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

That have nothing to do with race?

 

Depends whether his (a) girlfriend paid for the headphones or shoes, or if they found a box that fell off the truck.

 

You make a great point though, YF (but I'm going to ban you now!)

I use Trenton as an example many times because I was just immersed in the community for 5 years. With that, I offer this question: The Trenton African-American Pride Festival began 4 years ago when the Trentonian columnist, black, got fed up with every other ethnicity having a pride day but not blacks. The TAAPF began modestly but has grown by leaps and bounds the last 3 years with health screenings and (supposed) education forums (I say supposed because I have yet to see photos of these forums in action).

Lots of stages and food vendors etc etc but I'd be curious to know if financial literacy is something they focus on.

http://taacf.com/

 

Fascinating discussion thus far. The issues facing black people are complex in nature, but I think it can be summarized thusly:

We had a noble cause in making sure the playing field was even after years of Jim Crow. The problem was with how we enacted the cause. Rather than ensure all schools were funded adequately, we started busing students. Rather than let the public pressure of sit-ins and freedom rides keep causing embarrassment to businesses and thus force them to change, we implemented affirmative action. Rather than figure out how to get people entered into the workforce, we created programs that led to a vicious cycle of people believing government assistance is the only way they can survive.

Not to mention our economy has changed dramatically. It used to be that unemployment insurance wasn't something to make a big fuss about, because it was used for the so-called blue-collar workers to get some money in between jobs. Now that more white-collar workers are getting laid off, they're getting onto the unemployment rolls and they won't take blue-collar work.

And Songbird raises a valid point that racism isn't limited to whites versus whoever. Generally speaking, blacks and Hispanics are suspicious of one another. I've seen examples of it. Nobody wants to talk about it, though, because then we have to admit that those who the white man held back are just as capable of discrimination.

I'm gonna throw out another thought that's probably going to raise some eyebrows: Suburban development has caused a lot of the problems. We have spread-out development that requires lots of money to build and maintain infrastructure, and it's led to most people getting out of the cities, while the poor can't afford to do so and everything in the city gets neglected because it's not a priority for those in the suburbs, who usually have the ears of the state and federal legislatures.

Is it still possible to address the situation? Sure, but that means you have to stop with the direction you are going now, start getting to the root of the problem, and once you have found it (and not by pretending it's a "see how easy that is" approach, because I can tell you right now it is NOT easy), you figure how to properly address it. And you also remember it will take time, because how we got here didn't happen overnight, so we aren't going to get out of it overnight.

OK, I'm off the soapbox.

 

The story of Mound Bayou Mississippi:

http://www.kinglyheirs.com/MoundBayouMovement/History.html

 

Walmart gets a lot of crap, some of it deserved, but it does offer a lot of services the poor can use, such as cheap check-cashing services, and cheap reloadable debit cards.

 

And the banking industry, and state regulators, are fighting them tooth and nail to prevent them from offering more banking services.

 

Coming back to the original thread topic, the Times profile of Brown tells us that his uncle had "the conversation" with him.

No different than what the author of the article advises:

 

I don't think I follow.

Not all of the policy failures keeping the black population down are related to race. But the reason they were down in the first place was related to race, as was Jim Crow, as was block busting, and on and on.

 

If the same policy failures have hurt both inner city African-Americans and poor rural whites, then can't we assume there are not racist implications behind the policies?

Maybe it's not racism. Maybe it's just policy failures.

Also, what are the policies, and why did they fail?

I think many would argue that we had policies with good intentions, that weren't funded well enough to accomplish their intended goals.

But, did some of the policies actually cause more problems than they solved?

 

No.

I never said it was.

Absolutely.

Lots of 'em. Lots of reasons.

Definitely, in some cases. It's a complicated issue.

Probably.

 

Wait. It's not racism?

Then what the fuck are we talking about?

Does this mean we can stop focusing on race, and start looking for solutions?