3 ms·

Very sad story. Single parent household/lack of father figure, neighbourhoods that exist in their own separate reality, communities where the wrong things (acti

Very sad story. Single parent household/lack of father figure, neighbourhoods that exist in their own separate reality, communities where the wrong things (acting hard, etc) are valued over education, broken social services, over-zealous prosecutors, systemic prejudice, and tech corporations and their advertiser patrons pushing a consumerist agenda above all else.

gizmo 12y ago
This injustice is absolutely not a result of a single parent household, and insinuating that in some sense the mother is to blame here is gross. Your other suggestion, that the community itself is at fault (because they culturally value the wrong things) is mistaken. It's the other way around, the larger american culture is at fault because it is biased against black communities. Coates wrote a very good piece about this: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/black-pathology-and-the-closing-of-the-progressive-mind/284523/?single_page=true http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/black-pa...
- refurb 12y ago
  If the cause of all this is american culture being biased against black communities, how come so many blacks are not doing these things?
  - mc32 12y ago
    I think it's a very complicated issue and does not have an easy answer but consider recent African immigrants to the US and US-born and raised people of African descent. I'd love to see a study to see if their experiences are any different. I suspect, but am not sure, that 'culture' has some influence. I think Americans (black Americans in this case) have all kinds of baked in things which can be either positive or negative in their daily life interaction with others. So someone straight from Africa, let's say, has no preconceived notions of how one is expected to act in a given community in order to fit in. An immigrant is for some purposes a blank slate (they bring their own tendencies from home, of course) but not having baked in American tendencies to interact with (part of society) might afford them a different experience, for the most part. If there were differences in experiences, it'd be interesting if there was something to learn from that. For example, we have relatively recent Somali and Eritrean communities --normalizing their experience (ie take out the difficulties being a refugee, etc. might impose) what has their experience been in relation to the larger community?
  - mikeash 12y ago
    That question makes no sense. Something can move the average while leaving a wide distribution. Let's say I go around your neighborhood leaving caltrops all over the roads, causing a rash of flat tires. Your question is akin to asking, if the cause of all this is mikeash's caltrops, how come so many cars didn't get flat tires?
  - gizmo 12y ago
    The problem is that the odds are stacked against people of color. Some people beat the odds and succeed regardless, and that's great. Not everybody can be exceptional, though. So if some demographics are relatively disadvantaged then those people will on average have a worse quality of life through no fault of their own.
- forgingahead 12y ago
  Rather than misplaced appeals to authority (Coates is an opinion writer that has his own agenda, and definitely benefits from the narrative he and his publication loves to push), it would behoove us to approach this with a holistic understanding of the causes. There have been ample studies[0] done that show the lack of a father (therefore a single parent household) leads to increased delinquency in youths. [0] http://melbourneinstitute.com/downloads/working_paper_series/wp2011n23.pdf http://melbourneinstitute.com/downloads/working_paper_series...

gizmo 12y ago

This injustice is absolutely not a result of a single parent household, and insinuating that in some sense the mother is to blame here is gross. Your other suggestion, that the community itself is at fault (because they culturally value the wrong things) is mistaken. It's the other way around, the larger american culture is at fault because it is biased against black communities. Coates wrote a very good piece about this: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/black-pathology-and-the-closing-of-the-progressive-mind/284523/?single_page=true http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/black-pa...

refurb 12y ago
If the cause of all this is american culture being biased against black communities, how come so many blacks are not doing these things?
- mc32 12y ago
  I think it's a very complicated issue and does not have an easy answer but consider recent African immigrants to the US and US-born and raised people of African descent. I'd love to see a study to see if their experiences are any different. I suspect, but am not sure, that 'culture' has some influence. I think Americans (black Americans in this case) have all kinds of baked in things which can be either positive or negative in their daily life interaction with others. So someone straight from Africa, let's say, has no preconceived notions of how one is expected to act in a given community in order to fit in. An immigrant is for some purposes a blank slate (they bring their own tendencies from home, of course) but not having baked in American tendencies to interact with (part of society) might afford them a different experience, for the most part. If there were differences in experiences, it'd be interesting if there was something to learn from that. For example, we have relatively recent Somali and Eritrean communities --normalizing their experience (ie take out the difficulties being a refugee, etc. might impose) what has their experience been in relation to the larger community?
- mikeash 12y ago
  That question makes no sense. Something can move the average while leaving a wide distribution. Let's say I go around your neighborhood leaving caltrops all over the roads, causing a rash of flat tires. Your question is akin to asking, if the cause of all this is mikeash's caltrops, how come so many cars didn't get flat tires?
- gizmo 12y ago
  The problem is that the odds are stacked against people of color. Some people beat the odds and succeed regardless, and that's great. Not everybody can be exceptional, though. So if some demographics are relatively disadvantaged then those people will on average have a worse quality of life through no fault of their own.
forgingahead 12y ago
Rather than misplaced appeals to authority (Coates is an opinion writer that has his own agenda, and definitely benefits from the narrative he and his publication loves to push), it would behoove us to approach this with a holistic understanding of the causes. There have been ample studies[0] done that show the lack of a father (therefore a single parent household) leads to increased delinquency in youths. [0] http://melbourneinstitute.com/downloads/working_paper_series/wp2011n23.pdf http://melbourneinstitute.com/downloads/working_paper_series...