There may be serious pollution in East St. Louis, but's that's not the causative factor for the dysfunctional society that has arisen there.
And the proper question to ask is not why is East St. Louis in particular so bad, but why do we have these dysfunctional ghettoes all over the country in places like Detroit, South Bronx, Cabrini-Green in Chicago, Compton in LA, etc. etc.?
Are people from the ghetto discriminated against by employers? Yes, of course and for good reason. No rational employer wants to hire employees infused with the destructive ghetto culture.
First, many of the problems are the direct result of failed government policies arising out of LBJ's "War on Poverty":
- concentrating poor people into massive housing projects. Many of these people are not poor because of lack of opportunity or racism, but because of drug or alcohol addiction, mental illness, criminality, etc. And by concentrating all of these people into one physical space, the social pathologies spread and infect nearly everyone living there. Also, people living there don't have an ownership stake in their home and many of them therefore treat it like sh!t.
- AFDC and other programs which have contributed to the destruction of the black family. Illegitimacy rates in these areas approach 100%. Because of the way welfare programs have been set up, the federal government has essentially kicked the black father out of the family and has itself taken over that role. Furthermore, it is an iron rule that whatever one subsidizes, one gets more of. By subsidizing "babies born to babies", the problem gets exponentially greater with each generation.
- Forcing these families to send their children to failing public schools. Because so much energy of the teachers is spent trying to maintain a minimum level of discipline in classrooms filled with ghetto thugs, no one learns anything. Teachers are basically just babysitting and killing time. There is literally no hope for an intelligent, hard-working kid to acquire the skills needed to succeed honestly in the society at large. Private schools, especially catholic schools that impose strong discipline, have a remarkable record of success with inner-city minorities but the public school teachers union sees these schools as a threat and successfully defeats programs like vouchers which would help ghetto kids get into schools that will actually help them succeed.
And second, the blacks living in these areas are failed by their political and cultural leaders.
- the prevailing belief system is the ideology of "victimhood." People are told they can never succeed because "the Man" will always keep them down. Their political leaders continually repeat these messages to the people in these areas in order to keep themselves in power.
- "It's the culture, stupid." Criminals and gangsters are esteemed and glorified in movies, music and on the streets. And the culture feeds the unrealistic idea that kids can achieve success in the NBA or NFL, which only happens in reality to an infinitesmally small percentage of people.
But as you can see, a proper diagnosis of these problems lays the fault for these problems at liberal policies and liberal cultural institutions. This is a direct threat to the position of liberals in universities and government, and so it can never be admitted, and the only way these liberals can keep their positions is to cry "racism" and play on the politics and sociology of victimhood.
Kozol also makes the point, that the kids are sick many with lead poisoning. What do you both say to that. I'm playing devil's advocate here but what do you do about that?
But what came to my mind was the value of companies going out-of-business -- bankruptcy. Until the liquidation of bankruptcy and corporate dissolution, the valuable assets -- the hard assets, the real estate, the human workforce and the customer base are all held in the sway of a poor company -- mismanaged or barely competent. The demise of the failing enterprise in bankruptcy is most-always healthy for the community and for the economy. Supporting a weak and failing company impoverishes its investors, under-utilizes its workers, acts as a trapping blockage real estate wise, intellectual property wise to new business and innovation, saps community morale, and is an inertial force keeping its customer base from switching to innovators and alternatives.
The same applies to nieghborhods and cities.
One of the most vital needs of a vibrant city is its demolition program, the razing of delinquent and empty properties, one of the vital needs of any community is vulture investors who take over failing housing and businesses to rend them apart -- demolish and redo as something else.
I wonder if EStL has somehow impedded that vital demolition aspect by bureaucracy or law.