This isn't necessarily an article meant to attack the black populace. It is however a fair view of the faults of both the left and the right when it comes to America's underclass and how each side views it.
A tidbit from this article:
Criminality is the most extreme manifestation of the unsocialized young male. Another is the proportion of young males who choose not to work. Among black males ages 20-24, for example, the percentage who were not working or looking for work when the first numbers were gathered in 1954 was 9%. That figure grew during the 1960s and 1970s, stabilizing at around 20% during the 1980s. The proportion rose again, reaching 30% in 1999, a year when employers were frantically seeking workers for every level of job. The dropout rate among young white males is lower, but has been increasing faster than among blacks.
These increases are not explained by changes in college enrollment or any other benign cause. Large numbers of healthy young men, at ages when labor force participation used to be close to universal, have dropped out. Remember that these numbers ignore young males already in prison. Include them in the calculation, and the evidence of the deteriorating socialization of young males, concentrated in low income groups, is overwhelming.
All I ask is that these problems are recognized not excused. Dear husband and I started our lives together with basically the shirts on our backs and a bun in the oven. Through many years of very hard work and sacrifice, we are in a better place today.
I need to digress here:
Our church is sending a team of volunteers to the Mississippi coast to help with the clean-up efforts. They chose to go to Mississippi because it is being ignored. FEMA is not there, Red Cross is barely there and the people who were devastated by Hurricane Katrina are in desperate need. They are in this situation because of black leaders. With the 'squeaky wheels' of Jesse Jackson, et al, New Orleans is receiving the majority of assistance while the Mississippi coast sits almost untouched.
Thanks to Maggie again.
Posted by Stacy at October 7, 2005 11:16 AM | TrackBackThe truth is rarely popular, especially as relates to ethnic issues. Jackson, Sharpton, and others, should the race card lose potency, will become the non-entities they so richly deserve to be. Hence the vicious attacks on the message of Bill Cosby that blacks must take responsibility for their own actions, and for their own state.
Posted by: Bill at October 7, 2005 02:22 PMMy church's group just got back from southern Alabama, a place with no federal aid, a place with no crying politicians, just a place that appreciated any little bit we could do.
And that was a blessing to our group.
I was speaking yesterday with a neighbor who works for the local power company. In this den of liberal madness, he happens also to be a conservative. When someone at his work initiated a plea for volunteers to go to New Orleans, he was first to sign up; none of his liberal co-workers, they who have always been preaching about giving back, volunteered. To his credit, my friend called them on it, and shamed them all. To no one's surprise, however, none of those liberal stalwarts reconsidered. Pathetic!
Posted by: Bill at October 8, 2005 01:15 PM