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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If we ar eto wait for individual responsibility, than actual poor black kids with indivdiual responsibility in poor black neighborhoods are screwed.  They can go to school and get staight As and graduate completely unprepared for college and with terrible scores on national tests (remember the kid they followed in teh NPR story had teacher actually teach him something on the day they follwoed him).  So they get a job at Mcdondalds and work their way up to manager woking 50 demanading, demeaning hours a week for 30,000 a year (unelss Obama's new overtime rules go into effect). They burn out soon enough - imagine a life of managing fast food resturants ahead of you.  So they give education another shot.  Working 50 hour weeks of an unpredictablle schedule means they can't attend a traditional college (and rememeber they are academically underprepared anyway), so they get suckered into a degree in m,edical records at phoonix online.  Now they owe 20,000 (if they  didn't finsih) and 50,000 (if they did), and that gets them an 8.00 an hour job working in a medical office.  The good news is they can eventually make 11 dollars an hour (25,000 a year) and the work isn't physically taxing. The bad news is they owe 50,000 and getting laid off or fired puts them in an difficult position because supervisors, who are mostly white, just tend to relate more and thus hire white employees. Maybe when they see you a balck applicant they think of the black DMV woman who gave them bad customer service.  Not consciously but unconciosuly.  Of coruse, the crappy white dmv worker doesn't taint their vision of prosective white employees the same way.  So you better be exceptionally good and presentable.

Black kids know this.  They see it play out with their older realtives and kids in teh neighborhood.  It kills any drive.  Lack of oportunity is real.

Now, I will say that the story above about a black person but about a distent white relative I know who grew up in a rural, oppressed area where the guidence counselor sent all the best graduates to the military (there was no college counseling and no expectation of college). She doesn't deal with racism as in the example above.  But, really, this is what a poor failing school gets you.  She doesn't have kids (she is in her 30s now)  and likely won't ever have kids or own a house becasue she can't affird them.  So personal responsibility without oportunities gets you a 25,000 a year job and no family.  Her young neices saw this.  They didn't follow her path.  They followe dteh path you would expect - geds, young pregnancy, retail jobs, precarious though joyful existance full of love and drama and bad choices.  [/quote]

Add to that they can see the drug lord pimping it up everyday and there you go...no chance at all they will turn out ok.
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