Are we two kinds of people? — One Part
Several months ago, Topsoil Columnist Andrew Padula submitted a piece triggered by TI’s gun insanity. It was a good post, but in it Andrew made the observation that increasingly, there were two kinds of people in America. Beyond black and white or brown, there were those who were striving, adhering to the law and doing their best to fight for a taste of the American dream and there were others engaged in perpetually self and community destructive behaviors. He argued that the gulf between the two cultures was rapidly widening.
I regret to say, I flipped out. I argued that there is only one kind of person and most of those who are misdirected and losing in America just needed ‘bootstraps.’ They needed ‘bootstraps’ from both the private and public sector to find their way into the swim of the hardworking American ideal.
I now believe I was wrong. And my heart breaks to observe that there are generations of people lost to us and the best we may be able to do is to fight to save their young children.
Now the ‘us’ I refer to has absolutely nothing to do with race or socioeconomic bracket. I recall the time I spent as an adult literacy volunteer at the Urban League in South Central LA. The folks I worked with were black and Latino and I believe exclusively poor. But everyone worked: in fast food, as health aids, as janitors, as receptionists. Everyone consistently made it to the free and voluntary Saturday morning class eager to learn. Now I can certainly rail against the public education system that failed these students so miserably in during their school years, but the point is they weren’t giving up. I had a 56 year old man working on his GED! They is us. They is the we who have critical thinking skills. We have the ability to analyze and question and take advantage of whatever opportunities we find or create.
I am sure some of you are disagreeing with me. But as you structure your argument in rebuttal to my observations about critical thinking skills, you prove my point.
I had a heart sickening epiphany the other day. I was listening to an urban radio call in show when a young man called in. I think he said he was 23 and he had fathered 4 children by 4 different women and took care of exactly none of them. And he was proud of the fact that he had “4 kids.” I thought to myself, he would make any slave owner proud. And then I realized that he was measuring his own worth in the exact same way a century gone slave owner would have measured his worth, “How strong is this black buck’s back?”
That young man has exactly zero critical thinking skills. Of course there is clearly low self esteem, I understand that. But that young man and hundreds of thousands like him have no ability to ask themselves seemingly simple questions, “Does this make sense for me?” “Does this make sense for my community?” “Does this make sense a new human life?’
In April, the New York Times did a piece on the efforts to address disproportionate rates of black infant mortality in poor rural Mississippi. In one family profiled, there were multiple generations of women without high school diplomas, on welfare and with multiple children. The youngest mother of the bunch refused the social workers offer to help her children. She just refused to participate. Such a choice does not make any sense. I argue that this woman does not even have the skills necessary to make a decision that makes sense.
So here is where I come back to we have to save and teach those children. We have to make sure that the neighborhood school is clean, safe and staffed with qualified motivated teachers. We have to enforce truancy laws and provide after school programs like sports and school clubs to engage the minds of kids early. Let them get addicted to learning.
More tomorrow. Please comment. I am anxious to hear your thoughts.
Your are right on target! Great post, but how do we reach those hundreds of thousands of children? You said it yourself when you pointed to that Mississippi young woman who wanted no help from social services for her needy children. Those you worked with in LA were the minority, not the majority. It will always be the minority who want more for themselves and their families.
How do we educate men who think having children and not taking financial care of them is okay? How do we break the slave mentality that so many blacks have adopted and breed? How do we teach young women that their bodies are sacred and should not be given away to someone who can never love them? And, if these men loved themselves, they wouldn’t be with these women.
Yes, a good education is essential. An education that offers physical education, music, art, foreign language classes, etc. We, as a country, do not value public education. Look at the low wages we pay those entrusted with the minds of our future. We would much rather pay for expensive baseball, football, hockey tickets, beer and wine wouldn’t we, than pay for good and dedicated teachers?
I’m feeling rather cynical these days as the gap rapidly widens between the haves and have nots. The bottom line is education, education, education, not color. To many blacks want to blame their underachieving on their color. Yes, racist factors do come into play from time-to-time. But, today people are paid well for their abilities in critical thinking. So, as we pass down that invaluable missing link,the gap grows wider and wider for those who cannot think.
[...] Are we two kinds of people? — One Part I think he said he was 23 and he had fathered 4 children by 4 different women and took care of exactly none of them. And he was proud of the fact that he had “4 kids.” I thought to myself, he would make any slave owner proud. … [...]
I’m a little more optimistic. But I’m also realistic. I believe that each of us is the sum total of our life experiences up until the present moment – experiences that in essence mold us into the people that we become.
I think everything learned can be unlearned, but it’ll require a kind of commitment to change that, while I believe is possible, just isn’t popular. We live in an individualistic society. Sentiments expressed in phrases like “it takes a village to raise a child” aren’t exactly encouraged here.
But, no, I don’t believe that anyone is so far gone… so lost that they can’t be saved, unless of course they have some incurable psychological condition. That 23 year old man-boy learned his behavior from someone or somewhere – again, we are a product of our life experiences. He certainly wasn’t born an ignoramus. It’s taken 23 years for him to become the person that he is today, and so it might take another 23 years to completely reverse course.
But I suppose one argument would be to determine whether or not society’s resources are best spent re-educating a young’un like himself or elsewhere. And other issues would inevitably become vital. We’ll be talking about a kind of police state in which human beings are essentially manufactured, assembly-line style.
So many questions but with very few answers. Civilizations apathy is quite palpable. There’s also a complacency that needs to be addressed. A lot of damage has been done – thanks in part ideas like capitalism. There are so many unacknowledged currents at work with roots going back centuries. We’re talking about a complete paradigm shift in the way we think about ourselves, our fellow human beings, and the world in which we live.
I’m learning that being divisive certainly isn’t an answer – and this is exactly what classification does to us when we try to seperate/distance ourselves from one another. So, I wouldn’t say that we are two kinds of people or even 10 kinds of people. It just seems like too simplistic a way of thinking about conditions that are borne out of a multitude of complexities.
I think when the world decides it wants to accomplish something, it can and will. And that’s where my optimism stems… the possibilities that we have yet to consider implementing. However, realistically, complacency/laziness/fear are preventing us from reaching some higher potential. And I really don’t see that changing much anytime soon, unfortunately.
I hope I’m making some sense… I know I’m jumping around here
)
i just think snapshot judgements based on one moment of a person or what we know of them can only be trusted so far. i think people are complex and elude these kinds of “know-all” insights. i think it is seductive, always, to us to find “ways” of looking at the world, guided by anecdotal experiences…but it is best to keep those assessments flexible.
and…yes, i think some people cannot be reached. for whatever reason. of course “being reached” refers to a certain viewpoint from where we judge based on who we are. we have to remember that, too.
Yes, TOR and Nez. More on that tomorrow.
I agree with the premise. Knowing that you control your future and understanding the nuances of that does seem to be the most important thing for kids to get, for me anyway. Curing apathy and the concept of “cool kid” =
drop out of school because it don’t matter no how.” would be a high level solution. Good luck implementing it without a good role model in the house though.
tho i do feel sad about someone who feels pride and not a deep pang of regret (perhaps you can feel both?) when talking of four families one couldn’t make work out.
Hi Carm. Based on this post, I can conclude two things:
(1) You’ve got a heart of pure gold. Sadly, most people who are in social and political positions to actually make things happen don’t possess nearly as much concern for the “least of these” as people without such influence. But…
(2) I suspect that your deep and genuine concern for others may lead you to unconsciously impose your personal standards/expectancy on them. If you’re not careful, you can easily be seen as a person who has some level of antipathy for the folks whom you’re trying to reach; especially if they think that your critique of their current lifestyle is a bit on the judgemental side. For instance, I can just imagine what would happen if you had a chance to speak with the 24 year old you cited in your post. Though you would have nothing but good intentions with trying to empower this man, I suspect he would have casually dismissed you as being some sort of Cosby-esque elitist.
This is a difficult situation to tackle. It gets especially difficult for people who are deeply committed to social justice, empowering others, and building communities. That said, I feel your conflict.
i don’t get where any of this has to do with 2 types of people…
the young buck is obviously an industrious individual…
in all seriousness, as a society we are going to have to figure a way
to deal with this, sooner than later! It is a matter of logistics and
the survival of our society… period. the longer we wait,
the more draconian the solutions will be. tough decisions lie ahead, and a certain sect of society will have to eat a big reality pill and deal with this one… by the time this “buck” is 30, my guess is he will have another 3 or 4 kids and will have impaired another 6-8 + lives that are peripherally tied with these children… not to mention the drain on society and our infrastructure and services… Its horribly selfish!
This is a very difficult issue to tackle, because even if you educate some they will gravitate to a particular lifestyle. I had a teammate on my college basketball team that refused to take advantage of the opportunities given to him, and rather live a street life of selling drugs and all the trappings that come with that such as money and women. He didn’t grow up in a bad neighborhood, in fact his entire family (aunt, uncle, father, both grandfathers) served for their city’s police force.
This country was founded on violence and misogyny and is a learned behavior from a very young age, after all we play cops and robbers, cowboys and indians. Throughout history we have glorified criminals and given people the blueprint to crime. Then when you add the fact this country is all about excess and finance that provides a formula for destruction.
Then you have a class of people that haven’t been educated to the ways of attaining this excess and finance in a legal way, but are very educated in the ways of the underworld and can follow the criminal blueprint set before them. This underworld also has it’s own social norms on what defines their Pride, values, and morals that are different than the mainstream society they feel left out of. The problem with our country is the spotlight is shone on this underworld so much that it becomes glamorous to those even on the outside.
All that being said, I believe that people have a desire to belong and be accepted in some light, so they will gravitate to the environment they’ve most been socialized to.
Hate to open the bucket, but….
;}
Can you see how the incorrigible-seeming (and therefore easy to dismiss) 24-yr.old has a resistance to change built around and within a resistance to acknowledge wrong-doing, and thus self definition.
A glowing spotlight of our tendency to do this can be seen when a violent criminal describes the events of his crime. He almost always says stuff like, “that’s when it happened”, rather than,”that’s when I did it”.
Acceptance of one responsibility means a cascade of others, OR being haunted by knowing of your own selective hypocrisies. Easier to resist-all in the short term.
The short term thinking of youth, untempered by the wisdom of CONSPICUOUSLY PRESENT adults, leads to ‘Lord of the Flies’ behavior.
I think a lot of the rotten root has to do with the shattering of community.
I would argue that those two types, constructive vs. destructive cuts across all social boundaries, possibly even across the boundary of self.
I am both. I have felt the “quickening” of making a child cry. Like exhaling into a vacuum cleaner, I can feel the monster sucking all of me in, turning me inside-out.
How do we teach and save these children? One by one by one.
Truancy laws have become a bill-collecting issue in my district. The parent is at work, and can’t monitor.
For years, the neighborhood I worked in was relatively stable for the young kids. It was a predominately Crips and TS neighborhood. Old School, left the young’uns alone.
Over the last two years, MS13 has so effectively recruited the children that they became real competition for me in the classroom.
“Think long-term” was a voice in the wilderness of short-term gratification in many areas, but especially in “sense of belonging” and “power” in the helpless-against-the-poverty-treadmill environment.
My special ed. girls were especially vulnerable. Many heartbreaks.
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