This is an interesting question. What is if any the legacy of slavery, poverty and white racism? I think, if one is fair, one will admit that the legacy of class discrimmation, religious discrimination and racial discrimination has an impact on families, communities and individials. The human race -and I am a subscriber to the belief that there is only one human race- is in constant change, so, in my opinion only a flexible system of investigatin has any chance of discovering or uncovereing or sensing important truths about it.
Most history is about groups and their relations with other groups.
For reasons historical and sociological the “African-Americans” are considered a group. But if the truth be told most so-called “African-Americans have strong European and Native-American roots. This confusion about identity is revealed in the constant change of accept nomenclature. Today our most recent history books avoid the world slave and say “enslaved Africans” almost exclusively.

African-Americans can also be called Blacks or as they were once called Negroes or “people of color” or Colored People. Some years ago I thought the N-word was obsolete but now I hear it more than at any time in my life; it is chiefly used by African-Americans. The other day I heard Barack Obama joking about being on CP (colored people time).

I think most historians study political relationships or political and social relationships in terms of POWER. The relationship of the English-speaking peoples in North America with the Indians (“Native Americans”) and Black (Negroes; African-Americans) could be described essentialy those of the conqueror and conquered, overlord and subject; master and slave. Yet there was never a complete segregation of the races. There was a social and educational relationship. For this reason most people of African descent in the USA speak English. Most became Christian which is also evidence of cultural influence.

There have been many studies about families -some contradictory- but I think there is abundant evidence that African-American families are weak and chaotic as compared to other groups with a high rate of illegitmacy. Exactly why this is must remain a mystery but I believe there is a relationship to ancient folk patterns from Africa such as polygamy, the realtively mother centered family of the slave family with its tendency towards having children of anonymous and multiple fathers whose only role in raising the children was to impregnate the mother. Some of these women would have been slave-mistresses (viz Sally Hemmings) and others would have been raped but still others would have had children from Black males of the community. But from earliest days the tradition of a woman being shared with numerous men and the marriage bond not being very strong would have been established. Strong black males may exist but the Materfamilias seems to be the rule rather than the exception in black families. I have known many Chinese families -many were Chinese Christians- and they were very distinct from other ethnic groups particularly Blacks in that the usually had a strong extended family and a close family with grandparents and aunts and uncles. The Chinese like the Japanese also had a strong educational heritage that led them to work hard and value education. One traditional saying was “Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world” and “one should never tire to teach and never tire to study.”

I have been a teacher for many years and I have found the highest percentage of good students among these groups:

1) Jews
2) Japanese
3) Chinese
4) Koreans
5) Scottish educated people (as opposed to Southern Crackers of Scotch-Irish descent)
6) females of all kinds outnumber males as diligent students

I have had good students of all races; ONE of the best Spanish students I ever had was Black law enforcement officer but he was really the ONLY OUTSTANDING BLACK STUDENT I EVER HAD IN MORE THAN 20 years of teaching in any subject area. Most African-Americans could be divided into two groups
1) mediocre but reasonably diligent students
2) ghastly lazy and resentful students who dropped out as soon as possible

The good Black students I have known had these characteristics in common
1) they had an intact family (mother and father at home)
2) they came from a religious family (chiefly Christian); this seemed to help overcome the difficulty of being in a single parent household
3) they often had one White parent and at least one set of White grandparants; this is the case of Barrack Obama by the way.

Hispanic students and their successful charateristics were simliar to those of successful Black Americans.

So we are back to the orginal question. Is there a “legacy of slavery”?

I think there is evidence that Black families are fragile, that then tend to be poorer and less well-educated than the average American.

Some of this MUST be due to the legacy of slavery directly or indirectly (via racism and poverty) but not all. Some of it also must be due to the dependency lifestyle encouraged by the Great Society. I say this because the illegitmacy rate of of White Americans is as high today as it was for Black Americans in 1965 (about 25%). I am sure it is much higher among poor Whites. This breakup of families among Whites has nothing DIRECTLY to do with slavery but must have to do with other factors such as Feminism, Hedonism, the decline of Religion AND the BOLD STATE programs which make poor people servile and “married” (if you can call it that) to the State.

As for Black Slavery and the legacy of slavery, SOMETHING must remain but today the continued pathology of Black families must be also due to other causes as well. My ancestors were peons , sefts and cannon fodder for the British Empire and this is PART of my heritage. But we have overcome this difficult past by
1) emigration to America
2) hard work and sacrifice including the virtue of thrift
3) through education.

Through education and hard work one can survive many things -including wealth. There is no shame to being poor or ignorant per se; the real shame is not doing something to improve one’s situation as best as one can under the circumstances.

Re: ‘Practical reasons why ghetto kids join gangs and commit crimes and it has nothing to do with pseudo-scientific Freudian nonsense, which any intelligent person has many valid reasons to reject.”

1. This article in no place suggests that gang membership has anything to do with Freud or with any other complicated psychological theories. It does suggest that white liberalism is so suicidal and irrational that such theories appear, at least to this author, as the most viable explanation.

2. I am not a “Freudian,” and as a practitioner of Zen I am probably an anti-Freudian. I don’t know any really smart writer versed in Freudian theory who considers it “scientific,” so by calling it “pseudo-scientific” you are not gaining much.

3. “Any intelligent person” is not the kind of construct that intelligent people usually use, particularly in association with terms like “Freudian nonsense.” Freud himself may have been one of the 100 most intelligent people who ever lived.

4. Is there nonsense in Freud? Of course; it all depends how selectively you use his ideas and theories. They are by no means universal explainers of human conduct and motivation. In my opinion, the psychiatrist Ellsworth Baker, whom I quoted, applies them aptly and brilliantly to analyze white liberal elites. Had he used Freud to explain black gangsta in Detroit, I’d have called it worse than “nonsense.”

5. Your witness account on gangs is highly interesting, and relevant. Thanks.

Good post. It got me to wondering how other minority races (e.g., Chinese) managed to integrate themselves into the society at large. (I never bought the argument about “the legacy of slavery”.)

First and foremost, most whites, some Asian and some black Americans have constructed an “idealized” black man that never existed in my ghetto neighborhood. And, I suspect, that Latinos from Central and South America have become the new black man or “idealized” Latino continuing this sociological pattern of thought embraced by liberals within our academic, government and media establishments. The white guilt that built the mythical black American was born out of the civil rights movement, but became embedded, from that point on, as a cultural pattern of thought and teachings passed down to succeeding generations.

From my viewpoint, there was nothing mysterious or unusually noble about the blacks in my neighborhood. Ignorance, as opposed to stupidity, was widespread and on a scale that most suburban whites never fully comprehended. Imagine that you are confined to your ghetto world because you can’t read – and not in the conventional sense that you are completely illiterate, but rather because you have no comprehension of what the words mean in relation to the greater society.

Assume, for a moment, you can’t understand a transportation map and aren’t sure how to decipher bus lines, transfer points and which buses to take – effectively you’re confined to your ghetto world by your own ignorance. You don’t go into the suburbs where the jobs are because you’re afraid you can’t get back or might get lost – although, it’s somehow comforting to hear you needn’t bother because the white “racists” won’t hire you anyway. Discrimination by the white world justifies your continuing ignorance, you’re not stupid or inferior, but there’s no point in even trying.

Imagine you don’t understand how the government, the law, the stock market, the economy, the technical infrastructure, etc. works. These things are as alien and as unfathomable as string theory or the biochemistry of DNA. In essence, you’re ignorant and adrift in a highly sophisticated, technological society and ignorance breeds fear and frustration which in turn breeds anger. There isn’t room here to paint a complete picture of ghetto society, but multi-generational ignorance kept blacks in the ghetto far more than racism ever did.

Even paranoids have real enemies and ghetto blacks from the 60s’ were victims of both an individual and institutional paranoia. Besides the white cops, other whites in the Detroit area really do hate you and would like to harm you. Detroit was long a magnet for blue collar folks from every part of the country and world. Besides blacks from the Deep South who came north looking for work in the auto plants, there were also white hillbillies from Kentucky and Tennessee who came for the same reasons, but who retained their deep prejudice toward blacks.

With the 1960’s New Enlightenment, blacks were depicted in the greater society as misunderstood, alienated, oppressed, disadvantaged folks deserving of compassion and support. On the other hand, white hillbillies remained merely primitive, sister-marrying, hillbillies. Though both groups had a cultural history of poverty and ignorance, many southern bred whites resented the sympathy given blacks (and not themselves) and were certainly in no mind to tolerate them.

As an illustrative anecdote, the 1967 race riots in Detroit resulted in many grocery stores being either closed or completely looted. Ghetto blacks were forced to leave their inner-city sanctuaries in search of food stores in the suburbs. Two suburbs the blacks carefully avoided were jokingly referred to as Hazeltucky and Madison Hills (Hazel Park and Madison Heights) by locals – the home of a high proportion of white hillbillies. There was a chance that the media hysteria generated by the riots might have resulted in harm to blacks had they strayed into these enclaves, although long standing black fears of southern whites probably had more to do with their avoidance.

Blue collar white males in Detroit were a completely different breed of cat from white liberals on Manhattan’s upper west side and black males had reason to fear them, although the fear was greatly exaggerated by their own ignorance. However, southern whites weren’t the only enemy, the sons of immigrant Poles, Chaldeans, Hungarians, etc. were just as intolerant and prone to violence. Gangs primarily afford economic support and physical protection from the greater society and the psychological aspects of gang membership have been ridiculously distorted by white, mostly female, doctoral candidates in psychology.

Coming from a ghetto culture, it doesn’t take a lot of brains or courage to attack and murder someone when surrounded by your buddies in the gang; I witnessed plenty of violence and did some
myself in self-defense. In fact, it wasn’t until I moved into the greater white society of business and the suburbs that I realized what an intensely violent culture exists within the ghetto, I had taken the violence as both normal and natural to every society.

With white flight, the supply of victims dried up and forced criminals and gangs to forage within the suburbs and public places where their more compliant victims congregate. Remember that the highly violent ghetto society works both ways, criminals can also fear for their lives from their so-called innocent victims within the ghetto. My family had been burglarized so many times we packed our cheap 19” black and white television into the car trunk whenever we went shopping to keep it from being stolen. And, had I or my brothers caught a house breaker in the act, the violence would have been immediate and without civilized rules.

So, it’s not surprising the predators stalk the easier prey and grow in viciousness if nothing is done to diminish their numbers. However, it’s important to remember how ignorant and frightened these gangs and gang members really are. When the U. S. Army was unleashed on Detroit during the riots, the snipers and looters made themselves scarce – the Army airborne troops were fully armed and inclined to shoot first – something the cops and the Michigan National Guard had been reluctant to do.

I suspect that we are building to a cultural crisis as the author suggests. However, the outcome isn’t in doubt in my mind. The greater society will arm itself and strike back when goaded beyond endurance. In many areas of the country, concealed carry permits and self defense rights are a hot issue. And with today’s weapons it doesn’t take much skill to inflict extensive, even lethal damage. We shouldn’t over-estimate the influence of the liberal establishment; there remains a numerically, and more importantly, a morally superior core of Americans who can and will respond violently to attacks on their family or their homes. In essence, that’s what these gangs really fear – both as a response or even worse, pre-emptively. But, we’re going to have to pay a blood sacrifice before we fully realize it.

My comment was meant to be more about the nature of white guilt and fear of being viewed as a racists. I have no idea how those children turned out. But I do know how I, and I suspect several others present, felt being unwilling or “unqualified” to prevent an injustice (minor as it was).

I blame us, too. In a lot of ways, I believe reparations are paid daily in a most perverse and unhealthy way.

rothaich6,
Thanks for your valuable insight. As you are on the front lines doing the difficult, underappreciated, and deliberately sabotaged work, we all owe you are thanks.

My comment on yours is that immigration has never, not even approximately, had a side as dark as it has now. We all know why a paddy wagon was so called, and yes, Sicilians have caused us a lot of trouble, and Polish or Ukrainian peasants were not exactly the flowers of Western culture. But all these groups were culturally much closer to then-mainstream American culture than meso-American Mestizos are now. They had a mean-IQ higher by about 12 pts. than the LatAm immigrants have, and thus embodied the potential of social mobility that’s foreclosed with respect to the majority of the current immigrants. Also, there was an ocean separating between their homeland and their new land, and their homelands did not have territorial claims on their new land. And the surrounding ethos was assimilationist, whereas now it’s centrifugal and separationist. And I won’t even get started on our annual 6-figure influx of Yemeni or Somali Bantu shepherds, Hmong and Lao tribesmen etc. We have gone stark, raving mad, and we will pay the price.

Where I agree with you is, first, that there are more decent Latinos than rotten ones. And that education and acculturation are our only proper way of dealing with those who are law-abiding U.S. citizens. But we have to close that border for good, and be as merciless in squashing the dangerous criminals as we should be merciful with those legally here who are ignorant but decent and industrious.

Nick Adams,
Maybe these kids won’t grow up to be criminals, just idle chiselers feeding at the public trough. Still, the problem remains that the black community has largely rejected white America’s values and worldview, but white America has adopted quite a few black cultural values, and not the socially useful ones. I blame us, not them.

The black woman was teaching the next generation of criminals.

Once while waiting in line at a local sandwich shop in a predominantly white area, a black girl of about 9 or 10 raced in and up to the counter ahead of everyone and asked for an “a cup to get some water.”

She used it at the self-serve fountain to get ice and soda. The clerk looked annoyed, as did several white patrons who exhanged glances. The clerk told the girl it was for ice only but the girl did not stop. The girl bolted out the door with her hijacked soda.

Within 30 seconds, a black woman with four or five other black children entered, moving ahead of everyone waiting and asked for water cups for all the children.

The white clerk looked at a white co-worker, who said nothing and looked away. The woman was handed a stack of cups, telling the apparent mother of the children the cups are free but for ice and water only. The woman took the cups and distributed them to the children, who swarmed to the fountain machine, hands and waxed paper cups flying amidst the grinding of the ice dispenser and the “wooshing” sound of the soda dispensers, as all sorts of flavors shot out.

The clerk tried to mutter a protest but nothing came out. The white store patrons watched with disbelief. The mother told the children to get water only, but it appeared to be for everyone’s benefit but the children’s.

All the while, the mother jabbered and urged the children to hurry. She glanced at some of us, clearly acknowledging the wrong. Her answer to us was that she was doing her best to make this quick.

As the children finished filling their cups and began heading toward the door, the girl who had enetered the store by herself earlier, was last to leave, quickly topping off her drink before dashing out.

Everyone in the restaurant was silent. We exchanged glances, fumbled with money, looked at our feet, the menu on the wall. We scrutinized most everything around us we could. Everything but what had just happened.

But I will ad a proviso to this. In my experience the best and most acculturated students ARE FEMALE (by a four or five to one ratio) and most chologangbangers are male. With even a small percentage of Hispanic-Mexican gangsters etc. there is bound to be a strong growth in criminality.

I am aware that statistics that show that drop ups make less money have no effect on such types. They sneer and say things like “I ‘ll rip off what I like” or “I will smoke ‘em” or “shoot ‘em in the back”.

I have lived in Southern California for almost 20 years and have gotten to know many hundreds of Latino and Immigrant youth. Some of my students have probation officers. Some no longer can speak Spanish and refuse to learn saying ‘they know English” (“My bad –they say). But what they speak is a low-class semi-black ghetto dialect and they are semi-literate. School is just a launching point for crime (chiefly theft, intimidation and petty theft) and selling drugs.

I am a man who ‘gangs warily’; last year I noticed that someone had taken the pole from the back window in my portable classroom. The doors of the portable classroom are steel and relatively difficult to break into but the windows are the vulnerable point. At that time they were not alarmed (the main building was but they are today). So every day I made sure the pole was securely in place. My classroom was not broken into. But several others were and in those THAT WERE NOT it was discovered that the wooden poles to keep the windows shut had been REMOVED. To me –I reported this fact to the Dean and campus police this was evidence of an inside job.

The civilization that can’t defend itself is doomed.

I attended a Teacher-Ed training class the other day and the theme was STOP THE VIOLENCE. One of the cardinal rules was NEVER HIT ANYONE AND NEVER TOUCH ANYONE. Students were told not to defend themselves physically but to ‘document ‘ and call the appropriate authorities. My comment –not well taken- was this was the behavior of the students at Virginia Tech and so they were like lambs at the slaughter. I told them students should be taught civility and good manners and be told to avoid fighting WHENEVER POSSIBLE but that is was foolish to say a student should NEVER HIT ANYONE. “One should never seek a fight NOR SHUN A FIGHT”. If a student –or teacher – is attacked physically IT IS THAT PERSON’S RIGHT to fight back. It is the fundamental right of self-defense. To teach anything else is, in my view, idiocy. And all I can say it THANK GOD FOR THE US MARINE CORPS. It is one institution in America that has not gone completely soft and PC. What we need now is MORE JNROTC (and JROTC) classes in high schools and more JNROTC and ROTC in the colleges. We are going to need ‘em. “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” ; we are going to need plenty of both if we are to survive as a society and win the war on Islamofascism AND gangsterism.

I have nothing against immigrants. I have nothing against Latin-Americans. I rather like both.

But I hate and I fear cholo-gangsterss. They are no joke. They are a rising threat. To immigrants and to Americans.

Rep Tancredo has no chance to be president. I don’t agree with his policies by and large BUT I recognize his is a patriot who is trying to identify and talk about an issue that is for many Americans MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE WAR ON TERROR: Illegal immigrants and the growing wave of anarchy and violence that threatens the tranquility, lives and property of countless ordinary Americans.

I agree with the writer that wealthy elites like Bush , Clinton , Linda Chavez have lost touch with the situation that ordinary Americans have to face –and not just in border towns- but all over the USA.

This fantasy is ahead of us in Great Britain. There is an article http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_2_oh_to_be.html by an English prison doctor, Theodore Dalrymple, who observed that the most trivial violation of “political correctness” called down the greatest and most immediate response by British law enforcement, while the most egregious VIOLENT crimes went ignored. He cites the fate of a college student who asked a mounted policeman if he knew his horse was gay. This got him a night in the pokey. At the same, the authorities were failing to respond to violent crime. This syndrome is called “The Tolerance Über Alles Principle”. Couple this with the outlawing of personal protection firearms, and you have anarchy, which is the Left’s goal.