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Is this your way of saying that one problem of ghetto trash is the lack of strong male authority figures (IE: too many households with single mothers and no father figure to speak of)?

If so, I agree.

I also think that traditional things like educational achievement, reading, and hard work aren't as emphasized in "ghetto trash" communities.

Children are often presented with several bad options to "get out of the ghetto" (fostered by the media)

1. Join a gang, deal drugs
2. Become a basketball player
3. Become a rapper

Rarely is it encouraged to study, go to school, work hard, and try to attend college.

Also, as the T.O. debacle demonstrates. Products of this culture receive little to no instruction on basic financial management. Most come from families that are paycheck to paycheck, many of whom also carry large amounts of debt.

I think it's interesting some areas of Philly where the homes are all broken down, yet I see little children wearing $200 air jordans, $150 football jerseys, $30 hats, and nice jeans that cost anywhere from $80-$100.

Of course what Aestu has said is not racist...unfortunately though, this is too often the charge thrown at people who bring up these cultural issues. I think of when Bill Cosby discussed the laziness and apathy that pervades african-american males, and the problem of too many families with no leadership, or parents with drug issues. Criticize and you're labeled a racist.

I think of my step mother who taught in inner city schools for many years. The stories she would tell me about the conditions of these children would break my heart. She'd have shampoo and soap on hand in her classroom because children would come to school smelling awful and getting made fun of (they came from homes where parents didnt bother to instruct about basic hygiene). She'd have extra snacks, milk, cereal bars, etc. on hand. Children would come in to school and hadn't eaten since the previous day's school-supported lunch.

The worst was when she would describe the children that were already being initiated into gangs in 4th grade. They could come in with burns and scars on their arms, a right of passage.

Ghetto culture is a sad situation all around. I wonder what the Chinese immigrants who were second class citizens did...or the Irish who came over and were likewise discriminated against and prevented from holding certain jobs. How about japanese-Americans who overcame being thrown in internment camps and treated as the enemy..How have they been able to recover and succeed while others haven't? Did the institution of slavery and Jim Crow era racism hold these communities back that much? Is the increasing economic gap between the rich and the poor preventing any sort of progress?

What's the solution?

I doubt there is one.

I do agree with something you said... I believe the poor stay poor because they have the mentality of the poor... and if you try to teach the poor otherwise it's going to come down to their willingness to learn, change and help themselves -- all of which takes effort.

Yes, basically, but I think it's more than that.

A man needs self-respect more than anything else in this world. When that is taken from him, he feels he has nothing to lose. When I say "disenfranchised", I don't just mean economically, what I really mean is that black people feel they don't get a fair shake. They know that everyone and everything sees them with a jaundiced eye. They know they are seen as black first and everything else second. That has a real grinding effect on a man, on a culture, and I believe that is a major factor in why black men have such profound social issues.

I think that in a way, the civil rights movement actually made things worse in that it had the immediate effect of bringing black America in greater day-to-day contact with white America, with the result that the negative social effects of racism (as opposed to the strictly economic) became more pronounced. Black people were more free to disdain white racism when the two subcultures were more discrete.

I also believe that slavery itself did much to weed out a disposition for initiative and willfulness from the gene pool. People like that wouldn't live long enough to reproduce. Jews, of course, are often believed to have the opposite heritage.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

The solution is enfranchisement - social programs that benefit all Americans, not just the black or the white.

This is why some leaders in the black community make a big deal about housing, education, parks and medical care. White people tend not to see the connection. The common theme in all those solutions is enfranchisement and self-respect.

It's true of white people too, though - read about what white people were like before they started living in a civil manner, when life was mired in squalor and superstition. What changed wasn't just material technology, it was also the transformation of peasants into citizens through a change in social perception.

The Bastille was a watershed event in history. But what is far less known is that there were many peasant rebellions during the Middle Ages - chronic, even. For the European peasants as for the Roman plebs, these revolts were easily put down less because of superior force and more because of the collective sense of inferiority and insecurity that peasants and plebs had. Same with black people here in America. It's driven by social perception and living conditions.

What ultimately happened was, like I said, two things: things got so bad that people were willing to put it all on the line, and also a change in social perception that made the old status quo untenable. This is the real meaning of the first sentence of "A Tale of Two Cities" - how social confusion changed the equation and made the French Revolution possible, turning France from a nation of filthy peasants to a nation of citizens who are too proud to take baths. We will see this in America too. Today, protestors willingly accept being arrested and complying with the cops rather than pulling out AR15s because at some level even they accept the legitimacy of state authority. Make no mistake - that wall can, and will, come down. This is an example of why a moral code is vital to the long-term success of any authority. The many will not resist the few only so long as they believe they ought not. Fear alone will be overcome when the stakes get high enough.



You're looking at it from a "jaundiced" point of view. It's not a matter of "teaching" the poor, it's a matter of changing social conditions and opening opportunities.

History teaches us that by and large, people simply can't help themselves. This hasn't changed since the days of Charles Dickens. It hasn't changed since the days of Louis XVI. It hasn't changed since the days of the Gracchi. It hasn't changed since the days of Alcibiades. But in every time and place people always regard the poor as inherently evil and beyond help and not as victims of a social condition that can be dealt with in an enlightened way.

Such efforts don't take place within the term of a single president (unless it's FDR) - such efforts take decades and require clear and unequivocal vision. Hence usually it takes a tyrant or an invader to make the necessary change.



Still black first.

When I say "the grinding", what I mean is how hard it is for people to look to the far future when the present is so socially oppressive. By way of example I could point out how your own complacency makes you, too, reluctant to consider a wider worldview.

By contrast, it is no coincidence that most of history's great tyrants - Caesar, Sulla, Napoleon, Hitler, Alcibiades - were frustrated, well-educated upper-middle class people who were snubbed by their peers and knew enough about the world to feel compelled to develop an entirely different way of looking at it - and a willingness to take up arms against their countrymen against the status quo.



Those are people who never lost their dignity. That's the big difference.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

There are some people I truly want to hurt. (No one any of you would know, certainly not anyone in WoW).

My great dream is to destroy their livelihoods and reputation, then force them to watch as their families are dismembered then flayed alive. But them - I would leave them alive, unharmed, and give them a rich stipend to live on, in exchange, they would do some menial clerical work.

I know this would cause them far greater suffering than being allowed to share in their families' fate. Emphasizing not only their powerlessness to protect those they love, but even their powerlessness to resist on a moral level - hence the stipend and easy job - would destroy their self-respect and break their spirit. Proof one can, in fact, kill a man's soul.

Also see: 1984, Starcraft: Brood War (To Slay The Beast)

(And people say I don't understand people...)

(Disclaimer: comments are purely hypothetical / allegorical / rhetorical)

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Reported to DHS/FBI.