Hate

[MachineGhost]

I certainly don't believe that Africans (or anyone) are born to fail by their nature. What happened in Liberia, though? I am genuinely curious. Didn't they have every opportunity to get things right?

The usual story. Naive idealism gives way to Type A political corruption. Let's face it... at least in the mostly central African countries craigr likes to harp upon, they're up to several hundred years behind the West in political evolution. Self-determination is not a magical panacea. If white people have had an advantage, then it was that we've figured out what to do and what not to do for several hundred years while blacks were kept enslaved by Americans or imperialed by the Europeans. They are still in kindergarten or primary school over there in Africa.

OTOH, the great thing about the Internet and mobile phones is evolution happens at near warp speed nowadays. The Millennials and younger generations are not going to tolerate decades or a century of a lack of political progress. They're not at all that interested in the misery of collective suffering and more about becoming a fat, decadent, burquoise consumer like in the West. Win-win!

[MachineGhost]

I don't understand much about epigenetic transmission--only the basic concept. (I remember reading the footnote about Lamark in high school and thinking that he was on to something.) But we're talking only about the time span of only a few generations, and about behavioral traits that are highly complex. In broad-brush terms, how might this work? Is there a proposed mechanism for environmental alteration of whole "clusters" of genes that together form meaningful psychological or behavioral traits?

There's no alternation, just suppression or promotion of genes. Think of plants. You plant a seed and it grows and adapts to the enivronment including the unique weather and bugs of the particular location then that plant passes that epigenetic information down to its offspring without altering any genes. And so on and so on.

Now just to be fair, there's still a lot of institutional racism in this country that saying "stop whining" to the slave descendants is not going to magically ameliorate. If they can't get a job, then the entire foundation for a quality life crumbles.

Franky, I suspect nothing is going to change until we stop the bullshitting "War on Drugs" and stop over-imprisoning people of color. And stop giving anyone with a criminal record a civil death. Everything else is completely academic. Uncle OBAMA! doesn't care enough to tackle the issue in any significant way. So sophie is ultimately right, we need to remove all barriers and pull a Brave New World on these people and let them sink or swim... they've got to collectively grow up.

BTW, I've known many fine and upstanding black families and have had my share of run ins with the scumbag element. Ultimately, this is a socio-economic issue completely exacerbated by the lowest caste among that category. It's not a skin color issue at all.

[l82start]

Franky, I suspect nothing is going to change until we stop the bullshitting "War on Drugs" and stop over-imprisoning people of color. And stop giving anyone with a criminal record a civil death. Everything else is completely academic. Uncle OBAMA! doesn't care enough to tackle the issue in any significant way. So sophie is ultimately right, we need to remove all barriers and pull a Brave New World on these people and let them sink or swim... they've got to collectively grow up.

BTW, I've known many fine and upstanding black families and have had my share of run ins with the scumbag element. Ultimately, this is a socio-economic issue completely exacerbated by the lowest caste among that category. it's not a skin color issue at all.

it is definitely not, poor trash is poor trash not because of skin color, or any of the peripheral cultural preferences like music or clothing choices, poor trash has common underlying socio economic conditions, belief systems and oppression by corrupt practices (War on Drugs, poor education. entitlement mentality and the systems that breed it... etc) that keep them trapped in that condition, thats why smart people the world over can escape from ghettos, barrios, trailer parks, and shit-hole countries... and the ones who cant see past the trap don't escape, cant better themselves, or don't take action to eliminate the corruption in their shit hole, or if they do take over are just as bad as their predecessor if not worse...
(or in the case of modern American immigration, are trying to bring their shit-hole with them when they leave)

[MediumTex]

Franky, I suspect nothing is going to change until we stop the bullshitting "War on Drugs" and stop over-imprisoning people of color. And stop giving anyone with a criminal record a civil death. Everything else is completely academic. Uncle OBAMA! doesn't care enough to tackle the issue in any significant way. So sophie is ultimately right, we need to remove all barriers and pull a Brave New World on these people and let them sink or swim... they've got to collectively grow up.

BTW, I've known many fine and upstanding black families and have had my share of run ins with the scumbag element. Ultimately, this is a socio-economic issue completely exacerbated by the lowest caste among that category. it's not a skin color issue at all.

it is definitely not, poor trash is poor trash not because of skin color, or any of the peripheral cultural preferences like music or clothing choices, poor trash has common underlying socio economic conditions, belief systems and oppression by corrupt practices (War on Drugs, poor education. entitlement mentality and the systems that breed it... etc) that keep them trapped in that condition, thats why smart people the world over can escape from ghettos, barrios, trailer parks, and shit-hole countries... and the ones who cant see past the trap don't escape, cant better themselves, or don't take action to eliminate the corruption in their shit hole, or if they do take over are just as bad as their predecessor if not worse...
(or in the case of modern American immigration, are trying to bring their shit-hole with them when they leave)

In the U.S. the poorest black people are found in the urban ghettos, while the poorest white people are found out in the country.

Since our media is basically urban-centric in everything it does, it's no surprise that we hear less about white poverty than we do black poverty. The media would have to leave the cities to cover the white poverty story.

Note, too, that most of the prisons are away from the cities as well, which I think makes them more invisible to the average city dwelling media person.

If the media wanted to, it could spin almost any narrative involving disadvantaged people being mistreated by the institutions in our society.

Consider:

White People: White Trash Lives Matter
Native Americans: Drunk Hopeless Native American Lives Matter
Hispanics: Mexican Day Laborers' Lives Matter
Working Class Irish: No Talent Markie Mark Knockoff Lives Matter
North Dakotan Poor: Funny Talkin' Fargo-esque Meth Head Lives Matter

[TennPaGa]

In the U.S. the poorest black people are found in the urban ghettos, while the poorest white people are found out in the country.

Along these lines...

Hillbilly America: Do White Lives Matter?
--- Rod Dreher in The American Conservative (summarizing a recently released book entitled Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance)

The book is an autobiographical account by a lawyer (Yale Law School graduate) and sometime conservative writer who grew up in a poor and chaotic Appalachian household. He’s a hillbilly, in other words, and is not ashamed of the term. Vance reflects on his childhood, and how he escaped the miserable fate (broken families, drugs, etc) of so many white working class and poor people around whom he grew up. And he draws conclusions from it, conclusions that may be hard for some people to take. But Vance has earned the right to make those judgments. This was his life. He speaks with authority that has been extremely hard won.
...
Vance talks about how, in his youth, there was a lot of hardscrabble poverty among his people, but nothing like today, dominated by the devastation of drug addiction. Everything we are accustomed to hearing about black inner city social dysfunction is fully present among these white hillbillies, as Vance documents in great detail. He writes that “hillbillies learn from an early age to deal with uncomfortable truths by avoiding them, or by pretending better truths exist. This tendency might make for psychological resilience, but it also makes it hard for Appalachians to look at themselves honestly.”
...
Vance talks about the hillbilly habit of stigmatizing people who leave the hollers as “too big for your britches” — meaning that you got above yourself. It doesn’t matter that they may have left to find work, and that they’re living a fairly poor life not too far away, in Ohio. The point is, they left, and that is a hard sin to forgive. What, we weren’t good enough for you?

This is the white-people version of “acting white,” if you follow me: the same stigma and shame that poor black people deploy against other poor black people who want to better themselves with education and so on.

There's much more in the linked article, including many harrowing excerpts from the book. Here's one:

Why didn’t our neighbor leave that abusive man? Why did she spend her money on drugs? Why couldn’t she see that her behavior was destroying her daughter? Why were all of these things happening not just to our neighbor but to my mom? It would be years before I learned that no single book, or expert, or field could fully explain the problems of hillbillies in modern America. Our elegy is a sociological one, yes, but it is also about psychology and community and culture and faith. During my junior year of high school, our neighbor Pattie called her landlord to report a leaky roof. The landlord arrived and found Pattie topless, stoned, and unconscious on her living room couch. Upstairs the bathtub was overflowing — hence, the leaking roof. Pattie had apparently drawn herself a bath, taken a few prescription painkillers, and passed out. The top floor of her home and many of her family’s possessions were ruined. This is the reality of our community. It’s about a naked druggie destroying what little of value exists in her life. It’s about children who lose their toys and clothes to a mother’s addiction.

This was my world: a world of truly irrational behavior. We spend our way into the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don’t need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake. Thrift is inimical to our being. We spend to pretend that we’re upper class. And when the dust clears — when bankruptcy hits or a family member bails us out of our stupidity — there’s nothing left over. Nothing for the kids’ college tuition, no investment to grow our wealth, no rainy-day fund if someone loses her job. We know we shouldn’t spend like this. Sometimes we beat ourselves up over it, but we do it anyway.

FWIW, Dreher has written about this book frequently since its release in late June 2016. Check out all his related posts here.

[I Shrugged]

So, just imagine what happens when we get the Basic Living Income or whatever that evil dream is called.

All of these various underclass people are being destroyed by free money, by being able to subsist without working. No job, no meaning to life, the wrong lessons about right and wrong, more kids, more money, etc.

[I Shrugged]

Btw, you people are depressing me.

[MachineGhost]

Uh no, these people are being destroyed by a LACK of money to get the hell out. You obviously don't understand how much of a joke welfare really is. It's not enough to change your life in any significant way and you become a slave to Big Brother, so it just adds to the hopelessness. So why not use the feeble money to go get high and temporarily forget the pain of being irrelevant with no future?

On the other hand, as a conservative, I grow weary of fellow middle-class conservatives acting as if it were possible simply to bootstrap your way out of poverty. My dad was able to raise my sister and me in the 1970s on a civil servant’s salary, supplemented by my mom’s small salary as a school bus driver. I doubt this would be possible today. You’re a conservative who has known poverty and powerlessness as well as wealth and privilege. What do you have to say to your fellow conservatives?

I think you hit the nail right on the head: we need to judge less and understand more. It’s so easy for conservatives to use “culture” as an ending point in a discussion–an excuse to rationalize their worldview and then move on–rather than a starting point. I try to do precisely the opposite in Hillbilly Elegy. This book should start conversations, and it is successful, it will.

The Atlantic‘s Ta-Nehisi Coates, who I often disagree with, has made a really astute point about culture and the way it has been deployed against the black poor. His point, basically, is that “culture” is little more than an excuse to blame black people for various pathologies and then move on. So it’s hardly surprising that when poor people, especially poor black folks, hear “culture,” they instinctively run for the hills.

But let’s just think about what culture really means, to borrow an example from my life. One of the things I mention in the book is that domestic strife and family violence are cultural traits–they’re just there, and everyone experiences them in one form or another. I learned domestic strife from the moment I was born, from more than 15 stepdads and boyfriends I encountered, to the domestic violence case that nearly tore my family apart (I was the primary victim). So predictably, by the time I got married, I wasn’t a great spouse. I had to learn, with the help of my aunt and sister (both of whom had successful marriages), but especially with the help of my wife, how not to turn every small disagreement into a shouting match or a public scene. Too many conservatives look at that situation, say “well that’s a cultural problem, nothing we can do,” and then move on. They’re right that it’s a cultural problem: I learned domestic strife from my mother, and she learned it from her parents.

But to speak “culture” and then move on is a total copout, and there are public policy solutions to draw from experiences like this: how could my school have better prepared me for domestic life? how could child welfare services have given me more opportunities to spend time with my Mamaw and my aunt, rather than threatening me–as they did–with the promise of foster care if I kept talking? These are tough, tough problems, but they’re not totally immune to policy interventions. Neither are they entirely addressable by government. It’s just complicated.

That’s just one small example, obviously, and there are many more in the book. But I think this unwillingness to deal with tough issues–or worse, to pretend they’ll all go away if we can hit 4 percent growth targets–is a significant failure of modern conservative politics. And looking at the political landscape, this failure may very well have destroyed the conservative movement as we used to know it.

[l82start]

So, just imagine what happens when we get the Basic Living Income or whatever that evil dream is called.

All of these various underclass people are being destroyed by free money, by being able to subsist without working. No job, no meaning to life, the wrong lessons about right and wrong, more kids, more money, etc.

I have my doubts that a citizens dividend or Basic Living Income wont get twisted into some hellish experiment by the bureaucrats and law makers by adding in the same kind of stupidity that welfare and all the current entitlement programs have. The ones that result in unintended consequence like we see in poor neighborhoods country wide... but the ideal for a citizens dividend is that it is supposed to be set up in a way that it won't encourage people to vote for politicians promising more, it won't promote unwed motherhood, it won't encourage not working by decreasing the money you get if you do work.. etc.

i would like to see the ideal version tried... what the real version would look like after passing through governments hands.... probably not so much..

[craigr]

If any kind of basic income system were to ever be passed in the U.S., I would recommend anyone with the resources and ability to leave the country immediately. Barring that, at least move to an area very far away from major cities and dense population centers.

[l82start]

If any kind of basic income system were to ever be passed in the U.S., I would recommend anyone with the resources and ability to leave the country immediately. Barring that, at least move to an area very far away from major cities and dense population centers.

aren't they about to try this experiment in NZ?
what do you think is going to happen in the city's/population centers if they did this?

[craigr]

If any kind of basic income system were to ever be passed in the U.S., I would recommend anyone with the resources and ability to leave the country immediately. Barring that, at least move to an area very far away from major cities and dense population centers.

aren't they about to try this experiment in NZ?

I don't think so unless I missed something really big. That is not very likely to fly as many kiwis are still pretty conservative fiscally (e.g. cheap as). Even welfare here is hotly debated and there is a large population of Maori that are huge welfare consumers and a serious problem.

In fact, the government shut down welfare benefits to anyone they saw left the country. They figured if you can afford international travel, then you don't need welfare:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politic ... -penalised

what do you think is going to happen in the city's/population centers if they did this?

The entire system would collapse. Who are we kidding? It won't solve anything.