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Reparation talk in the House

Author's bio- Ron Haskins
https://www.brookings.edu/experts/ron-haskins/
Haskins previously co-chaired the Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission appointed by Speaker Paul Ryan. He is the co-author of Show Me the Evidence: Obama’s Fight for Rigor and Evidence in Social Policy (2015) and the author of Work over Welfare: The Inside Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law (2006). Beginning in 1986, he spent 14 years on the staff of the House Ways and Means Committee and was subsequently appointed to be the Senior Advisor to President Bush for Welfare Policy. In 1997, Haskins was selected by the National Journal as one of the 100 most influential people in the federal government. He and his colleague Isabel Sawhill were awarded the 2016 Moynihan Prize by the American Academy of Political and Social Science for being champions of the public good and advocates for public policy based on social science research.
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But...but...but... IT'S BROOKINGS!!!!
 
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It's not controversial to say that white people in general have an advantage, but that isn't the whole story either. Anyone who grows up in an intact family has that same advantage, but it isn't race based and it isn't racist to say that the black community has had more problems with maintaining a nuclear family for the last 80 years. That being said, the solution is not to write a bunch of checks that just end up going to rich people in the end anyway.
 
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IMO, we shouldn't be asking what we can do to help, we should be asking what we are doing that hurts.

Do you think a large segment outside of the black community legitimately cares and/or asks those questions when not provoked by reparations talk?

I'd imagine one way to truly make America great is to repair our inner cities so I agree that those are the important questions for sure.
 
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They never bother to ask that question. So, maybe calling them racist isn't totally correct. They are just dumb.

It's an honest question on my part. Bc I wholeheartedly agree with what he said from a factual perspective. I also know that the erosion of the family unit has been central to this whole issue since the ver first African slave stepped foot here and I feel like that part of the discussion and the impact it has had over centuries always gets left out.
 
It's an honest question on my part. Bc I wholeheartedly agree with what he said from a factual perspective. I also know that the erosion of the family unit has been central to this whole issue since the ver first African slave stepped foot here and I feel like that part of the discussion and the impact it has had over centuries always gets left out.
It’s hard to discuss issues like this because any white person who brings this up is quickly condemned as a racist.

Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams have some pretty strong writings in this area. It’s hard to ignore the effect social policies have had in eroding the family unit but that isn’t the whole story. There’s a vicious cycle in effect with the policies though. The more the policies incentivize/enable single-parent families, the more the culture normalizes single-parent families, the more problems we have with children of all races from single-parent families, the more it appears that we need to assist the single-parent families.
 
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It’s hard to discuss issues like this because any white person who brings this up is quickly condemned as a racist.

Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams have some pretty strong writings in this area. It’s hard to ignore the effect social policies have had in eroding the family unit but that isn’t the whole story. There’s a vicious cycle in effect with the policies though. The more the policies incentivize/enable single-parent families, the more the culture normalizes single-parent families, the more problems we have with children of all races from single-parent families, the more it appears that we need to assist the single-parent families.

I agree with you. And it's unfortunate b/c the ONLY way this shit gets fixed is through action of White Americans. I think it can be framed in such a manner that's more palatable though. Just saying "the problem is the breakdown of the black family" to a bunch of people who already feel victimized (and rightfully so) probably isn't the right approach even though the data has pointed that direction for decades. So the better question is what happened over the last 75+ years for the decline of the black family to happen? Your answer is ghettoization and in some cases even hyperghettos (see Chicago). So that is what we need to study and reverse.
 
It's a wealth issue.

Start poor stay poor.
Start rich stay rich.

Blacks were started as poor as possible and kept there with 100 years of racist laws and practices. Upward mobility is statistically irrelevant. Most people in America do about as well as their parents and their kids will do as well as them.
 
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It's a wealth issue.

Start poor stay poor.
Start rich stay rich.

Blacks were started as poor as possible and kept there with 100 years of racist laws and practices. Upward mobility is statistically irrelevant. Most people in America do about as well as their parents and their kids will do as well as them.
On the article i shared earlier, how is that white people can drop out school and have kids and still make more money than black people with college degrees?
 
I mean at the end of the day yea but fact remains there was a period in my grandparents life where the black middle class was on the rise and there was certainly no wealth. This all stagnated and declined with the onset of ghettoization in the north post the great migration. These hyperghettos have led to abhorrent conditions which have destroyed the family and thus any chance of a future for most children. Rinse and repeat...

But of course wealth brings you out of the ghetto so here we are back to the question of how you do that.


----------------------------------------------------


"Most analysts assumed that once the nation removed discriminatory legal barriers and expanded employment opportunities, blacks would advance, just as poor immigrants had.

Conditions for testing that proposition looked good. Between the 1954 Browndecision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, legal racism had been dismantled. And the economy was humming along; in the first five years of the sixties, the economy generated 7 million jobs.

Yet those most familiar with what was called “the Negro problem” were getting nervous. About half of all blacks had moved into the middle class by the mid-sixties, but now progress seemed to be stalling. The rise in black income relative to that of whites, steady throughout the fifties, was sputtering to a halt. More blacks were out of work in 1964 than in 1954. Most alarming, after rioting in Harlem and Paterson, New Jersey, in 1964, the problems of the northern ghettos suddenly seemed more intractable than those of the George Wallace South.

Moynihan, then assistant secretary of labor and one of a new class of government social scientists, was among the worriers, as he puzzled over his charts. One in particular caught his eye. Instead of rates of black male unemployment and welfare enrollment running parallel as they always had, in 1962 they started to diverge in a way that would come to be called “Moynihan’s scissors.” In the past, policymakers had assumed that if the male heads of household had jobs, women and children would be provided for. This no longer seemed true. Even while more black men—though still “catastrophically” low numbers—were getting jobs, more black women were joining the welfare rolls. Moynihan and his aides decided that a serious analysis was in order.

Convinced that “the Negro revolution . . . , a movement for equality as well as for liberty,” was now at risk, Moynihan wanted to make several arguments in his report. The first was empirical and would quickly become indisputable: single-parent families were on the rise in the ghetto. But other points were more speculative and sparked a partisan dispute that has lasted to this day. Moynihan argued that the rise in single-mother families was not due to a lack of jobs but rather to a destructive vein in ghetto culture that could be traced back to slavery and Jim Crow discrimination. Though black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier had already introduced the idea in the 1930s, Moynihan’s argument defied conventional social-science wisdom. As he wrote later, “The work began in the most orthodox setting, the U.S. Department of Labor, to establish at some level of statistical conciseness what ‘everyone knew’: that economic conditions determine social conditions. Whereupon, it turned out that what everyone knew was evidently not so.”

https://www.city-journal.org/html/black-family-40-years-lies-12872.html
 
It's a wealth issue.

Start poor stay poor.
Start rich stay rich.

Blacks were started as poor as possible and kept there with 100 years of racist laws and practices. Upward mobility is statistically irrelevant. Most people in America do about as well as their parents and their kids will do as well as them.

that's a nice conspiracy, it's a shame the facts disagree with you:

"Indeed, 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation, and a stunning 90% by the third, according to the Williams Group wealth consultancy."

source: http://money.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/

ps, explain why Oprah is rich when she was born in poverty
 
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On the article i shared earlier, how is that white people can drop out school and have kids and still make more money than black people with college degrees?

And then of course you have flat out racism. This part needs to stop being conveniently ignored just b/c half black Obama was elected. No one with any reasonable intelligence should think this doesn't play a real part at minimum at the subconscious level of those in power.
 
One thing is certain. Mental poverty is 100% a real thing. Every bit as real as financial poverty and arguably worse. Anyone who has spent any real time in ghettos can tell you how fuked up the ghetto mentality is. This was not a thing with my grandparents and those before them.

You ever hear the saying about taking someone out the ghetto but not the ghetto out of the person? Is it a perfect saying? Hell no. But it sure as hell didn't come from nowhere. It's a shit environment that nobody should aspire to want to be in. Those that make it out have incredibly positive influences that are lacking that mentality and/or a very special talent that society values.

It has gone backwards. What are the best policies to end those environments
 
I agree with you. And it's unfortunate b/c the ONLY way this shit gets fixed is through action of White Americans. I think it can be framed in such a manner that's more palatable though. Just saying "the problem is the breakdown of the black family" to a bunch of people who already feel victimized (and rightfully so) probably isn't the right approach even though the data has pointed that direction for decades. So the better question is what happened over the last 75+ years for the decline of the black family to happen? Your answer is ghettoization and in some cases even hyperghettos (see Chicago). So that is what we need to study and reverse.
There were ghettos pre-New Deal, though and the rate of black nuclear families was over 70% and the black teenage unemployment rate was in the teens. That’s flipped upside down over the last hundred years. It’s been a cascade of things both internal and external.

I don’t know if I agree that it takes a white man’s actions to fix the problems. I grew up on the south side of Chicago with progressive parents. They met each other in line to get into a Rising Up Angry event. I’ve seen alderman after alderman after reverend after community organizer blame outsiders for local problems and call on outsiders to fix local problems. It just isn’t working.

I truly believe that it starts at the individual, then the family, then the community, and then the rest. What are the cultural pressures that need to be changed and how do we change those? How to we convince young people that education is better than a quick buck. That staying out of trouble is better than getting in trouble. That there is a point to living past 20. No white man’s talk or white man’s action is going to be the answer to any of those questions.

President Obama had a hell of an opportunity (still does) and a hell of a podium to extol the virtues of hard work and dedication and a future that is what you make of it. Unfortunately, it feels like he wasted a lot of that opportunity on the same old south side-style politics.
 
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I mean at the end of the day yea but fact remains there was a period in my grandparents life where the black middle class was on the rise and there was certainly no wealth. This all stagnated and declined with the onset of ghettoization in the north post the great migration. These hyperghettos have led to abhorrent conditions which have destroyed the family and thus any chance of a future for most children. Rinse and repeat...

But of course wealth brings you out of the ghetto so here we are back to the question of how you do that.


----------------------------------------------------


"Most analysts assumed that once the nation removed discriminatory legal barriers and expanded employment opportunities, blacks would advance, just as poor immigrants had.

Conditions for testing that proposition looked good. Between the 1954 Browndecision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, legal racism had been dismantled. And the economy was humming along; in the first five years of the sixties, the economy generated 7 million jobs.

Yet those most familiar with what was called “the Negro problem” were getting nervous. About half of all blacks had moved into the middle class by the mid-sixties, but now progress seemed to be stalling. The rise in black income relative to that of whites, steady throughout the fifties, was sputtering to a halt. More blacks were out of work in 1964 than in 1954. Most alarming, after rioting in Harlem and Paterson, New Jersey, in 1964, the problems of the northern ghettos suddenly seemed more intractable than those of the George Wallace South.

Moynihan, then assistant secretary of labor and one of a new class of government social scientists, was among the worriers, as he puzzled over his charts. One in particular caught his eye. Instead of rates of black male unemployment and welfare enrollment running parallel as they always had, in 1962 they started to diverge in a way that would come to be called “Moynihan’s scissors.” In the past, policymakers had assumed that if the male heads of household had jobs, women and children would be provided for. This no longer seemed true. Even while more black men—though still “catastrophically” low numbers—were getting jobs, more black women were joining the welfare rolls. Moynihan and his aides decided that a serious analysis was in order.

Convinced that “the Negro revolution . . . , a movement for equality as well as for liberty,” was now at risk, Moynihan wanted to make several arguments in his report. The first was empirical and would quickly become indisputable: single-parent families were on the rise in the ghetto. But other points were more speculative and sparked a partisan dispute that has lasted to this day. Moynihan argued that the rise in single-mother families was not due to a lack of jobs but rather to a destructive vein in ghetto culture that could be traced back to slavery and Jim Crow discrimination. Though black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier had already introduced the idea in the 1930s, Moynihan’s argument defied conventional social-science wisdom. As he wrote later, “The work began in the most orthodox setting, the U.S. Department of Labor, to establish at some level of statistical conciseness what ‘everyone knew’: that economic conditions determine social conditions. Whereupon, it turned out that what everyone knew was evidently not so.”

https://www.city-journal.org/html/black-family-40-years-lies-12872.html
Wealth is a set of skills and a mindset and even a familial culture. We’ve been throwing money at people and hoping it would magically multiply into wealth. For some, they’ve been able to keep their heads up long enough to make the transition. But too many aren’t. We have to go about it a different way.
 
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On the article i shared earlier, how is that white people can drop out school and have kids and still make more money than black people with college degrees?
It would’ve been nice for the article to explore what is different about the groups besides the color of their skin. Did the New School study explore factors or just skin deep?
 
It would’ve been nice for the article to explore what is different about the groups besides the color of their skin. Did the New School study explore factors or just skin deep?
Apparently, you neglected the context of why I posted that.
 
President Obama had a hell of an opportunity (still does) and a hell of a podium to extol the virtues of hard work and dedication and a future that is what you make of it.
What does this exactly mean anyway....leave whitey alone?
 
Ok, so please tell us why then. At least one factor beyond racist whitey is holding black people down.
No, you tell us why white people can drop out of school and white women get knocked up without a degree while black women have college degrees and yet still make less money.
 
Youre par for the course.
You’re playing a part. I even put in the next sentence after the on you quoted the answer to your question. But you’re hell bent on impugning me with some racist motive. It’s an old, tired ploy that I’m through entertaining.
 
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You’re playing a part. I even put in the next sentence after the on you quoted the answer to your question. But you’re hell bent on impugning me with some racist motive. It’s an old, tired ploy that I’m through entertaining.

Eh not as old and effective as feeling guilty and overcompensating by pandering to "whitey".
 
There were ghettos pre-New Deal, though and the rate of black nuclear families was over 70% and the black teenage unemployment rate was in the teens. That’s flipped upside down over the last hundred years. It’s been a cascade of things both internal and external.

I don’t know if I agree that it takes a white man’s actions to fix the problems. I grew up on the south side of Chicago with progressive parents. They met each other in line to get into a Rising Up Angry event. I’ve seen alderman after alderman after reverend after community organizer blame outsiders for local problems and call on outsiders to fix local problems. It just isn’t working.

I truly believe that it starts at the individual, then the family, then the community, and then the rest. What are the cultural pressures that need to be changed and how do we change those? How to we convince young people that education is better than a quick buck. That staying out of trouble is better than getting in trouble. That there is a point to living past 20. No white man’s talk or white man’s action is going to be the answer to any of those questions.

President Obama had a hell of an opportunity (still does) and a hell of a podium to extol the virtues of hard work and dedication and a future that is what you make of it. Unfortunately, it feels like he wasted a lot of that opportunity on the same old south side-style politics.

Yes segregation existed prior to the New Deal but black ghettos in northern cities skyrocketed in the 30s and 40s.

These ward data show that black isolation was quite low through 1910, when the average black lived in a city that was only 3.8% black and lived in a ward that was overwhelmingly white (only 12.4% black). It rose appreciably by 1920 (when the average black person's ward was 24.4% black), but greatly accelerated after that time, reaching 43.6% in 1930 and 46.2% in 1940. This timing is crucial – blacks’ neighborhoods did not approach being majority black until the 1930s.
Creating the Black Ghetto: Black Residential Patterns Before and During the Great Migration


And white American's most definitely have to be part of the solution for no other reason than they hold a lot of political power and we haven't even begun to talk about War on drugs, war on crime, mass incarceration etc that disproportionately impact black people. I didn't mean to imply the need for a white savior, I surely wouldn't hold my breath for that, I just meant there are policy issues at play as well that need attention.

It should go without saying this is an American problem... not an African American problem. White people don't get to say it's hard to talk about it for fear of being called a racist and then sit on the sideline all while loudly shouting their opinion through their keyboards. Fine, don't get involved in the hood but then don't try and tell me about a hood mentality or tell me "it's as simple as finish high school and don't get preggers". Be useful and work with leaders to stamp out bullshit policies and practices if don't think you can make a difference on the ground. And for the record, I 100% reject the notion that white people can't get involved in the community. It's a terrible attitude (Not saying that's you). And I'm not saying it's easy and that you won't occasionally run in to resistance but what kind of attitudes do you think people of color have run up against when operating in places where some felt they didn't belong?


I truly believe that it starts at the individual, then the family, then the community, and then the rest. What are the cultural pressures that need to be changed and how do we change those? How to we convince young people that education is better than a quick buck. That staying out of trouble is better than getting in trouble. That there is a point to living past 20. No white man’s talk or white man’s action is going to be the answer to any of those questions.

It's most likely not going to happen through talk. I mean Obama is nice and all but it's visibility and individual engagement starting at a very young age from people who have walked in their shoes. They have to lead the charge and SHOW them. It's the only way you break it. So to your point, no you probably can't walk up to the court and gather the youth around and inspire them but the guy who went to an HBCU on a band scholarship and then founded he own entertainment company can. You can then come in and support :) or not..
 
President Obama had a hell of an opportunity (still does) and a hell of a podium to extol the virtues of hard work and dedication and a future that is what you make of it. Unfortunately, it feels like he wasted a lot of that opportunity on the same old south side-style politics.

There we go, again. The old "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" argument. Always a classic that 100% ignores that there is any underlying issue.
How do we get the right to want to solve a problem when they are too busy ignoring the problem?
 
There we go, again. The old "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" argument. Always a classic that 100% ignores that there is any underlying issue.
How do we get the right to want to solve a problem when they are too busy ignoring the problem?
Go solve the problem then. No one is stopping you. No one stopped President Obama from becoming successful either.

Why do you need someone else to solve a problem for you?
 
Yes segregation existed prior to the New Deal but black ghettos in northern cities skyrocketed in the 30s and 40s.

These ward data show that black isolation was quite low through 1910, when the average black lived in a city that was only 3.8% black and lived in a ward that was overwhelmingly white (only 12.4% black). It rose appreciably by 1920 (when the average black person's ward was 24.4% black), but greatly accelerated after that time, reaching 43.6% in 1930 and 46.2% in 1940. This timing is crucial – blacks’ neighborhoods did not approach being majority black until the 1930s.
Creating the Black Ghetto: Black Residential Patterns Before and During the Great Migration


And white American's most definitely have to be part of the solution for no other reason than they hold a lot of political power and we haven't even begun to talk about War on drugs, war on crime, mass incarceration etc that disproportionately impact black people. I didn't mean to imply the need for a white savior, I surely wouldn't hold my breath for that, I just meant there are policy issues at play as well that need attention.

It should go without saying this is an American problem... not an African American problem. White people don't get to say it's hard to talk about it for fear of being called a racist and then sit on the sideline all while loudly shouting their opinion through their keyboards. Fine, don't get involved in the hood but then don't try and tell me about a hood mentality or tell me "it's as simple as finish high school and don't get preggers". Be useful and work with leaders to stamp out bullshit policies and practices if don't think you can make a difference on the ground. And for the record, I 100% reject the notion that white people can't get involved in the community. It's a terrible attitude (Not saying that's you). And I'm not saying it's easy and that you won't occasionally run in to resistance but what kind of attitudes do you think people of color have run up against when operating in places where some felt they didn't belong?




It's most likely not going to happen through talk. I mean Obama is nice and all but it's visibility and individual engagement starting at a very young age from people who have walked in their shoes. They have to lead the charge and SHOW them. It's the only way you break it. So to your point, no you probably can't walk up to the court and gather the youth around and inspire them but the guy who went to an HBCU on a band scholarship and then founded he own entertainment company can. You can then come in and support :) or not..
Good points. I agree that it’s an American problem. America has yet to find a policy that captures the hearts and determination of young black Americans as effectively as gangs and the lifestyle of crime have. Maybe part of the answer is to legalize all drugs and make a legal industry out of them. Take the crime aspect of it out of the places where kids grow up. I don’t know how that would affect gangs but it would certainly remove the easy “big” money.

On an earlier point, we talked to the loss of two-parent families. What policy or outside influence is going to get a man to marry his baby mama and be a father?
 
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Go solve the problem then. No one is stopping you. No one stopped President Obama from becoming successful either.

Why do you need someone else to solve a problem for you?
because chemmie is a do nothing slacktavist. he loves to complain on social media about the problem, blame everyone, piss on every idea that isnt his, but ultimately do nothing about it himself.
 
because chemmie is a do nothing slacktavist. he loves to complain on social media about the problem, blame everyone, piss on every idea that isnt his, but ultimately do nothing about it himself.

It's exactly what I said earlier. He must virtue signal on this subject so that he can tell his douchebag hipster white liberal friends at their douchebag hipster beer bars and restaurants that he's sufficiently Woke and did his bashing of conservatives for the day.

This is all these people need to continue drinking $10 beers and opining about how awesome socialism is in Scandinavia, while doing absolutely nothing to benefit the poor people and minorities that they claim to care soooooooooo much about.
 
Why do you think that is?

I think the basis of it probably started with an unequal criminal justice system largely regarding drug use. A black man is/was more likely to get a longer sentence than a white man for the same crime. That began the cycle of broken families. From that point on it was probably the result of perpetuating drug use and violent crime, over-sexualization, and pop culture that glorified it, but at it's core it was depression. One generation of boys who didn't have a dad around turns into 5 and the cycle just continues for many people who either feel stuck or don't know any different. I feel like African American boys are also just naturally more drawn to sports, and when they idolize the most successful black people in that arena, it makes them focus even more on that passion, which draws them away from finding other potential they have that can lead to a more likely successful career. African American girls (and all girls for that matter) who grew up without a dad put a lot of the focus on wanting to have a man in their lives, sometimes to the point of making unwise decisions in an attempt to feel secure, only to be on the wrong end of a bad deal and left to make further bad decisions that perpetuate the cycle. Also, for all of the good that came from the civil Rights movement, there were also some unintended consequences as well. The militant factions that existed in the 60s bred a feeling of animosity that became an "us vs them" mentality that doesn't go away easily. That probably worked to isolate some of those people, which isn't a healthy place to be. I'll never forget something that my grandpa said back in the mid 80s. I grew up in a town with 3 black families, all of whom had kids around my age and I was friends with all of them. The dad's in those families were the president of a bank, a production manager at an aerospace company, and a salesman. They all did well and the families were all involved in stuff. So my grandpa said "minorities do well when they are less than 5 % of the population because they learn to interact with others. When you get above that, they just stick with each other". At the time ( I was like 8 years old) I didn't think much of it. Later on I started to think that was a pretty racist thing to say. Now, I think I see that he's probably right. I can't say that I totally understand it, but my inclination is to think that the more any subset of people interacts socially with others, it creates a feeling of "we". The more they isolate themselves with other like individuals it becomes "us" and "them", and that's not a good place to be.
 
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It's exactly what I said earlier. He must virtue signal on this subject so that he can tell his douchebag hipster white liberal friends at their douchebag hipster beer bars and restaurants that he's sufficiently Woke and did his bashing of conservatives for the day.

This is all these people need to continue drinking $10 beers and opining about how awesome socialism is in Scandinavia, while doing absolutely nothing to benefit the poor people and minorities that they claim to care soooooooooo much about.

You already tried this one yesterday, Copernicus. Spending more money on local products produced humanely, where workers are fairly compensated, is putting my money where my mouth is. You see this as being a douchebag hipster, because you are dumb.
 
I think the basis of it probably started with an unequal criminal justice system largely regarding drug use. A black man is/was more likely to get a longer sentence than a white man for the same crime. That began the cycle of broken families. From that point on it was probably the result of perpetuating drug use and violent crime, over-sexualization, and pop culture that glorified it, but at it's core it was depression. One generation of boys who didn't have a dad around turns into 5 and the cycle just continues for many people who either feel stuck or don't know any different. I feel like African American boys are also just naturally more drawn to sports, and when they idolize the most successful black people in that arena, it makes them focus even more on that passion, which draws them away from finding other potential they have that can lead to a more likely successful career. African American girls (and all girls for that matter) who grew up without a dad put a lot of the focus on wanting to have a man in their lives, sometimes to the point of making unwise decisions in an attempt to feel secure, only to be on the wrong end of a bad deal and left to make further bad decisions that perpetuate the cycle. Also, for all of the good that came from the civil Rights movement, there were also some unintended consequences as well. The militant factions that existed in the 60s bred a feeling of animosity that became an "us vs them" mentality that doesn't go away easily. That probably worked to isolate some of those people, which isn't a healthy place to be. I'll never forget something that my grandpa said back in the mid 80s. I grew up in a town with 3 black families, all of whom had kids around my age and I was friends with all of them. The dad's in those families were the president of a bank, a production manager at an aerospace company, and a salesman. They all did well and the families were all involved in stuff. So my grandpa said "minorities do well when they are less than 5 % of the population because they learn to interact with others. When you get above that, they just stick with each other". At the time ( I was like 8 years old) I didn't think much of it. Later on I started to think that was a pretty racist thing to say. Now, I think I see that he's probably right. I can't say that I totally understand it, but my inclination is to think that the more any subset of people interacts socially with others, it creates a feeling of "we". The more they isolate themselves with other like individuals it becomes "us" and "them", and that's not a good place to be.


So, militant blacks are the ones responsible for making it an "us vs them" situation?

[roll][roll][roll][roll][roll]
 
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