Vision Circle

I agree with you more or less. But we CAN quantify the advantage ghetto whites have over ghetto blacks. This is where the experimental literature comes in. Whites are MUCH more likely to believe that poverty is a structural problem if the victim is a poor white woman (juxtaposed to a poor black woman). They are much more likely to call for regressive crime policy if the perp is young and black, rather than young and white. This advantage has significant benefits...particularly as rural whites all over the country are cracked out.

....I know now where the disagreement is. We shouldn't EXPECT people living in Detroit, and people living in Ishpeming to see eye to eye. Where we SHOULD expect cooperation is at the level of the state legislature. That we DON'T see it, is NOT because of black politics at all...whether you're talking nationalist, integrationist, or radical. It's because of "white" politics. In this case the unwillingness of rural white representatives to believe they have anything in common with blacks.

In the meantime, experienced black politicians abandon Ishpeming.

"It is ghettoes that hold back blackfolks, get out of the ghetto and the playing field is leveled. That doesn't mean that the injuries don't linger but it does mean that the number one priority is leaving the ghetto."

As always, I'm caught up in the middle. You make a solid argument, but I'm forced to make the following observations and perhaps in doing so, I can bring a different perspective to the conversation.

The term "social exclusion" has been used to describe a wide range of types of disadvantage faced by some individuals or groups in our society.

That concept as well as "structural marginalization" of groups in a society constrains people’s ability to influence decisions which shape their lives. That in turns becomes a problem of economic exclusion and socio-political exclusion.

for example, take two households of similar income, equally poor but with a different "voice" (a poor Black household and a poor White household). The former is more vulnerable to remaining chronically poor than the latter for a variety of reasons. One reason is that poor Whites benefit in many ways from the "voice" exercised by other Whites, which ensure that Whites as a whole have access to better opportunities than Blacks. Also, poor Whites will have access to White networks of information, which will give them an edge in emerging from poverty.

There is a need for policies which seek to avoid the creation of "social exclusion", with all its adverse consequences. One important component of these policies is to ensure that social, economic, administrative and political institutions are designed to be accessible and responsive to all. Investing in education and health also helps people to gain and retain "voice". As current events highlight, the consequences of excessive exclusion can be potentially explosive,and can lead to many of the social ills we're witnessing in our communities nationwide.

Despite the realities of social exclusion, the old old old traditions of stressing education give blacks, who have essentially no barriers to eduction more than enough rationale to become competent. Blacks who can demonstrate competence have not just the klan as an audience, but to every new immigrant to this nation. If the first word of English new immigrants learned was 'nigger' then I'd say we're in trouble. But it's more likely that the word is 'opportunity'.

What I'm suggesting is that there are far too many avenues to success which can be overcome by competence. I'm not suggesting that everyone has to be Jackie Robinson, but that there's good work in the minor leagues. Not only that, there's cricket and water polo.

I am willing to beleive that there are hundreds of areas where African Americans have yet to integrate or demonstrate competence. If these were not new frontiers ripe for the plucking, then I wouldn't even think about being a Republican. There are equally hundreds of neighborhoods, like South Boston, where blacks are never going to make inroads in a million years. Abandon them, and abandon the ghettoes that we all know don't work.

There would be no blacks in Chicago or Detroit unless they got fed up with sharecropping. They had to learn welding and factory work from scratch. But that Great Migration happened and it began a new era for African Americans. If blackfolks do not progress off of their current inner-city plantations / slave quarters / prisons then they will languish. It is a recipe for failure that everybody knows. Because everybody knows, we don't need blue ribbon committees or government grants to tell us that the grass is greener.

We can talk about Tuskeegee Syphillis forever. The men were illiterate and taken advantage of for the worst racist reasons. But Tuskeegee could have only happened in Tuskeegee. It couldn't have happened in Brooklyn or San Francisco. Blacks had very good reasons to leave Tuskeegee and go to Brooklyn. Now Brooklyn doesn't work, are blackfolks going to complain about people who come to the lands of opportunity from Mumbai?

When America stops building new houses, new communities and new shopping malls, then I'll beleive that this is a zero sum game (maybe). Until that time, blackfolks have no excuse for squatting on worthless property and complaining about the conditions. We are in every state of the Union and we're welcome. So move!

Where's my Cuba Gooding Jr, film library? I need to go watch 'Men of Honor' once more just to remind me that sharecroppers do grow up to be somebody. Y'all make me feel like I'm smoking dope.

(btw, welcome ray, i've blogrolled you over at cobb).

So this is where a nice rich account of state level black politics would be helpful. If my own theory of elite political behavior holds true, then black politicians most likely ignored black working class constituents through "black empowerment rhetoric." But the kicker is that whites did too, using "white empowerment rhetoric." The content of each rhetorical narrative may be slightly different (with the white narrative more focused on rugged individualism and the black narrative focused more on a classed form of linked fate)...but they share some important similarities. Get rid of these middle men--get poor whites for instance to realize they need government--and we'll be ahead of the game.

Can you quantify the advantage ghetto whites have over ghetto blacks?

lks's riposte lacked any real substance. This question must be answered through causal and not correlative data.

scott...experiments come the closest to proving causation that we have. you want citations, email me...but a good place to start is WHY AMERICANS HATE WELFARE.

Ok, I'll read this as soon as im finished with my thesis.
However, as this thread goes, there is not one causal link posted quantifying the advantages of poor whites over poor blacks. There are most likely some advantages, but claims of this sort need to present causal links. If there no causal links are presented, the argument is weak.

Mbowden makes an important point regarding class and race that seems all to ignored in current discourse.