t be enough positions for them. We need the less motivated and ambitious who will always exist to have jobs as well and not $8.25 an hour. Lift these communities up through needed work at solid pay. Let’s have more of these jobs addressing beautification and cleanup in these communities. I am a firm believer in broken windows theory. Keep these communities clean and the crime will fall.
I tend to agree that having a safety net isn't necessarily a disincentive to work the problem though I see with how the welfare state in the US isn't that it makes people lazy but that it forces poor and lower middle class people to make Hobbesian choices. For example things such as Medicaid where people get trapped in a situation that if they earn too much they have to go off Medicaid but then they don't earn enough to get private health insurance or private health insurance that provides as much coverage as Medicaid. I think most people agree aid should be carefully targeted but how and to whom we target is the problem. I think everyone agrees in principle with things like SNAP and WIC but things like actual financial aid is much trickier. Also while everyone wants to help children there are still issues dealing with systemic racism that affects adults. As the main point of this thread is how do we address the wealth disparity between blacks and whites. In terms of the low expectations besides as stated with how we talk about things like riots I see it most in education. One of the areas I differ from Liberals is standardized testing. I believe there is a place for standardized testing in education and am against the idea that we shouldn't do them because of cultural bias built into the testing. I agree and accept that there is cultural bias in tests but I think doing away with them is low expectations as saying that students from certain backgrounds can't overcome that bias. Most professions require standardized tests to become licensed. My profession requires six tests. If we aren't preparing students for an economy and society where they will be tested and or will be required to learn and use language that they don't speak or use at home we're not helping them.
I love hip hop culture actually... one of my favorite music types. It definitely isn't the blame of the wealth gap. The wealth gap is a number that simply reflects how much money a group has made which has near infinite strands of reasons tied to each individual person in that group. These articles you all reflect ignore that of the individual and that is a short coming for sure. But to blame it on hip hop culture is nonsensical and I find it funny you all tag me in this mess. I hardly even post these days. Yall have me confused with some other posters in your efforts to have witches for your mob think bullshit.
Lol, looks like I tagged you for the right reason then, you still ignore the data for a tired talking point. This article doesn't ignore the individual aspect, anytime this is brought up, it never does. Never. Because you are right, there are a lot of variables, but what a lot of people don't seem to get in this thread...one of the variables is your race.
I'll be honest, I've say here 4 times trying to start writing my thoughts...and every time it becomes a long book full of qualifying statements. It isn't that the topic is sensitive, there's just a lot to unpack when systemic racism is brought up...and I'm not sure any of what I would post would add anything to your debate or the tone of this thread. I guess I'll throw this in...1/3rd of the population as of last year was born when Jim Crow laws were on the books...this includes our two current presidential candidates as well as our House and Senate Leaders...all who are white. The problem with most of these discussions online is that it doesn't include that demographic of people...and those are the people controlling this country at the moment and also have the most wealth accumulated (one study I saw said the average accumulation for that group was over $1M). Until that group is gone, or no longer in power, I'm afraid that no real change to systemic racism (or education, or wealth inequality, or anything else that could possibly help in this area) will occur.
I never said it wasn't. You're definitely looking to argue but I would say the tired talking point is blaming everything on race. Agree to disagree bud.
Yes there is a lot to unpack, unpack away. Anything you say would add to the debate, the problem with a lot of these debates is the lack of representation of people that are actually affected. Also there is not a lot of nuance. I went to a HBCU wich was a great way to get a sense of myself and made me what I am today but sometimes I think, actually I know, that I would be much further along if I went to majority white school because I would have learned how to better play well with others and gained some legit connections. But I enjoyed the heck out of myself but it also taught me a lot of the dynamics of black people when they are the majority and we don't really band together, there is a lot of petty jealousy and back biting, the bottom line is we don't support each other as a whole because in my opinion we are always trying to one up each other. Now a lot of this is because of the destruction of family and community in slavery and how we have been pitted against each other but at some point we have to come together. I also acknowledge that we did sell ourselves into slavery and we have had some of the worse genocide in history on the african continent amongst ourselves. This is why I push back on the victimhood mentality, sometimes you got to look in the mirror. Anyway you don't have to respond to any of this, these are thoughts I have had and for some reason this thread brought them to the surface. I
I don't have a problem with that. If you've ever taken any inherent bias quizes or courses...we all have them. I'm also fine with pointing out the opposite of the OP piece, which is that many of us, perhaps often unknowingly, benefit from white privelege. Which isn't to say we don't have our own issues/problems to deal with. Have attended several of the BLM sessions we've had at work, and while they were fine, there seems to be an absence of the other point of view. ie, while yes, blacks and other minorities likely do face various issues at work, well, we ALL have various issues at work. Black issues may be different, they may even exceed those that others face (reverse discrimination is a reality in many/most places). If we're going to have the discussion, shouldn't those things be allowed in the conversation? Currently, they are not. There are all kinds of things I might like or want to do at work that I know I can't do because it wouldn't fit the expected profile. That's not unique to minorities. So, it is also a little frustrating to hear about issues that minorities face, when they often don't really sound Agree.
Respect and thanks for sharing this, Jiggyfly. I think it is part of that other side of the equation that needs to be part of the conversation.
Off tangent... I once read an article around 08, when people were taking all these risky loans, that there was implicit pressure among white households to keep up with the joneses despite stagnant wages and opportunities and they took their hardship with a stiff upper lip because it was, in a sense, the price of admission to the American Dream. What a bs long con in brainwashing when the real lesson should've been to learn how to buy stocks and low cost etfs and find opportunities in property ownership. They don't teach you that in commercials that beg you to take HELOCs for that shiny new truck. They don't teach you that at church when the msg of the week is sometimes about perseverance or aspiring to a fervent Puritanical work ethic for all things that Matter. It's that kind of misdirection that makes people tilt the other way with get rich quick influence schemes as they get burned out from the daily dead end grind. American Dream always preaches Working Hard. Then some crafty jackass replies to Work Smart over Working Hard. The implicit pressure gleamed from that article is that to get it all you have to do both all the time. Already be optimizing; always climb harder. That's why many Americans work over 40hrs (don't get paid for overages) and still feel out of energy, out of time, and overcommitted financially. Yet we scoff at European 35 hour workweeks or mandatory one month vacations as a point of pride. Brain Washed I guess to tie this back to the thread, when non blacks start questioning the systemic hurdles African Americans face in fears that it trivializes their struggles, it's usually because they're pushing this giant rock uphill and can't consider other people's hurdles without feeling like they'll slip back further. Definitely creates a higher standard on how the Civil Rights message being delivered
To follow up on the last few posts. A lot of Americans are suffering besides just black Americans and I think some of the divisiveness is the feeling from some that the problems of black Americans are getting an inordinate amount of attention while others are suffering. The Trump base of mostly lower middle class and poor white people. The idea of the American dream that they were brought up on was that you could earn a good living working a low skilled factory or mining job but those are precisely the jobs that have been hurt the most by globalization. In the meantime for many black Americans they feel that they've been denied the American Dream and that no matter how hard they work they are still bheld back. Add into this mix groups of immigrants who in many ways still believe in the American dream. This is the dangerous mixture of resentment from a group that had been dominant and saw their parents and grandparents live the American dream while they are struggling versus a group that saw their parents and grandparents legally discriminated against and still see signs that they aren't on an equal footing. Both groups see immigrants coming in who they feel as newcomers who are competing against them for jobs while changing the culture in ways they don't like..
I think this is certainly the case and it isn't unique to the struggle of black Americans. I remember when there was a strong push for equality for the LGBT community, there were over minority groups that were not happy that the attention was bright on the LGBT community and not other traditionally repressed classifications of people. I will say that over the last handful of years I have noted that minority groups and leadership have done a better job of supporting each other with the understanding that everyone is in this together. In the past, conservative groups would attempt to capitalize on the infighting. The one "minority group" that really hasn't coalesced around other minority groups has been poor white people. They have for the most part separated themselves socially and politically and that has only made their situation worse. There are a number of historical reasons for this, going all the way back to poor whites being so staunchly pro slavery even if it wasn't in their best interest. I think it is pretty hard to argue against the fact that black Americans have been denied the American Dream at a macro level. Concerning immigrants, it is hard to really cast everyone with a wide net, but I can say in my experience the vast majority of immigrants I have known are not very sympathetic to African Americans. The things I have heard and the conversations that I have had are shocking in hindsight. I had a Korean immigrant tell me that he punished his daughter for responding to a black peer of hers that greeted her. He and his wife felt black people were sub human. I attempted to politely explain how absurd that was, but his position was that American's are too gently and they should be sent back to Africa. Yes, the mixture of resentment by lower class and even middle class white people and in some case black people towards immigrants is extremely, extremely dangerous. For the first time in our country, we are in the middle of the minority becoming the majority and we do not know how it all will play out. However that type of powder keg of memories of past glory and loss of power can result in some really nasty consequences.
At my current company, it is EXPECTED that everyone works until the job is done (often taking 12+ hour days, for days on end, working weekends as well), and it is simultaneously frowned upon to actually record all those hours (despite it being explicit company policy to actually record your hours, and we get hit with ethics training every year reinforcing this). And much of what drives these hours are 'nice to haves' that aren't even really needed, but hey, since everyone is at our beck and call, why not tell them, at 9:30 PM, that these things are needed by EOD? A perfect example of just what you are talking about. To your point about European workweeks...this just wouldn't happen...yet they, Germany in particular, are just as, or more productive. A lesson lost due to the 'brainwashing'? Hmmmm. I hadn't thought of it that way, but, yes, that may be true. Very insightful point, IMHO.
