Black Rednecks and White Liberals (by Thomas Sowell)

Sorry, but this is just absurd. I go to an inner-city school. Just this year, due to budget cuts, we lost after school tutoring of any kind (luckily, a few of the teachers are nice enough to stay after anyway). No tutoring. Doesn't sound like anyone's going out of their way to ensure our success.We did, though, and despite the budget cuts which lost us our tutoring, get 31 security cameras installed. My school is a magnet school with a college prep curriculum. There's a fight maybe once a month here. But because 70% of the students are black, we obviously need those new cameras more than after school tutoring or new textbooks or increased salaries for the teachers.It's absurd, and so is your argument that the public school systems caters to our every need.

NJ was wrong and you are too. See my Message 67. My district, the Kansas City Missouri School District, no longer pays teachers to stay after school, unless they have the ridiculous amount of twenty students staying with them. That's a whole class! It's essentially removing after school tutoring, especially for my school, which is a measly 800 students. Perhaps it's different where you live (though I know it's not), but in KC, no one's going out of their way to ensure anyone's success, certainly not black people's.

You may not agree, NJ, but it's true. A year or two ago, a couple friends and I went skateboarding downtown. I live in the Historic Northeast, which, if you've ever been to Kansas City, is just blocks away from downtown. We left in the early to mid evening, 6 or 7, and were still downtown at around 10 or 11 when a police cruiser approached us. We thought we would be in trouble for staying out so late or for skating downtown, which is illegal, but the cops pulled over and told us how dangerous it was to be downtown at such a late hour. They told us that just last night someone was stabbed and robbed not a block away. They even offered to drive us home! We didn't exactly take their advice - we were leaving anyway - but we left, and the whole way home we joked about how if we were black, they wouldn't have said anything. It's not really funny, though, because it's true. There are countless black people all over downtown Kansas City after dark, but they don't bother warning them how dangerous it is. We were committing a crime!That's a privilege. When a police officer takes you under his wing and offers you his safety merely because you're white. When he ignores the illegal actions occurring right in front of his face because you're white. It's a privilege and it's racist. You seemed to dismiss this as if it weren't true or unimportant. But how many times have you heard someone say, in an interview or in everyday conversation, "As a black person, how do you feel about..."? How many times have you heard, "As a white person, how do you feel about..."? Perhaps I took this differently than you, NJ, but I don't think it's exclusive to children's books. In high school, what do the students read? Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, Faulkner, Melville. All white. The only widely read book with a black author that I can think of is Native Son.NJ, in my sophomore year of high school I took an African-American History course. Do you think that's racist?

This is a good point, and one I hold no contention with. It is, however, ultimately the fault of racism and de facto segregation. This is entirely possible, though much less likely than the situation I experienced. A black man in a white neighborhood is almost always a suspect, and almost never a victim. I doubt anyone thinks it's unusual, but just because something is natural and ordinary doesn't mean it's good. Racism is natural, and has always been a part of society, but that doesn't mean we have to keep it that way.In hindsight, I feel my example was a bad choice on my part. One single, isolated incident of racist cops. Though I do feel it reflects fairly well the attitude of society as a whole.You're probably right about being off topic. This thread is about the book, and the arguments put forth in the book. If NJ feels that I or anyone else are off topic he could certainly say so.

I've read several times in this thread about an "unwillingness to learn" that pervades black culture. There is no such thing. Sure, there are always some who give up on school, flunk out, drop out, etc. But there are people like that, people with an "unwillingness to learn", in every race, in every culture. It's not unique to black culture, nor is it disproportionate among blacks.I know my posts in this thread have consisted almost entirely of anecdotes, but just bear with me this one last time. This "unwillingness to learn" isn't something you can document in any empirical form.As I've said before, I go to a predominantly black school in a predominantly black neighborhood. My school is different than most inner-city schools, however, in that it is a college prep school with a college prep curriculum. If you get lower than a 2.5 GPA, you're out. We're the "cream of the crop", as our administrators love to remind us. The majority of the graduates from my school go to college. Most of the people in my grade that I regularly talk to plan to go to college. There are several that don't; I know quite a few people who plan to join the military; a couple want to be rappers. But the rest want to go to college.One of my best (female, black) friends lives in a terrible neighborhood. On New Year's Eve she had to be home at eleven o' clock, "before the shooting starts". When she found out that the school installed security cameras all across the building over the summer, she started a Facebook group called, "31 cameras and no new textbooks". She hates her neighborhood. She wants out. She's willing to learn if that can help her get away from her poverty-stricken and crime-afflicted home.Another (black) friend of mine and I were discussing where we might go to college. When I told her I wanted to stay in Kansas City, she said, "Why? So you can get shot?" She, too, lives in a bad neighborhood. She, too, wants out. She, too, is willing to learn.The truth is there is next to nobody who doesn't want out. Some might be more motivated than others. Some might have better luck (and luck it is when you're 50% less likely to be hired for a job than a white man with the same qualifications). Smearing all blacks with the label "unwilling to learn" is just a way for white conservatives to pass on blame from themselves, when really it's their fault blacks are in this predicament, regardless of how willing they are to learn. Even if blacks were lazy and unwilling to learn, it would still be up to whites to help solve the problem they created. I know it hurts, but it's the truth. Get used to it.