charles, do you think the proper materialist context will get these kids to do their homework? what will?

Another reading of the claim is that the children of recent East African immigrants don't have sense of who they are, dont'hav a sense of their own history, of the *why* of their situation.
With recent immigrants as with exisiting black communities history and not just economic structure sets the context in which one lives as an economic and political entity.
If the details of the article are to be believe, it's not the marginal economic situation of immigrant parents itself that causes the problem, but the inability of the children to comprehend just how their parents situation could make sense, how it could possibly be a worthwhile life.
I don't see anyhing all that invidious about the claim that ceteris paribus the situation of the families of E African immigrants is made difficult because of a more or less ineliminable gap in experience and understanding of the history that gives their life meaning, that makes sense of it.

Black American culture does not stand outside but inside of the American economy; it is shaped by the American economy, and responds to real economic conditions. The PI article is written as if black American culture is completely isolated and produced purely by the accident of biological circumstances. However, what is wrong or bad is not being a black American but being in a society that refuses to distribute its wealth in any way that resembles fairness. Without this context, an examination of the black African experience of black America can only be useless and racist.

Charles, I don't think the problem is primarily an economic one. The problem lies part in the mindset that has developed in this country over time (and it has existed in both the white and black community) that black Americans are more prone to becoming criminals.

But the root of the problems in the PI article have much more to do with the war on drugs than it does with economics (although economics certainly plays a role). Most drug markets in the U.S. are run from major cities and the gangs that control the trade are basically filled with those who are least intimidated by the prospect of going to jail. When you have the kind of divide that has grown over the years in this country that has made us believe that black people are more prone to go to jail, it shouldn't surprise anyone that they are the ones more likely to risk going to jail in the pursuit of wealth. And any African cultural traditions are easily trumped by this new reality in America. When you're here, you're black, and you become a part of that dynamic.

I follow the drug war very closely, and I find myself amazed that with all the news recently about the incarceration rate of young black Americans (the percentage of black U.S. citizens in jail is now 6 times higher than in the last year of Apartheid South Africa), that hardly anyone talks about the role that the drug war plays in exacerbating the stereotypes that are accepted by everyone from Bill Bennett to rappers that black culture is about crime. I'm sure that in 1920s Chicago, a lot children of Italian immigrants ended up involved in the gangs that controlled illegal alcohol distribution, which perpetuated the stereotype of lawlessness in that community which to this day still lingers. But that was not an issue of economics, it was an issue of having a lucrative black market where those who didn't fear the consequences of breaking the law could find their fortune.

Today, we look at the large numbers of black prisoners in the U.S. and conservatives believe "well, black people are culturally more prone to crime" and liberals think "we need to spend more money there". Both beliefs are wrong. The problem will exist as long as the most attractive option for a 17-year-old high school dropout from inner-city Baltimore or Detroit or even Seattle is to stand on the corner and sell drugs rather than to work someplace above the law.

But that was not an issue of economics, it was an issue of having a lucrative black market where those who didn't fear the consequences of breaking the law could find their fortune.

I need to proof-read the things I write before I post them. :)

What I mean to say is that it wasn't a matter of "economic investments"...

It's NOT the most attractive option, and it never has been. But it's the glamorized option. It's the one you see in rap videos and movies. The fact is most black Americans are part of the regular ol' mainstream, working jobs and living in houses. But you do not see their images in culture -- ESPECIALLY not in black culture.

It's the mindset that convinces young blacks in schools that professional sports is a realistic career goal, when it is usually not; that working on rhymes in the hallway is a valuable activity, because "I want to be a rapper", as if that's a realistic goal too. It's not; not even many of the 1/1000th of a percent of sports stars and especially rappers who are successful carry that success forward into later life.

But the black engineers and doctors and what have you get no exposure in the received notions of current generations. The crime isn't telling black kids they'll never amount to anything; it's the black kids believing them.

It's the mindset that convinces young blacks in schools that professional sports is a realistic career goal, when it is usually not; that working on rhymes in the hallway is a valuable activity, because "I want to be a rapper", as if that's a realistic goal too. It's not; not even many of the 1/1000th of a percent of sports stars and especially rappers who are successful carry that success forward into later life.

I don't buy that. Kids of all races dream of being sports heroes and celebrities. And when they get to be in their late teens, they discover the reality of those dreams fading away. The difference, as I mentioned above, is that since many drug markets have become based in black neighborhoods, the kid who drops out of high school in a white neighborhood gets an above-the-law job and begins a life of usually low-paying work, while many of the black kids in the same situation start selling drugs and begin a life of crime.

Yes, I know that's oversimplifying some, but that trend does exist and it does play a significant role in how race and crime are viewed and (mis)understood in our society.

It's oversimplifying a LOT. Most kids who sell drugs make almost nothing. Most drug markets aren't in "black" neighborhoods. Blacks in schools ARE marketed and marketing a rapper lifestyle more than whites; in a school like Garfield it's two alternate universes coexisting in the same space. Black kids don't go to AP classes; their friends would crucify them.

one more thing: knowledge of "your history" is utterly useless. it's a handicap. think serbs and croats.

seriously, I think a lot of black consciousness raising has the effect of inflicting depression and ptsd on successive generations. (google "learned helplessness). I know it sounds good to "know where you came from" but it also can turn into feelings of helplessness, resentment, despair, and anger. there's enough wrong with today to worry about the past.

the only historically-aware people that have been able to make their history useful (as far as I know) are the jewish people. and their big lesson is to invest in human capital (education and personal relationships), because the man can take away your physical capital.

It sounds like the children of East African immigrants have become too American, period. I don't have any illusions about most white students being particularly interested in where they come from or in working hard. They're too apathetic and there are too many distractions: television, internet, drugs.

Charles is right: there is something soul killing and inherently self destructive about a society that valorizes the economics of the lottery above all.

All Americans today dream of making a really big score, becoming Bill Gates or Paul Allen, and buying the biggest yacht they can commission. Or the economic equivalent.

The government even encourages this now by funding education through state lotteries, and continually reducing taxes on the rich.

Why don't we start a movement to reduce this trend, and make being very rich something we as a society frown upon - or make impossible by taxing away all income over a certain amount - say, over what 99% of other Americans make - and redistributing it for the social good?

Why don't we start a movement to reduce this trend, and make being very rich something we as a society frown upon - or make impossible by taxing away all income over a certain amount - say, over what 99% of other Americans make - and redistributing it for the social good?



I left a long comment last night that was held for review and apparently got swallowed up by the filter, but it was in response to FNARF. You can build the most modern high-tech schools imaginable in every black neighborhood in the US, but it would change nothing unless America's mindset that black neighborhoods are areas where criminality is the norm goes away. And it's the drug war and the illegal markets that spring up from it that perpetuate this mindset more than anything else. Throwing money at this problem won't work by itself. The only way to fix it is to stop ignoring the fact that our drug laws have created a gigantic human rights problem among the black community.

Yes, I agree THEHIM - but again, it's just a variation on the "you could make a really big score" theme fundamental to the American political economy overall.

And Bill Gates is perhaps the central avatar of this theme, at least in Seattle.

So however much money his foundation throws at schools to make them better, his own example contributes more to the problem than the schools he funds will ever solve.

What's happened in America is that what Marx derided as "merchant capital" in contrast to capital per se - early modern capital of joint stock companies of merchant adventurers and pirates, inherently risky (see The Merchant of Venice), often criminal and rooted in the idea of making a big score - has, through the magic of the stock market and the success of the public corporation as the dominant mode of economic organization, taken over everywhere.

It's no longer your piddling private capitalist exploiting his small cadre of workers by extracting surplus value from their overtime labor - and doing so rationally, methodically, bit by bit, year after year, to fund his upper middle class lifestyle.

No, it's robber joint stock capitalism run amock, where all that matters is stock price to institutional and big ticket investors who reap the rewards - huge due to the vastness of their holdings, even when price changes are small.

And it's corporations so large that the megamillions the insiders club of directors pay each other when they're CEOs don't even make enough dent in the revenue stream to affect the stock price one way or the other.

Such a political economy is inherently amoral - and encourages the very kind of lawlessness among those shut out from its benefits - but capable of emulating its example through illegal activity - that you decry.

Such a political economy is inherently amoral - and encourages the very kind of lawlessness among those shut out from its benefits - but capable of emulating its example through illegal activity - that you decry.


I agree with you, but we're still talking about two separate things. There's an extra element of division (that goes back to the original post from Charles) in play here that makes it even more of an uphill climb for someone in the black inner-city than for someone in a small town, even if on paper, they have the same level of economic support.


I agree with you completely that our love affair with free market capitalism and the downstream effects of an abandonment of investing in things that have no immediate return have had an alarming effect on many facets of our society. But that has very little to do with the alienation that Charles talks about. That alienation comes from the mindset we have that black communities are more prone to crime. And that stereotype lives and breathes on the drug war.


The two problems that we're talking about here do work together to some extent, but I think it's a mistake to think that it's solely an economic problem that has caused such a dire situation among the nation's black (mostly inner-city) communities.

Actually, I think Charles's original point was that the kid's laziness and lack of a work ethic wasn't specifically a *black* American problem - just an American problem.

And what's so different about white crack heads - perhaps the children of hard-working recent Croatian immigrants?

The dynamics are the same

And what's so different about white crack heads - perhaps the children of hard-working recent Croatian immigrants?

It's not so much about who does the drugs, it's about who gets recruited into selling them.