Many commentators are currently engaged in talking about how poor black people were worst hit in the New Orleans hurricane/flood and how they suffered because they were black. The reasoning goes something like this: america is a racist society that uses black people to fulfill menial tasks, while whites enjoy a higher standard of living because they are white.
Many so-called black leaders have spiced up the tenor of talk shows and solidified their position among black people by holding forth this position as if it were a given. and on the surface of it, they are, strictly speaking, statistically correct. However, as there are three kinds of lies (i.e. lies, damned lies and statistics) one should take this rhetoric with a grain of salt.
The fact that america's black people have managed to stay at the bottom of the socio-economic scale is not so much an indictment of the system as it is of most black people themselves. Before you break out the tar and feathers and prepare to lynch me as a racist, let me explain.
Many african americans believe that any black people who succeed within the system are sellouts-- Uncle Toms and aunt Jemimas. Individuals such as Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice have their legitimate achievements minimized and denigrated in an effort to prove that the only reason they advanced in life was because they sucked up to the White Man.
Imagine the cynical, nihilistic outlook that must permeate people who actually utilize this proposition as a life strategy. What they are essentially saying is that they are forever doomed to wallow in misery and poverty with no chance of eventual betterment. No matter what they do or attempt to do, nothing will change their lot in life.
and if someone does manage to change one's lot in life, then it couldn't be because they achieved it through hard work and personal excellence, but through the betrayal of their race. affirmative action programs only re-enforce this perception, as minority individuals who are hired to do a job don't ever really know if they were hired on the merit of their achievement or to fulfill a racial quota. additionally, there is always the suspicion among their co-workers that hey were hired because of the former.
It's a sad fact that there actually are people who believe this with all their being. It is a self-proving hypothesis that can't be disproved because if black people fail and remain in poverty it proves their point that no matter what they do they can't succeed. On the other hand those black people that do succeed are alleged to do so because they are “Uncle Toms” or “aunt Jemimas”, which is also proof to the naysayers that nothing can change.
So long as individuals like these have influence over their community, then that community will never change. So why bother going to school to learn educational basics in pursuit of a career?
For over 40 years now the Democrats have waged a war on poverty (read that black poverty). The U.S. government has spent more money ($60 trillion) on this war than on any other war that america has fought in its entire history. Yet poverty is a bigger problem today than it was in 1964 when that war was originally declared.
It's interesting to note that the Democrats keep talking about eradicating poverty, but the more they talk and the more money they spend, the larger the poverty numbers grow. One of the main reasons that this is so is because the Democrats are masters at convincing poor black people that their poverty is the direct result of a conscious effort on the part of wealthy whites to keep them that way. Can you just picture Bill Gates getting up in the morning and thinking up more and better ways to keep black people poor?
While there is hope, as more and more african americans join the ranks of the middle class without playing pro-ball, the progress is painfully slow. What the New Orleans disaster has shown is that poor people have relied on government to care for them for so long that many died when that government broke down and wasn't there for them.
accepting poverty as a life-sentence is not an option that we should give to the poor. By doing so, we discourage them from ever even trying to better themselves or to improve their lot in life. It is time that poor people took some responsibility for their plight and looked at ways to improve their lives, rather than lay the blame for their poverty on society as a whole. Using the excuse that racism is the cause of poverty is a classic cop-out that plays directly into the hands of those who would keep it that way in order to hang on to power.