No one is suggesting that it does. But there are a lot more opportunities for someone who is not born into a poor situation. There are likewise a lot more opportunities for someone who doesn't face racial prejudices against them. Despite what conservative media says, no one is making excuses for people who squander their opportunities. What needs to happen, though, is for chances to make something of oneself to not be so scarce for those born into bad situations.
No one is making excuses? You just did right there... right in your own text right before you said that no one is making excuses... Jiminy Cricket man... Seriously?
These are two different issues, but they reinforce each other in a vicious cycle.
Any cycle, vicious or not, is the result of not turning in a different direction. Making different choices.
If you lack this basic information, then I'm not sure I'll be able to explain it to you. But you are very clearly talking about middle class people here. Not those born into a ghetto like this thread is about.
If I believed your position as valid, I would not have posed the questions. If you had real empirical data to share, that was not borne of projection and external blame, I would expect you to provide it. I believe that Lizzie made a very poignant statement in the following post:
They can't change it to the Hamptons, but they don't have to live in slums. Some of the very poorest people in the South keep their homes and neighborhoods clean and neat, and they don't trash it up. Ghetto is as much a state of mind as it is a place.
And what I'm talking about is actually making good on that guarantee for the chance to try.
They have the guarantee to let them try. Guarantee of the ability to try is not the same as a guarantee of success.
A lot of people don't get it.
Everyone is born with the opportunity to try.
A lot of people simply have no opportunity.
They are born with the opportunity to try by the fact of being born in this country. Want to talk about people that have no opportunity, look at most of the other countries of the world, not here.
They are doomed from birth because the schools they can go to are underfunded, ...
Underfunded? Per student funding is more in schools that are Title I schools, and they are the worst of the worse. More money is not the answer. More parental involvement, less crime, more student commitment, and more focus on education and less on sports... is.
... because there are no businesses to hire them when they graduate,
If you graduate with a 6th grade reading level then yeah, it's hard to get a job. If you graduate and dress and talk like a gangster, then yeah, it's hard to get a job. Self imposed cultural barriers are a problem.
... because their families are too poor to even own a car,
What? Public transportation or car pooling - just to name two. Find an answer not an excuse.
... because they face racial prejudice,
Over used and over applied. You probably think that my reference above to dressing and talking like a gangster is racist - it isn't. It's a fact. Professionals that manage a business are not looking for people that project problems. They want people that project success. That dress, talk and project success.
... because one major illness can wipe out a family's savings if they don't have insurance...
Had to throw that one in there... Sure. That's true. How many people have not been successful in escaping the ghetto, or were unsuccessful in transforming their small part of it to a respectable and livable place because of illness? All of them? That can happen to anyone. It also can be overcome, however. Anything can. In fact, I was able to - from the very same circumstances.
... many many factors conspire to keep a poor person poor.
Ahhh. The conspiracy against the poor.
(shakes head from side to side and then just sighs)
Many more factors than you or I ever had to face.
You have no idea what I had to face.
And if we can help get some of these roadblocks out of people's way, then they will take hold of those chances and will make the most of them.
Okay, I'll bite. How do we get these roadblocks you describe out of their way?
Almost everyone in this country has a good work ethic. Almost everyone works very hard. That includes the poor, and that includes urban blacks. They work very hard just to stay at poor and not slip into homeless. The idea that there is a significant portion of the population that doesn't work hard is part of that demonization. Don't believe it. It's a lie.
I know that this part was not posed to me, but - I'm not saying that working hard is the problem. The term "hard work" is misunderstood by most Progressives and some liberals. Hard work, in the way that I use it, does not mean sweating and shoveling dirt or some other difficult labor intensive job. What the term hard work means, is taking risks, doing those things that are required to get out of the position you are in and move forward - like getting an education, learning new skills, fighting the temptations of your environment, taking responsibility for your own life, and may other actions that are hard, not easy. That's what hard work is meant by me.
