Tuesday, October 23, 2012

It's not race, it's culture

I've heard, on campus, a lot of young black people whining about racism keeping them from a better life, that their mommas were left holding the bag by sperm donors not fit to breathe, much less be real daddies. 

Hate to say it, but the reason they're ill-equipped and unprepared for the real world, and the only thing standing in the way of a better life for them, is the dependence on the government that their mommas had, and have trained into them.  It isn't racism, but culture.

Our across the road neighbors have just as many obstacles in their way.  The husband has a bad back--some days he can work, some days he can't--because he didn't use the proper equipment provided by the garages he worked for to pull engines and transmissions.  He's been turned down for disability, and doesn't really want to appeal.  He'd prefer to find a job and support his wife and kids.

A young man raised depending on the government for food, income, and shelter, would more likely whine and fight for what he was "entitled" to. 

The family across the road have nothing.  Their families have really stepped up to help, offering rides (when they can), diapers, and stuff like that.  A family dependent on the government also offers assistance--advice on how to get the best deal and most government benefits.  And that does nothing but mire another generation in poverty that they can't get out of.

It's not race.  It's the culture of dependence on government.

6 comments:

  1. On the subway this AM, the car was mostly empty, except for a 2nd or 3rd grade class field trip. There were about 20 kids... they appeared to be from a virtually ALL Salvadoran/Mexican immigrant elementary school class- fairly common here in DC. Anyway, the kids were obviously 1st or 2nd generation Americans & were speaking grammatically correct English, no accent - typical annoying little brats. The black kids [that I might have easily sat near on another day] in the city of Washington DC (usually 10th - 12th generation Americans) will be UNABLE to compete with non-black peers simply because their parents REFUSE TO speak and REFUSE TO teach grammatically correct English. What "white man" is at fault here? The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves...

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    1. You are absolutely correct, Russell--and I love the Shakespeare quote--but I'd go further, and propose that it's also Johnson's fault for starting up welfare, and the welfare culture, and the whole "It's not my fault!" mentality. And again, it is a culture thing, not a race thing. I've seen more white people with that attitude than I have any other race (possibly because I live in flyover country, and my specific area is rather "underrepresented" in minorities).

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  2. Perhaps Romney's infamous 47% reference is true---personally, I think he was right......

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    1. 49% of the population either don't pay any taxes or get back as much if not more on their tax returns as they paid in. 47% of the population (all but 2% of those that don't pay taxes) don't understand how lower taxes for everyone benefits them. Romney is right, and that's only the bare start of it.

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  3. to HH: my one subway ride was in NO WAY scientific... it's just that the picture of "this person" or "that person" who looks one way or another falls behind for VERY SPECIFIC reasons. From what I've read about the U. of California, for instance, when the bean-counters do the regression analyses of Korean, Vietnamese, Indian and Chinese 1st generation applicants to the Marquee schools in the system... what do the spread-sheets say? Their grades are such that "white" "black" and "brown" kids CAN'T COMPETE. Actually, the dummies have spent 12 years NOT COMPETING. Why is doing homework and doing perfect class-room work and behaving properly so difficult to understand? Every other area of excellence: art, music, acting, baseball, basketball, hockey, karate, video games, marksmanship THE SAME THE SAME THE SAME: practice the fundamentals all the time.

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    1. Do you want to hear something interesting? They've shown that the advantages given by a culture of new immigrant parents expecting excellence (or at least effort) in education tends to taper off in about the third generation, and vanish by the fourth--about the same time as the generations quit being able to use even the kitchen variety of the native language.

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