You bring up some very valid points - all of which I agree with - but also all of which I ask the question, Why? For me at least, and forgive the elementary analogy - but it is much like the chicken or the egg question.
It appears to be a chicken or egg question, but that assumption is conclusively false. African Americans have been disenfranchised from American society through slavery, Jim Crow in the south, discrimination in the north, and punitive drug laws. That is the primary cause for the majority of blacks being in a poor state today, not their personal failings. They've been left behind. You can't expect them to make up the distance on sheer effort and will. A few try and succeed. Many try and fail. Some say feck it and go the illegal route. All that doesn't wipe away the history of how that gap was created in the first place.
1) Why are there minimal job opportunities? Are there minimal job opportunities because business do not want to invest and operate in areas that are full of crime and drugs? Which one solves our problems - do we first clean up areas and minimize drugs and crime so businesses want to come to these areas or do we first need to have businesses establish themselves in these areas in order to get rid of the crime and drugs?
You're asking the wrong question. If there are minimal job opportunities, it is the job of the government to facilitate employment. We have not seen an urban renewal project akin to that of FDR's New Deal or the War on Poverty that Johnson launched. FDR didn't go on a rant about how the residents of Appalachia needed to pull their pants up and stop inbreeding, feuding, bootlegging moonshine, and start going to school. He and his administration introduced programs that aimed to improve the life of
white residents in the region and nationwide. The federal government stepped in and saved several auto industries from collapsing.
This ignores rampant job discrimination by private companies today. A white man with a criminal record is more likely to get hired than a black man without a criminal record. Odds stacked.
2) Why are so many urban males incarcerated? Easy answer is - because they commit the vast majority of crimes. However, solving the job issue seems to be the first logical step in reducing arrests. The more urban males that have a steady job - the less crimes are committed.
This is a fallacy. Sentencing laws unfairly target African Americans and Hispanics. The disparity between sentences for trafficking crack cocaine vs powder cocaine (which was reduced, but not eliminated) devastated an entire generation. Laws like the 3 strikes rule in California were sweeping and lacked restraint, sending people to prison for life for non-violent crimes. I find it ironic that people are wasting away in prison now for trafficking marijuana, while businesses in Colorado are making a killing selling the product legally.
Minorities are more likely to be put on death row than whites convicted of the same crimes. Minorities are profiled while driving despite amount of driving violations being similar to those of whites.
This all feeds into a lot of urban males ending up with a criminal record. Locking them out of decent employment opportunities. The cycle repeats.
3) Why are the schools so bad? Is it because good quality teachers do not want to teach in that environment? Is it because there is a lack of importance set on education? Is it because the youth of today are brought up to question authority rather than respect it? Again, I don't know the answer - but I do know that this is a large part of the viscous cycle - and anything involving our youth needs to be high up on the priority list.
I blame disparity in funding for urban schools compared to their counterparts in the suburbs. There's an ugly racial tint to the history of how the suburbs were created, how mortgages were denied to black people post WW2, how neighborhoods were emptied of white families overnight on the threat a nigger family was moving in. Entire swaths of urban zip codes were redlined, denying black people from obtaining FHA mortgages, and feeding them into exploitative mortgage contracts that screwed them over royally. Property taxes fund education at the elementary and secondary levels in this country, so inner cities with depressed neighborhoods won't have as much funding as the suburbs. This results in schools with minimal supplies, lackluster teachers, and disappointed students.
I agree with you in that I also blame lack of quality parenting. Some blame can be aimed at individuals (father your sons) definitely. There are several specialized high schools of excellence in New York, public but some of the best in the country. Admission is based upon merit alone, after taking a standardized test. The overwhelming majority of kids at these schools are Asian. That says a lot about the black community's relative failure to do right by their kids, but it's more complicated than "raise your kids".
4) Why is the infrastructure so dilapidated? I think this goes hand in hand with issue # 1. You have to follow the money - and there aren't exactly a lot of people looking to invest in these areas due to the environment and lack of return on those investments.
I addressed this already. Government.
5) Why the lack of support systems? This is another one that hits close to home. Single mother households, lack of father figures, teen pregnancy, shitty education system, lack of jobs...they all fall play a role in this. I commend those that are trying to do things the right way (work real jobs with small wages) - but many have to make the decision to a)put food on the table for their children or b)be active in their childrens lives. This is a real life decision that many have to make and most choose a over b - which leads kids to making the wrong decisions at early ages in which an engaged parent could have counseled them against.
Spot on. But people of all genders and races have issues and make mistakes. People get knocked up. People flunk out of school. But it seems as if though black people are held to a higher level of personal responsibility. That should not be the case.
In the end, this viscous cycle has to be broken somehow...I am just not smart enough to understand exactly how it needs to be done.
I do think the first thing that has to be done is to answer this question. Are the residents a product of the environment or is the environment a product of the residents? I honestly don't know the answer...hence the chicken and the egg analogy.
The residents are a product of the environment, which is a legacy of the racism African Americans, Native Americans and Hispanic Americans have faced in this country. There is a feedback loop but there is no question how things started. Look at Black Wall Street in Tulsa. Prosperous thriving community of black owned businesses and enterprises. Burned down by whites in the 1920s. Reservations which isolate Native Americans from the rest of the country and condemn countless people to a life of alcoholism, drug usage and violence. Blanket laws which enable judges to lock away Latino youths for appearing to affiliate with gangs. I'm scratching the surface with this patchy post, but you can't just shrug all that away and say, "work through it, I did".
