"It's important to talk about life chances - about the constricted set of opportunities that poverty brings. But to treat black people as if they're helpless rag dolls swept up and buffeted by vast social trends - as if they had no say in the shaping of their lives - is a supreme act of condescension. Only 50 percent of all black children graduate from high school; an estimated 64 percent of black teenage girls will become pregnant. (Black children raised by female "householders" are five times as likely to live in poverty as those raised by married couples.) Are white racists forcing black teenagers to drop out of school or to have babies?

"Mr. Cosby got a lot of flak for complaining about children who couldn't speak standard English. Yet it isn't a derogation of the black vernacular - a marvelously rich and inventive tongue - to point out that there's a language of the marketplace, too, and learning to speak that language has generally been a precondition for economic success, whoever you are. When we let black youth become monolingual, we've limited their imaginative and economic possibilities.

"These issues can be ticklish, no question, but they're badly served by silence or squeamishness."

don't fair much better in the cycles and traps of generational poverty and self-limiting behavior.

The diffference is that the white trash are not the descendants of slaves, or the recipients of segregated schools and everything else Jim Crow of only a generation or so ago.

Being in the majority in a nation, particular a majority with a racial divide seperating it, comes with substantial advantages. This is a fact that the outraged right is trying its best to ignore.

Funny thing about the right, they act as if a single terrorist act directed against a building that they have probably never seen in person is a personal attack on them by an entire religion and global region, yet they cannot seem to come to grips with the anger of the actual descendants of human slavery, a period in our hisotry not yet but four or five generations old.

I didn't own any slaves. I didn't drag them out of their homes, and haul them 10000 miles and build a society on their backs. I didn't keep black people for voting until 1964. I didn't force them to play in their own goddamned baseball leagues. I didn't make them drink from different water fountains. I didn't put them into their own schools. I didn't call them "nigger" to their face, or spray them with hoses when they asked to be treated equally, or make them cross over to the other side of the street when I walked down this side of the street. I didn't abandon the schools where black people live.

I didn't do it.

Well said.

is disputed by some studies I have seen (depends a bit on how much you mean by "much"). It's a question that can only be resolved by data. Have you seen any or are you just intuiting?

What, specifically, are the "substantial advantages" poor white kids enjoy over poor black kids? Is it related to continued discrimination (in school admissions, hiring, promotion, bank loans, etc.) or something else? In any case, the factors mentioned in the text and the ones you are positing are not mutually exclusive. Do you think the quoted paragraphs are basically false?

I didn't write that, but I'll admit I've thought about it.

could someone please read a dayumn history book before they begin talking authoritatively about what happened when.

I think there was a question in there somewhere.

What we know: there is racism; it ain't going away on its own; there is a legacy of racism; there is reverse racism; there is reverse reverse racism; etc (all on a declining scale).

I believe some future President will fix things thusly: free University tuition (not entrancy) for black kids (dividing line to be determined, just like reparations argument). No extra spots, no front of the line, just if they get in, they get in for free. Let it run a generation or so. Then just call it even steven. Can't be a black Pres of course, so Obama's off the hook. Plus he's busy. p.s. Luxembourg does it (for all), just a little factoid.

Indeed. The problem begins when this line of thinking becomes the justification for a lack of empathy. Which rarely turns out well.

For instance, the billions of people of muslim descent did not attack the world trade center. So why the hell are we over there killing them?

Poor transition on my part The paragraph about poor whites and the paragraph about being in the majority were not necessarily intended to be linked directly. Although I would rather be a poor white than a poor black in this country if given the choice.

And neither address directly your quote which seems to endorse the idea that even though blacks face structural and cultural impediments, the answer lies in shutting up and taking care of themselves. True in principle of course, but then I like to put crickets in large glass bowls and watch them try and climb out until they die.

Poor whites face structural impediments too - generally the universal obstacles to getting out of poverty. But like I said, I'd rather be poor white than poor black. Poor hispanic probably in the middle. I am sure some studies dispute generational poverty, but what explanation do they offer (that poor people love getting lobster and wine on their food stamps and don;t want to give it up)?

The quoted material you offered can just as easily be said about poor whites of course. They really need to just get another/better job, perform their own surgeries on themselves, clean up the dead cars in their front yards, stop breeding, and shut the hell up.

I believe some future President will fix things thusly: free University tuition (not entrancy) for black kids (dividing line to be determined, just like reparations argument). No extra spots, no front of the line, just if they get in, they get in for free. Let it run a generation or so. Then just call it even steven. Can't be a black Pres of course, so Obama's off the hook. Plus he's busy. p.s. Luxembourg does it (for all), just a little factoid.

Parallel here with something I've thought with respect to reparations for a while, which is that a Republican President might should do exactly what you suggest here.

The studies I have in mind do provide strong evidence of structural factors at work, in that class and economic outcomes are extremely sticky across generations for all races. The children of poor parents tend to end up poor. They also claim that race has residual predictive power even after parental characteristics (education, income, etc.) are controlled for. For example, the children of affluent black parents are more at risk of doing badly in life than children of affluent white parents. Therefore, there must be other factors at work too (cultural, discriminatory, etc.) beyond the structural ones.

I think it is consistent to say that to be healthy, you need to have a decent income and maintain a prudent lifestyle, so it is a combination of means and will (but also possible to take a deterministic view for social aggregates). The quoted text calls for a cultural transformation among blacks but does not say it is the exclusive moral imperative. Maybe you think the author is being cagey, but shouldn't you give him/her the benefit of doubt absent further evidence?

Education, esp. higher education is a funny sort of commodity. In anything else, if there are waiting lines, they'll mop it up by increasing the price. By that principle, Ivy leagues shouldn't have such low acceptance rates (imagine even talking of acceptance rates for buyers of Ford pick-ups, unless a bank loan is involved). Essentially, the screening is substantially by merit and only partially by price. Harvard gives out lotsa scholarships not as charity but as business strategy. So I'd say the primary constraint for African Americans for going to college isn't lack of funds. Sure more scholarships and waivers will smooth it a bit, but impact is likely to be marginal. By the time people are mailing college applictions, it's already too late.

Hmm - why does this thread remind me of the scene in Legally Blonde where the heroine finds out from her ex-fiance's soon-to-be ex-fiancee that he didn't make it into Harvard Law School on his own, and that his Daddy had to "make a call" ...?

for humankind that the standard - practically the official - language for so much of the planet...came from the same POS who spread their sick values over our planet like some malignant peanut butter. land ownership...profiting from medical and pharmaceutical treatments, etc...

so fucking much is lost in translation...there are some thoughts almost impossible to even think in english or other euro languages. (of course, that's why people like my father were beaten by christianists for daring to speak in their own tongue.)