@gjgp27 said:
@static_shock: Most poor black communities are poor because of white oppression? Yeah, it's not because most are uneducated (barely passed high school), unemployable (the jobs that they can get are sweeping brooms, no stem training or trade skills such as auto mechanics or craftsman skills), and destroy their own (single mothers raise men and women who repeat the exact same cycle, usually because these mothers won't even admit to their own mistakes). Seriously, are ghettos just filled with doctors, lawyers, film production houses, art districts, musicians (not rappers), business owners, or even marketers?
Plus, why aren't poor whites rioting, or even poor Mexicans? Don't tell me that white privilege crap.
I support the cops/police, specifically in bad neighborhoods. I can definitely empathize with stories where you have people too afraid to do things as simple as picking up their mail in their apartment building, because they’re wary of being confronted by juvenile delinquents staying in open spaces, usually creating commotion with their gathering or plotting criminal activity, in these bad neighborhoods. The only relief can sometimes literally be knowing that the police are right outside observing things through glass windows. But, didn’t you see my constructive comments in your thread supposing that there were two solutions to ghettos? And, having seen those comments, you still don’t know the answers to your own questions?
Who are these people too afraid to visit their own mailboxes in these apartment complexes? They have to be other African Americans in these neighborhoods who are the victims of circumstances. They might be African Americans who ended up there after losing a job requiring a college education requiring a math, science, or engineering degree. Or, they might be African Americans who are the children of those African Americans who loss their math, science, or engineering job.
The reason that they are in these neighborhoods, in general, is because of the institutionalize racism that was gradually established in response to the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As I said in your other thread, the courts began to narrowly interpret the law in such a way that the current climate of passive employment discrimination was created in only 15 years after the law was enacted. Congress than exasperated matters by not adjusting the legislation in response to controversial court decisions. And than Ronald Reagan set policies in place that further undermined the effectiveness of Title VII, as well as other employment related laws associated with collective bargaining, applications for employment (e.g. I know a controversial court decision that allow employers to get away with bad mouthing former employees with the specific purpose of keeping that person out of work), and civil service employment with the Federal Courts Improvement Act. During the 90s, the courts were than left to dilute civil rights efforts in relation to education. As a result, the foundations were put into place which made it very difficult for African Americans to enroll in nationally recognized colleges and universities. Very soon after, another problem became corporate abuse and manipulation of education and employment VISAs. As a result of the economic disaster in 2008, nearly all African American computer scientists and experts lost their jobs and VISAs were used to permanently displace the African Americans away from these technology jobs. Such was made easier by Reagan policies.
In the meantime, no politician since LBJ has been focused on LBJ efforts to do away with racism and poverty. And such created the current climate in Baltimore. The only solution, as an initial matter, is going to be legislation designed to overcome court action and Reagan politics by updating the civil rights laws, worker rights laws, educational and employment VISAs, giving or restoring rights to job applicants, and civil rights laws designed to get African Americans back into the upper educational systems (e.g. reduce the seats set aside for students from other countries and return them back to United States citizens). From there, policies, federal budgets, and, perhaps adjustments to legislation need to be put into place to address poverty; focus and budget size could be reduced for foreign affairs and the military to focus on these issues of poverty; things like the food stamp program and federal assistance for families can be adjusted in accordance to the adjustments to the employment laws to compel companies to hire disenfranchised people with their ability to provide on the job training instead of using a lack of skills as an excuse to refuse to hire these people. Once these legislative adjustments are in place, we can look into class inequality and the middle class. And, last of all, the more shadow issues such as considering fixes for the criminal justice system and tackling police brutality can be considered, keeping in mind that these instances such as Freddie Gray and Walter Scott are a small number of the cases. After which, the president and Congress can get back to politics as usual.
Having said that, and to address some of your comments, when you try to include most black communities with ghettos than you’re grossly generalizing instead of just generalizing as you would be doing if you’d limited your comments to ghettos. If you consider the unemployment rates in most black communities, it would involve white oppression instead of lack of education. Most of these African Americans have both STEM education and employment experience, but they were beaten back into those circumstances because of white oppression. What I’d recommend you do is study the disposition of cases going through the EEOC and into the court system to get a clearer picture. Beginning your research at and through the EEOC you’ll find hundreds of African Americans who are well educated but who are routinely discriminated against in hiring practices and employment at corporations and in the federal government. Once you review enough cases, you’ll than begin to understand institutionalized racism and injustice in the United States legal system as the immediate cause of the income levels in African American communities; you’ll understand why the primary solution is in updated civil rights employment legislation. And than take your research to the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Federal Circuit to see the results of Reagan politics and the need for employment legislation in general, but an employee would have to be pressed out of employment to understand such adversity; the only employees who are pressed in employment are usually the minority employees. In some cases, you’ll also find that most of these African Americans made a mistake in judgment on the job, but can’t get a break, as opposed to a lack of education, or, they made a mistake in judgment by acquiring a non-violent criminal background. If you can’t find a break in employment, it’s more a case of people with hiring authority choosing other applicants, usually less qualified applicants, than a case of an inability to find African Americans for work; the only fix for such a problem is going to be some degree of compulsion to hire these African Americans when they are qualified for something like a STEM job, and especially if they are more qualified for the STEM position than the selected applicant. Freddie Gray actually had valuable skills, but he was being forced to waste away and acquired a criminal background that was financial related; it is understandable that Freddie took his chances, if he faced whimsical hiring decisions often enough, and it kept him unemployed for months, perhaps even years. Thus, these African Americans are relegated to sweeping brooms, despite having STEM education and work experience; it’s more of a problem with the lawmakers and elected officials, and they need to act. Rioting may be the only effective way to achieve any results on behalf of lawmakers and elected officials; rioting helps them refocus and properly consider their priorities. Believe me, I intend to bring these issues to the attention of the presidential candidates, lawmakers, and elected officials; they need to focus on fixing these problem first, before turning to class inequality and the middle class. Yes, to your questions, these ghettos could be filled with African American doctors, lawyers, film producers, musicians, business owners, marketers, etc; just get informed by visiting the EEOC and Merit Systems Protection Board as starting points; I phrase it this way, because even one of each of these African American doctors, lawyers, film producers, musicians, business owners, marketers, etc, in these neighborhoods should be important enough to require major attention to civil and workers rights legislation.
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