I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me.

Because it is offensive

 

I don't think it is in this context. DW is ascribing it to other people's views, and some most certainly see it that way.

 

You can't spend decades making empty promises to lift people up unless you make every effort to keep them down.

 

Basically agree. Personally, I think Old Tony's post about African Americans being better off before the mid-60s is far more offensive than Dicks blunt use of the N-word here. At least if you bother to consider context and meaning, instead of just word choice.

 

Within reason.

 

That one was still going up when it cleared the fence.

As I've stated, the people who think the government is going to deliver their prosperity are still waiting or they died still waiting.

 

I'm having trouble thinking all the implications of this through to find good numbers. For example do I want to look at all Hispanics born in the US as a comparison? Or just second-generation Hispanics?
There's also some other factors - if I compare all second-generation Hispanics or all native Hispanics to only poor African Americans, I keep in my sample those Hispanics who were poor but made good, while taking out those African Americans who were poor but made good (seems like a bad idea for what we're trying to measure - we need to include the African American inner-city success stories).
Finally there's some survival bias. Recent immigrants who don't find success are more likely to emigrate than native borns who don't find success.

All that said - native-born Hispanics are more likely to find themselves in the lowest economic quartile than native born blacks (using the term blacks when discussing these findings b/c that's the term used in the findings).
Immigrant hispanics are even more likely.
Native blacks are more likely to find themselves in the top 2 economic quartlies than native Hispanics (all this according to a paper published by the University of Wisconsin).

Interestingly enough, for all levels of educational attainment, according to this UW paper, native-born blacks are more likely to be in poverty than native-born Hispanics, Whites, Asians or "others." Though the paper didn't delve in to the why of that and there's a lot of possible variables to speculate with, it's an interesting fact.

EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION: The Numbers in the UW paper looked at adults.

 

See, you approach this with this preconceived idea that I am pushing some far left economic agenda. In actuality, I'm the person here who postulated that it might be worth exploring lowering the minimum wage for corporations willing to hire poor people. It would probably be uconstitutional, and certainly not too politically palatable. But it's definitely not a leftist policy proposal.

 

You keep saying this or some variation of it. I don't understand how it matters. The black population as a whole is disproportionately impoverished, undereducated, and unskilled. Of course there will be outliers.

 

But, what if they're not outliers?

What if the causes of poverty among poor African-Americans, Native Americans, and whites are similar/the same, and have nothing to do with race?

If poverty becomes a self perpetuating, generational cycle, regardless of race, then we should look at the causes and potential solutions. The focus on race distracts us and divides us.

 

I'm not an attorney and certainly not a constitutional scholar, but how in the world can lowering the minimum wage be unconstitutional? I don't think there's a minimum wage mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.

 

What if the the causes of poverty among African-Americans, rural whites, Native Americans et al. are resistant, perhaps impervious, to the sort of policy that flesh-and-blood human beings formulate and implement? Not because the poor are shiftless or of lesser worth, but because the people who formulate, implement -- and don't forget enforce -- policy are as self-interested as anyone.

To paraphrase Edmund Burke: