As I was driving back and forth from a quick errand this morning I caught a brief portion of an interview in which a young man presented a somewhat different take on the (black) reparations issue. What he was saying is that treating the reparations issue as about transferring cash is a blind alley and that the issue should be more about making communities whole rather than handing out cash.
I agree with that in principle but the alternative version of reparations he gave—giving blacks preferential access to higher education, something I argued in favor of when I was the interviewee’s age—struck me as reflecting ignorance of the real problems facing black people.
Now, as an old white man I’m absolutely the wrong person to give an authoritative opinion on the problems black folk face but here are what I think the most significant problems are:
- Not enough jobs for people with or without college educations. Higher education as a vehicle for a fuller life experience is a luxury for rich people. For poor people and even middle income people regardless of color higher education is mostly a way to get a better job. If there are no better jobs available, what the heck good is it?
- Bad schools. Preferential access to education is no blessing if you’re not prepared for college. The grade schools and high schools attended by black kids aren’t doing that. When did the public schools become a jobs program or vehicle for political organization? When did they become about adults rather than kids?
- Higher education is too expensive. That’s not just a problem for black kids and black families. It’s a problem for everyone.
- Social dysfunction in the black community. For whatever reason (I have my own opinions) men are still treated as expendable in too many black families. Sixty years ago most black kids grew up in families with two parents who were married to each other. Now that’s a minority. Have you ever noticed that the most successful black actors, musicians, and sports figures all grew up in intact families? It’s not a coincidence.
- Gangs have become the alternative to the family for economic and social support for too many young black men. That’s a path to drug and alcohol abuse, prison, and premature death.
- Bad policing. There’s both too much crime in black neighborhoods and, at least here in Chicago, too many police officers are shooting first and asking questions later. Both have got to stop.
- The political system has failed black people. Despite all of their lip service, what have the Democrats done for black folks lately? Republicans aren’t even giving lip service. That’s what I call a failure of the political system.
Oh, yeah. There’s also racism. It’s still present in hiring, access to credit, housing, you name it. Is it as bad as it was 60 years ago? Of course not. Is it as bad as it was 30 years ago? In many ways I think it’s worse.
What do you think are the most significant problems facing black people and what, if anything, do you think should be done about them?
The principal problem is that they are unassimilable. An integrated society is impossible, and, left to their own devices, different races will experience different levels of success.
Spoken as an old white man.
With #4, you will see the same pattern with white families — the reasons are often different, but the two parent family doesn’t work in either community.
De facto segregation is probably one of the huge problems — it allows entire minority communities to fail without affecting the majority. It makes failing schools, crime, and lack of opportunities “someone else’s problem” for too much of white America.
What they have in common are social acceptability and economic viability.
The two parent family works just fine. It does require sacrifice, though.
Black middle class people don’t seem much different than white middle class people, at least the ones I know and have known, family, friends and co-workers. OTOH,some of the urban poor have a culture that seems almost alien to me. I think it would help if we stopped jailing blacks at disproportionately high rates for the same crimes white people commit, but I am not sure if there is a whole lot else government can do at this point. For example, I think your point about bad schools is true, but then I am not sure any school we could actually afford can make up for the problems that exist for black, urban kids.
Steve
Bob Sykes makes an important point. Most Latinos can “pass” as white, or be accepted as honorary white, if you know what I mean. Asians can’t pass, but there just isn’t anything like the level of racism aimed at Asians. (Father of a Chinese daughter speaking.) Gays can pass, Muslims can pass if they don’t wear the hijab, Jews can pass if they change their names from, say, Jonathan Leibowitz to Jon Stewart.
African-Americans cannot pass. They cannot hide within the majority. Which is one reason I think the POC label is misleading and probably useless. It encompasses people who are stuck and people who aren’t – an army where some have no choice but to fight, while others can slink away. And unlike Latinos and Asians, blacks are not a growing minority, their birth rate is dropping same as other groups, but they are not being added to via immigration.
Get rid of disparate law enforcement and wait for more old white people to die off. That’s all I’ve got solution-wise.
My experience is similar to Steve’s regarding black middle-class people. I work with a pretty diverse group in the civil service and during my time in the military.
“Now, as an old white man I’m absolutely the wrong person to give an authoritative opinion on the problems black folk face……”
This statement is instructive. You are no less qualified to give an opinion than on any other set of people, presuming due consideration of the issues. Yet there is the need to provide a qualifier.
As a society we have been so trained to walk on eggshells, lest we be labeled with the intended disqualifier and perceived argument ender: “you are a racist,” that we cannot deal with issues frankly. Steve informs us that black middle class people seem like any middle class people as if this is a revelation. But heaven forbid part of the problem of the poor, black, white, or whatever be ascribed to character, effort or capability. We can criticize “the rich,” deservedly or not in any particular case, with impunity. Not the poor. Better, and more sanitary, to blame it on society. Less judgmental I guess.
Dave’s list seems a pretty good overview, and it would take an entire evening to make any headway point by point. But I guarantee no efficacious policy prescriptions have any hope of emerging as long as we are not able to admit that self destructive attitudes and behaviors arena significant component of the problem.
I don’t expect this to happen. PC dogma is alive and well. The black grievance business is alive and well. Politicians have discovered a weapon and vote magnet as potent as giving away free stuff. I think you can whip this essay out, Dave, and repost it 5 years from now, 10 years from now….. Sure works for the war on poverty.
Shorter Guarneri: “You darn kids get off my lawn!”
You’re so out of touch you’re sounding senile. Really, dude, open your mind just a little. Learn something. Because I know you think you’re saying something profound, but it’s really just a racist Abe Simpson rant.
Knew someone would pull that one out, but what suit is Trump?
Spades, Hearts Diamonds or Clubs?
Probably white people. Here’s a charming example:
We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
That’s John Ehrlichman. The war on drugs–a totalitarian endeavor to screw with blacks and hippies. But hey–forty years later it’s still a legitimate idea even though now, as whites are discovering the pleasures of opiates, it can be considered a health issue, rather than something for degenerates.
It’s not that every white person dreams of finding ways to attack blacks. It’s that the myth of white people makes it register any act done against blacks, except if you have video of it happening, and even then, there’s this huge gray area as to how it happens.
Back in 1994, John Ehrlichman tells a reporter or author about the real reason for War on Drugs. The reporter/author decides it has nothing to do with what he is working on, and it is of no value at all. Twenty-two years later on the eve of an election that Democrats will need every black vote they can scrounge, this little tidbit emerges.
Conveniently, the source and most of his contemporaries are dead or in Depends.
Might I suggest that we stop talking about “white people” and “black people” and instead get back to talking about human universals?
For example, if tribal thinking is a human universal, then shifting the blame from one preferred tribal signifier to another isn’t going to accomplish very much in the grand scheme of things. “You’ve had yours, now it’s my turn” isn’t seizing the moral high ground, it’s abandoning it for expediency.
IMHO, a much better alternative would be to start thinking about “the tribe of people who think tribally,” which is all of us, and go from there.
The jumping-off point for this post was an interview I heard about the reparations issue. It’s pretty hard to separate that from race.
A fair point. But the twinned problems of “making [black] communities whole” and “ignorance of the real problems facing black people” are rendered unsolvable by focusing on on the narrow issues of skin color and/or reparations, because the underlying problems are actually systemic to human-on-human interactions.
If we persist in looking at the issues through the divisive prisms of race, privilege, religion, or political preference, we miss the point, and any chance at workable solutions.
Not meant as a slam at the post, by the way. Just an observation from the peanut gallery.
Yeah, that’s actually my point, I guess. Note that none of the factors I mention involve cash transfers, reflecting my view that reparations won’t remediate the problems.
Look, I’m an atheist with no family ties beyond my immediate family. I don’t give a wet fart about the fact that my mother was Jewish and therefore, under the tribal law of the ancient Hebrews, so am I. I would love to stop worrying about Jew stuff.
Here’s the problem: a significant portion of the human race wants me dead for being what I don’t even care about. Just as a significant number of Americans actively hate, or passive-aggressively resent, or treat with contempt, their fellow black Americans.
So saying, ‘why don’t we get past race,’ is effectively the same as the ‘why don’t we just ignore terrorists’ argument. It only takes one side to make a war.
Michael, I am not suggesting that we ignore it. Neither, however, am I suggesting that matters can be improved by looking at the problem too narrowly.
“[A] significant portion of the human race wants me dead for being what I don’t even care about” is a true statement for everyone on this planet, especially given that “significant” acquires a whole new meaning when technological force multipliers are readily available to the perpetually outraged.
Being white, or Jewish, or American, or any other form of hyphenated human, is mere window dressing that is, frankly, about as appetizing as a week-dead red herring. Worse, it doesn’t work.
I am suggesting that the only viable strategic path to “getting past race” is to look past it to the human universals underneath, and attach there your ideals of human dignity, meaning, and worth.
Then, of course, you have to demonstrate that your method actually works if you are to persuade anyone that you have a viable alternative.
I didn’t say it was easy, just that it needs doing.
Piercello:
Sounds great in the abstract. In reality black people have distinctly different lives and different problems, so the solution that works for the majority simply does not work when racial animus is in the equation. A rising tide does not lift all boats if employers toss aside any resumé from a black applicant.
As Chris Rock so rightly observes, is not a black problem, it’s a white problem. If white people could get past their obsession with pigmentation, many of the difficulties of the black community would evaporate. Look no further than the incredibly disparate reactions to drug use. If it’s black people, lock ’em up and throw away the key. But once it’s white people we overnight switch to talk of treatment. That is a white people problem inflicted on black people – our racism hobbling them.
So no, these are not simply human problems, they are white racism directed against blacks. One bunch of humans despising another bunch of humans for absolutely no good reason. A rising tide of solved problems will lift the black boat only if white people stop shooting holes in that boat.
“If white people could get past their obsession with pigmentation”
Pot, meet kettle.
I am telling you that the only _way_ to get past that so-called obsession is to look past it to the underlying universals.
It isn’t a white problem. It isn’t a black problem. it is a _human_ problem, relating to the us/them mentality that is produced by hardwired tribalistic identity games.
The only way you can defeat the pernicious effects of that mentality is to expand the tribe to all of humanity. You can’t pick and choose who to blame. It doesn’t work.
I don’t know how I can make my point any more clearly.
Let’s see….
White Lives Matter
White PTA groupings
White History Month
White Congressional Caucus
White Studies
If any such “white” selective categories were alive, well and sanctioned, the racist label would be applicable. However, the reality that another hue of our humanity can not only have those distinctions, but also be accepted, given sanctimonious validation, totally bypassing any suggestion of racism is confounding to me, and exemplifies the very nature of the sick hypocrisy ingrained in our American politics.
I do agree that racism is profoundly stressed in this country, seemingly at the crux of every problem. But, let’s not hang it all on past prejudices but rather on the current discrepancies and liberal histrionics that are actually hindering the disassociation of color from conduct. There’s a backlash going on now that is not only aggravating race relationships, but is spilling over onto almost every aspect of our society, creating a very dysfunctional country.
Right and wrong behavior is no longer a qualifier for praise or punishment, but is centered more on black versus white coloration. Even those African Americans, who dissent from the rhetoric and rituals of liberal white orthodoxy, are given the finger, shunned and labeled as traitors of their race. Whites who dissent are conveniently called “racists” — end of discussion! Basically, hate is mixed in the concrete of liberal guilt, and that essentially is a major component of what is slowing the efforts of every color from moving forward, becoming allies rather than enemies.
Jesus Christ. Lectures from white people on the universality of our problems and on black racism. I’m sorry, but you are both utterly clueless.
I have 63 years of experience for what that’s worth I am a mixed raced white, (Swedish and Czechoslovakian), my wife of 42 years is native American, my first serious girlfriend was Jewish, (don’t know what she saw in me) I don’t hate anyone. I can converse with any race except Blacks descended from slavery. It’s not just their slang, I literally cannot reach a meeting of the mind, even when I think I have. This has bothered me a great deal, and the best I can tell is that they are talking about how they FEEL, while I am talking about what I THINK. So, the best I can come up with is to be polite and keep the conversation lite to get along.
Also, for the audience, I have always thought of Jews as white, Hispanics are pretty damn white and Native Americans are friendly, happy, and peaceful people who love their families, love to laugh, and sadly, are extremely used to early disease and death.
Lectures on racism from a lot of white progressives to soothe the fact that they refuse to associate with black people. They sit behind the gates of their lily white communities patrolled by the racist cops they hired to keep any non-whites out.
Give me a f*cking break. When you aSSholes stop preaching to cover your racism, give me a call. Until then, go f*ck yourselves. You can fool the other white people (conservatives, liberals, or progressives) who live in whitopia, but I have seen you all in action when you get around a lot of poor and low income black people. First you patronize, next, you get exasperated, and finally, your racist self comes out.
To all my white conservative friends, most of you have never lived in a racially mixed community. In the New Orleans proper, there are no gated communities, and while the races may segregate, it is often by blocks or streets. There is no where to get away from black people. They can walk or drive down your street, and there is nothing you can do about it.
Also, poor and lower income people do certain things that progressives cannot stand, and when it is white people doing it, they have no problem disparaging them. Black people are not supposed to follow these stereotypes, and when they do, these ever so easily upset white progressives are terrorized. Rather than accept that they were wrong, they blame the poor and low income black people, and it is not pretty.
If you are from New Orleans, a lot of this is just background noise. For example, Mary Landrieu would not act this way because she grew up in and around black people. Poor and low income black people are not college educated middle and upper income white people, but that does not mean that they are trash.
When you come from a city with actual black people, you know that they are not just statistics. They are flesh and blood. They have feelings, and those feelings get hurt like anybody else. They do not want to be treated like trash. They do a lot of stupid sh*t, and a lot of it is the basis for stereotypes. Here is the thing. If you are not one of the family, you do not understand how, why, or when the stereotypes apply and when they do not. Apparently, progressives believe they can divine the meaning of this behavior, and they disparage based upon this divine knowledge.
My white conservative friends, you never see the grocery stores filled with black people that the white progressives never set foot inside. If a business is black owned, you can be assured that white progressives have never gone inside (except restaurants). They will drive halfway around the world to avoid a gas station with a lot of black people. Same thing with drug stores, flower shops, shoe stores, hardware stores, etc.
White progressives are not just hypocrites. They are well beyond that. They are racists, and that is why they have to deflect attention from themselves. When you see white progressives moving into black neighborhoods and not moving out the black residents, you will have found the non-racist white progressives, but until then, they will never live in any place that looks like Ferguson.
Racism is a universal human trait, full stop. Anyone who doesn’t believe that needs to spend time in other parts of the world. Talk to anyone who’s actually lived in Japan for a first world example – most racial discrimination that we find abhorrent here is perfectly legal there and not at all rare. In less developed countries, things get much worse, particularly when clan, tribe, ethnic and religious differences get involved.
None of that excuses racism in America, but to think it is solely black vs white or white vs people “of color” is parochial thinking.
I lived in New Orleans from age 11 through adulthood and can vouch for what Tastybits says but also have a different perspective.
Moved there in sixth grade after living in all white suburbs of the northeast, where I literally don’t recall ever being in the same room with a black person. It was extreme culture shock starting at a school that was 50:50 black:white and I still remember the first time I touched a black girl’s hand, thinking that she was just like me and wondering what all the fuss was about.
That same girl, though, sad to say, soon robbed me of a small amount of cash I’d received for my birthday. It was the first of many bad experiences in my new diverse environment, including my brother’s high school going on lock down every other week when kids pulled knives and guns on each other, and learning that our local hospital was named for a young woman- daughter of one of the doctors- who had been raped and murdered while doing volunteer work in the projects. In high school (my sister and I went to the magnet school across the river, not the local district school where my brother graduated) our bus broke down in the projects and we had to get police escorts home. At 13 years old, working in the family business, I was held up at gunpoint by a black man.
Suffice it to say, I no longer thought black people were all just like me. Along the way I made friends with some too so I didn’t generalize the conceptions to a whole race of people and it was pretty obvious that the major difference was economics and class, not skin color. At the same time, I can see why people do generalize because living in a place where you don’t feel safe makes it more important to be risk aversive than inclusive.
Racism exists, and I have seen it first hand. For one thing, few progressives have ever met a real racist or have any idea of what an actual “drag a n*gger behind the truck” racist is like. Let me help you. Start accusing everybody of being a racist, and you will quickly wish you were black. Real rural white Southern racists are f*cking scary, and there a’nt much that scares me.
When I the skinheads thought we were “white brothers” because I shaved my head (like Isaac Hayes), I had no problem disabusing them of the notion in the city, but in the backwoods was a different matter.
I have said before that landlords love white people, and they cannot contain their joy when they learn you will be the tenet. Employers discriminate. After the Marine Corps, I figured I would take it easy and try to get into the food & beverage industry by starting at the bottom washing dishes. I finally got a job because a friend knew a restaurant owner, and his regular guy did not show up. Later on, the owner told me he only kept me because I was the best, but it was not a job for a white person. I left shortly after that.
There is bigotry, racial ignorance, discrimination, and insensitivity in addition to outright racism, and they are not all the same. There are legitimate problems and grievances, but calling political opponents racist does not help.
Most white people do not have a clue as to what goes on in the black community much less why. They do not know and cannot understand the problems. Because of this, most of them assume poor and low income black communities are just a less well off version of their world or a black version of the poor and low income white communities.
People who have never lived in or around poor and low income black communities or spent a lot of time there do not know how the police treat the people, and if you are from the middle and upper income suburbs, it is hard to believe that more than a few police do anything wrong. Police do not get up every morning and go to work with the intention of killing young (or old) black men. Sorry, that is not how it works.
Mostly, it is complicated, but generally, the police treat poor and low income people different than middle and upper income people. The more money you have buys you more “yes sir” or “no ma’am”, and you can stay in your car without having the flashlight blind you. The police do not automatically assume you are guilty or that you have a weapon. The police take more time to determine whether you have a knife or a comb, and even if you did, they tend to not shoot you until you are within stabbing distance. I could go on and on.
Again, I am not talking out of my a$$. I was a Deputy in the same city as NOPD, and NOPD were a$$holes. I was commissioned, POST certified, and had graduated the academy. My badge was good throughout the state, and the Gulf states would recognize it as a “Professional Courtesy” (get out of jail free). The one place we had trouble was New Orleans. They were corrupt a$$holes, and they would f*ck over the poor black people like they were animals. (If they were animals, they could have gotten the SPCA to help them.)
I know what a corrupt police department looks like close up, and when the police are as bad or worse than the criminals, you tend not to trust them. This is a difficult concept for middle and upper income people to grasp. A cop putting out a contract(s) on a citizen(s) who reports him to Internal Affairs seems like something out of a comic book, but it happened. The police not only providing protection for drug shipments but actually taking over the drug shipments is crazy but true.
The Tuskegee Experiments and CIA cocaine drug smuggling are two known instances of the US government deliberately f*cking over poor black people, and it might make a little sense why they are skeptical of the police.
It is a depressing subject.
A lot of progressives view poor black people as “Noble Savages”. (Somehow, other poor people are just savages.) When they encounter large numbers of poor black people, they quickly have their ideals smashed. It turns out that poor black people are made up of (1) poor, (2) black, and (3) persons, and persons are not a monolithic being.
Each has a face, and more than likely, the elite progressive cannot tell one from the other. (It is hilarious watching middle and upper income white people trying to figure out who is who when confronted with large numbers of black people.) Black people are really black persons. If you have never been around them, you do not have a f*cking clue, and you are the f*cking white trash that uses a hurricane to keep them out of the city which is their home. (Did I mention I especially hate New Orleans white progressives.)
The biggest difference between the black population and the Irish immigrants is not slavery. It is Jim Crow. The US Supreme Court legalized segregation for about 100 years, and it was not just private segregation. Government bodies across all states and counties practiced segregation when the number of black people got too high.
Furthermore, the progressive presidents were the worst. Abortion, then as now, is a way to control the black population. Who in their right mind would think that there should be more abortion clinics in the black neighborhoods, and anything that would restrict the growth of the black population is racist. Unf*cking believable. I guess we are lucky the progressives do not make it legal to kill black babies at will.
If crack dealers were selling on the corner in white progressive neighborhoods and killing little white boys and girls, white progressives would want them thrown in jail for life, but because it occurs in black neighborhoods, they want them out as fast as possible. Stopping or just slowing the rate of killing black people is somehow racist. Unf*cking believable. I guess we are lucky the progressives do not make it legal to kill innocent people in drug related drive-bys.
Criminals live in poor communities because these are the easiest people to abuse. Middle and upper income people will not tolerate violent criminal behavior, and they have the resources to do something about it. They have access to the politicians, and they have the money to move. When the criminal gangs were mostly Italian, they were in the poor Italian neighborhoods, and it is the same for Chinese, Motorcycle, Mexican, Hatian, etc. gangs.
The police are also a lot more abusive, and if you have no experience, you do not know how they are abusive. You just repeat anything you hear without the foggiest idea of what it means. Middle and upper income black people will not be treated the same as poor and lower income. On the street outside the Magnolia Project, a young black would hear, “hold up there youngblood/gangster”, but in his neighborhood, Louis Gates would hear, “excuse me sir.”
In poor areas, the police do a personal form of “civil forfeiture”, and it is just the way things are. In the more affluent areas, it is called stealing, and it is not tolerated. There are multiple other ways that small forms of abuse occur, and they add up into a constant low level pounding. It becomes pervasive, and many of the people are not aware of it.
Housing discrimination, job discrimination, check cashing fees, and various rent/lease (car, television, etc.) usury level interest rates are a part of everyday life. Bars on windows and doors, abandoned houses and businesses are used for a variety of purposes including illegal drug use. Criminals, gangsters, con men, ex-cons, pimps, etc. are the role models no matter what you do. Athletes and rappers are the few positive role models, but in whitopia, this does not compute.
The problems in the black community are spreading across racial and ethnic lines, and they are moving up the socio-economic scale. The solution begins with employment and manufacturing. The solution begins with less consumer debt. These will facilitate rebuilding the two parent family, and this should begin getting the quality of schooling improved.
Black people are not The White Man’s Burden. They are grown a$$ed men and women capable of thinking for themselves, and they do not need the great white savior swooping down to save them from the big bad racist, especially when the great white savior stays locked in his fortified gated community.