I have an idea for a reality show. Take people who have been on some form of public assistance their entire lives, give them tasks for which they are not prepared, and see who can succeed. For example, you dump building materials in a parking lot somewhere, leave a blueprint, and see who can organize the project and get it done. You could pay for the college, or vocational training of the winner. Maybe every participant gets something–for example a job.
This is the sort of model that needs to be on display. Currently, the motto seems to be “get rich (by luck) or die trying”. Rather than seeing a pathway to progress, teens in ghettos (and I would include here all the chronically unemployed of all races in countries like Britain and France) engage in risky behaviors of all sorts, including not just drug dealing, but assuming that some sort of athletic or musical talent will get them out. They do on occasion, but rarely.
We need to be clear that black people in this country have been segregated more or less as a conscious policy of Democrat policy-makers, who have insisted that their path forward consists in electing and reelecting the same people who fail them year-in, year-out. Every election cycle, the promised manna falls in small bits, but never enough to fundamentally alter anything, with the major exception of the cost/benefit analysis as it regards out-of-wedlock parenthood.
Currently, African-Americans are incarcerated at a rate at least three times that of European-Americans. Yet, as I understand the matter, if you correct for single parent households, this disparity disappears. White Americans that are raised in single parent homes commit crimes at the same rate as black Americans also raised in single parent homes. This is, then, not a racial difference at all, but a cultural difference, and the culture in question cannot be understood outside of the politics of separation, resentment, and victimhood that have been playing in the ghettos ever since Jesse Jackson used the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. to launch his own brand of political entrepreneurialism.
To the point, the message is that no matter what you do, what decisions you make, you deserve something from others. That personal responsibility is not a primary virtue, and that anger combined with political agitation is the pathway to the future.
For his part, Jackson’s business has done well. He has made a lot of money. But he has not helped anyone help themselves. The best he ever gets for anyone is a place at a feeding trough filled with food provided by other people.
He does not produce producers. He does not produce self respecters. He does not produce wealth. He does not produce innovation. He does not produce GOODNESS. The seeds he has sown produce burning buildings, of the sort seen here some time ago, and quite possibly soon enough again.
Rant over.