Discussion for article #234337
Slavery is now and has always been THE political issue in the United States. It is our original sin. Brooks’s audience are racists and will believe anything that is framed in a manner consistent with their prejudices. Racism – or more generally, tribalism – is our greatest economic problem since it can be so easily used to garner support for even the most overt rent-seeking activities.
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This column is equally ignorant. Symptoms can be causes, and symptoms can be outcomes. They can be both. Simplistic thinkers, such as this columnist, require that they be one or the other. Single motherhood is a symptom and a cause of poverty. Similarly, housing issues are both symptoms and causes. The entire issue in poverty is a cycle of bad things, in which a symptom at one time is a cause at another.
That’s hoo-hah BS. Slavery ended 150 years ago on April 15, when the South lost. Since then, it is pathological social and personal behaviors. Getting pregnant while unmarried has nothing to do with the servitude of your great-great-grandfather.
Hard to see reality when your head is stuck up a place where no sun shines.
David Brooks is what happens when W.A.S.P.s are allowed to pontificate on “what is wrong with everybody else”.
Arrogant, Clueless, Assholes one and all.
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What is meant here, the effects of slavery persist. We have constantly kept minorities, particularly those of color, in dire economics circumstances. Just note how in Ferguson, the police preyed upon minorities as an income source. Or the financial punishments were more severe and had a greater effect. While there is a “truth” to your simplistic thinking, the problems are greater than you perceive.
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Shocking, shocking. Specifically how have “we” done that, and who is this “we” anyway?
Maybe you understand wealth inequality and the role of the federal policy in housing discrimination. The myth is that blacks are scamming the system, not working, collecting welfare. But in the federal government played a huge role–post slavery–in ensuring that blacks couldn’t partake of social programs.
I suspect that when white slave owners were fathering all of the “mulatto” children in the south and elsewhere there was no concern about the debauchery of their intimate lives.
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So every issue of today’s black population is due to white slave owners’ behavior in 1854 or so? How about for you? Is every bit of your behavior governed by the choices of your great-great-grandfather? Mine are not. I make my choices, and so does every person alive today. It’ s amazingly patronizing and totally racist to claim, as you are, that blacks are not responsible for their own situation.
“Grub first, then ethics” - Brecht.
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This is a true statement about David Brooks, even though he is not a WASP.
In the Victorian Age, the “deserving poor” were those who acknowledged their moral inferiority – and thus by implication their betters’ moral superiority. That view lies at the heart of Republican ideology, as Brooks demonstrates again. Claiming moral high ground is a never-ending human preoccupation. It’s also known as self-righteousness. There’s always a surplus of that in any society. Look around.
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Uh no. That is dumbed-down history “hoo-hah” BS. Brutal involuntary servitude (peonage and convict leasing) affecting thousands re-emerged and persisted well into the 20th century. Try again.
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Did you not read the words “post slavery”? McNett said that the Federal government played a huge role post slavery in ensuring that blacks couldn’t partake of social programs. 1854 was not “post-slavery.” McNett is likely referring to, among other things, FHA policies that designated neighborhoods with any black residents as “red” zones where mortgages could never be insured by the Federal government. This policy lasted until 1968. If you want to claim that whites have done nothing to keep blacks down after the 1960s that’d be a different argument. But remember that lots and lots of people alive today grew up in circumstances directly shaped by Jim Crow.
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“Stable marital norms are difficult to develop, refine and maintain at any income.”
See Brooks, David, divorce.
You’re welcome.
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Yes, but in this case I’m sure it was all Her Fault. He was doing nothing but virtuously following all those eternal norms that the shiftless poor simply refuse to recognize.
The next time David Brooks says or writes something insightful will be the first time.
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Suffering from abject poverty, racism, poor upbringing, limited opportunities is a tragedy. The U.S. is saddled with the effects of generations of mistreatment of minorities. But I wonder, if you’re a victim of all this; marginalized, uneducated, possibly suffering from substance abuse, unemployed or working 2-3 menial jobs to get by, why are you having children? You’ve just made your life doubly more difficult than it was before having a child. You’re ill prepared to cultivate a rich life for that child. Why did you do it? Frankly I think the entire planet could skip a generation of ANYONE having children. Procreation and the species in general are highly overrrated.
Williams’ focus on whether Brooks understands cause and effect misses the larger points.
It’s not just that wealth/poverty is the strongest predictor of a child’s educational achievement. It’s also all the ways our country operates to increase income inequality rather than decrease it. Or that the dis-linking of productivity and pay over the last 20 years has cost many middle- and lower-income workers tens of thousands of dollars a year. It’s things like Chicago Mayor Emanuel’s closing 40-odd schools, most of which just happen to be in minority neighborhoods. It’s not questioning why so many in this country use money as a barometer for self-worth, not just on themselves but on others.
Brooks is merely a symptom of a bigger darker picture, one which Williams misses.
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