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Thursday, October 15. 2020

At Quillette, The Lawrence Mead Affair:

Regarding the claim that “black social problems” are due to “white oppression,” Mead argued, “By that logic, the problems should have been worst prior to the civil rights reforms in the 1960s.” Yet in his reading of events, “The collapse of the black family occurred mostly after civil rights rather than before.” Hence Mead not only suggested that Western culture is better than non-Western culture, at least when it comes to getting ahead in America, but also that higher poverty rates among blacks and Hispanics are attributable to factors other than racial discrimination. As you can imagine, this message was not warmly received...

There are black (and white) subcultures which are not positive in orientation. But in 2020, everything is racism. Racism, or some other sort of victimology. Maybe it's an election year. Identifying as a victim is not a good approach to life though. A recipe for misery or dysfunction.

Posted by The Barrister in Education at 13:22 | Comments (13) | Trackbacks (0)

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Much as Mead's argument is superficially appealing, simple temporal ordering is insufficient to demonstrate cause and effect. Civil rights reforms are confounded with the War on Poverty, the anti-war movement, sexual "liberation" due to cheap birth-control drugs, and the rise in drug culture, to name a few pernicious social innovations. So many ways to be miserable, so few to be happy.

#1 Mike Anderson (Link) on 2020-10-15 14:12 (Reply)

Oh. From the snippet above which I poorly skimmed I assumed they were talking about MARGARET Mead the cultural anthropologist. I'm sure she would be politically incorrect and banned today as well.

#2 Jim on 2020-10-15 14:37 (Reply)

This was all by intent. LBJ blurted it out on TV one time. I can't remember the exact quote but it was basically that with the welfare the Democrats passed the blacks would forever be dependent and forever vote Democrat.

#3 OneGuy on 2020-10-15 18:38 (Reply)

It was indeed a deliberate action. Lyndon Johnson wanted the blacks voting Democrat "for 200 years" — although "blacks" wasn't the noun he used. You can probably guess what his actual word was.

In any case, what should upset people today is not Johnson's vocabulary, but rather sheer cynicism with which he promoted the Great Society welfare programs. He set out to make blacks wards of the state who would reliably vote Democrat and to achieve that he deliberately destroyed black family structure.

These programs set up a welfare system that, in effect, pays women to have kids. So you get single-mom "families" of multiple kids by multiple fathers, with none of the fathers around to guide the male kids' upbringing and teach them how to become a decent adult.

#3.1 PubliusII on 2020-10-15 19:21 (Reply)

Culture can change (and does) but the current movement asserts that one cannot criticize anything about blacks, including culture. Culture explains why black immigrants from Bermuda, Africa etc do better than native blacks. It is preposterous that the Left wants to defend gang culture, but they do.

#4 cc (Link) on 2020-10-15 19:15 (Reply)

..."Identifying as a victim is not a good approach to life though. A recipe for misery or dysfunction."

It's very hard to overemphasize this thought. Taking it to heart and acting on it is the key to a decent life for everyone.

#5 PubliusII on 2020-10-15 19:18 (Reply)

Amen, brother. I can't think of a worse way to live your one-and-only life.

#5.1 Mark J Anderson (Link) on 2020-10-15 21:15 (Reply)

One identifiable group in America is far ahead of every other in the racism olympics in every survey ever taken.

It isn't white people.

American black people would rather cling to failure and blame white people for it, than do the work of living like civilized human beings. The white people making excuses for it are even worse.

#6 ccoffer on 2020-10-15 20:32 (Reply)

"American black people would rather cling to failure and blame white people"

Really? I'd ask my American Black partner about what he thinks of your bullshit but he's busy on an engineering project.

Do you people ever think before you post?

#6.1 Henry Jackson on 2020-10-16 13:31 (Reply)

I grew up on the fringes, although not enmired in, an all-white southern rural culture that was as impoverished, and dysfunctional as any that one could imagine.

Many broke out of it. It was not easy. Most did it by serving in WWII, and using the "sweat and blood equity" to buy their way out.

A good part of my own so-called "white privilege" was earned through military service.

Options are usually available to change your life trajectory. Quite often they are available for a finite period, and a person needs to be prepared for them; and also be willing to pay the associated price.

#7 Oldflyer on 2020-10-15 20:34 (Reply)

America can never, ever have an honest discussion about race as long as the culture issue is verboten. Evidently there’s nothing more racist than asking black folks what “they” could do to improve their lot. It’s like saying if you don’t fight with/run from police while high, or just agitated, then your chances of not getting hurt by police decreases exponentially, but it’s obvious this isn’t a consideration in the reform quest.

Learned my lesson early on this. In grad school I made the point that white flight isn’t due to racism (maybe in the most minor of cases), but class/culture and politics. You would have thought I stood up and called my classmates the N-word, and there wasn’t a black soul in there.

#8 Hoss on 2020-10-15 22:16 (Reply)

"White Flight" was about one thing and one thing only--quality education for children from K-12! White flight was about forced busing. White flight was about children being forced to not excel above others in their classrooms. White flight was about denying white kids the right to be the best they could be. End of story!

#8.1 faculty wife on 2020-10-15 22:23 (Reply)

While I don't disagree with your point it ignores other major reasons and the most important of those is safety. Black neighborhoods are not safe and they are ten times more dangerous for non-blacks.

#8.1.1 OneGuy on 2020-10-17 11:14 (Reply)

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Thursday, October 15. 2020

Another academic victim