(Editor’s note: This blog post initially started as a reaction to something the writer saw on Facebook. The original Facebook post is included, but the identity of the person has been removed.)
This comment all too well sums up what is wrong with “White America.” To break it down, I wrote the following:
Let’s start from the beginning. Imagine you are born to a young black mother and father–one of the “lucky” and already better-off instances with a two-parent household. She is the daughter of two high school graduates (who grew up before there existed such a myriad of programs and educational outreaches). She was never taught the value of education because it simply hadn’t reached her household. She never saw socioeconomic success as a possibility or understood any real path to achieve it because she never had a personal role model in that realm. Even if her parents would have emphasized “you need to get your education,” they too didn’t understand the path she needed to take or the value that accompanied it as they themselves had no relatable experience.
Your father was raised similarly, amid high mortality rates due to violence, drug use, and poor health. Additionally, he knew many a man spending life in jail next to violent criminals for using pot. He himself, with a lifelong, conscious effort though still to his own surprise, had managed to avoid both death and imprisonment.
However, with such a significant portion of young black persons being routed to one of those two ends, no one knew if and when it would be their turn. Thus, the general climate suggested “hurry, experience life while you have the chance.” Your father’s life had already been one of early “milestones”, if you will: seeing things no child should due to his blameless situation in a low-income family in a low-income neighborhood; losing many friends and family along the way to violence, drugs, and the law; and you, his rather rash though not uncommon decision to participate in reproduction as he anticipated his own death or imprisonment.
Now, you may be thinking “he should have nothing to worry about if he’s not acting in bad character”; however, violence, as noted above, was inevitable in the areas in which he was raised as well as those in which he had the opportunity to work (influenced in large part by where and by who he was raised). And more importantly, have you ever had a dream or been prompted to imagine that you were falsely accused of a crime? That anxiety, that anticipation–not prompted by anything you had hypothetically done of course, other than perhaps being in the wrong place at the wrong time–is quite similar to the experience of minority, especially the African-American. We can understand this in remembering the myriad of stories not only of those arrested for violent crimes, but those locked away for petty crimes and even the falsely accused and abused, and IMPORTANTLY that the days of rule by racism are not so far behind (who’s to say that they’re even completely in the mirror?).
So, that collective narrative and so many variants upon it are what surround and envelope you yourself every day from birth onward. They fill the halls of your underfunded and understaffed school. They reach your eyes every morning and every night when you look out your window. When you buy groceries, when you get on the bus, when you do anything at all, these are the narratives recognized and drilled into your head shaping your own self-perceived (and therefore projected) identity.
How is it then that the government could actually change this? The first problem is that the bulk of our existing policy was created by people who did not understand the “cycle” above. Thus, it is inefficient, targets the wrong areas, and/or simply aggravates and accelerates the cycle itself–examples include high mandatory sentencing for nonviolent crimes and outreach programs that encourage the mindset that the poor are poor mostly if not solely as a result of their own choices, and their own beings.
Through the years, as the concept of the cyclical poverty has grown in prominence, new policies have sprouted up amongst the base of “ineffective/counterproductive legislation” which work to attack the firmly ingrained “live life while you can” narrative and instill hope and knowledge for a path towards an admirable and desirable future; yet again, also underfunded and too small, as well as obstructed by so much “ineffective/counterproductive legislation”, these programs fail to reach the general populations in need and create sweeping, generational change.
As you point out, it is possible for almost anyone to get a useful education and fight their way to “the good life.” But, as I have attempted to explain, very few within the the communities in question know that, and just as important, know how. So, by instituting and throwing ourselves behind what we know works (programs that teach the true plausibility of success and offer a road map and support to it), we could effectively break the (false) consensus within these communities that they cannot be healthy, truly happy, and successful–fully integrated into our society–and guide them over “the hurdles” towards a world full of happier and more productive people–a world better for all of us.
Lastly, how is this the fault of those currently in power–i.e. elites, whites (as a historically-established majority), and society as a whole? For one, our politicians keep pushing philosophies and approaches proved inaccurate, and when legislation is put through, it is either rendered ineffective by those wrong ideas, or is simply a showpiece as is so common in politics, designed as something for the official(s) to point to in and of itself in place of the change we hope for it to bring.
How is it the fault of white people? Well, overall, our systemically-racist (meaning that one race as a community is favored in various capacities over another by the system as it is) reality is no more the fault of today’s whites than is the birth to poor, uneducated parents experienced by a disproportionate share of blacks as established in your statistics their fault. However, there exists a large body of whites who refuse to allow the change necessary, for instance insisting that “All Lives Matter” to counter to the “Black Lives Matter” campaign. Of course all lives matter–the whole reason focus is on black lives is because they currently, as illustrated in your statistics, matter less than white lives. In the words of a friend, “Saying ‘All Lives Matter’ is like a doctor saying ‘all bones matter.’ Let’s fix the bone that’s broken.”
