Reply to The Middle School Problem

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The whole city should be outraged. It wouldn't occur to a lot of other places/cities that they need to fight and constantly lobby for safe, 50-90 % at grade level or higher. But in DC this is the case it is sad. But then we keep voting in that don't seem to do much about it. [/quote]

The middle class middle students are concentrated at one middle school in the city. This leaves a very small amount of kids sprinkled at Hardy, SH, and charters. The remaining students are in deep poverty and don’t have adequate support and facing things at home that you can’t even imagine. If middle schools are 90% at risk are you really blaming the school or city that only 1/3 of those students are at level?[b] You should be advocating for social justice, affordable housing, and jobs before even you can see the impact in the schools.[/b] [/quote]

What does that even mean? How does "social justice" magically turn an uneducated single parent with too many children to support, few basic skills, and (perhaps) a substance abuse problem into a responsible citizen and effective parent? [/quote]

Do you think that uneducated single moms drop from the sky, or do you think that a larger social context plays a role in their development?   For example - if a boy starts getting followed around by store clerks who think he’ll steal stuff and stopped by police (including being held at gunpoint) by the time he’s 12, do you think he’s more or less likely to be a « responsible citizen »?  If a family is only shown apartments in high crime areas (despite their ability to pay the rent elsewhere) do you think they are more or less likely to raise kids who are « responsible citizens »? [/quote]

Actually, I think [b]a major[/b] factor in multi-generational poverty is a culture that tolerates or encourages destructive behavior and devalues behaviors that could break the cycle. And I think this is as true in WV "hollows" as it is in blighted urban centers. And "culture" here includes the near-term material and sexual gratification that's beamed at us endlessly in music and video.[/quote]

Do you think that this culture you describe dropped from the sky?  Or could it have anything to do with the institutional racism that I described? There is a ton of research which shows:

- Most white people, view black kids as being older than they are.  The research I saw said that on average whites see black kids as on average 4 years older, so they see black 12 year olds as 16.  This leads them to react to kid behavior differently than they do with white kids, which results in dramatically higher involvement of black youth with the criminal justice system for the same behaviors that white kids tend to get away with.

- Starting in preschool, black kids are suspended and expelled at a dramatically higher rate than white kids for the same behaviors.

- Black kids are very much more likely to be charged as adults for crimes, more likely to be convicted than whites based on similar evidence, and sentenced more harshly for the same crimes.

- Black moms are reported for child abuse and neglect much more than white moms for the exact same behaviors.

- Buying a home is a huge catalyst of the kinds of middle class values that you are talking about (and to accumulating wealth).  Between the 1930s and the 1970s, the US government spend billions of dollars subsidizing white home ownership, but the FHA and VA loans that were used for that were much less available to black aspiring homeowners due to a combination of restrictive deeds, redlining, etc.  Fast forward 40 years and predatory lending (especially in the 2008 financial crisis) focused on black and Latino neighborhoods, and the subsequent foreclosure crisis decimated black home ownership, which dropped 23% between 2005 and 2009.  You really see this in places like Cleveland - banks there were found guilty of all kinds of fraud specifically targeting minorities, and the result was that in black east side neighborhoods, more than 15% of houses were foreclosed and eventually abandoned by banks, and many have been torn down.  That rate of vacancy and dereliction also destroys the value of surrounding homes, so whole neighborhoods that were up and coming residential neighborhoods in 2006 are largely vacant now and the people who scrimped and saved to buy a house and own part of the middle class American dream have lost all their equity --- often without having been foreclosed on or ever missing a payment.  Cleveland.com has an amazing article on this with Google Earth images from before and after the foreclosure crisis -- a thriving neighborhood from 2006 is now mostly vacant lots where derelict houses have been razed.

The point is that the culture and behaviors that your are bemoaning exist in a context, and in many ways that context is one of black kids, moms and homeowners having the deck stacked against them in a lot of ways.  Sure, through heroic effort people can overcome the odds and become successful, but it shouldn't take a heroic effort, and that context is something that we as a society can do something about. 
     [/quote]

When the 1964 Civil Rights Act was enacted the AA out of wedlock birthdate was 25%.  In the decades since, not only has it not gotten better, it has gotten exponentially worse.  And now stands close to a staggering 75%. It’s a tragedy.  [/quote]

No it hasn't and no it isn't.  It's dropped significantly since it peaked in 2007 according to CDC statistics.  And black mothers have shown the largest drop.  Anyway, most out- of-wedlock babies are born to cohabiting couples, many of whom marry subsequent to the child's birth.  I'm white, by the way, but I have to say that you're making racist arguments.[/quote]

It’s easy to flip the shoe on the other foot.
White evangelical Christians have very low rates of education, with only 17 percent getting college degrees, far below other groups.
White evangelical Christians have very low rates of mothers who contribute to society by working.  Many are in 1-working-parent households, more than African Americans.

Why do we let white evangelicals get away with freeloading on our society and why don’t they care about education?  
If only white evangelicals cared about their kids they’d focus on education and bring up the college rate!

(Bottom line: the African American arguments are often biased political talking points discussed by partisan media outlets that ignore problems that whites have.  Most parents are trying to do what’s best for their children.  We should work on helping people that want help, not blaming “black society” or “white society”.)

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/04/the-most-and-least-educated-u-s-religious-groups/
[/quote]
X100

Yes, thank you saying this! I came from a area that has 1/3 of the town in the boat and many surrounding communities are dying off because of this. Idiots that are still pissed there is no factory work and hand outs for them.  Give them free education to get new skills.. They reject this because they are some how entitled to sit on their ass until 'God' spoon feeds them whatever they think they should have.  Of course now the drug crisis is to blame again not them... Always someone else's fault.

X1000[/quote]

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