Social Degeneration

So Thomas Sowell, the black author of the article, is deliberately distorting the truth to further his career? Interesting perspective.
I recall a time, getting fainter by the moment, when people were allowed to have an opinion. Now, if you speak your mind, you're labeled racist, hater, homophobes and so on. The divide in our nation is no different, its the lack of tolerance of others thoughts that is gone.

HEARTLESS wrote: So Thomas Sowell, the black author of the article, is deliberately distorting the truth to further his career? Interesting perspective.

"To further his career"?

Not exactly.

He is distorting the truth because his message has pretty much always been that black society deserves its problems. Which is arguably true in some limited ways, but when you bend the truth to make the point, I for one become somewhat suspicious of the messenger. Don't you?

Sorry, I edited my other post while you responded. But I think he speaks of the gang mentality portion of his own race, not of all blacks.

He can have his own opinion. And I can have my opinion of his opinion.

Yes you can. I met a Reuters reporter at a barbecue a couple weeks ago that also sidelines as a PI. He has done extensive work on the Darrent Williams murder case and trial. He has spent much time interviewing key tre tre crips members here in Denver, and stated that the overall desire of these people were to aspire to be pro athletes or gang members, nothing else. Similar views from someone that has actual contact with the gang crowd.

HEARTLESS wrote: the overall desire of these people were to aspire to be pro athletes or gang members, nothing else. Similar views from someone that has actual contact with the gang crowd.

Sad that they think those are their best career paths.

Sad that people want the money and bling so bad to risk their lives, freedom (prison) to get it.

HEARTLESS wrote: Sad that people want the money and bling so bad to risk their lives, freedom (prison) to get it.

I'm not sure that someone raised in an atmosphere where so many of the people he/she knows have been or are in prison would see it the same way a middle class white person would, though. Sadly, it may even be seen as a rite of passage, the way college might to a middle class kid. Or just part of the cost of "doing business".

If you want to understand why poor blacks make the choices they do, you have to see it through their eyes, not your own. Their choices seem much more rational when seen through the lens of their experience. A middle class white kid would be throwing away his whole future if he did something that risked prison time. But if you see your "career path" as being a gang banger, prison is just one part of the whole.

That's also true when you look at things like the rate of black families on welfare. If you look at the stats of such families, you find that with their educational and skill levels being so low, there really isn't a more rational economic choice than welfare - or crime. You simply won't do as well working at an uncertain minimum wage job without benefits as you will on welfare. So can you really blame families for making what is in fact the RATIONAL economic choice for them?

If you want to see people choose more positive lifestyles, you have to make sure there actually exist more positive choices. It's easy to say they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but in the real world that doesn't work. People caught in an economic trap where there are no decent and legal job opportunities that will lift them out of poverty will choose to remain on welfare or involved in crime.

Very, very few, the extraordinarily motiviated, may manage to make it on their own. But what happens as a result is that everyone points to those exceptional examples and then claims all the rest could do it if they "wanted to". Only that's simply not true. A lot of the poor are poor for very good reasons that are outside of their control.

So food stamps and other welfare does not help them, why continue it? Why keep pushing for more money for schools and teachers in ares that have students whose goal is drop out and become a gang member? Throwing more money at a losing cause is just foolish.

HEARTLESS wrote: So food stamps and other welfare does not help them, why continue it? Why keep pushing for more money for schools and teachers in ares that have students whose goal is drop out and become a gang member? Throwing more money at a losing cause is just foolish.

I don't argue that welfare as it exists is a failure. But you can't just cut off the sole means of support for millions without providing an alternative way for people to economically survive. There is already a huge number of people looking for work who can't find it. And millions of people in the underclass are unemployable, either because of low skill sets, disability or other causes. Is your solution to just let them starve? Or drive the desperate into crime?

And I can't agree that cutting off money for schools is the answer, either. Part of the reason so few escape the povery in inner cities is because the schools there are TERRIBLE. I do think it wouldn't hurt to give public schools more power to expell trouble makers to make a safer and more conducive to study atmosphere for those who want to learn.