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Yes: you are missing the history of the United States. This was most of the point of the article: Black people disproportionately live in poverty (not to mentio

by bo1024 10y ago

Yes: you are missing the history of the United States. This was most of the point of the article: Black people disproportionately live in poverty (not to mention the history of discrimination in this country), and the effects of living in poverty are extremely harmful. Your post seems to be missing the history of human slavery in the United States, the subsequent history of discrimination, and the conditions it created whose effects and legacy are still very strong today. You can't control for these factors by comparing to other minority immigrant groups!! One can argue that there are negative cultural effects, but it's a chicken-and-egg issue because history has created conditions for cultures of e.g. gangs and violence to arise. Similarly, the solution must address both the chicken and the egg. Your comment about "the black community needs to address" black culture, while perhaps well-intentioned, is the sort of argument historically commonly used by powerful whites to justify a "not my problem" philosophy toward black poverty and living conditions that create a negative culture. How does one create a culture that favors education when inner-city schools provide useless educations and are filled with gang violence, when there is little hope of using education for good? How does one create a "hard working" culture when the best "jobs" that seem realistically available are selling drugs, or when hard work fails to be rewarded due to discrimination? How does one create a culture of "loyal to family" when 73% of black children live in single-parent households (compared to 25% of white children)? (source: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jul/29/don-lemon/cnns-don-lemon-says-more-72-percent-african-americ/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jul/... ) All I can do in closing is suggest that, if you really want to understand your question "why are blacks not doing well", you should read some history, studies/statistics, and accounts of what life is currently like for blacks in the US. (Edited to change the source of the data.)

eumoria 10y ago
I live in a ~70% black neighborhood in NYC and the crack epidemic[0] of the late 80s into the 90s really destroyed a lot of the healthy culture that americans of african descent cherished through the 60s and 70s. Older guys on my block describe it like a warzone and, while I'm sure slightly hyperbolic, really took its toll on everyone there. There's so many factors here. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic
BurningFrog 10y ago
> Your comment about "the black community needs to address" black culture, while perhaps well-intentioned, is the sort of argument historically commonly used by powerful whites to justify a "not my problem" philosophy toward black poverty and living conditions that create a negative culture. This is a terrible argument. Statements are not automatically false because awful people agree with them. If Hitler thinks 2+2=4, decent people are not forced to choose 3 or 5. It seems to me that only black people can change black culture. Who else would do it? How?
- bo1024 10y ago
  It was not an argument, just a comment. But to address your second comment, part of the point of my post is that people outside the black community can do many things to improve the conditions that lead to a negative culture (which is not necessarily about being black but more common to poverty broadly): provide better schools, better housing options, decrease discrimination of all forms, better/fairer policing, replace the war on drugs with a fight against addiction, ...

by bo1024 10y ago

eumoria 10y ago

I live in a ~70% black neighborhood in NYC and the crack epidemic[0] of the late 80s into the 90s really destroyed a lot of the healthy culture that americans of african descent cherished through the 60s and 70s. Older guys on my block describe it like a warzone and, while I'm sure slightly hyperbolic, really took its toll on everyone there. There's so many factors here. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic

BurningFrog 10y ago

> Your comment about "the black community needs to address" black culture, while perhaps well-intentioned, is the sort of argument historically commonly used by powerful whites to justify a "not my problem" philosophy toward black poverty and living conditions that create a negative culture. This is a terrible argument. Statements are not automatically false because awful people agree with them. If Hitler thinks 2+2=4, decent people are not forced to choose 3 or 5. It seems to me that only black people can change black culture. Who else would do it? How?

bo1024 10y ago
It was not an argument, just a comment. But to address your second comment, part of the point of my post is that people outside the black community can do many things to improve the conditions that lead to a negative culture (which is not necessarily about being black but more common to poverty broadly): provide better schools, better housing options, decrease discrimination of all forms, better/fairer policing, replace the war on drugs with a fight against addiction, ...