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To: AmishDude
You make a good point, it a difficult one to discuss in America: the behavior and attitude issues of many blacks are class issues, not racial issues.

In white society, those who display similar socially deviant attitudes and behaviors are marginalized and remain stuck in a relatively small lumpenproletariat or underclass. One thinks of England's soccer hooligans.

Members of groups outside of the traditionally white, primarily Anglo-Saxon, middle and upper middle classes, regardless of race, who wish to be accepted and attain the benefits of middle and upper middle class status must expect to conform to the attitudes and behavior norms appropriate for those classes. And, as with accents, it's almost harder because there are those of ill will who look for a 'slip', a reversion to former attitudes or behaviors, as a way to reject the upwardly mobile minorities. That's sad, but you can only ultimately change hearts with goodwill and behavior, not with demands and 'in your fac' behavior.

50 posted on 05/30/2002 10:49:33 AM PDT by CatoRenasci
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To: CatoRenasci
This is a very broad issue and one that I am not qualified to discuss and that most of America is too cowed to even take up (except on FR, bless you JimRob). What is interesting is how immigrants adapt. Look at immigrants from Asia (largely China, India, Pakistan). In the US, they stay in the middle-class for several generations and accept American middle-class mores, at least in public. In Britain, though, there is a growing BOSCO (British, of sub-continent origin) underclass.

Here, I'd like to mention a little of my background. Few in my family, before this generation, were educated in any real way. My family was what one might classify as the so-called "working class". But the more I got educated, the more I met people whose college and post-graduate education was assumed and not some sort of miracle.

I suspect that most educated and middle-class blacks have many close relatives who are very uneducated and it's hard to divorce their kids from some very bad elements.

lumpenproletariat

Is that a real word? I love it! Probably German.

Members of groups outside of the traditionally white, primarily Anglo-Saxon,

I'd disagree with that last one. The Italian, Irish, German (see screen name) and Jewish middle-class is (publicly) indistinguishable from the Anglo-Saxon one.

That's sad, but you can only ultimately change hearts with goodwill and behavior, not with demands and 'in your face' behavior.

"You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar," excellent point.

53 posted on 05/30/2002 11:09:43 AM PDT by AmishDude
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