[mlc9852]

We just need to throw more money at the problem. That will solve it.

[thoughtomator]

We have not learned what to do about it.

Well, for starters, we can stop inflicting the tragedy called "public education" on them.

[MisterRepublican]

So it's all whitey's fault.

DR GIBBOUS T HILL
Since May 7, 2005

[Luke21]

This is the same stuff we heard in the sixties and seventies. We spent all that money on the war on poverty to be back at the start line.

Oh well, they can all get Social Security for their tobacco and alcohol needs. We won't be able to.

[Steve_Seattle]

This isn't just a black issue. Every day at lunchtime in downtown Seattle, I hop on the bus or walk down the street and see dozens of people - white, black, Hispanic, Indian - even Asian - who very much appear to be part of a permanent underclass. They are often alcoholic, often drug-addicted, often mentally ill, but sometimes merely "unemployable" - so far out of the mainstream that it is almost impossible to imagine anyone hiring them for any job. I suppose this is nothing new - "the poor you will always have with you" - but it seems that their chances are in some ways worse than ever. This is a society where image and slickness mean everything, and where opportunities for manual labor are diminishing. I don't know what the solution is. And perhaps there's even a danger in looking for a "solution" - Hitler's "solution" was simply to exterminate all of the "unfit".

[2banana]

Go, say, to South Chicago (actually, don't: you wouldn't last an hour) where the city warehouses unwanted blacks in huge high-rise projects, ugly megaliths erupting from bleak concrete, with their own police stations and terrible schools with dropout rates of seventy-five percent.

Built and funded by liberal democrats under the "Great Society Programs" - welcome to the Plantation!

Meanwhile hatred gathers in the urban blasted heath. The riots of Los Angeles could have happened anywhere. The people of the ghetto believe that whites are the cause of their misery, and they are, just under the surface, very angry. One day this is going to bite us.

Not as long as I can defend myself and my family...

[dead]

The people of the ghetto believe that whites are the cause of their misery, and they are, just under the surface, very angry.

That is really a problem that only they can address.

One day this is going to bite us.

It’s been biting them for forty years. You’d think they wake up and realize it.

The people who do find a way out of the cycle. The ones who don't are doomed for another generation, at least.

[Steve_Seattle]

"They don't want to be white. They don't speak the bastardized English of downtown because they couldn't learn to say, "He is" instead of, "He be.""

Well, finally someone's admitting what I've long suspected; we're dealing with a studied insolence, not a basic incapacity.

[trisham]

White America doesn't grasp the magnitude of the underclass, its isolation, its hopelessness, its resistance to change. Or its anger.

**************

Hey! I watch "COPS".

[BipolarBob]

WOW!! This one made me think. Notice how the author clearly and precisely laid out solutions for every problem and it wasn't just a race-baiting blame-whitey piece. What a literary masterpiece.

---

NOT

[RexBeach]

Whining won't help. And if black culture is so rich and vibrant how come all of these people, who populate these downtown ghettoes, are so miserable?

[skeeter]

One day this is going to bite us.

Are you threatening me?

[AaronInCarolina]

Even to white eyes there is a certain gelded quality to a black executive speaking precise white English.

Speak for yourself Dr. Hill!(author) This is absolute BS and precisely part of the problem. These dis-engaged ghetto blacks are ill-served when they are taught that to be educated is to be "white" or to be successful is to abandon their so-called "blackness". They are taught from the day they are born that they can never succeed due to the oppression of the white society. This LIE serves the democratic party well in that it guarantees a near-monolithic voting pattern among blacks, but it damns these ghetto inhabitants to a poverty-stricken hell. Only when poor blacks look upon a successful, articulate-speaking African-American success story as a role model and not an Uncle Tom sell-out (and stop voting exclusively democrat) will things begin to change.

Also, it wouldn't hurt to move to more rural areas where morals are still intact.

[headsonpikes]

The so-called 'underclass' is an artifact of the modern Welfare State.

The various agencies of a modern government develop client bases of those requiring 'services', and just like their private sector equivalents, are eager for repeat business from customers who say, "Super-Size me!"

Dismantle the Welfare institutions and bureaucracies, and Voila! - no underclass.

[Little Ray]

Meanwhile hatred gathers in the urban blasted heath. The riots of Los Angeles could have happened anywhere. The people of the ghetto believe that whites are the cause of their misery, and they are, just under the surface, very angry. One day this is going to bite us.


That is what they make machine guns and napalm for...

We don't owe these people anything. They OWE us for shelter, food, etc., none of which they have earned.

[layman]

The enthusiasms of the era of civil rights have waned.

It's hard to remain enthusiastic when best efforts continue to fail. I think more black spokesmen like Bill Cosby and fewer black spokesmen like Jesse Jackson would accomplish much more than Welfare and Affirmative Action have accomplished. And successful blacks, of which there are many, must work harder to influence their communities regarding education and family responsibility. The answer, in other words, lies within the black community itself.

[varon]

The ghetto is permanent. Hispanics seem to be pulling themselves up the ladder in the long tradition of America's immigrants, Asians do it readily, but the forgotten blacks of the ghetto don't.

The Hispanics and Asians are even a smaller minority, yet they manage to move up the ladder.

The blacks have had a head start on Hispanics and Asians with government sponsored and enforced affirmative action programs, lowering of standards and implementing of shortcuts to provide a "leg up" to the blacks, yet to no avail.

It is not lack of opportunity or lack of caring or willingness to help. It is the lack of desire that is the problem.

The Hispanics and especially Asians have a drive, respect and understanding of rewards that hard work and education will bring. They hold up academic achievers as role models while blacks hold them up to ridicule.

Even manual labor would pull many blacks out of poverty which begs the question why Mexicans can get and do those jobs and blacks can't/won't?

To be very simplistic, the problem can be defined by one word, ATTITUDE!!!

[Kay Syrah]

Well, it seems to be a racial problem, but your essay ignores the successes of immigrant blacks. You do support your thesis that it is the unique American ghetto culture that is the problem tho, but you don't address the "root" cause.

At the bottom of all of this is the government intrusion into the traditional means for the poor to get ahead. They used to open door stoop businesses, accumulate a few bucks, buy and old building become slum lords, accumulate wealth, start new business move up and out of poverty. Regulation and government competition in the cheap housing market pretty much strangle the small initiatives from which better things come. Ownership becomes nearly impossible, and job creation becomes the duty of the goverment.

Even to white eyes there is a certain gelded quality to a black executive speaking precise white English.

That's a particularly offensive statement. And tells me you probably aren't as well intentioned as you would like to seem in your essay. Learning the language of the dominant culture is a tool for freedom, not a symbol of oppression. We all relax on our own turf with our own language and culture. They shouldn't be at war, and aren't except to those who hate the dominant culture and blame it instead of themselves for failure. Ownership is freedom, and it is discouraged, by those that say they want to improve things and those that are benefitting from the underclass industry. Now who can afford to or would want to buy the ugly high rise warehouses called gov't housing and begin to recraft a new neighbourhood. The massive interference of the gov't is the problem. They get crappy schools, crappy housing, crappy services, and they have no control over changing the situation. That is the root of rage.

[avg_freeper]

This article is chocked full of the purple journalism ("necrotic wastelands of the urban conglomerations", "ugly megaliths erupting from bleak concrete") and tired old cliches one expects from Fred's site.

Black America isn't synonymous with the big-city socialist hellholes liberals have constructed for them. Away from these "ugly megaliths" there are "black communities" that I'd feel safe strolling through barefoot at midnight. Just as there's "white neighborhoods" I wouldn't be caught sprinting through at 3:00pm (I used to live in one of those).

This train of thought, that a race of people are bound to their regression and incapable of change for the better is held widely by liberals. I think this was stated best by Professor Bunyip writing about our success in the middle east:

"How dare they foist democracy, an end to tyranny, property rights and freedom of speech on those quaint little brown-ish people, whose station in life is to remain basket cases so that superior types at the Silly and other news organs will always have someone to patronise?"

So liberals use the prejudice of lowered expectations to make their selves feel better. I believe the author of this piece uses it to make him feel worse or at least frighten others into similar dejection.

[gregwest]

About 20 years ago, I was contemplating the very things Dr. Hill writes about while I was composing a song called "Effingham Street." Effingham Street used to be a lively downtown commercial district in Portsmouth, Virginia. My grandmother used to haul me down there with her while she tried on dresses and shopped for shoes at some fancy ladies stores. I was always bored stiff waiting for her to get done, but I enjoyed going downtown, getting a some candy at the Leggett store kiosk, and sometimes riding the bus down the street (it only cost a dime back then).

Portsmouth's Effingham Street today is the dividing line between the fashionable "Old Town" district where upscale whites and blacks live in restored 19th century homes and stroll along the waterfront while the sun shines. At night, you only go outside to go somewhere else with your car doors locked. From Effingham Street outward for several miles is nothing but urban blight and the individuals Dr. Hill described. It's a shame.

Similarly, I grew up not far away in an urban neighborhood in Norfolk called Fairmount Park. It was a nice place back then, but the blacks moved in and the whites moved out. Today, there are nightly shootings, drugs, vandalism, etc. I'm sure there are a lot of you who can tell the same story.

Is it racism that creates ghettos? Years ago I would have said yes, but as I get older, I come to think of it as a security problem, not a racial one. As a young man without a family, I was concerned only for my own safety, and of course I thought I was "immortal." Now as a mid-40s guy with kids, I've had to worry about the safety of predominantly black high school where my son was beat up by black students and robbed for $20 and a movie pass. My daughter graduates from there this year. She's the last of my children in public schools. (We home school the younger two).

I've seen racism. My parents came from an era when the last vestiges of segregation were hanging on. Once, when I was 10, I brought home a new classmate who had moved into the neighborhood. He happened to be what we called Negro back then. When he left the house a couple of hour later, my mom told me to never invite him back and threw away the glass he drank some milk from.

Racism can be overcome. Even my mother, in her later years, moderated her prejudices and befriended African-Americans who worked with my father when his job in the Coast Guard took him to Alaska. Racism is a product of fear. Once my parents were out of an environment where they felt threatened by black people, they were willing to embrace them as individuals.

Remembering my mother's poor example (but appreciative of the changes in her attitudes later on) I raised my children to be "color blind." As I worked in the Air Force, I served side-by-side with people of all races. I lived in Air Force family housing and my kids made no differences in race when choosing their friends. Of course, for the most part, that's a very controlled, secure, and safe environment. Many of the African-Americans I knew said they joined the service because it offered them a way out of the ghetto.

I spent much of my time in the service in Germany and Alaska. In Germany, if a black serviceman went jogging before sunrise or after dark, the German police would arrest them. The German's assumption was, if you're black, outside after dark, and running, you must be up to no good. In Alaska, the biggest complaint that black service members had was lack of hair care items in the local stores. (The servicemembers were outsiders to the local racial issues between Alaskan Natives and non-natives).

When we returned to Virginia in 1998, I knew what I was coming back to. This time I was bringing a family. I worried about the safety of my color-blind kids. I didn't want to impart any racist sentiments into them, because they really didn't have any racial prejudices at all. I had successfully insulated them from having to face that particular evil.

The big question was, how could I teach my kids to be wary of the black underclass for their own protection and not impart prejudice? They had black, middle-class friends. They would be "babes in the woods" if I didn't do something.

I decided to just explain to them that they would encounter a different culture and that they'd have to assess individuals on their own merits. They'd have to discern between people who shared the moral values we had taught them and those whose morality taught them that ignorance, intimidation, violence, and crime were acceptable as long as you didn't get caught. I prepared them as gently as I could.

After a couple of months back in Virginia, as they finished up the school year, I asked them how it was going, to see if they'd had any problems. At this time, my oldest was like 12 or 13. He said that the black kids in middle school cut in front of white kids in the lunch line and dared them to challenge them or report it to the teacher. Coercion and threats were used to occasionally muscle kids for their lunch money, pencils, lined paper, etc. In short, it hadn't changed at all.

As my oldest kids finished their school years, they learned coping skills, disarming potential adversaries with goodwill and humor. They learned, however, to be careful. Two of my kids' best friends were African-American kids who were people of high standards, good manners, ambition, and respect. I was glad to see it. Nevertheless, my kids have learned to be "wise as serpents but harmless as doves" like Jesus said.

This year, my daughter will graduate with honors. Some of her black school mates will go on to college with scholarships. Many more will join the military or go to work in the shipyards or other useful professions. Yet a large number of her class, perhaps at least a third, will head into the correctional system in the next couple of years.

Perhaps this isn't the appropriate forum for such a discussion. Baring your soul on such an issue can be dangerous. I can't say I have any solution to the problem, just some observations. Most of all, I just want to say that it's not my fault.

I never owned a slave.
I never oppressed anyone or denied anyone his rights.
It isn't my fault that some blacks reject the same free education that set my kids on the path to success.
It's not my fault that someone's mother slept with five guys and had five children by different men, all of whom abandoned them and left them in poverty.
It's not my fault that one out of four black men in Virginia can't vote because they have felony convictions.

White people can't fix the consequences of bad choices by blacks. We face the same challenges. Could it be that a higher percentage of whites simply make better choices? Do fewer white teenagers use drugs or have out-of-wedlock births? Perhaps it is racist that the business world has its own rules that make it difficult for a Shaneeqwa to get ahead, or someone with dreadlocks, or someone who walks around with the waistband of his trousers around his knees. We all make adjustments to succeed. Try going through basic training and refusing to get a haircut, shave, and wearing a uniform improperly. Success imitates success.

I once traveled to Beatty, Nevada on an Air Force mission to the test ranges in the desert. In that little town on the edge of Death Valley, there was a "help wanted" sign in every store and restaurant window. I have been in 39 of the 50 states. In every small town I passed through, there were farms needing farmhands, there were businesses hiring. There were opportunities to start and own businesses, even so humble as a hot dog stand on Main Street. The United States is a land of opportunity still.

If I was a poor, ghetto-bound black, I'd consider doing what some of my Air Force fellows had done. I'd get up and get out. The military has many opportunities for rewarding careers and education. If I was completely destitute, I'd panhandle enough cash to get on a Greyhound bus and go out to the heartland of America. There are jobs there. There is opportunity. Sure, you start at the bottom, but the road goes up from there. That's what most of us do. (In the Air Force, they called E-1's "jeeps." It stood for junior enlisted expendable personnel.)

I apologize for the length of this post. To conclude, the reason Effingham Street died as a commercial area and Fairmount Park blighted was not a black/white issue. It was a security issue. When blacks moved into those areas, whites didn't feel safe. Why didn't they feel safe? Because crime measurably increased. Why do crime, drugs, vandalism, robbery, rape, and violence increase when blacks move into a neighborhood? That's not for me to answer. That's for the Jessie Jacksons, Al Sharptons, and other black leaders to answer. Bill Cosby's "turn the mirror around" speech is a first step. Louis Farrakhan has been saying similar things for years.

When can real interracial dialog and healing begin? Let's sit down an talk once my youngest son can go to school without fear of getting shoved to the back of the lunch line or having his lunch money beaten out of him by a classmate from Fairmount Park. See you then.