Nova said:
Um, yeah. When certain people have 500 years of experience that tells them NOT to trust government or big business. I realize the rest of us are apt to feel impatient at what seems like short-sightedness. But what is naive to us may seem completely rational to people with a different history.
I understand Billy's point that the problem in N.O. seems to be heavily influenced by income and education level. But in this country, those factors are historically tied to race. Add in a quite reasonable historical suspicion of authority (political and economic) and none of us should be surprised.
Unless we have a brain ray that erases their brains, there's no way to do anything for someone who refuses your help. To me, this is the same as when an adult blames all their failings on their parents. Sure - their mom may have beat them when they were 7, and that was horrible, and no doubt has an impact on them still today. But as an adult, they have to realize that this cannot allow them to beat up on someone else, and that if that beating makes them choose to avoid all contact with women, it's their choice, and their chosen life.
The government saw a problem. They set up assistance to deal with it. They publicized that assistance as much as they could, emphasising attempts to contact poorer neighborhoods. And some chose not to use it. Among those who did chose to use it - they got an average of $40,000 more money! For everyone who heard about it, or simply chose to fight, and found out about it that way - there is no racial disparity in how much more money they got - no racial bias at all. The only bias is that those who didn't choose to use this help, didn't choose to fight, tended to be black more than white.
It's something that I think maybe needs to be taught in schools, or somewhere to balance this out. This isn't the only case I've seen of this type of thinking hurting black children. In an upper class neighborhood, with excellent schools, doing all they can to ensure an equal outcome, students of the same economic class, and black students do less well. The frustrated and puzzled school looks into it, and finds that the white parents are more likely to talk to the teacher, get involved, work with their kids on the homework, etc. - stay at home parents, income, everything balanced out, except race. Polls showed that the black parents had no idea of what the white parents were doing, they were just assuming that sending the kids to school, and nothing much more was what all parents did.
There was another interesing poll that showed a huge amount of the statistical racial bias found in, IIRC, college admissions, was not present for African students. The reason claimed (by someone I was debating who was black, and by the article) was that they hadn't the history of racism, so they just came in expecting to be treated equally - without feeling inferior, without compensating and expecting racism - and were.
It's a magic pill, makes bias go away, just by expecting to be treated equally, without being automatically on the attack expecting someone else to be a racist due to the color of their skin (I've experienced my share of that!), without removing yourself from the race because you assume racists will block you (when these days there are a lot of things stopping them, and a lot of old racists retiring and dying and being replaced by people who are not racists). Had the people quoted in this article expected and requested equal treatment, they would have gotten it - those that did, did get equal treatment. Those who expected no help, requested none, got none, and were racially discriminated against by themselves. (Money is indeed a major issue, can you afford to fight, but if I read the article right, race was the major factor of if someone got help or not, I'd assume adjusted for income).
There is racism, and racists, and bias, and so many other things we need to improve and so many things that have improved immensely over the past century, decades, and years - but these don't help those who have already decided to give up. And I think there should be some recognition that it is their choice, and that it is not our problem to fix. And ideally, some work in schools on trying to educate kids to not give up, to not assume people are biased, and let that assumption become reality by your actions.
