Yes: The real enemy is the weight of history. When you grow up malnutritioned, in a place of dereliction and no access to a decent education, a broken family life, rampant nihilism, valorization of crime/violence, political redistricting intended to prevent you from voting, etc, outcomes like these obviously become more common. The idea that all Black people need to do is mysteriously effect a cultural transformation is too naïve- most of these cultural problems are themselves matters of adaptive preference formation to environmental factors that are far out of the control of any poor, historically-disenfranchised population. Revitalizing a neighborhood takes a lot more than a cultural change, but regardless, its also the very condition for one. Preferences are formed in relation to ones environment, not vice versa, especially when were talking about early childhood, which is the most formative time and tends to affect the likelihood of absorbing negative cultural behaviors the most, making them difficult to counter later on in life. Furthermore, ghettos today are worse in many ways than the ghettos of the 60s that were still able to produce community organizing and mass movements for change. The government has since cut more funding to public programs, given up on rehabilitative models of criminal punishment, ramped up the drug war (until very recently), etc, which ultimately will only further entrench the cultural problems.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 02:00:41 +0000
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