A debt is owed to blacks, even if it’s uncollectible and never paid.
“There’s nothing wrong with us, something was done to us.” READ
That “something” was more than 300 years of the most inhumane and brutal form of slavery ever perpetrated by one group of human beings on another. And the remnants of those dark centuries still haunt blacks here in America in the form of abject poverty, low achievement, and endemic violence in poor communities. While neither the current generation of whites nor their parents or grandparents participated in the brutality perpetrated by their more-distant ancestors, many continue to benefit from its effects, and not nearly enough have engaged in any efforts to ameliorate the lingering effects of slavery. A debt is owed to blacks, even if it’s uncollectible and never paid.
No group of people ever willingly allows its young people to devour themselves as senselessly as young black males are currently doing in America. These youths are drowning in a perfect storm of neglect, poverty, and mindless violence. If there were an easy solution to the high rate of violence among young men of color, the elders of the black community, criminologists, and social scientists would have “solved” the problem decades ago.
But if pointed barbs from small-minded conservative commentators are what it takes to spur the country into action, then so be it. The point is to solve the problem and not play petty politics with young black lives.
Some potential short-term solutions: In more enlightened countries, poor people are paid to see doctors, because it’s cheaper to keep people from getting sick than to have to pay for emergency care once they are seriously ill. Other countries are experimenting with the idea of paying addicts to stay clean. Death is costly. So why not take the fundamentally conservative idea that people respond to marginal economic incentives and apply it to the intractable problem of black youth violence? READ BELOW ,,,,IT GETS BETTER !
No group of people ever willingly allows its young people to devour themselves as senselessly as young black males are currently doing in America. These youths are drowning in a perfect storm of neglect, poverty, and mindless violence. If there were an easy solution to the high rate of violence among young men of color, the elders of the black community, criminologists, and social scientists would have “solved” the problem decades ago.
But if pointed barbs from small-minded conservative commentators are what it takes to spur the country into action, then so be it. The point is to solve the problem and not play petty politics with young black lives.
Some potential short-term solutions: In more enlightened countries, poor people are paid to see doctors, because it’s cheaper to keep people from getting sick than to have to pay for emergency care once they are seriously ill. Other countries are experimenting with the idea of paying addicts to stay clean. Death is costly. So why not take the fundamentally conservative idea that people respond to marginal economic incentives and apply it to the intractable problem of black youth violence? READ BELOW ,,,,IT GETS BETTER !
One potential answer is paying students for earning good grades. All parents capable of doing so already engage in the practice in one form or another, but parents without the financial wherewithal or resources cannot use this simple carrot-and-stick approach, which has achieved remarkable success in Brazil, where it’s a government policy, and some promising results in New York City, where a privately funded pilot program has tested the idea. I’ve had an educator tell me that he was “philosophically opposed” to paying kids to get good grades—so I suppose he expected children from disadvantaged backgrounds, where there’s no family tradition of education, to become good students because it’s the right thing to doStaying with money, adults need to understand that it’s tough being broke in an iPad world. Young blacks, like everyone else in our society, are bombarded with messages telling them what they absolutely need to have, and absent a legitimate method of acquiring such “things”—basic necessities of adolescence, if you stop and think about it—they will resort to illegitimate methods.