The point of the article is that slavery and Jim Crow are cheap excuses for failures of today. As I pointed out in the story of my father, he got handed nothing but more challenges from his parents. You will find that most white people are the same way. And again, if anything is handed down, our generation will probably be the first for most whites.
Black are not getting less of an education, however blacks take much less advantage of it, and that's not our fault. If you took a middle-class white student body, and put them in these same low-income schools, they will continue to do fine. The black student body that got their school? They will continue to fail.
The school is not the failure, the parent is. When people shove their children on the school bus and that ends their educational involvement, of course you're going to get poorer results.
I've told this story before on USMB before, so if you read it already, skip over.
My former next door neighbor bought a portable basketball hoop. Before you knew it, kids were coming here from everywhere. They played from the time they came home from school until well past dark; sometimes to 10:00 pm. They tried to play later, but I told them to cut it out or called the police.
This didn't happen in the white neighborhood I grew up in. We were in the house well before dark. Our parents made sure our homework was done, we had a shower, and in bed at a reasonable enough time for ample sleep for the next school day. They knew where we were every minute, and it wasn't several streets away.
In other words, place the blame where it rightly belongs.
What you aren’t understanding is the difference between your parents and grandparents and their challenges vs those of generation old blacks who’s challenges were a direct result of our laws and government. Generations of discrimination by our system that resulted in poverty, low education, broken families, high crime and many other factors that impact the black population today. How can you gloss over all that as insignificant?
You admitted earlier that a child from an uneducated low income family has worse odds of achieving success than a child from a high income family. Well millions of blacks were stuffed into that low income bracket because of generations of racist laws made by our country. Take a second to think about that before reacting.
I've thought about it over and over again because the left keeps regurgitating this topic and has been for years.
If my parents (for whatever reason) were restricted in income, unable to provide us with the extras, kept us in low income housing, that's mostly the responsibility of my parents. Nobody should be having children they can't afford, or bringing them into the world of poverty or low income areas. That's personal responsibility.
But even if that was the case, it's up to me as an adult to overcome and do better than my parents. It's up to me to learn from their mistakes.
Can you explain to me how some foreigners come here, first generation, barely speaking the language, and do better than our blacks in America today? Who is more disadvantaged in your opinion, those foreigners who came here with twenty bucks in their pockets or our African Americans who's parents or grandparents were held back?
The beverage store I patron is owned by an Indian guy. He came here, worked night and day, opened up his own beverage store, and provided service no other competitor could. I never have to worry about him being out of the products I purchase. His personality, his attentiveness to customers needs, his hours all beat out his competition.
After he started doing well, he took on buying rental property which he still manages. On top of that, he purchased a small hotel outside of town about 40 miles, and it's doing fantastic as well. He and his wife seldom see each other because she quit working the beverage store to run the hotel.
If he can do this, why can't any other American including a black one?
