Reply to Lack of Social Promotion at BASIS?

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Reply to "Lack of Social Promotion at BASIS?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]To 06:29 I would agree that it is not appropriate to remove children from their families and cultures, but there is a cultural change that does desperately need to happen.

That being, that education needs to be valued, that it needs to be taught and reinforced that education and hard work is what will lift one from poverty and difficult circumstance, nothing else will.

[b]Consider that much in current "culture" is transitory; appearance, dress, and habits generally just a few decades old at most (the great-grandparents of today's urban youth were nothing like today's urban youth), whereas Native Americans had a culture millennia deep that was disrupted[/b].[/quote]

ITA -- As an AA I am tired of people (in general, both minority and non-minority) spouted this nonsense about contemporary urban culture (dress, attitude towards women and lack of respect for education) as if it was intrinsic or had an historical legacy dated back hundreds of years.  Now the legacy of poverty and lack of access to resources are historical--slavery and structural racism--however, my grandparents did not react to racism and limited access to cultural/social capital like today's "urban" culture.  [/quote]

+1 from another AA

I think what's required though is a break up of concentrated areas of poverty. Housing patterns very much correlate with school performance. This town has never really desegregated. I can and do visit areas of Washington, DC, restaurants for instance, where I am the only in the place. As much as people hate gentrification, I think it could have a profoundly positive impact on the east side of town. On the west side, there needs to be more opportunities for section 8 vouchers holders to find housing. The idea is to create income diversity in most neighborhoods and put the social service agencies middle to downtown, accessible by public transportation.

Some of what is held out there as contemporary culture is rooted in jail or poverty. This is becoming the norm all over and is true across culture lines. Look at the explosion of expression through skin exposure, body art, language. It's not just an AA thing.[/quote]

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