I was talking with a social worker today who said she didn’t like her job. I asked her why, and she said she didn’t feel she was “making a difference”. Her idea of where to go was the public school system, where she wanted to be an administrator of some sort at some point.
I thought about this, and the only thought that kept coming back to me was: can you really help people who are unwilling to help themselves? Why are so many of the people who claim to be able to speak on behalf of “disadvantaged minorities” not themselves from the same place? Why are they normally white leftists, who figure that without their expertise nothing can get done?
One of the cruelest things you can do for a person is to help them carry their burdens, when their burdens need to be making them stronger and more able. Where is the self organization in the black communities? Where are the block leaders, saying “we need to police ourselves”? Where are the parents, setting up study groups?
It’s not a question of poverty. Drop any illiterate person from Japan or China or Tibet in a poor neighborhood, and they will work three jobs so their kids can go to college. Give the poor of almost any nation the chances that the average poor American has, and they will use them.
It’s not a question of race. Prior to the upheavals of the 60’s, black neighborhoods were every bit as peaceful, and their children every bit as eager to learn–an opportunity often denied them, or offered inequally–as anyone else.
No, the problem is cultural. It stems directly from the basic philosophy offered by the Left, which is that the task is not to lift yourself and the people around you up, but to extort money from the “rich” as retribution for the supposed injustice of inequality of outcome.
Part and parcel of this socialist package is the denigration of God and the church (which has been perverted into an extension of politics), the nuclear family, and self restraint and self sacrifice outright.
It really is this simple. The left wants to argue that black people can’t make it on their own. I disagree. They are just the victims of really, really, really bad ideas that have grown legs; and which are reinforced daily by those who depend on the votes of those who have only languished and suffered from their long term loyalty.
You think Democrats help African Americans? Where? What Democrats do is BUY their votes. None of them have to live in the hellholes of most inner American cities, nor do they send their children to the schools where those who vote for them send their own children. They know damn well they would get an inferior education.
This is a complex topic, but quite clearly what has been done, IS NOT WORKING. This means something different needs to be tried. Vouchers would be a good start. I have a few more ideas, but lack the time and energy to defend them at this moment.