How to fix black America?

Shiner said:
I know of a country full of white people who could say the same thing your friend said. But we just call ourselves Australians and get on with it. Slave/Transported convict. Tell me there's a difference 200 years later.
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Because Australia didn't have its own blacks to enslave and exterminate?
 
20% of modern Australians are descended from convicts.
Convicts were, usually, set free after serving their sentence.
Their transportation was to a culture mostly their own.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia

Blacks, meanwhile, were captured wholesale. Had little to no chance of obtaining their freedom, and around 80% a majority by far, of black Americans are direct descendants of those slaves.

As for people who do complain, I'm pretty sure your aboriginals do.
 
ShadowSot said:
20% of modern Australians are descended from convicts.
Convicts were, usually, set free after serving their sentence.
Their transportation was to a culture mostly their own.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia

Blacks, meanwhile, were captured wholesale. Had little to no chance of obtaining their freedom, and around 80% a majority by far, of black Americans are direct descendants of those slaves.

As for people who do complain, I'm pretty sure your aboriginals do.
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I'm not sure of your point.

Roughly 35 million descendants of slaves. 7 generations?

I was comparing them to roughly 5 million descendants of transported convicts. The time and generational gap is similar.

Are you saying white America is racist?! :jaw-dropp

I didn't mention aboriginals because they simply aren't relevant to the point I was making. Not sure what your "complain" refers too.
 
Shiner said:
I know of a country full of white people who could say the same thing your friend said. But we just call ourselves Australians and get on with it. Slave/Transported convict. Tell me there's a difference 200 years later.
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That's hardly even up to an apple and pear comparison! More like an apple and a duck comparison.
 
Axxman300 said:
The problems can't be "fixed" without the facts:

White people make up 69% of arrests for crime in the US, with African-Americans making up 28.1%. The problem is that a black man is more likely to go to prison than his white counterpart.
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That sort of stuff will happen when you commit more crime. The question is how to get them out of that situation, specifically poverty.

White America needs to get off of their backs and see them as equals.
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That won't solve the crime and poverty issue, will it?

Fudbucker said:
I would guess it's a function of poverty more than anything else, but that begs the question: why is the poverty rate for blacks so high?
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Given that access to basic education is, I'm told, free, I really can't say. Some people blame it on "gangsta culture" but I don't know how accurate, or widespread, that is.
 
casebro said:
...snip...

Why do some blacks manage to rise? That may be where the answer lies.

...snip..
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Same way as most other people manage to rise - luck.

Want to know the best predictor of your own wealth - it's what your parents earned. Born into poverty and you will more than likely stay in poverty all your life, born into riches and the you will more than likely stay rich all your life.

(This is of course a generalisation and people often object to their own success as having anything to do with luck, and when you are talking about millions of human beings even "rare luck" will happen quite a few times.)
 
Argumemnon said:
That sort of stuff will happen when you commit more crime. The question is how to get them out of that situation, specifically poverty. ...snip...
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Unlike most problems poverty actually does have a simple solution.

(That is absolute poverty does - relative poverty of course can never be "fixed" in a limited resources world.)
 
Shiner said:
I'm not sure of your point.

Roughly 35 million descendants of slaves. 7 generations?

I was comparing them to roughly 5 million descendants of transported convicts. The time and generational gap is similar.

Are you saying white America is racist?! :jaw-dropp

I didn't mention aboriginals because they simply aren't relevant to the point I was making. Not sure what your "complain" refers too.
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The two aren't comparable. Your white convicts were freed after serving their sentence, in a country full of people like themselves. And were part of society as equals long before segregation ended in the US.
Chattel slavery isn't equitable to to what the convicts had to deal with. Their situation was bad, but they were able to move on. Slaves spent most of their existence with no such chance. By the time they were freed, they didn't receive any funds to make a living off of. Most ended up just going back to the plantations, and most of the black population in the States at the time was in the already economically damaged South.
At to that the employment restrictions, voting restrictions, segregation, aND you have a much different scenario than what the convicts and their defendants faced in Australia.
Someone on Facebook was attempting to make the Irish seem to have been worse abused in America by much the same argument, but the Irish had a similar set of circumstances. Indentured servitude that lasted seven years, but by 1829 we had our first Irish President.
 
"White anti-black racists exist!"
"Black subculture needs to get its own act together!"
"No, white anti-black racists exist!"

It's not a choice of one or the other. White anti-black racists exist, and black subculture needs to get its own act together. But the latter problem is bigger yet has less work being done to actually do anything about it, and even has sort of a taboo against even admitting that it actually exists (because of the correction to the former problem overcorrecting in some ways).

Axxman300 said:
White people make up 69% of arrests for crime in the US, with African-Americans making up 28.1%. The problem is that a black man is more likely to go to prison than his white counterpart.
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This looks like you're trying to tell us that the system is racist against whites: it's more likely to arrest innocent whites.

Darat said:
is the crime rate for the poor black population different to that for the poor white/hispanic/asian etc. population?
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Yes, when economic factors are canceled out by comparing people of the same economic level, black crime remains worse, but less so.
 
Pretty simple. We actually invest in black, impoverished neighborhoods and towns. Well-built, good schools, aid with college (really, we should be trying to bring college costs down, so it'd be a combo), aid with housing, and not having a police force that considers itself at war with black people.

Basically, the exact same things we did with white people.

Also, it's best not to confuse "unmarried" with "mother only". The problem here tends to be that the number of children born to married couples (of all races) is plummeting. We may want to do something about immigration, since other countries are clearly also struggling with this.
 
Hercules56 said:
The African-American community has the following problems at much higher rates than whites and the USA and general:

-crime
-poverty
-low high school & college graduation rates
-single parent homes
-drug use
-unemployment
...
So what do we need to do? Is there anything larger society can do or does the black community have to literally fix itself?
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Here's my plan:

1) Ease up on laws regarding marijuana. Now, personally, I've never touched the stuff. But, as others have pointed out, black people get imprisoned at a much higher rate than white people, and many of these crimes are drug related. Loosen the laws on marijuana and that problem may be partially alleviated. That means at least some black people arrested for pot possession won't have their lives up-ended due to a criminal record, and it will make them more employable

2) Better policing standards, including body cameras and perhaps mandatory regulations for training to try to cut down on police shootings. Now, I recognize that this isn't directly related to problems with poverty, employment, ect. But, racial tensions probably don't help matters. (Black people do have a reason to be upset over some of the shootings, but then protests can get out of hand, the initial message gets lost, and you're left with white people with a negative perception.)

3) Better funding for schools in poorer areas, and more scholarship opportunities and student loan programs for people in poorer districts studying in useful areas. Now, I'm not a "Bernie Bro"... I don't think college should necessarily be free for everyone, but give more opportunities for younger black people will eventually see more and more people removed from poverty, etc. (Admittedly, this is long term, and will take years/decades before it shows results.)
 
I've seen a couple good ideas here.

Massive investment in black inner city communities.

Tax-free zones in such communities for companies to build manufacturing/tech jobs and training centers.

Free public college for all black people?

I would also add mandatory IUD for all black women on welfare, so the problem doesn't get worse.

We should also reform our discriminatory drug laws.
 
Segnosaur said:
2) Better policing standards, including body cameras and perhaps mandatory regulations for training to try to cut down on police shootings. Now, I recognize that this isn't directly related to problems with poverty, employment, ect. But, racial tensions probably don't help matters. (Black people do have a reason to be upset over some of the shootings, but then protests can get out of hand, the initial message gets lost, and you're left with white people with a negative perception.)
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That attitude is going to have to change, as well. It's not merely shootings of black people that has drawn the ire of black people - policies like Stop and Frisk, beatings and pepperspraying of unarmed children, and shootings of unarmed and unoffending white people have also been spread far and wide. Also, quite a few of these "out of hand" protests are actually caused directly by *police* overreactions to mourners or protestors (with Ferguson, Baltimore, and Baton Rouge as clear examples of this). Combine this with a disinterest in solving major crimes (rapes, shootings), and you're got a recipe for disaster.

Really, articles like this one spell out the issues in much greater detail than I could.
 
Testing has been done that shows the response rate for job applications is lower for blacks, all else being equal. This is reflective of all experiences along all of a lifetime for some people, people who know that on mere sight they are thought less. The high level of effort needed to suppress anger in response is enough to lead to measurably higher average stress levels.

Being visibly different is like walking through water, when the mainstream race walks through air. Appearance may seem the same, but everything takes greater effort, and an all-pervasive sense of injustice oppresses at all times. Now add that instead of pride in your past, there is also shame, not because of guilt, but because victims feel shame. This is your identity. Then you find, as all long-term victims do, that some of the narrative of the abuser or dominating party seeps into the psyche. You unconsciously find some biases and rankings, such as by skin tone, creeping in to where they have the least right to take hold. More anger, first at yourself, then at who ultimately caused this, too.

Then there are the encounters with the justice system, starting with the police, then with the bail-fine-late.fee scam run in many places, then with obligatory sentencing. So, you say, I'll be a good American and improve my lot, one way by participating in the system with my voice. Then comes overt voter suppression. Blatant. (SCOTUS practically had to use a spittoon after announcing its decision on N. Carolina, for example.) So, if denied voice, what do you have left as an alternative?...

The US is damn lucky to have such a noble, patient, decent, kind black population, taken as a whole.
 
casebro said:
We just don't need full employment. What with Chinese imports, and our own computer driven efficiency, we only have a set number of jobs.
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We may not need full employment (for some definition of "need"), but it's absolutely not true that we only have a set number of jobs. The lump sum theory of labor is a massive fallacy, on par with the lump sum theory of wealth. The number of jobs changes in response to conditions. For example, make it cheaper to employ people, and the number of jobs goes up. Make it more expensive to employ people, and the number of jobs goes down. Jobs are not immune to market forces.

Educate one black man, he rises a step ot two. But jobs are currently a zero sum game. Somebody else gets demoted to drug salesman, welfare queen, or criminal. White guy or black, do you think?
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No, they are not a zero sum game. People compete for jobs, and it's true that you can't get something for nothing. Jobs won't magically appear just because there's more qualified candidates. But competition for jobs lowers labor prices, and lowered labor prices expand the labor market. If you educate more people, you get more people competing for higher-quality jobs. Wages for those jobs may go down, but employment goes up, and productivity goes up too, benefiting everyone.

Unless, that is, you artificially prop up the price of labor, in which case the labor market won't expand.

Anyway, it's not a black problem, it's a Modern Society problem.
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You've only talked about one of the issues here. The whole single-parent family, children without fathers dynamic is a massive problem. It's not unique to blacks, but it affects blacks disproportionately. And all sorts of social ills flow from that. I don't know what we can do to address it, but it desperately needs addressing.
 
Mumbles said:
2) Better policing standards, including body cameras and perhaps mandatory regulations for training to try to cut down on police shootings.
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That attitude is going to have to change, as well. It's not merely shootings of black people that has drawn the ire of black people - policies like Stop and Frisk, beatings and pepperspraying of unarmed children, and shootings of unarmed and unoffending white people have also been spread far and wide. Also, quite a few of these "out of hand" protests are actually caused directly by *police* overreactions to mourners or protestors (with Ferguson, Baltimore, and Baton Rouge as clear examples of this).
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I'm not disagreeing with you. That's why I suggested the "mandatory regulations for training", with the hope that anyone wearing a badge will have been taught proper techniques for dealing with things like protesters, or to perhaps weed out the cops that are more likely to be abusive.

Granted you may have a certain amount of backlash complaints about how the Federal or state government (who would be regulating the training) is stepping on the rights of local police forces to do things the way they want.
 
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