On Gang Culture, Racism, Classism, and Radical Self Reliance

In response to the idea that inner city kids are a product of poor parenting...

I really doubt that this was due to the parenting - at least for most of these kids.

I would suggest that it is due to living in a world surrounded by people who shoot each other - the gangs. Why are there gangs? Because of a pervasive hopelessness. Because everywhere an inner city child looks, there is poverty and guns and killing and hopeless adults who aren't able to find jobs and pay the bills, and stressed out mothers who also can't find jobs, and schools where the teachers are freaking out because everyone is shooting each other and bringing guns and knives to school and on and on.

The very conservative (and libertarian) idea that this is a product of a moral failure to raise children well is .. as far as I can tell, naive.

I'm not trying to say that culture isn't important... at this late date, there is a strong element of gang-worship, of bling mentality, of live fast because living for the long run ain't worth it.

But that just underscores the liberal point: there is no real evidence that if you're a black kid in an inner city that you have any rational reason to think that you will be better off if you study and work towards a long stable life of fitting into the larger world.

The reality is that our prisons are full of black inner city folk. The big majority are the people from their neighborhoods - their fathers, their uncles, their mothers, their brothers, and so on.

And I don't know how that anyone can honestly believe that human beings are born equal yet turn into such horrible people unless you're implying that there is a strong element of genetic predisposition to moral failing.

And there are many studies that show if you take an inner city child and raise him or her up in a suburban home, they're likely to have white people attitudes. You're saying it's entirely what their mother & father said to them that makes that difference?! Or maybe it is seeing everyone around them preparing for a life of paying the bills and being a citizen? And critically: seeing that they're succeeding.

Watching those who struggle to do right fail in the face of overwhelming poverty and racism - with the police attacking you or your friends or your parents or your neighbors; you're just not going to get the sense that you're on the same side with the cops, or with society as a whole. You're clearly the wrong color, coming from the wrong side of the tracks, and unless you're a basketball / football star, your prospects are shit, is going to give you a very different view of your potential futures and what strategies might be sensibly applied to your life.

Seriously! Parental upbringing is the problem?! That's flat-out vastly insufficient to explain the phenomenons of inner cities, and would fit well with every racist group on the planet: the Jews are garbage. The Spics, the Beaners, the whatever. Their culture is to blame. Their upbringing. There is something fundamentally wrong with them.

No, there is something fundamentally unfair about the world, and kids aren't stupid. They get it by the time they're about 10 yrs old. This shit is rigged, they're on the losing team, and any attempt to change teams will be met with fierce opposition by both sides. They're fucked up, down and sideways. So, if they're fucked, then there's nothing for it but to get what you can before you're shot. To do your best for your tribe. There's honor in that, clearly. Fuck the man.