You guys seem to tend to think that Black culture is the cause of Black people's astronomical rates of poverty, imprisonment, drug abuse etc.
1) That's not the main factor.
2) I'll admit that "Black culture" isn't perfect. I'm not denying that gangs and anti-intellectualism are a problem (although that's a problem in most races in America) But let me ask you this: what has African-American culture developed in response to? Why is there even something called Black culture? And why is there a group of people who are defined first and foremost as being "Black"?
Blackness itself, at least as the defining characteristic of an individual is an invention of the capitalist system. The presumed inferiority, the assertion of the less than human value of a Black man or woman, etc. arose out of the necessity for cheap labor. Modern racism was invented as a justification for the slave trade, which in turn built modern capitalism. Thus, Blackness itself, as we know it today, is an invention of capitalist racism.
Black culture has developed in response to systematic oppression and racism. From slavery, to Jim Crow, to the destruction of the Black middle class under Reagan to today--at every turn Black culture has had to respond to massive, systematic racism with the limited resources that are inherent to being part of a hated minority who is oppressed politically and economically.
Throughout history when you have any racial or ethnic group to whom the doors of power aren't open--to whom jobs or equal rights aren't available, you'll see that they tend to establish their own leadership structures which will be criminal by the standards of the ruling class. Be it la castra nostra or the bloods and crips. In the early 80's, as the manufacturing jobs that had offered some hope to the Black community were systematically dismantled and shipped overseas people turned to the drug trade out of desperation.
Drug trades lead to violence. But these drugs and violence are the result of horrific conditions that make them seem like the best possible options. You can talk about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps all you want, but the reality is that when gangs and drugs exploded in LA, there weren't jobs available to young men in the Black community. And there aren't many today. Have you seen the Black unemployment rate lately?
Can you acknowledge that if some problems arise in "Black culture" that perhaps, just maybe on some infinitesimal level, racism, historic and current, played some hand in that? You really can't make that connection? If not, I'd like you to offer an alternative explanation. Is it simply that the vile, destructive, Black culture you despise has emerged purely from the vile, destructive, Black hearts of Black men, for no good reason?
