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kirisutogomenExordium
I often hear people talk about politics as if Democrats are the only ones who care about poor people. Republicans, apparently, believe in reinforcing class diferences, oppressing minorities, screwing the working classes, etc. They're pretty vile people, I guess. I wonder why half of the country keeps supporting them?
I'm slightly offended by these views, and occasionally am more deeply indignant. Otherwise intelligent members of my circle of friends seem to assume that anyone with a brain who isn't a sociopath is left-wing. They seem to have never considered the possibility that the other side might have some valid points. Disagree if you must, but my fellow travellers are not vicious cold-blooded enemies of the people.
I believe in giving the underprivileged a helping hand. I believe in a certain amount of redistribution of the wealth. There is, however, more than one way to do it, and some are better than others. If I'm opposed to affirmative action, it's not because I hate black people and want to keep them in theior place. I'm just more discerning about what will or won't actually work, and I'm more cognizant of unintended consequences of well-intentioned policies. Unlike many on the left, I actually know that those on the other side of the political spectrum have the best interests of people at their hearts; I know not to attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.
Narratio
The closed-minded knee-jerk reactions "black" leaders have to alternative points of view are destroying the futures of vast numbers of those whose welfare they presumably are hoping to advance.
Partilio
Attributing all the statistical inequalities that exist between "blacks" and "whites" to discrimination, or claiming that I somehow owe redress to people who look like those who were enslaved 150 years ago, is counterproductive, to say the least. A culture of victimhood merely breeds resentment and an overblown sense of entitlement. The cause of increased social mobility does not benefit from a view of the world as a perpetual racial conflict. If you want "your people" to claim their places in society, do what you can to truly empower them.
Confirmatio
Bill Cosby, at an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, in front of NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and other African-American leaders, took aim at blacks who don't take responsibility for their economic status, blame police for incarcerations and teach their kids poor speaking habits.
He's not a big fan of street slang, either.
If you're graduating an average of four years behind in basic skills than the rest of high school students, incapable of performing at even the most rudimentary competence in reading, writing, math, or science, of course you're going to be poor. The American comparative advantage is rooted in our superior university educational system, which more than compensates for our inferior primary and secondary systems. That is, if you participate in a university education. Otherwise you're going to find yourself competing without a productivity advantage against Mexican workers. Good luck.
Poverty of your parents doesn't create these disparities. Other than blacks and Hispanics, every other minority group in America has wiped out their gap (and Asians have surpassed those of European descent). More tellingly, the achievement gaps are constant across income groups. Children from upper-middle class "black" families are just as far behind their "white" counterparts.
School funding doesn't have any effect either. There is simply no correlation between education spending and school quality. Zero. Cambridge public school spend an average of $17 000 per year on their students, and the gap between black and white is no less than elsewhere.
Are we still a racist society? People of similar math and literacy skills earn the same amount of money, regardless of "race". I don't think you could sensibly claim that we've become more racist over the past 15 years, yet the gap in academic achievement has grown over that period.
Affirmative action has clearly failed. Shall we consider cultural values? Are we comfortable attributing the superior performance of Asian-American children to their cultural emphasis on the value of education? Then why am I a racist if I suggest that encouraging your children to dream of athletic success instead of academic success might be a problem? Why are black children who do study diligently stigmatized as "Oreos", black on the outside, but white on the inside?
Refutatio
Some claim that comparisons between other immigrant groups and "African-Americans" are irrelevant. They say that one cannot meaningfully compare the achievements of voluntary immigrants to the descendants of slaves. Why not? We're going to blame the condition of ancestors from hundreds of years ago for the success of people in the present? A vast number of "voluntary" immigrants fled to America as their only alternative to death, mostly at the hands of their own governments; their situations are not so different from those of Africans taken as slaves, and they were for the most part quite a bit more recent. For that matter, a majority of those classified as "black" have at least one parent or grandparent who was a voluntary immigrant. Shall we blame this century's discriminatory policies for the condition of "blacks," but ignore the concentration camps we built for Japanese-Americans 60 years ago?
There are those who would attempt to turn the argument into an assignment of blame. They would claim that people of my views are trying to pin the blame for their condition on the underprivileged themselves. I don't give a damn about who is to blame. All I care about is fixing the problem, not pointing fingers at the guilty.
Peroratio
Scattered across the country are schools getting real results with underprivileged children. These rare schools share a vision of what effective education looks like and are free of many of the constraints that compromise education in traditional public schools. That, in case you don't know, means private schools and charter schools. It means giving parents choice in what schools their children attend.
School vouchers would be an invaluable tool. Giving substantial wads of money to parents to help pay for any school they choose for their children would create a blossoming of diversity and choice. It would hold public schools to the ultimate test of effectiveness. Rather than using blunt instruments such as achievement tests to evaluate success or failure, it would allow parents to make their evaluations based on all the information, most of which couldn't possibly be captured by a standardized test.
The No Child Left Behind Act, one of President Bush's greatest achievements, is a good start, but we need to go much further. The future of our nation depends to a great extent on crushing the spiteful teachers' unions and their reactionary opposition to any sort of evaluation of effectiveness, whether of individual teachers, students, or schools, by way of standardized tests, or the accumulated choices of those whose futures are at stake.
I often hear people talk about politics as if Democrats are the only ones who care about poor people. Republicans, apparently, believe in reinforcing class diferences, oppressing minorities, screwing the working classes, etc. They're pretty vile people, I guess. I wonder why half of the country keeps supporting them?
I'm slightly offended by these views, and occasionally am more deeply indignant. Otherwise intelligent members of my circle of friends seem to assume that anyone with a brain who isn't a sociopath is left-wing. They seem to have never considered the possibility that the other side might have some valid points. Disagree if you must, but my fellow travellers are not vicious cold-blooded enemies of the people.
I believe in giving the underprivileged a helping hand. I believe in a certain amount of redistribution of the wealth. There is, however, more than one way to do it, and some are better than others. If I'm opposed to affirmative action, it's not because I hate black people and want to keep them in theior place. I'm just more discerning about what will or won't actually work, and I'm more cognizant of unintended consequences of well-intentioned policies. Unlike many on the left, I actually know that those on the other side of the political spectrum have the best interests of people at their hearts; I know not to attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.
Narratio
The closed-minded knee-jerk reactions "black" leaders have to alternative points of view are destroying the futures of vast numbers of those whose welfare they presumably are hoping to advance.
Partilio
Attributing all the statistical inequalities that exist between "blacks" and "whites" to discrimination, or claiming that I somehow owe redress to people who look like those who were enslaved 150 years ago, is counterproductive, to say the least. A culture of victimhood merely breeds resentment and an overblown sense of entitlement. The cause of increased social mobility does not benefit from a view of the world as a perpetual racial conflict. If you want "your people" to claim their places in society, do what you can to truly empower them.
Confirmatio
Bill Cosby, at an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, in front of NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and other African-American leaders, took aim at blacks who don't take responsibility for their economic status, blame police for incarcerations and teach their kids poor speaking habits.
Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids – $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics.
He's not a big fan of street slang, either.
Your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 pm every day, it's cursing and calling each other nigger. They think they're hip. They can't read; they can't write. They're laughing and giggling, and they're going nowhere....They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: "Why you ain't," "Where you is"....And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads....You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!
If you're graduating an average of four years behind in basic skills than the rest of high school students, incapable of performing at even the most rudimentary competence in reading, writing, math, or science, of course you're going to be poor. The American comparative advantage is rooted in our superior university educational system, which more than compensates for our inferior primary and secondary systems. That is, if you participate in a university education. Otherwise you're going to find yourself competing without a productivity advantage against Mexican workers. Good luck.
Poverty of your parents doesn't create these disparities. Other than blacks and Hispanics, every other minority group in America has wiped out their gap (and Asians have surpassed those of European descent). More tellingly, the achievement gaps are constant across income groups. Children from upper-middle class "black" families are just as far behind their "white" counterparts.
School funding doesn't have any effect either. There is simply no correlation between education spending and school quality. Zero. Cambridge public school spend an average of $17 000 per year on their students, and the gap between black and white is no less than elsewhere.
Are we still a racist society? People of similar math and literacy skills earn the same amount of money, regardless of "race". I don't think you could sensibly claim that we've become more racist over the past 15 years, yet the gap in academic achievement has grown over that period.
Affirmative action has clearly failed. Shall we consider cultural values? Are we comfortable attributing the superior performance of Asian-American children to their cultural emphasis on the value of education? Then why am I a racist if I suggest that encouraging your children to dream of athletic success instead of academic success might be a problem? Why are black children who do study diligently stigmatized as "Oreos", black on the outside, but white on the inside?
Refutatio
Some claim that comparisons between other immigrant groups and "African-Americans" are irrelevant. They say that one cannot meaningfully compare the achievements of voluntary immigrants to the descendants of slaves. Why not? We're going to blame the condition of ancestors from hundreds of years ago for the success of people in the present? A vast number of "voluntary" immigrants fled to America as their only alternative to death, mostly at the hands of their own governments; their situations are not so different from those of Africans taken as slaves, and they were for the most part quite a bit more recent. For that matter, a majority of those classified as "black" have at least one parent or grandparent who was a voluntary immigrant. Shall we blame this century's discriminatory policies for the condition of "blacks," but ignore the concentration camps we built for Japanese-Americans 60 years ago?
There are those who would attempt to turn the argument into an assignment of blame. They would claim that people of my views are trying to pin the blame for their condition on the underprivileged themselves. I don't give a damn about who is to blame. All I care about is fixing the problem, not pointing fingers at the guilty.
Peroratio
Scattered across the country are schools getting real results with underprivileged children. These rare schools share a vision of what effective education looks like and are free of many of the constraints that compromise education in traditional public schools. That, in case you don't know, means private schools and charter schools. It means giving parents choice in what schools their children attend.
School vouchers would be an invaluable tool. Giving substantial wads of money to parents to help pay for any school they choose for their children would create a blossoming of diversity and choice. It would hold public schools to the ultimate test of effectiveness. Rather than using blunt instruments such as achievement tests to evaluate success or failure, it would allow parents to make their evaluations based on all the information, most of which couldn't possibly be captured by a standardized test.
The No Child Left Behind Act, one of President Bush's greatest achievements, is a good start, but we need to go much further. The future of our nation depends to a great extent on crushing the spiteful teachers' unions and their reactionary opposition to any sort of evaluation of effectiveness, whether of individual teachers, students, or schools, by way of standardized tests, or the accumulated choices of those whose futures are at stake.
