The Source of Black Poverty

grip said:

I think the article is not trying to address the factual aspects that poverty can create unfortunate circumstances, low education and less opportunity. It's more of a piece on what, if anything, can society do as a whole, to help diminish the ranks of the poor by understanding the cultural differences and causes.

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Imo, we can't diminish it by understanding the cultural differences and causes. That information is all well and good to have, but understanding doesn't fix problems. Actions fix problems.

shrubnose said:

The main cause of Black poverty is the fact that most Black people don't have much money.

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STUDY: Single Women Of Color Age 36-49 Have Median Wealth Of Just $5

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STUDY: Single Women Of Color Age 36-49 Have Median Wealth Of Just $5

The root of poverty, in general, is in fixed supply of space/resources. Resolve that issue and you pretty much end poverty as we know it.

Compared to other groups, blacks seem to be hit hardest economically. I think a mix of racism and culture plays a role here. While the Irish, Polish, Italians, Jews, etc have all faced discrimination in the United States (and elsewhere), it was generally easier for them blend into society and move up the socio-economic ladder. A black person cannot simply shed their skin for a more "acceptable" color. There is also the issue of dependency culture. From slavery to modern times, blacks have been in servitude to whites. That slavery today is much more subtle, but it can be seen through how the western govts, banks and corporations have operated within Africa. That foreign corruption breeds more domestic corruption (dictators/warlords take power) and the cycle becomes almost unbreakable.

Of course, the 'black culture' we see today does not help the situation. However, I see it more as a symptom of a socio-economic crisis rather than a cause.

lizzie said:

Imo, we can't diminish it by understanding the cultural differences and causes. That information is all well and good to have, but understanding doesn't fix problems. Actions fix problems.

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Yea, but you have to understand enough to know what actions to take. Maybe, we as a society have done the best we can, maybe we've got a long ways to go, only time will tell. I do believe to say, "they're all lazy" or that "it's all racism" is way too simplistic and negative to help.

justabubba said:

STUDY:

Single Women Of Color Age 36-49 Have Median Wealth Of Just $5

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What does this tell a lot of horny men?

grip said:

Yea, but you have to understand enough to know what actions to take. Maybe, we as a society have done the best we can, maybe we've got a long ways to go, only time will tell. I do believe to say, "they're all lazy" or that "it's all racism" is way too simplistic and negative to help.

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The only viable option is to do the same with poor, as you do with overgrown children who can't face the realities of adult life. Cut the apron strings and set them free to sink or swim. It's amazing what a taste of reality, and an actual necessity to rely on oneself can accomplish. People are much smarter and more resourceful than we give them credit for.

grip said:

You're pulling at the thread of the lowest common denominator, like mob violence. There is a certain familiarity with 'the devil you know' factor and 'ignorance is comfort', but it's not common enough to account for the sheer volume of poor in a wealthy society.

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I'm sorry - is poverty not the lowest common denominator? If you're asking why anyone of average means is broke, then I don't have the first damn clue.

grip said:

Yea, but you have to understand enough to know what actions to take. Maybe, we as a society have done the best we can, maybe we've got a long ways to go, only time will tell. I do believe to say, "they're all lazy" or that "it's all racism" is way too simplistic and negative to help.

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The writer does scant little to build a middle ground between the ideas expressed in those quotes. He really doesn't even seem to acknowledge any exists when describing the "black culture" option. For that reason, I would guess the purpose of the article is not to build understanding but to persuade.

lizzie said:

Imo, we can't diminish it by understanding the cultural differences and causes. That information is all well and good to have, but understanding doesn't fix problems. Actions fix problems.

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i applaud your inclination toward action

but doing the right things is more effective than doing things right
and if we do not understand the circumstances that perpetuate poverty, how can we identify the appropriate solutions to address the elimination of poverty

i would suggest this is the same conundrum we presently also face with our public education system. we know it needs to be repaired. but what exactly needs to be fixed. taking action, like no child left behind, just to take action is both expensive and ineffective

justabubba said:

i applaud your inclination toward action

but doing the right things is more effective than doing things right
and if we do not understand the circumstances that perpetuate poverty, how can we identify the appropriate solutions to address the elimination of poverty

i would suggest this is the same conundrum we presently also face with our public education system. we know it needs to be repaired. but what exactly needs to be fixed. taking action, like no child left behind, just to take action is both expensive and ineffective

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Originally Posted by lizzie

"Imo, we can't diminish it by understanding the cultural differences and causes. That information is all well and good to have, but understanding doesn't fix problems. Actions fix problems."

(Yoda voice) A false dichotomy, we've found.

CycloneWanderer said:

Originally Posted by lizzie

"Imo, we can't diminish it by understanding the cultural differences and causes. That information is all well and good to have, but understanding doesn't fix problems. Actions fix problems."

(Yoda voice) A false dichotomy, we've found.

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And you can't solve a problem effectively until you've properly identified the causes. CORRECT actions fix problems, not action for the sake of action.

StillBallin75 said:

And you can't solve a problem effectively until you've properly identified the causes. CORRECT actions fix problems, not action for the sake of action.

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In every war on poverty its the poor who always lose. M. Wilde

A lot of it is simply genetics IMO.

The average Afro-American's IQ is only 85 and that puts them at a significant disadvantage when competing in the job market.

And another factor is their above average propensity towards violence. Being convicted of a violent crime can certainly shut out economic opportunities. This obviously also has a genetic component to it.

And there is also immigration and globalization. A lot of manufacturing and agricultural jobs that are suitable for a person with a low IQ are being filled by immigrants or sent overseas. The lack of isolationism and protectionism is particularly hard on the Afro-American community.

lizzie said:

The only viable option is to do the same with poor, as you do with overgrown children who can't face the realities of adult life. Cut the apron strings and set them free to sink or swim. It's amazing what a taste of reality, and an actual necessity to rely on oneself can accomplish. People are much smarter and more resourceful than we give them credit for.

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How is that not the worst idea in the world, Lizzie?

Poverty increases crime. It impedes stable homes, and lessens children's well-beings and educational achievement. Poverty decreases life spans and general health, and increases things such as drug, tobacco and alcohol abuse. It sends out shock waves of social ills that have the tendency of destroying societies. The very most immediate effect of selfishness and removing aide to the needy would be a drastic increase in those social ills.

In what sane world would you want to do that?

The black people themselves.

lizzie said:

The only viable option is to do the same with poor, as you do with overgrown children who can't face the realities of adult life. Cut the apron strings and set them free to sink or swim. It's amazing what a taste of reality, and an actual necessity to rely on oneself can accomplish. People are much smarter and more resourceful than we give them credit for.

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who do you refer to when you say "we" ? as in we give them credit for.

lizzie said:

It's the same as with any other group of poor. I came from poor and white, and for whatever reason, my parents and some of their siblings were driven to succeed against the culture they were raised in. They weren't comfortable in their poverty. They wanted out of it, by whatever means necessary, which meant hard work and a hard life. If we (as a society) make poverty comfortable, many people who live in poverty will stay there, as it is the path of least resistance. I'm not saying that there isn't an extra hurdle to jump, if you're a minority, but the willingness to do whatever it takes to succeed can easily overcome those hurdles.

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This is especially true if one's sub-culture teaches that it's not only good to remain poor, but that it's not your fault and another group owes you a living. The black sub-culture does all of this and it teaches blacks that trying to get out of the ghetto, trying to better yourself, is a bad thing and one to be punished. That's why other racial groups who start out in the ghetto don't tend to remain there very long, at least in general terms. You can draw some parallels to hillbilly culture and the like, but Asians, for example, aren't generally multi-generationally poor because their cultures tend to push for improvement.

justabubba said:

ok, i shall
emerging from poverty is more difficult for blacks
because of the legacy of racism
the kind which causes the title of this thread about sources of poverty to be focused on black poverty, rather that of all races

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That's BS though, the legacy of racism has nothing to do with why blacks drop out of school, make bad decisions, get involved in drugs and gangs, end up in prison, etc. It's an excuse, the people involved with these things have no one to blame but themselves and their culture.

hado117 said:

In every war on poverty its the poor who always lose. M. Wilde

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That's because virtually every war on poverty is not fought by the poor, but by the well-off on their behalf. So long as the poor are not personally invested in bettering their own situation, they will never succeed.

Stupid black people! They should just try harder!














:roll:

Race, or black culture, or anything else is not the problem. Every poor community of every race has lower drop out rates, bad decisions, gangs, drugs, jail ect. That is a bi product of poverty. Our society is set up so that the poor stay poor. There are different degrees of poverty and there is always the rare person who rises above it but that is not the norm. these things that certain people blame for poverty or keeping people in poverty like drugs really don't offer much different of an outcome than working a menial job for scraps and still staying in poverty. The idea that black people have it worse or some other crap is nothing but BS either. Poor is poor. poor white people, or poor brown people dont have any advantages that poor black people dont and rich black kids and rich white kids all have the same benefits. Ignoring the real issue and blaming racism hasn't worked and won't.

DDD said:

Why would civilian black Americans model from African black savages?

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Cultural conditioning over thousands of years...these things do not simply go away overnight.

The responses to threads like this are so predictable as most of them tend to follow the common narratives about black Americans that permeate society. I suppose I could waste my intellectual energy on explaining the complexity of the issue that is "black poverty", but it's such a fruitless effort. If people want to understand the issue, then there is plenty of easily accessible research available for them. But here's the problem, people don't want to understand the issue. People want to believe in narratives of the welfare queen, the violent black man, colorblindness, meritocracy and whatever other story (read: myth) white people have crafted in order to make themselves feel better about their role in the oppression of black Americans and hide, from themselves, the reality of how pervasive racism and its effects still are in our current society.

The bottom line is that any explanation that concludes the position of the black population in American society is a function of some deficiency of blacks and "black culture" is racist. Even further, those who advocate that explanation are racists and those who persistently remain silent in the face of that explanation are cowards.

lizzie said:

The only viable option is to do the same with poor, as you do with overgrown children who can't face the realities of adult life. Cut the apron strings and set them free to sink or swim. It's amazing what a taste of reality, and an actual necessity to rely on oneself can accomplish. People are much smarter and more resourceful than we give them credit for.

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And when you cut off the basics, they can be much more dangerous than you can imagine. You don't create a large welfare state, offer very little income opportunities or means of survival, then suddenly cut off all funding. The rioting mobs would rival anything seen in modern history.

Gipper said:

I'm sorry - is poverty not the lowest common denominator? If you're asking why anyone of average means is broke, then I don't have the first damn clue.

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Accrediting all classes of people of having an average means is disingenuous.

CycloneWanderer said:

The writer does scant little to build a middle ground between the ideas expressed in those quotes. He really doesn't even seem to acknowledge any exists when describing the "black culture" option. For that reason, I would guess the purpose of the article is not to build understanding but to persuade.

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I agree, that's why I edited much of the original article. If the negative cultural differences in our society are addressed, in an unbiased and academic manner, there is a far better chance of understanding and addressing them.

StillBallin75 said:

I think it makes some good points, however, my issue is that the "black culture" and "poor culture" options are viewed as separate and divorced. My issue with the (generally conservative) assertion that black culture is to blame for lack of black progress is that that view tends put culture in a vacuum - in other words, there is something specific about black people and their culture that is holding them back, rather than the view that any race that has gone through what blacks have gone through in American history would likely be facing the same situation.

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That's sort of a non-falsifiable thesis, given that no race was targeted so thoroughly for terrorism. However, if you wanted a parallel, the closest you could come to would probably be Asians: imported for use in dirty, manual labor, and generally treated as less than human.

Culture does not exist in a vacuum independent of history - culture is wrapped in history.


As for the OP, Charles Murray laid out the numbers in Coming Apart : It is Culture of Poverty. The figures pretty much track each other regardless of what race you are in, if you make culturally poor choices, you have roughly the same likelihood of being poor socioeconomically as well. A larger portion of the African American populace has simply institutionalized some of these poor culture choices (single parenthood, unfinished education), due not a little to the incentives that they were offered to do so by our government. That, unfortunately, often confuses the conversation, where people mistake a preponderance of result for a cause or a focus.

There is indeed racism, however, presence of one factor does not mean that others are not predominate. Businesses and organizations actively seek out high-performing black individuals to promote because it makes them less vulnerable to attack. Additionally, there is a wealth of programs and funds largely aimed at shifting blacks up the socioeconomic ladder (college scholarships, for example. There are no "historically white colleges" anymore, but we do have "historically black" colleges) that do not exist for other ethnicities. So there are strong mitigants to that as a driver.