THE HALLMARK OF THE UNDERCLASS

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Versions of every program being proposed by the administration in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina have been tried before and evaluated. We already know that the programs are mismatched with the characteristics of the underclass, says Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute.

Job training? Unemployment in the underclass is not caused by lack of jobs or of job skills, but by the inability to get up every morning and go to work. A homesteading act? The lack of home ownership is not caused by the inability to save money from meager earnings, but because the concept of thrift is alien. You name it, we've tried it. It doesn't work with the underclass, says Murray.

The crime rate has been dropping for 13 years, but the proportion of young men who grow up unsocialized and who, given the opportunity, commit crimes, has not; criminality, measured by the percentage of the population under correctional supervision has risen from 1.9 percent in 1992 to 2.4 percent in 2003. Among black males ages 20-24, the percentage not working or looking for work in 1954 was 9 percent, but that rate grew to 30 percent in 1999, a year when employers were frantically seeking workers for every level of job. The illegitimacy ratio, the percentage of births by single women, was 4 percent in the 1950s and has risen to 35 percent as of 2003; the black illegitimacy ratio in 2003 was 68 percent, up from 24 percent in the 1960s. Poor people who are not part of the underclass seldom need help to get out of poverty. Despite the exceptions that get the newspaper ink, the statistical reality is that people who get into the American job market and stay there seldom remain poor unless they do something self-destructive. And behaving self-destructively is the hallmark of the underclass, says Murray.

Source: Charles Murray, "The Hallmark of the Underclass," Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2005.

Property taxes fund education, how could you expect any minority group to build a good education system since 1965.

The Washington DC public school system is essentially all black, and has been among the most expensive in the country for years. For 2005, spending was $13,330 per student which is more than any other state, and about 50% more than the national average.

With all that money, they've built one of the worst education systems in the country.

"The lack of hope is to blame. When everything around is shit, even your schools, there isn't much hope to go around."

What a bunch of touchy-feely, psycho-babble nonsense. I really hope you are kidding. If that were really true, than none of the millions of immigrants who came to the U.S. in the early 1900's would have made it. And history tells us that isn't true. How much hope did they have living in dirty overcrowded conditions. No clothes, shoes, certainly no welfare; many didn't even know the language. The one thing they did have was pride. They wanted to make a life for themselves and their children at any cost. They valued their family. They would have been highly embarassed to not work....learn the language...or do well for their families. There are no values or ethics in the current generations of the welfare culture. One reason why there are very few Asians among welfare recipients is their cultural values.

The fact is it takes a super hero to come out of the ghetto without by not conforming to the sub-culture.

I am not diminishing the accomplishments of those that did, but that is simply not true. (BTW my grandparents lived & died in the "ghetto", I spent a lot of time each week in spanish harlem. It was every disgusting thing that you think of including vermin, roaches, urine in the halls, junkies on the street and the pervading sweet smell of decaying garbage in the vestibule.)

I will grant you that if your parents are firmly set in the ghetto mentality, it is hard to see another way. But simply exposure to alternatives opens doors. Now that may mean things as simple as a job at McDonald's or outside the neighborhood, church programs, a magnet school that mixes kids from different backgrounds, scouting programs, military service, a couple of smart friends, etc.

I work at a college that has traditionally catered to 1st generation college students (as I was). We have students from some of the worst neighborhoods & schools in NYC, many in mentoring programs to help retention rates. Many are receiving HUGE amounts of financial aid. There is MUCH MORE help available now than there was before. College was not even a dream for poor families, like my father's in the bowery (lower east side Italian ghetto) or my mother's in spanish harlem.

A much higher percentage of young people attend college than 40 years ago, PARTICULARLY minority students. I'm pretty sure you would agree that education is the fastest ticket out of poverty. In fact I've read that it is the MOST relavant factor in studies of income disparity. More of a factor than family income background, race, sex and immigration status or geography (rural/urban).

There is much more opportunity to get out of poverty now. You don't have to be a super-hero. But I will agree that those that have isolated themselves and their families, particularly through substance abuse, ARE firmly entrenched. If the opportunities are there, and you turn your back and refuse to make the effort for either yourself or your kids, who is to blame?

Do you deny that inner city minorities were at a disadvantage starting in 1965?

I think they were at a disadvantage BEFORE 1965 too. I know there were many more prosperous minorities in the inner city before 1965 (they left for the same reasons the whites left the inner cities). But there was always an underclass of poor in the inner cities. And not just "minorities," if by that you mean African-American.

You can't help to have a bad attitude when you have been at a disadvantage the whole time your people have been in a country.

I don't think my mother-in-law's family in a town named Mine 7, PA or something like that had a great attitude either. When she got tired of saving flour sacks for recycling into washcloths and canning food so the family would have something during winter, she left. Those eastern european coal miners in PA were at some disadvantage too. She left to do piece-work in NYC and send some money to her mother. I guess she had a bad attitude too, but that didn't stop her from trying to do more than just survive.

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