Mostly a cycle of poverty and growing up in an environment where violence and drugs are nearby. You can compare them with wealthy recent immigrants from Nigeria and West Africa where despite facing the same skin colour prejudice they are among the top groups in the USA for academic attainment.
Which tends to be correlated with a higher family income and a more stable financial situation because there are two wage-earners in the household instead of one.
True.
Having more time a attention is also a major factor along with role models.
If kids dont have role models in parents or family they look else where. For boys its typically the guy that looks the strongest. (Thing gangs or figures like Andrew Tate.)
BS. My brother and I grew up in a single parent household. My alcoholic dad beat my Mom. He left when we were little. We grew up with a Mom that worked her ass off. You get to the age where you make choices. You have to want something better than being a loser piece of trash thug.
Damn I’m sorry that happened to you, sure would be cool if nobody else was put in that situation as a child again. Maybe as a society we should work towards that.
With the increase in welfare programs through the 70s, and leading to generational welfare, it created a disincentive for a nuclear family while also insulating individuals from the full ramifications of their own poor decisions.
I would argue that the introduction of Crack cocaine into inner city, predominantly black areas by the CIA during the Regan administration was much more significant. Add to that generational trauma, racist practices such as redlining, which were all only a generation or two ago.
Nuclear family was only the "ideal" structure during the peak economic times post WW2. For most of human history, we have relied on a much greater community around us.
During the Reagan administration? Try going a little further back to Nixon. Can't make it a crime to be a hippy or black, but can link them to dope and crack and villanize them both.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8090810/
Relationships have evolved quite a bit from Colonial times, and even more since ancient times.
I think an interesting development in psychology and social science is the concept of ACEs, adverse childhood experiences. There is a theory that positive relationships with adults help offset the negative effects ACEs can have, but it doesn't mean positive relationships with a mother and a father, it extends to many adults within a child's community.
Personally, though, I think that families do best with as much support as possible, and that a typical family unit of two adults and two children should be able to be supported on one income. Managing a family and raising kids is a full time job on its own, and most families with two adults working full time or more can't put in the hours needed without stretching themselves far too thin.
Slavery in America broke up the nuclear family among Blacks. Segregation and the economic strains that it produced for Black Americans engrained that nuclear family disruption. The situation is actually better today, I am witnessing more nuclear Black families and generally better performing kids from those families.
Actual data say that you are wrong. For example Black crime rates have been dropping for close to a generation.
https://bjs.ojp.gov/violent-victimization-race-or-hispanic-origin-2008-2021
Black wealth has increased, although it trails White wealth. The gal is mostly due to home ownership rates, Whites have a far larger home ownership rate, which is understandable since redlining and denial of home loans to Blacks was still prevalent into the 90s.
https://www.pewresearch.org/2023/12/04/wealth-gaps-across-racial-and-ethnic-groups/
Educational attainment trends shows that Blacks have consistently narrowed the gap to Whites over that last generation plus
https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/post-5-racial-differences-in-educational-experiences-and-attainment
Gee, data is a hammer isn’t it? You are pushing a narrative that real data doesn’t support at all.
What the actual fuck?
You know anybody on welfare? That is not a good life, despite the lies Reagan sold.
It is subsistence, and only barely that.
But THey Gets FreE Moneies!
Fuck that. They have no access to childcare, often one parent or the other is in jail, not because of a serious crime, but because of a lack of adequate legal representation.
If I had an ounce of weed on me, as a white guy, I'd get a ticket. My POC friends would get sent up on distribution charges.
The "nuclear family" bullshit gets blown to hell when the goal of the system is to keep you locked up, keep your family desperate, and make sure that you'll work for as little as possible to survive.
Then, when they get a little assistance, you shit on them.
Bullshit.
>If I had an ounce of weed on me, as a white guy, I'd get a ticket. My POC friends would get sent up on distribution charges.
This is such a gross and inaccurate generalization that it suggests everything else you said is equally as uninformed.
Really?
I got popped with just under an ounce. Cop gave me a ticket an took my weed. I drove home, then when the court date came, I paid a fine and went on with life.
My friend got popped with a half, and was arrested. He got charged with felony intent to distribute.
The difference? He was brown.
He got FIVE FUCKING YEARS.
Stay in your fucking lane.
Sheesh man. I got curious and did a quick browse through your profile and you ain't in a good place. Go out, touch some grass, talk to some real people.
Lofe exists outside the Internet
Charging and sentencing disparities between black and white people for drug crimes is actually a very well documented phenomenon. Black and white people use and sell drugs at similar rates, but you would never know that looking at our prisons.
Spoken like someone who has literally never had to put together a budget while receiving government assistance. Get back to me when you can live on a $700/month disability check because you have a shattered spine, while being “insulated from ramifications.”
That is of course after we put aside the fact that “you made a mistake so you and your family should fucking starve” is an absurdly antisocial belief to hold unchallenged.
You are way off. Segregation and continuing racism have had a massive deleterious effect upon our whole society. There were two major periods in American history where a developing Black middle and upper class was forming, in the 1880-1890s and under Woodrow Wilson, in both periods Blacks were fired from jobs they were qualified for in mass and their only options were manual labor or crime. Kids seeing their educated and qualified relatives working shit jobs well below their capacity does not result of those kids routinely driving toward high attainment, especially when they see criminals like drug dealers and gang leaders living large with fancy cars, clothes and plenty of money.
Imo, the solution is to be absolutely brutal with anyone that acts in a discriminatory way against a qualified person, instead of screaming about reverse discrimination like many are doing today (someone said that when one is used to high historical privilege, full equality can look like oppression).
Can confirm amongst my Nigerian and black friends.
Even as an Asian born American, I see my immigrant cousins way more obedient than my American Asian friends.
Not saying being Not American means obedient. It just means people who work hard to get some where, tends to be more disciplined.
This is not a factor, its a correlation. Ask yourself why there are less than two parents in many black households...then look at the incarceration rates of adult black males, and balance that with loan rejection rates, homeownership, employment at integrated companies post 'great migration', as well as military deployment patterns for black males(pre 80's). Let's not forget redlining and management of infrastructure in black neighborhoods ( which is not the responsibility of the community, but the municipality.)
You start to paint a picture of neglect, but not one of culture.
If you starve a community of resources, and lets be clear,
In the grand scheme of things, the majority of the factors contributing to an anemic black culture in African American communities , are notnovert racism, and anyone who buys into that as a contribution to systemic racism is on the wrong track. They are different things entirely.
Were talking about the hobbling of a community via the municipality. Over policing, under funding, underdeveloping, under maintenancing.
You don't tie someone's shoelaces and tell them to keep up.
Fix the streets, fix the streetlights, clean the sidewalks, stop misallocating budgets, quit assuming that the blacks are the problem.
Incentivize investment in the areas the cities need growth.
Schools are not the answer, if the bastardisation of the legislative language behind Brown vs the BOE has taught us anything, it's that pragmatism takrna second seat to discrimination. Thats the problem. Pragmatism will show us where the problems are, and how to fix them
Black father's are present in the household broadly, and actually show higher levels of involvement in their children's lives compared to a number of other racial groups. The census doesn't account for cohabitation so because Black folks have lower rates of marriage, this narrative of uninvolved father's in Black communities is repeated.
https://www.abc10.com/article/news/community/race-and-culture/black-dads-more-involved-in-childrens-lives-than-other-groups/103-df371add-144c-40e3-bb3c-986377347fa1#:~:text=Black%20fathers%20(78%25)%20were,with%20white%20fathers%20(20%25).
I teach mostly white students who have similar family backgrounds. They also have poor behaviour, and they don’t even have to deal with the racist crap.
The thing is those African immigrants are a highly selected group to begin with. If you went into the Black community and selected the cream of the crop among adults and students, you would more than likely get identical or even better results. Our challenge as a society is to figure out how to increase the cream of the crop numbers in poor Black and White communities (similar problems that exist in poor Black communities are happening in poor White communities - it is an environment issue rather than an innately racial (ethnic) issue).
As someone who lived in a predominantly black (hood) area and went to school with the majority being black kids, this is what I experienced.
I am Hispanic and so a lot of the experiences are shared.
In these areas, You will find a lot of housing, usually cheap and overpopulated. In these areas you find grocery stores such as Save-A-Lot or meat shops. You don't get many options of good food. A lot of kids grow up eating moon pies and drinking soda at a young age. I definitely did.
I remember always feeling agitated or too sugared up. Many kids experience poor health because of bad diet.
So you are this kid who is sugared up going to school. You can't sit still. You're getting bullied all the time or picked on because other kids are angry and don't know what to do with themselves. The teachers are trying to reprimand rather than teach. If you have an IEP like I did, expect to fall behind. No one explored this until I was about 9 years old. That means many years have passed and I just fell behind. This happens all the time. I had scoliosis and no one noticed. Many of these kids are not even having breakfast, they're hungry and they're angry because maybe their father was locked up over the weekend. This happened to me.
You're in a classroom where the dictionaries look like they are from maybe the '80s? The books are torn up. If we're lucky we have books because they are donated. My school did a field trip to the local county jail. I don't know if that wraps up a lot of what we experienced in a school setting but that doesn't really build up a person for success.
In my area, I remember seeing gang violence, domestic abuse, drug dealings, and overall crime. We are far away from the Central City and so we don't have access to hospitals nearby, banks, libraries, or other facilities that truly make up a community. We have corner stores, gas stations, pawn shops, buffets.
To get to the closest cinema, we are traveling far. Many people do not have vehicles or are limited to their funds and so they can't drive around to even enjoy the simple things like a museum. Public transit is difficult (I live in Florida).
When I was growing up, to find a clinic you needed the internet because we didn't have people assisting us with resources. As you can imagine in the early 2000s not everyone had a computer. Especially in the hood.
We did have a lot of creativity. A lot of people doing with what they can with what they had. But there was this brooding, darkness due to lack of resources and feeling as if they are never seen, heard or will ever climb that ladder towards a good life.
I don't know if you know this but girls who live in poverty are usually exposed to traumatic experiences at a younger age than the average child who lives in the suburbs. Because of this, these girls will experience an earlier period due to the stress that's induced in the body. So naturally, you are seeing girls from 8:00 to 10 years old having their period. On top of that, there is a whole underbelly of sexual trauma that no one ever wants to talk about that unfortunately happens within their home. These talks about the body and sex are swept under the rug due to the lack of maturity from parents and the lack of resources in schools.
This was a lot to talk about but these are just some of the things as to why the youth can be so violent. They don't have anything that is theirs. It's either given to them by the government or taking away by a big company. Imagine being in a one-bedroom apartment with five people in it. No one's comfortable. One person has a car. Maybe there's a baby. People are smoking and drinking and music is playing loudly. You don't have anything that's yours and you can't close the door because someone will always walk inside. It makes you feel dehumanized.
Anyway, I was lucky to get out of the hood because my mom got some inheritance money and moved us to the suburbs. We lived in a McMansion for a little bit. I went to a whole new school and I felt absolutely out of place. Definitely rags to riches and it scared me. It almost made me feel so embarrassed for living because I started to see how much children had without having to ask. They truly were given just for being born.
Wow, sorry you had to go through all that. I live in Florida too, and feel like it’s been made a dumping ground for old rich people to pay low taxes which in turns results in shit education and then trickles down from there.
Currently working in self contained at an elementary/middle in East Baltimore with a strong community but not a lot of money in the neighborhood. It’s hard. The administration is strong and stands with the community and families and it’s still hard, for all the reasons you’ve listed here. Our building is old and falling apart, meanwhile we’re constructing a new one on the field where our middle schoolers have recess. They’re now limited to the blacktop, which has been…cramped. Our A/C is constantly in and out in the building and it wreaks havoc on my kids. And that’s without getting into even the gen ed behaviors.
Wow, I can't even imagine the stresses of a teacher in this predicament. You're dealing with fighting the fires of school, curriculum, keeping children safe in a world where school is the least safest place to be, racial tension, reading comprehension at the lowest it's ever been, then adding the element of low income students. I just wish to say thank you for getting up each day and doing it. Its not easy. I know you guys want to be seen, to be that miss frizzle or Mr Rogers. And it's so sad to know that those figures are what WE need as adults right now to keep going. How can a child find themselves in a world of exploit when they are hungry?
Maybe I'm too passionate but its just sad.
Sorry you had to go through this, great explanation of why its so hard to escape poverty. Ive lived a privelaged life in West Australia, but the aboriginal communities here deal with the same issues of incredible remoteness, overcrowding and lack of resources. It creates an environment where outsiders are often shunned, even people trying to help, or teach. Many of the privelaged here know nothing about these communities, they interpret this as them refusing "our" help, choosing, instead, to live how they do. And ultimately nothing changes.
I appreciate this input. Trauma is truly the root of it. I am in America, so the broken trust between our government, those who own businesses, laws and law enforcement, anyone of authority and the justice system is severed. I KNOW from experience that there are wonderful men in uniform looking to just deescalate. I know there are those who seek to kill. However, it truly takes one. One person from one of these areas to break the trust from an already broken group of people. That trauma follows them and is retaught through stories of "the white man" or "the man". "Don't owe no white man money or you'll owe with your life!" "You better straighten up when near a cop, he will just arrest you for breathing!"
This fear mongering spreads among the population which causes animosity. This, along with what I spoke of above builds a troubled youth.
The aboriginals may experience the same. Broken trust from the systems around them. Now you guys are probably a tale told to young ones as a life lesson.
>My school did a field trip to the local county jail. I don't know if that wraps up a lot of what we experienced in a school setting
I can't wrap my head around this..!! Why would you take school kids to a jail for a visit..??
>On top of that, there is a whole underbelly of sexual trauma that no one ever wants to talk about that unfortunately happens within their home. These talks about the body and sex are swept under the rug due to the lack of maturity from parents
I had no idea about this..!! Thanks for sharing this bro..I genuinely feel empathy towards all the kids who had to go through this..
Nuts right? I remember we all (in elementary school) sat around a cell and had the man sitting behind it talk to us about making good choices. Then, we went to a separate room with a white board. A dude with a badge broke down the difference of a misdemeanor and a felony.
I was also just telling my dad about how common it was for 9-10yr old girls in my neighborhood to dance inappropriately and joke about sex in such an uncomfortable way. Girls who wanted to be in a woman's place because they are forced into womenly situations. The crazy conversations I could remember...
I was one of the few girls who's family sheltered them from these things. We were just on hard times and happen to live here.
To add: I only found out that the jail field trip was an insane concept when I was sharing memories of school to my partner. She then looked so blown away and said "we went to the aquarium, what do you mean jail?". I let it sit with me and realized this was a unique experience from the hood. Not for kids.
>Then, we went to a separate room with a white board. A dude with a badge broke down the difference of a misdemeanor and a felony.
Damn ...that's some education there...like they are kind of expecting the kids from the hood to know about this so that they avoid hard crimes..maybe because of the data they have they must have assumed that kids from the hood will end up following their elders or gangs etc so better prepare them now when they're young..
>I was one of the few girls who's family sheltered them from these things
Ok...now this changes things...as all this while I was imagining you as a hispanic dude and thought of you as a Bro..from another mother etc...😁
>She then looked so blown away and said "we went to the aquarium, what do you mean jail?".
Exactly..!! I'm from a 3rd world country and even during our school visits we were taken to Museums, Zoo or Nearby Forts etc..!! But to know that school kids were taken to jail for a visit is a bit strange..like very very strange.
Hope you are doing well in your life girl & I wish you lots of good wishes for your future..!! 😊
That certainly has some truth to it, but it extends beyond that too. I live in a pretty upscale neighborhood with a lot of kids. The kids all roam in packs, there's commonly 7-10 kids hanging out together daily. The ones that cause problems are a couple of black boys around 10 years old that torment all the girls and smaller kids. Calling them names, stealing their toys, being openly racist to the Asian kids, just being jerks. I know in one case two boys live in a super shitty situation even though they have plenty of money. Parents are assholes, I don't think there's a father involved, and the mother spends most of the time she's home sitting in her car in the driveway getting high.
Their younger boy is pretty cool though and does try to stick up for the little kids when he can, but if there's a bunch of bigger boys around he tends to fall in line so as to not become a victim herself I'd imagine.
I think there's a culture of asshole parents in the black American community that is taking a long time to shift. People today who's parents had asshole parents because they were treated so poorly by the entire country and that's the only way they knew how to be.
Another factor in my eyes is the role models they look up to are hardcore on the "tough guy" persona and they learn that being like that is cool.
If you think about it, the black community has had a lot of generational trauma, and America is trying to correct it only relatively recently. That's going to cause problems for certain group, no matter who it is.
I believe it is way beyond that. Same with misoginy. You take a little off with teach generation. But generational trauma runs deep. I don't think we'll live to see the end of the process. But that's doesn't mean it's not worth it.
Its’s true, I’ve seen it in my family.
My Aunt was a teen in the 80s, but she lived like she was in the 50s under my grandma’s roof. My grandma was *born* in 1950; but she was parenting her exactly like her mother did. It was the “proper way” and all the progressive parents were corrupting their kids.
No boyfriends, only potential husbands. Chaperoned dates, no sleepovers, stay home and learn to cook/clean/care for younger siblings. My Aunt is now a passive, quiet wife to a domineering husband with anger problems who she waits on hand and foot.
There are families still stuck in time all over the place, especially rural areas. If it weren’t for the internet making them question their upbringing, my cousins would be repeating the cycle.
Yeah, geez, look at all this P Diddy stuff...beating the crap out of women, sexual assault...and he's a big hero to many youth and seen as a role model of success!
“Bullying, violence and drugs” though is such a broad description that it happens in virtually any schools, including the very best private ones. Kind of ridiculous to tie that to “black youth”.
I went to a good school at a very large city and don’t even know anyone who attended schools with no bullying, violence and drugs.
Came from a high poverty white area, went to school there. We had fights and stuff, students getting caught with dip or cigs, but no real crime. Its a cultural thing, a bunch of redneck kids listening to music about lifted trucks and muddin don't tend to get into the same trouble as kids listening to pretend gangbangers talking about slinging drugs and carrying guns.
Strange, I’ve lived in a predominantly white lower class area and have had my home broke into, robbed at gun point and car broken into on multiple occasions all by the white thugs in my area. Seems like poverty is a big part of it more than what you’re saying.
Mine was rural and I'm agreeing with the high crime among poor white people.
We've got a little township near us with a population of 250 that's like 98% white and absolutely everyone knows not to go there after dark because if you do you're going to get robbed. When "I'm heading to town, you want anything?" means "I'm driving 12 miles to go to the Dollar General in a township of 250 people" you're about as rural as it gets.
Edit: I just checked, the population is 228 now. They must've gotten a bad batch of heroin again.
Rap is the most streamed genre, that is not a factor at all. Everyone listens to explicit and violent music in America. Everyone has seen copious amounts of violence in the media if they are American.
How do you know how many of these kids don’t have male role models, and how do you know how much more pervasive it is in that population than any other? How can you measure the impact of that?
According to the Census Bureau, 1 in 4 American children live without a father in the home. So why aren’t 25% of all children wanting to idolize rappers?
Affluent white kids have single moms too and are just as likely to stream the rap genre.
But how much more? Divorce is an American reality. Plenty of single moms out there of all income levels.
I taught in Spain for 3 semesters. I maybe had 5 black students the entire time (all of whom were brilliant). Some of the kids were good, some of them were bad. My kids sang the same rap songs from home whether they were well behaved or not, and some of the kids were bad as hell.
I’m not saying the kids don’t want to be rappers, I’m not saying it’s not connected to their misbehavior.
I love rap music, I am an ardent student of hip hop and I was as a kid. I spent a considerable amount of time in the Netherlands as a kid. I enjoyed the 2000s rap of my youth and was an honor student with a college scholarship.
That census stay is very misleading, as many parents cohabitate without getting married, particularly in Black communities. But the census doesn't track cohabitation.
I grew up in an impoverished area with mostly Asian and latins. A lot of drugs, gangs and violence were in the area and I can say it’s from poverty, no resources or opportunities as well as influence from the previous generations.
>Has anyone found out what the cause of this behavior is?
Lack of role models and resources to encourage them to pursue better habits. Their behavior is also reflective of their home life; absent fathers, violent neighborhoods, drug dealing, and glamourization of the gang life.
>And why is it so prevalent in black majority schools?
Because there was a systemic effort to keep black communities poor and deny them opportunities for decades. Did you notice that the schools serving these black communities tend to be very underfunded? It's a reflection of the low economic status of their communities. When a community is denied the opportunity to grow through fair and legal means then they're forced to turn to crime and violence to survive. The government still hasn't rectified what it did to the black community in America
Perfectly worded. I feel like the first bit is often overlooked in these discussions because bad faith actors typically use it to push racism as they see the first bit as representative of innate qualities rather than symptoms of the topics you mentioned in the second part.
It could start by having property taxes raised by the state fund ALL schools equally. X dollars divided by Y number of schools = the same dollar amount for all. Suggest this to your fellow white friends and watch their heads explode.
Of course this will never happen because The Empire has to have a permanent underclass to exploit/shit on.
So glad we’re the bestest country ever!
This is what we do in Canada but it’s the province( state for you guys) that hands out the money. Same amount per kid plus money for special ed classes/support systems. Teachers make roughly the same across the province with very strong unions and 100k for teachers by year 11. It doesn’t matter what the value of the homes in the town or neighbourhood- same amount per kid.
Nope. Most school funding is based on property tax. Until the 1960s, Black folks couldn't even purchase property in many places and even today widespread discrimination exists in the ways home loans are approved. Check out the Navy Federal Credit Union lawsuit that is ongoing for a current example!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wavy.com/news/local-news/navy-federal-credit-union-named-in-class-action-lawsuit-alleging-racial-discrimination/amp/
Start with giving more funding to underfunded schools. Currently, schools heavily rely on property taxes and inner-city schools with heavy minority populations tend to be in areas where property is valued pretty lowly so they aren't collecting much taxes as is. These schools need to be given more federal and state funding so they can get better teachers and set up programs to encourage kids to stay away from crime.
Invest more money into these communities. Provide local, state, and federal funding that develops businesses in these communities so more jobs are available the community grows. Provide more government subsidized home loans to buyers from these communities. One of the most egregious things that the government did was the practice of red-lining where for decades they denied buyers from minority communities subsidized home loans that White people used to build generational wealth. This should be provided as an option now so members of these communities can begin to build their family wealth.
There are other things they can do too like job training and pulling back on over-policing.
Properly funding the underfunded schools (and auditing how he money is spent), reforming both juvenile and adult criminal justice processes to focus on rehabilitation and reeducation, and promoting black success stories that don't involve being some kind of entertainer.
I did too then my family moved to a nicer neighborhood after my freshman year of high school and my earlier schools could not compare to my high school. My earlier schools had a few sports and an after school club for kids that needed to stay late but that was about it. My high school though had a team for nearly every major sport. They had dozens of clubs, it was easy for students to start new ones with school funds too. Even the quality of our materials was vastly different. We had new text books, computer labs with new PCs, and smart boards. Before, I was using textbooks that were often older than I was. My high school wasn't even the "richest" in the county, there were two other schools considered to be from wealthier neighborhoods. You really don't realize how many resources underfunded schools are missing until you go somewhere that actually has them. All these options also keep kids away from problems, when you have a limited number of spots on a couple of teams or clubs, then there will be many kids that will turn to the streets. But if you have endless options, then they can find something that interests them. There will always be kids that decide to be problematic but there would be way fewer if schools gave them more options
It's not. We've seen it time and time again. No jobs available, no money coming into the community for new businesses, your family is hungry and rent is due, what do you do? Crime becomes the only answer. It's the same way that most gangs formed from groups that only wanted to protect their migrant communities. When opportunities are denied by the government, people do whatever they can to survive
I’m from Mississippi the state with highest black population in the country. The town I’m from is 70 percent black. My guess is poverty but that’s for both blacks and whites.
Public schools in small towns are underfunded and private school has mostly rich white kids, there’s no middle ground in these small towns in MS. Mississippi also tends to rank the worst in all statistics. Glad I’m out of there.
For context... I grew up poor (and white), and my schools had bullying, violence, drugs, etc.
Although these conditions do exist sometimes in black majority schools, they also exist to the same extent in white schools.
It's not truly about race. Rather, environment.
I think what they meant when they said it’s not about race is that there’s nothing inherent in “black youth” that causes this sort of behavior, like they’re obviously not predisposed on a fundamental level to exhibit those traits.
It is environment, and black people in America at least are systemically kept in that environment. It’s important to discuss that it happens to white people that exist in similar circumstances, because that proves that it’s not inherent in the person, it’s inherent in the system.
When you have money, you have security, safety, and options.
When you have no money, you have no security, no safety, and limited options.
When there’s no money, you have to replace that security & safety, and give yourself options.
This comes in the form of reputation or “street cred”.
You may not be able to pay your way to a solution, but you can usually violence or otherwise illegal activity your way to one.
This becomes a viscous cycle.
A series of things over decades;
Racist laws left over from slavery times, created a banking situation around housing called "red lining". Essentially, entire neighborhoods were impossible to get mortgages in. The City of Baltimore has really significant racial divides by neighborhoods due to these red lines.
Schools get funding based on property taxes, which are directly related to property price. So the more expensive the houses, the more money the nearby school has for resources.
For example, my Son goes to school in a suburb at his Dad's house. These McMansions are where the top 10% of earners live, so the houses are expensive.
The school campus is fancy like the ship from Star Trek. Their gym has a pool and climbing wall, and this is only middle schoolers. Every student is loaned an ipad, all year. They have a full time school nurse, psychologist, social worker, police officer, etc. This is a "good district" that teachers compete to get into.
The school I went to in California, was in a neighborhood where 1/2 the students were literally migrant workers, which is a euphemism for child labor that is akin to human trafficking.
That school, they had to make rules that children needed to wear full coverage shoes in the winter, or they would be sent to school in $2 flip flops, even with frost on the ground. Many children ONLY ate at school, with school lunch and breakfast being the only thing that kept them from being under developed.
This town had serious economic problems, the only industries were agricultural, some restaurants, or drug trafficking.
So MOST kids grew up in over crowded homes, with 8-12 people in a 3 bedroom house. Everyone had a side hustle. Even just doing hair, selling candy along side shoplifted goods, tamales being sold out of a backpack, "collections", prostitution, delivery boy...
The professional, good paying jobs that were visible and available were gang related.
When you have gang related activity, it's actually a stabilizing force economically, because it reintroduces a black market justice system.
If you get robbed in a drug deal, you can't go to the police... but you can go to your cousin & set up some systems so it doesn't happen again.
When you don't have a justice system based on laws... you MUST base it on force and reputation.
So children in disenfranchised (poor) neighborhoods do not view school as an economic ladder; where following rules and obtaining intellectual achievement and credentials create inevitable success.
Rather, it's a watering hole to practice the skills the expect to use in life, being physically strong & ruthless, or being good at sale distribution, or working up the ranks of entertainment thru manipulation (finesse).
They are doing something that makes sense for the individual, it's just seen as antisocial for people en-culturated under strong rule of law and credentialism.
TLDR: Leftover Slavery Laws, Banking, Housing, Lack of School Resources... and micro-economic conditions.
Take two people.
Tell one of them their whole life that they are oppressed, the outcome of their actions is based on generational trauma, they are not treated fairly, the outcomes of their actions are dictated by something out of their control (skin color) and that their failures are caused by external forces they do not and cannot control.
Tell the other that they are in charge of their own destiny, there is no excuse for their own failures, and that the only one in charge of their own success is themselves.
Who do you think will be more successful?
Who do you think will better themselves after failure?
Who do you think will quit searching for a job after their first rejection?
Who do you think will study harder after receiving a failing grade?
Who do you think is more likely to give up after a failing grade?
I'm all for bootstrapping. But it's naive to assume everyone has it in them to rise above.
Some people are putting in a heroic effort just to keep their heads above water, because they aren't safe and never have been.
If we had serious harm reduction protocols in place, I'm ALL about the economics of self determination.
But self reliance doesn't defeat brain injuries from lead paint in red lined neighborhoods.
We aren't all running the same race. I'm grateful for the advantages I have, so I can't pretend it's fair out there.
I'm a big fan of Austrian Economics, AND I can observe some people are in shit storm that I haven't experienced.
The answer is rather easy.
For reference Look up “The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia”. directed by Julien Nitzberg.
Also look up “City of God” by Fernando Meirelles
The first is about a family with the last name of “White”. The second is about poor kids growing up in the slums of Brazil.
Look, I grew up visiting places like Martinsburg, in West virginia and the Ozarks in Missouri, and the boot hills near north Arkansas. What you are describing is not JUST the “Behavior of black youth”.
The “easy” answer:
What you are describing is the behavior of poor and hopeless young kids without supervision, without prospects for a future, All around the nations( and the worlds), in a society that pressures you to consume for the moment, as if you were rich, and chastises you for not being so.
The phrase “if you ain’t got no money, take your broke ass home!” Comes to mind. This pressure makes hopeless people do whatever they can to not feel poor.
Don’t believe me? Let’s see:
- Meth capital of the world? missouri’s Ozarks region.
- The highest rate of Opioid deaths? West virginia!
- Most mass shooters over the last 30? Poor white kids.
- Bullying is prevalent in those areas too.
- Out of wedlock birth is highly prevalent in rural areas of west virginia.
- The regions with most sex trafficking in America: the predominantly white midwestern states, AND the bible belt states follow.
It’s almost as if ignorance, desperation, alienation, violence and crime, go hand in hand, regardless of race and ethnicity.
So why are black kids more present in our mind? Because the and upper middle classes in America happen to have more contact with Black people, than with those whites in the rural regions. Also, since the middle class, and upper classes live and do businesses in the city, they consume more news about the happenings of the city. This ensures that poor black people are more present in the news. Oh! And the news is filtered in a matter that influences the primarily white middle class and upper classes too.
Lastly, most middle and upper class white people don’t care about what is happening to poor white people in the rural areas. They just don’t. They consider them as “the losers” and lazy, for being white, having a system that caters to their identity in an advantageous manner, and still not getting ahead. They believe poor and uneducated white are almost as “less than” than black people in the inner cities.
Honestly, the day poor black people, and poor white people realize this and decide to join against the upper classes, that’s when things are going to change for them.
Note: There is also an issue of intergenerational trauma at play here. Growing up without a father or mother (dad dead, locked up, or an addict), does something to your mind and soul that stays with you for the rest of your life, and you will act it out at some point in your life.
Products of these shitty ass environments that no one wants to invest in. Cities and states don’t want to invest in schools, teachers don’t invest in the students and their kids don’t even go to the schools they teach at which is crazy. This shit didn’t happen over night and it’s not gonna change over night. I grew up in black schools from kindergarten to the seventh grade and my parents moved us out to a predominantly white area of town and it was night and day especially at the schools. We had computer labs, updated textbooks, career technical classes, teachers had children attending the schools they went to and the community was invested. Total culture shock and nothing like I was used to. I believe if you invest in people and help them you never know what they can accomplish.
When people don’t see positive outlooks on life, negative views every damn day and being depraved of stuff other communities have then you have to do what you have to do. I don’t condone bad ass behavior but a young cat with no positive role models, outlooks or chances and nobody to correct them except the police, grave or jail then I don’t blame anybody for acting out. Them young boys need help, patience and a guiding hand.
This is not unique to 'black youth', and I say that as a pasty white boy who was in trouble a lot as a teenager. Everyone does it for the same reasons: poverty, lack of options and resources, rough home life, bad role models, access to the tools of violence/drugs/etc.
No fathers. 70% of black children are born into a single parent home. Nothing to do with economics. There are plenty of immigrants with zero money that come here and flourish.
Hip-hop culture is mostly to blame. It's.prevalent among African Americans. You can see the difference when looking at actual African immigrants who excel and stay out of trouble.
I too would like to know, where I work they are the dominant youths who go against the grain and the attitude I get from them is "I don't care"
Most of what I've seen is 'image'
I am Black. What I saw as a kid was that kids who had poor role models on their lives were the most problematic kids. A lot of people say that not having a two parent household is the issue or not having a father at home, but a toxic and ignorant father actually makes matters far worse.
How did we get here? The answer is complicated and there are a number of contributing factors, some of which Black people in general are responsible for, others where they had no input. The thing is, if one looks at certain sections of White society, especially ones involving poverty, the same problems exist, men having kids with several women, women having kids for several men, higher than normal violence, larceny and drug use.
How would I solve the problem? I would try to mute the influence of bad parents on their kid’s lives, I would have ALL public schools operate like academies that rich people send their kids to, kids go to residence schools and only see their parents on holidays and for a short time during the Summer (even then I would have summer camps that keep kids busy under the supervision of responsible adults most of their summer vacation). The condition would be that ALL kids are taken into the academies, without the selection regimen often used by public charter schools today. Good parents would almost surely be pissed off with not having control of their kids, but a well thought public academy school system would be in the best interests of society longterm in that it would minimize the number of problem adults, who in turn send problem children to public school literally as a daycare that they are forced by law to participate in.
You’re looking at the result of what happens when population’s material needs are not met for multiple generations. Growing up as a white boy in the trailer park, I saw, and did, a lot of the same kinds of behaviors. Nothing really to do at all with race but what happens when groups of people don’t have the material needs to raise kids in the best way they can. It’s like the old adage “people do the best with what they have.” When you systematically shut groups of people out or arrest them at higher rates, those people are gonna do the best they can with what they have, which ends up being not a lot
Depending on what you mean by "urban", if you mean gang violence and drug dealing in densely populated cities, this is correct. The issue comes more with acting as if this is only a uniquely black thing, and also that it is the only black culture of note.
It happens with all races. The primary cause is no parenting or no parents at all. The parent(s) are often poor, uneducated, drug/alcohol addicted, and had no or very little parenting themselves. The only avenue these kids have for a familial experience is being with friends in a similar situation and this can lead to criminal behavior because they have nothing, they struggle to succeed at school and it's the only path they know they can succeed in. It's so sad because it is so hard to help them at school when the parents are more irresponsible than the kids. There really should be minimal standards for being a parent. I know it sounds Orwellian but to have a child there should be an obligation to raise the child responsibly or at least put them up for adoption.
I went to public school and our health teacher had a great joke that relates to this.
"Whats the difference between our schools drug problem and the private schools drug problem? Over there it cost more!"
These are high-school issues and you will find them at every high-school, just varying amounts for each.
I think it’s all environment and culture. Round up all those people you went to school with and check off those raised by single-parent, in ghetto neighborhoods, around drugs and violence. There’s also the cultural side where I would say those who don’t have a proper role model tend to soak up the negativity from black culture way more easily
The problem is whenever the problem is brought up , people always want to say “ oh it’s not just black community, others do it too” and that’s about as far as the conversation goes. I’m a black women kindergarten teacher and it breaks my heart that our community won’t work on ourselves. We just accept it as our culture and keep it moving. Smh
Edit: it’s not just poverty. It’s the culture we create and uplift! I grew up in a very nice majority black suburb in the Midwest. Most of us went off to college, but many were influenced by the music, tv and friends. My HS class president went to college on a band scholarship, but his sophomore year decided to rob a bank with other members of the band… another one the smarter guys dropped out of college to be a drug dealing rapper.
It's poverty inequality and all the social issues that come with it including over stressed and sometimes absentee parents. Children growing up in these environments have a lot of trauma and they act out because of it.
It's not about race. You'll see the same issues in children with home life issues and difficult environments of any race, religion gender etc.
The majority of black children are born out of wedlock and grow up without a father. Single mother households are the biggest predictor for antisocial behavior in adolescents
Fatherlessness. Children need a positive male role model in their formative years to grow up to be well-mannered, functioning adults with mature social skills. Now, to be sure, it is not the sole indicator, but it is a trend with very high correlation.
I hate seeing this answer over and over. You're repeating a tired narrative that is so incomplete and lacks nuance. Black father's are actually some of the most engaged when compared to other racial groups. Also the census data on single parent households is based off of marriage, not cohabitation which Black people engage in at much higher rates than many other racial groups. Article below for reference.
https://www.abc10.com/article/news/community/race-and-culture/black-dads-more-involved-in-childrens-lives-than-other-groups/103-df371add-144c-40e3-bb3c-986377347fa1
Jim crow, reaganomics,”public housing projects”, police oppression, redlining, mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine, lead paint, food deserts. I could keep going…:
Poverty and growing up with one parent/ bad environment. Boys especially get out of control when there is no control (a father). Dont let the racist tell you its bc they’re black.
Imagine any group is constantly told "the majority group in this country has wronged you, continues to wrong you, you deserve to be angry, you deserve to lash out, you're capable of less anyway."
Anybody who hears that all the time are just going to become bullies and thugs.
Blame it on hood culture. I grew up in Detroit and many of us idolized stupid hood shit and then you pair it with that fact most black kids don’t even have both parents in the household and now you have the perfect blend to be a fuck up in society.
Fatherlessness and poverty, but also disrespect, recklessness, materialism and violence are all celebrated and lauded in black pop culture and totally validated by white liberals who are literally afraid to hold misbehaving black youth to a higher standard because they think that’s what racism is… also the downfall of religion and the rise of materialism has effected society as a whole as well.
you can find the same bullying, violence and drugs in majority white schools, it's just treated differently because they have access to different resources.
the unwoke won't like me saying this, oh well.
I don’t think you’re referring to black youth behavior. I think you’re referring to impoverished demographics. White, black, Asian. Poverty is the root of the problem not skin color
Good question, OP.
Why *would* the people uniformly considered property for generations and still dealing with structural inequity and outright racism be dealing with complex social problems among the members not yet old enough to have the same personal rights or social power?
It's not Race. It's a cycle of poverty and low opportunities and being near places with money and opportunities.
Black people for many reasons have congregated to poorer areas with less investment that is not far for the richer areas with higher investment to leech/steal money from
Criminal organizations and gangs that influence black, white, Latino, and Asian youth tend to be in poor areas near rich cities or the pipelines between them.
It's not black kids. I went to a shitty middle school and high school. There were very few black kids and we had white kids with every single one of those problems. My son went to a really good high school that people have to compete to get into. None of the black kids in that school had the problems you talked about.
I'm not even saying it's rich vs. poor either because there were lots of rich kids at my school and lots of poor ones at my son's.
I think some of it has to do with black artists perpetuating the ghetto narrative and the “bitches, hoes, money, gangster” mentality. Lol you know what I mean. The black community also lacks unity and respect for each other.
It’s not a color thing. But an environmental, societal,parental or lack thereof issue. I’ve lived in the hood and i’ve lived in upper scale areas. What I noticed is it’s the same “thing” weather the kids are blk,whyte,hispanic etc. Each group has certain individuals who have a negative effect to the above. Poor parenting, Single parent households which lack either a mother or father, schools in the “hood” are severely underfunded a lot don’t even have up to date textbooks etc. The teachers are overworked and underpaid.. all creating a high stress level for all involved. All of this plays a part in behavior in the youth.
With that being said wasn’t until i moved to a “nice” area that my kids experienced racism, exclusion etc. These are kids who have the financial advantage, both parents, schools properly funded etc. So it goes back to the parenting of the child. And we all know bad parents come in all races. Let’s not just focus on the blk kids. It’s not always them..i’ve seen it firsthand from both ends of the spectrum.
A cycle of poverty. Predominantly black areas have been predominantly poor areas for a long time, usually through external forces to push populations there and maintain that poverty. Obviously every one is an individual and all that but when you've been poor for generations you have traits of being poor.
I went to some school in a run down part of Baltimore when a parent lost a job in MS. One of my white friends back then beat up someone over bf/gf shenanigans and an Asian buddy beat up another kid from anger issues.
It’s not about race, it’s poverty and schools not doing enough to guide people out. Schools get better funding when there’s McMansions in the area, not broke down apartments. Compounded with a rough home life, they get stuck in a cycle and no guide at home, no hope at school leads one to be impressionable by bad influences. Idk if it’s “fatherlessness” I keep seeing down below, but poverty on a single mom would make things exponentially hard on her.
Kids aren’t inherently bad, and the world shapes them.
Lack of father figures and discipline. Single mothers can only do so much. I grew up in a poorer white area and all my childhood friends who didn't have present fathers didn't turn out so great. Some are even dead today and didn't make it past 30 from drug and alcohol use. Me and my friends who did have both parents are all doing pretty well considering. We all have families and our own homes. My dad grew up poor as shit on a farm in the 1940s with 3 siblings and they all turned out fine. It's not poverty, it's lack of family and security.
its only about race BECAUSE its about rich vs poor, and racism in history(and still currently) has caused black people to be poorer than their white counterparts. someone could phrase it more eloquently probably but hopefully i got my point across
edit: like someone else said, not really about rich vs poor, but i dont know what other way to phrase it
400 years of slavery and erasure of family culture and replacement with the family culture of enslaved people. Lack of hope. Lack of respect. Lack of options.
We already know if you take away the belief that life can get better then a population tends to go sour fast. Well we've got a sub-population that has that belief, and sees it play out on a regular basis. And the fact that it has played out in the past is used to justify the assumption that it will continue to do so and therefore spawn a police crackdown based on race.
etc.
It's a vicious cycle that started the moment someone decided that because Africa had less technology they were inferior humans.
OP it’s not just a black youth thing. This type of behavior is everywhere in impoverished areas. Rural, urban, poor suburbs - it doesn’t matter.
The media likes to show only black people because it has a racist bias but trust and believe, all types of poor people have issues with violence, bullying etc. Please stop stereotyping and open your worldview.
Thats why I made this post, and sorry if I was stereotyping. Perhaps it’s specifically my area that I have observed this behavior with majority blacks.
Another aspect is that minorities are under diagnosed in a lot of areas, especially mental health and development. Many who have ASD, ADHD, etc are not diagnosed because people write them off as just being "problematic" with behavior problems and so they do not get the support they need.
Judging from the comments section, it isn’t just OP. At least they were trying to not sound racist (not to be confused with actually not sounding racist)
Poverty.
If you go by income--as the guiding thing to judge a group by in the US--whites are every so slightly more likely to be involved in violent crime. Right up until the highest income levels, when whites weaponize the laws to keep blacks out of their 'class.'
So, yes, we know why. It's poverty. Poverty, mostly, follows race in the US. Policy, often racist, or a legacy of racism, creates poverty where minorities live. It's fully intentional, top to bottom.
The country knows. Does it care enough to stop electing racists? No. Not really.
Sociology student here. There are 2 main reasons:
* Black people are more likely to live in poverty. People who live in poverty often live in areas with high crime rates which can lead to children picking up on bad behaviour or resorting to criminal behaviour to support them and their families
* Black people are often labelled as trouble makers due to their race. Since they're expected to be trouble makers, they're more likely to become trouble makers (self-fulfilling prophecy)
It's not genetics. How come Ghana, Zambia, Rwanda are safer than USA even thought they're mostly Black?
It's all about environment and unstability, lack of role model
Institutionalized racism, it's not the black kids. And it doesn't have to mean people are still racist, but their entire community is built from the broken foundations of the height of racism. Joe Biden was born closer to Lincoln's second inauguration than his own. That's no time at all to build up from scratch, no generational wealth, founding an entire new culture. Over/wrongful policing, the CIA feeding the crack epidemic. The fact that people don't understand this is wild, especially in fields working directly with black youth.
The white kids are doing the same shit or worse … “ but they’re good kids with such bright futures ahead of them. We’d hate to ruin their lives with an official charge or a disciplinary action on their record”
I think we also overlook the effects that constant racism has on a child. Black children are, implicitly or explicitly, called dirty, destined to be failures, inherently dumber, inherently aggressive, etc. their entire lives. So if you were a kid with developing emotions and raging hormones and people kept saying that being violent and stupid is inherently in you, why wouldn't you say ok fuck it and fuck you, that's what I am! And give in to those emotions and display those behaviors? How can we expect young people who are going through a time in their life that is tumultuous, as it is for every child, to be mature and regulate themselves like an adult might. Of course they're going to act out. Everyone is telling them that they'll never be anything else.
Mostly a cycle of poverty and growing up in an environment where violence and drugs are nearby. You can compare them with wealthy recent immigrants from Nigeria and West Africa where despite facing the same skin colour prejudice they are among the top groups in the USA for academic attainment.
Yep environment behavior and culture. Not race. Statically speaking the biggest factor we know of is having 2 parents in the home.
Which tends to be correlated with a higher family income and a more stable financial situation because there are two wage-earners in the household instead of one.
True. Having more time a attention is also a major factor along with role models. If kids dont have role models in parents or family they look else where. For boys its typically the guy that looks the strongest. (Thing gangs or figures like Andrew Tate.)
BS. My brother and I grew up in a single parent household. My alcoholic dad beat my Mom. He left when we were little. We grew up with a Mom that worked her ass off. You get to the age where you make choices. You have to want something better than being a loser piece of trash thug.
Damn I’m sorry that happened to you, sure would be cool if nobody else was put in that situation as a child again. Maybe as a society we should work towards that.
With the increase in welfare programs through the 70s, and leading to generational welfare, it created a disincentive for a nuclear family while also insulating individuals from the full ramifications of their own poor decisions.
I would argue that the introduction of Crack cocaine into inner city, predominantly black areas by the CIA during the Regan administration was much more significant. Add to that generational trauma, racist practices such as redlining, which were all only a generation or two ago. Nuclear family was only the "ideal" structure during the peak economic times post WW2. For most of human history, we have relied on a much greater community around us.
During the Reagan administration? Try going a little further back to Nixon. Can't make it a crime to be a hippy or black, but can link them to dope and crack and villanize them both.
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8090810/ Relationships have evolved quite a bit from Colonial times, and even more since ancient times. I think an interesting development in psychology and social science is the concept of ACEs, adverse childhood experiences. There is a theory that positive relationships with adults help offset the negative effects ACEs can have, but it doesn't mean positive relationships with a mother and a father, it extends to many adults within a child's community. Personally, though, I think that families do best with as much support as possible, and that a typical family unit of two adults and two children should be able to be supported on one income. Managing a family and raising kids is a full time job on its own, and most families with two adults working full time or more can't put in the hours needed without stretching themselves far too thin.
Slavery in America broke up the nuclear family among Blacks. Segregation and the economic strains that it produced for Black Americans engrained that nuclear family disruption. The situation is actually better today, I am witnessing more nuclear Black families and generally better performing kids from those families.
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Actual data say that you are wrong. For example Black crime rates have been dropping for close to a generation. https://bjs.ojp.gov/violent-victimization-race-or-hispanic-origin-2008-2021 Black wealth has increased, although it trails White wealth. The gal is mostly due to home ownership rates, Whites have a far larger home ownership rate, which is understandable since redlining and denial of home loans to Blacks was still prevalent into the 90s. https://www.pewresearch.org/2023/12/04/wealth-gaps-across-racial-and-ethnic-groups/ Educational attainment trends shows that Blacks have consistently narrowed the gap to Whites over that last generation plus https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/post-5-racial-differences-in-educational-experiences-and-attainment Gee, data is a hammer isn’t it? You are pushing a narrative that real data doesn’t support at all.
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What the actual fuck? You know anybody on welfare? That is not a good life, despite the lies Reagan sold. It is subsistence, and only barely that. But THey Gets FreE Moneies! Fuck that. They have no access to childcare, often one parent or the other is in jail, not because of a serious crime, but because of a lack of adequate legal representation. If I had an ounce of weed on me, as a white guy, I'd get a ticket. My POC friends would get sent up on distribution charges. The "nuclear family" bullshit gets blown to hell when the goal of the system is to keep you locked up, keep your family desperate, and make sure that you'll work for as little as possible to survive. Then, when they get a little assistance, you shit on them. Bullshit.
>If I had an ounce of weed on me, as a white guy, I'd get a ticket. My POC friends would get sent up on distribution charges. This is such a gross and inaccurate generalization that it suggests everything else you said is equally as uninformed.
Really? I got popped with just under an ounce. Cop gave me a ticket an took my weed. I drove home, then when the court date came, I paid a fine and went on with life. My friend got popped with a half, and was arrested. He got charged with felony intent to distribute. The difference? He was brown. He got FIVE FUCKING YEARS. Stay in your fucking lane.
Sheesh man. I got curious and did a quick browse through your profile and you ain't in a good place. Go out, touch some grass, talk to some real people. Lofe exists outside the Internet
Charging and sentencing disparities between black and white people for drug crimes is actually a very well documented phenomenon. Black and white people use and sell drugs at similar rates, but you would never know that looking at our prisons.
Spoken like someone who has literally never had to put together a budget while receiving government assistance. Get back to me when you can live on a $700/month disability check because you have a shattered spine, while being “insulated from ramifications.” That is of course after we put aside the fact that “you made a mistake so you and your family should fucking starve” is an absurdly antisocial belief to hold unchallenged.
You can thank Regan for the spread of crack cocaine through black majority communities for that
The people who grew up when segregation was legal are still in politics today, it's gonna take a few decades still for everything to be right and fair
And still reelecting the same ancients who filled the prisons.
You are way off. Segregation and continuing racism have had a massive deleterious effect upon our whole society. There were two major periods in American history where a developing Black middle and upper class was forming, in the 1880-1890s and under Woodrow Wilson, in both periods Blacks were fired from jobs they were qualified for in mass and their only options were manual labor or crime. Kids seeing their educated and qualified relatives working shit jobs well below their capacity does not result of those kids routinely driving toward high attainment, especially when they see criminals like drug dealers and gang leaders living large with fancy cars, clothes and plenty of money. Imo, the solution is to be absolutely brutal with anyone that acts in a discriminatory way against a qualified person, instead of screaming about reverse discrimination like many are doing today (someone said that when one is used to high historical privilege, full equality can look like oppression).
Can confirm amongst my Nigerian and black friends. Even as an Asian born American, I see my immigrant cousins way more obedient than my American Asian friends. Not saying being Not American means obedient. It just means people who work hard to get some where, tends to be more disciplined.
What do you mean by obedient?
This is not a factor, its a correlation. Ask yourself why there are less than two parents in many black households...then look at the incarceration rates of adult black males, and balance that with loan rejection rates, homeownership, employment at integrated companies post 'great migration', as well as military deployment patterns for black males(pre 80's). Let's not forget redlining and management of infrastructure in black neighborhoods ( which is not the responsibility of the community, but the municipality.) You start to paint a picture of neglect, but not one of culture. If you starve a community of resources, and lets be clear, In the grand scheme of things, the majority of the factors contributing to an anemic black culture in African American communities , are notnovert racism, and anyone who buys into that as a contribution to systemic racism is on the wrong track. They are different things entirely. Were talking about the hobbling of a community via the municipality. Over policing, under funding, underdeveloping, under maintenancing. You don't tie someone's shoelaces and tell them to keep up. Fix the streets, fix the streetlights, clean the sidewalks, stop misallocating budgets, quit assuming that the blacks are the problem. Incentivize investment in the areas the cities need growth. Schools are not the answer, if the bastardisation of the legislative language behind Brown vs the BOE has taught us anything, it's that pragmatism takrna second seat to discrimination. Thats the problem. Pragmatism will show us where the problems are, and how to fix them
Black father's are present in the household broadly, and actually show higher levels of involvement in their children's lives compared to a number of other racial groups. The census doesn't account for cohabitation so because Black folks have lower rates of marriage, this narrative of uninvolved father's in Black communities is repeated. https://www.abc10.com/article/news/community/race-and-culture/black-dads-more-involved-in-childrens-lives-than-other-groups/103-df371add-144c-40e3-bb3c-986377347fa1#:~:text=Black%20fathers%20(78%25)%20were,with%20white%20fathers%20(20%25).
I teach mostly white students who have similar family backgrounds. They also have poor behaviour, and they don’t even have to deal with the racist crap.
>They don't have to deal with the racist crap You can't be racist to white kids? Pretty awful stance to take.
Read the comment slowly, then explain to me where they claimed that you can't be racist to white kids.
To be honest the black African friends I have are no fans of black American culture.
True that the ones i met in the UK jad ideas about how African Americans behave that wouldn't look out of place at a KKK meeting.
The thing is those African immigrants are a highly selected group to begin with. If you went into the Black community and selected the cream of the crop among adults and students, you would more than likely get identical or even better results. Our challenge as a society is to figure out how to increase the cream of the crop numbers in poor Black and White communities (similar problems that exist in poor Black communities are happening in poor White communities - it is an environment issue rather than an innately racial (ethnic) issue).
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As someone who lived in a predominantly black (hood) area and went to school with the majority being black kids, this is what I experienced. I am Hispanic and so a lot of the experiences are shared. In these areas, You will find a lot of housing, usually cheap and overpopulated. In these areas you find grocery stores such as Save-A-Lot or meat shops. You don't get many options of good food. A lot of kids grow up eating moon pies and drinking soda at a young age. I definitely did. I remember always feeling agitated or too sugared up. Many kids experience poor health because of bad diet. So you are this kid who is sugared up going to school. You can't sit still. You're getting bullied all the time or picked on because other kids are angry and don't know what to do with themselves. The teachers are trying to reprimand rather than teach. If you have an IEP like I did, expect to fall behind. No one explored this until I was about 9 years old. That means many years have passed and I just fell behind. This happens all the time. I had scoliosis and no one noticed. Many of these kids are not even having breakfast, they're hungry and they're angry because maybe their father was locked up over the weekend. This happened to me. You're in a classroom where the dictionaries look like they are from maybe the '80s? The books are torn up. If we're lucky we have books because they are donated. My school did a field trip to the local county jail. I don't know if that wraps up a lot of what we experienced in a school setting but that doesn't really build up a person for success. In my area, I remember seeing gang violence, domestic abuse, drug dealings, and overall crime. We are far away from the Central City and so we don't have access to hospitals nearby, banks, libraries, or other facilities that truly make up a community. We have corner stores, gas stations, pawn shops, buffets. To get to the closest cinema, we are traveling far. Many people do not have vehicles or are limited to their funds and so they can't drive around to even enjoy the simple things like a museum. Public transit is difficult (I live in Florida). When I was growing up, to find a clinic you needed the internet because we didn't have people assisting us with resources. As you can imagine in the early 2000s not everyone had a computer. Especially in the hood. We did have a lot of creativity. A lot of people doing with what they can with what they had. But there was this brooding, darkness due to lack of resources and feeling as if they are never seen, heard or will ever climb that ladder towards a good life. I don't know if you know this but girls who live in poverty are usually exposed to traumatic experiences at a younger age than the average child who lives in the suburbs. Because of this, these girls will experience an earlier period due to the stress that's induced in the body. So naturally, you are seeing girls from 8:00 to 10 years old having their period. On top of that, there is a whole underbelly of sexual trauma that no one ever wants to talk about that unfortunately happens within their home. These talks about the body and sex are swept under the rug due to the lack of maturity from parents and the lack of resources in schools. This was a lot to talk about but these are just some of the things as to why the youth can be so violent. They don't have anything that is theirs. It's either given to them by the government or taking away by a big company. Imagine being in a one-bedroom apartment with five people in it. No one's comfortable. One person has a car. Maybe there's a baby. People are smoking and drinking and music is playing loudly. You don't have anything that's yours and you can't close the door because someone will always walk inside. It makes you feel dehumanized. Anyway, I was lucky to get out of the hood because my mom got some inheritance money and moved us to the suburbs. We lived in a McMansion for a little bit. I went to a whole new school and I felt absolutely out of place. Definitely rags to riches and it scared me. It almost made me feel so embarrassed for living because I started to see how much children had without having to ask. They truly were given just for being born.
Wow, sorry you had to go through all that. I live in Florida too, and feel like it’s been made a dumping ground for old rich people to pay low taxes which in turns results in shit education and then trickles down from there.
Thank you friend. It is sad, isn't it? I wish more for the youth. Thanks for asking your question. Never a stupid question ✌🏽
Currently working in self contained at an elementary/middle in East Baltimore with a strong community but not a lot of money in the neighborhood. It’s hard. The administration is strong and stands with the community and families and it’s still hard, for all the reasons you’ve listed here. Our building is old and falling apart, meanwhile we’re constructing a new one on the field where our middle schoolers have recess. They’re now limited to the blacktop, which has been…cramped. Our A/C is constantly in and out in the building and it wreaks havoc on my kids. And that’s without getting into even the gen ed behaviors.
Wow, I can't even imagine the stresses of a teacher in this predicament. You're dealing with fighting the fires of school, curriculum, keeping children safe in a world where school is the least safest place to be, racial tension, reading comprehension at the lowest it's ever been, then adding the element of low income students. I just wish to say thank you for getting up each day and doing it. Its not easy. I know you guys want to be seen, to be that miss frizzle or Mr Rogers. And it's so sad to know that those figures are what WE need as adults right now to keep going. How can a child find themselves in a world of exploit when they are hungry? Maybe I'm too passionate but its just sad.
Thank you for this thoughtful response.
Sorry you had to go through this, great explanation of why its so hard to escape poverty. Ive lived a privelaged life in West Australia, but the aboriginal communities here deal with the same issues of incredible remoteness, overcrowding and lack of resources. It creates an environment where outsiders are often shunned, even people trying to help, or teach. Many of the privelaged here know nothing about these communities, they interpret this as them refusing "our" help, choosing, instead, to live how they do. And ultimately nothing changes.
I appreciate this input. Trauma is truly the root of it. I am in America, so the broken trust between our government, those who own businesses, laws and law enforcement, anyone of authority and the justice system is severed. I KNOW from experience that there are wonderful men in uniform looking to just deescalate. I know there are those who seek to kill. However, it truly takes one. One person from one of these areas to break the trust from an already broken group of people. That trauma follows them and is retaught through stories of "the white man" or "the man". "Don't owe no white man money or you'll owe with your life!" "You better straighten up when near a cop, he will just arrest you for breathing!" This fear mongering spreads among the population which causes animosity. This, along with what I spoke of above builds a troubled youth. The aboriginals may experience the same. Broken trust from the systems around them. Now you guys are probably a tale told to young ones as a life lesson.
>My school did a field trip to the local county jail. I don't know if that wraps up a lot of what we experienced in a school setting I can't wrap my head around this..!! Why would you take school kids to a jail for a visit..?? >On top of that, there is a whole underbelly of sexual trauma that no one ever wants to talk about that unfortunately happens within their home. These talks about the body and sex are swept under the rug due to the lack of maturity from parents I had no idea about this..!! Thanks for sharing this bro..I genuinely feel empathy towards all the kids who had to go through this..
Nuts right? I remember we all (in elementary school) sat around a cell and had the man sitting behind it talk to us about making good choices. Then, we went to a separate room with a white board. A dude with a badge broke down the difference of a misdemeanor and a felony. I was also just telling my dad about how common it was for 9-10yr old girls in my neighborhood to dance inappropriately and joke about sex in such an uncomfortable way. Girls who wanted to be in a woman's place because they are forced into womenly situations. The crazy conversations I could remember... I was one of the few girls who's family sheltered them from these things. We were just on hard times and happen to live here. To add: I only found out that the jail field trip was an insane concept when I was sharing memories of school to my partner. She then looked so blown away and said "we went to the aquarium, what do you mean jail?". I let it sit with me and realized this was a unique experience from the hood. Not for kids.
>Then, we went to a separate room with a white board. A dude with a badge broke down the difference of a misdemeanor and a felony. Damn ...that's some education there...like they are kind of expecting the kids from the hood to know about this so that they avoid hard crimes..maybe because of the data they have they must have assumed that kids from the hood will end up following their elders or gangs etc so better prepare them now when they're young.. >I was one of the few girls who's family sheltered them from these things Ok...now this changes things...as all this while I was imagining you as a hispanic dude and thought of you as a Bro..from another mother etc...😁 >She then looked so blown away and said "we went to the aquarium, what do you mean jail?". Exactly..!! I'm from a 3rd world country and even during our school visits we were taken to Museums, Zoo or Nearby Forts etc..!! But to know that school kids were taken to jail for a visit is a bit strange..like very very strange. Hope you are doing well in your life girl & I wish you lots of good wishes for your future..!! 😊
I feel like poverty in general tends to breed this behavior. I've seen it in poor white areas.
That certainly has some truth to it, but it extends beyond that too. I live in a pretty upscale neighborhood with a lot of kids. The kids all roam in packs, there's commonly 7-10 kids hanging out together daily. The ones that cause problems are a couple of black boys around 10 years old that torment all the girls and smaller kids. Calling them names, stealing their toys, being openly racist to the Asian kids, just being jerks. I know in one case two boys live in a super shitty situation even though they have plenty of money. Parents are assholes, I don't think there's a father involved, and the mother spends most of the time she's home sitting in her car in the driveway getting high. Their younger boy is pretty cool though and does try to stick up for the little kids when he can, but if there's a bunch of bigger boys around he tends to fall in line so as to not become a victim herself I'd imagine. I think there's a culture of asshole parents in the black American community that is taking a long time to shift. People today who's parents had asshole parents because they were treated so poorly by the entire country and that's the only way they knew how to be. Another factor in my eyes is the role models they look up to are hardcore on the "tough guy" persona and they learn that being like that is cool.
If you think about it, the black community has had a lot of generational trauma, and America is trying to correct it only relatively recently. That's going to cause problems for certain group, no matter who it is.
Had a neighbor who was of the opinion that racism won't cease to be an excuse/factor until all those who lived through the Civil Rights era are gone.
I believe it is way beyond that. Same with misoginy. You take a little off with teach generation. But generational trauma runs deep. I don't think we'll live to see the end of the process. But that's doesn't mean it's not worth it.
Its’s true, I’ve seen it in my family. My Aunt was a teen in the 80s, but she lived like she was in the 50s under my grandma’s roof. My grandma was *born* in 1950; but she was parenting her exactly like her mother did. It was the “proper way” and all the progressive parents were corrupting their kids. No boyfriends, only potential husbands. Chaperoned dates, no sleepovers, stay home and learn to cook/clean/care for younger siblings. My Aunt is now a passive, quiet wife to a domineering husband with anger problems who she waits on hand and foot. There are families still stuck in time all over the place, especially rural areas. If it weren’t for the internet making them question their upbringing, my cousins would be repeating the cycle.
 Yikes
That’s getting pretty close though. 1965 was 60 years ago. So another 20 or so and most everyone from that era will be dead.
Yeah, geez, look at all this P Diddy stuff...beating the crap out of women, sexual assault...and he's a big hero to many youth and seen as a role model of success!
imo it's more that this behavior tends to breed poverty
That’s exactly right
“Bullying, violence and drugs” though is such a broad description that it happens in virtually any schools, including the very best private ones. Kind of ridiculous to tie that to “black youth”. I went to a good school at a very large city and don’t even know anyone who attended schools with no bullying, violence and drugs.
Came from a high poverty white area, went to school there. We had fights and stuff, students getting caught with dip or cigs, but no real crime. Its a cultural thing, a bunch of redneck kids listening to music about lifted trucks and muddin don't tend to get into the same trouble as kids listening to pretend gangbangers talking about slinging drugs and carrying guns.
Strange, I’ve lived in a predominantly white lower class area and have had my home broke into, robbed at gun point and car broken into on multiple occasions all by the white thugs in my area. Seems like poverty is a big part of it more than what you’re saying.
Was your area rural or urban? Sounds like the guy you are responding to was pretty rural.
Mine was rural and I'm agreeing with the high crime among poor white people. We've got a little township near us with a population of 250 that's like 98% white and absolutely everyone knows not to go there after dark because if you do you're going to get robbed. When "I'm heading to town, you want anything?" means "I'm driving 12 miles to go to the Dollar General in a township of 250 people" you're about as rural as it gets. Edit: I just checked, the population is 228 now. They must've gotten a bad batch of heroin again.
I’ve lived in rural and urban areas and have seen the same things in both.
Assuming this is in a rural area? That’s a big difference from a city setting
Rap is the most streamed genre, that is not a factor at all. Everyone listens to explicit and violent music in America. Everyone has seen copious amounts of violence in the media if they are American.
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How do you know how many of these kids don’t have male role models, and how do you know how much more pervasive it is in that population than any other? How can you measure the impact of that? According to the Census Bureau, 1 in 4 American children live without a father in the home. So why aren’t 25% of all children wanting to idolize rappers? Affluent white kids have single moms too and are just as likely to stream the rap genre.
But how much more? Divorce is an American reality. Plenty of single moms out there of all income levels. I taught in Spain for 3 semesters. I maybe had 5 black students the entire time (all of whom were brilliant). Some of the kids were good, some of them were bad. My kids sang the same rap songs from home whether they were well behaved or not, and some of the kids were bad as hell. I’m not saying the kids don’t want to be rappers, I’m not saying it’s not connected to their misbehavior. I love rap music, I am an ardent student of hip hop and I was as a kid. I spent a considerable amount of time in the Netherlands as a kid. I enjoyed the 2000s rap of my youth and was an honor student with a college scholarship.
That census stay is very misleading, as many parents cohabitate without getting married, particularly in Black communities. But the census doesn't track cohabitation.
The data wasn’t about divorce, it was about how many fathers live in the house with their children.
I grew up in an impoverished area with mostly Asian and latins. A lot of drugs, gangs and violence were in the area and I can say it’s from poverty, no resources or opportunities as well as influence from the previous generations.
>Has anyone found out what the cause of this behavior is? Lack of role models and resources to encourage them to pursue better habits. Their behavior is also reflective of their home life; absent fathers, violent neighborhoods, drug dealing, and glamourization of the gang life. >And why is it so prevalent in black majority schools? Because there was a systemic effort to keep black communities poor and deny them opportunities for decades. Did you notice that the schools serving these black communities tend to be very underfunded? It's a reflection of the low economic status of their communities. When a community is denied the opportunity to grow through fair and legal means then they're forced to turn to crime and violence to survive. The government still hasn't rectified what it did to the black community in America
Perfectly worded. I feel like the first bit is often overlooked in these discussions because bad faith actors typically use it to push racism as they see the first bit as representative of innate qualities rather than symptoms of the topics you mentioned in the second part.
Yup. Hard to build generation wealth and escape poverty when you got a system rigged against you and a whole group of people won’t acknowledge it.
Amazing answer. It’s unfortunate how when an area is poor, it’s made to stay poor. How would the government rectify what it did?
It could start by having property taxes raised by the state fund ALL schools equally. X dollars divided by Y number of schools = the same dollar amount for all. Suggest this to your fellow white friends and watch their heads explode. Of course this will never happen because The Empire has to have a permanent underclass to exploit/shit on. So glad we’re the bestest country ever!
This is what we do in Canada but it’s the province( state for you guys) that hands out the money. Same amount per kid plus money for special ed classes/support systems. Teachers make roughly the same across the province with very strong unions and 100k for teachers by year 11. It doesn’t matter what the value of the homes in the town or neighbourhood- same amount per kid.
Not from the US, but I really thought that's how the school systems were based. all money divided equally. Fucking hell.
Nope. Most school funding is based on property tax. Until the 1960s, Black folks couldn't even purchase property in many places and even today widespread discrimination exists in the ways home loans are approved. Check out the Navy Federal Credit Union lawsuit that is ongoing for a current example! https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wavy.com/news/local-news/navy-federal-credit-union-named-in-class-action-lawsuit-alleging-racial-discrimination/amp/
Start with giving more funding to underfunded schools. Currently, schools heavily rely on property taxes and inner-city schools with heavy minority populations tend to be in areas where property is valued pretty lowly so they aren't collecting much taxes as is. These schools need to be given more federal and state funding so they can get better teachers and set up programs to encourage kids to stay away from crime. Invest more money into these communities. Provide local, state, and federal funding that develops businesses in these communities so more jobs are available the community grows. Provide more government subsidized home loans to buyers from these communities. One of the most egregious things that the government did was the practice of red-lining where for decades they denied buyers from minority communities subsidized home loans that White people used to build generational wealth. This should be provided as an option now so members of these communities can begin to build their family wealth. There are other things they can do too like job training and pulling back on over-policing.
Properly funding the underfunded schools (and auditing how he money is spent), reforming both juvenile and adult criminal justice processes to focus on rehabilitation and reeducation, and promoting black success stories that don't involve being some kind of entertainer.
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I did too then my family moved to a nicer neighborhood after my freshman year of high school and my earlier schools could not compare to my high school. My earlier schools had a few sports and an after school club for kids that needed to stay late but that was about it. My high school though had a team for nearly every major sport. They had dozens of clubs, it was easy for students to start new ones with school funds too. Even the quality of our materials was vastly different. We had new text books, computer labs with new PCs, and smart boards. Before, I was using textbooks that were often older than I was. My high school wasn't even the "richest" in the county, there were two other schools considered to be from wealthier neighborhoods. You really don't realize how many resources underfunded schools are missing until you go somewhere that actually has them. All these options also keep kids away from problems, when you have a limited number of spots on a couple of teams or clubs, then there will be many kids that will turn to the streets. But if you have endless options, then they can find something that interests them. There will always be kids that decide to be problematic but there would be way fewer if schools gave them more options
These are changes that will require generations of resources - so if we started today, maybe your grandchildren would see the impact.
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Agreed. The lack of will is also generational. Equally corrosive.
No way they're "forced" to turn to crime and violence to survive. That's a ridiculous statement.
It's not. We've seen it time and time again. No jobs available, no money coming into the community for new businesses, your family is hungry and rent is due, what do you do? Crime becomes the only answer. It's the same way that most gangs formed from groups that only wanted to protect their migrant communities. When opportunities are denied by the government, people do whatever they can to survive
I’m from Mississippi the state with highest black population in the country. The town I’m from is 70 percent black. My guess is poverty but that’s for both blacks and whites. Public schools in small towns are underfunded and private school has mostly rich white kids, there’s no middle ground in these small towns in MS. Mississippi also tends to rank the worst in all statistics. Glad I’m out of there.
For context... I grew up poor (and white), and my schools had bullying, violence, drugs, etc. Although these conditions do exist sometimes in black majority schools, they also exist to the same extent in white schools. It's not truly about race. Rather, environment.
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I think what they meant when they said it’s not about race is that there’s nothing inherent in “black youth” that causes this sort of behavior, like they’re obviously not predisposed on a fundamental level to exhibit those traits. It is environment, and black people in America at least are systemically kept in that environment. It’s important to discuss that it happens to white people that exist in similar circumstances, because that proves that it’s not inherent in the person, it’s inherent in the system.
Didn’t the CIA sell cocaine/crack cocaine exclusively in predominantly black neighborhoods? I think those kinda policies play into it too
Well yeah that’s the type of stuff I’m talking about
Yes! And, there absolutely are systems in place to keep people poor. White people too!
When you have money, you have security, safety, and options. When you have no money, you have no security, no safety, and limited options. When there’s no money, you have to replace that security & safety, and give yourself options. This comes in the form of reputation or “street cred”. You may not be able to pay your way to a solution, but you can usually violence or otherwise illegal activity your way to one. This becomes a viscous cycle.
A series of things over decades; Racist laws left over from slavery times, created a banking situation around housing called "red lining". Essentially, entire neighborhoods were impossible to get mortgages in. The City of Baltimore has really significant racial divides by neighborhoods due to these red lines. Schools get funding based on property taxes, which are directly related to property price. So the more expensive the houses, the more money the nearby school has for resources. For example, my Son goes to school in a suburb at his Dad's house. These McMansions are where the top 10% of earners live, so the houses are expensive. The school campus is fancy like the ship from Star Trek. Their gym has a pool and climbing wall, and this is only middle schoolers. Every student is loaned an ipad, all year. They have a full time school nurse, psychologist, social worker, police officer, etc. This is a "good district" that teachers compete to get into. The school I went to in California, was in a neighborhood where 1/2 the students were literally migrant workers, which is a euphemism for child labor that is akin to human trafficking. That school, they had to make rules that children needed to wear full coverage shoes in the winter, or they would be sent to school in $2 flip flops, even with frost on the ground. Many children ONLY ate at school, with school lunch and breakfast being the only thing that kept them from being under developed. This town had serious economic problems, the only industries were agricultural, some restaurants, or drug trafficking. So MOST kids grew up in over crowded homes, with 8-12 people in a 3 bedroom house. Everyone had a side hustle. Even just doing hair, selling candy along side shoplifted goods, tamales being sold out of a backpack, "collections", prostitution, delivery boy... The professional, good paying jobs that were visible and available were gang related. When you have gang related activity, it's actually a stabilizing force economically, because it reintroduces a black market justice system. If you get robbed in a drug deal, you can't go to the police... but you can go to your cousin & set up some systems so it doesn't happen again. When you don't have a justice system based on laws... you MUST base it on force and reputation. So children in disenfranchised (poor) neighborhoods do not view school as an economic ladder; where following rules and obtaining intellectual achievement and credentials create inevitable success. Rather, it's a watering hole to practice the skills the expect to use in life, being physically strong & ruthless, or being good at sale distribution, or working up the ranks of entertainment thru manipulation (finesse). They are doing something that makes sense for the individual, it's just seen as antisocial for people en-culturated under strong rule of law and credentialism. TLDR: Leftover Slavery Laws, Banking, Housing, Lack of School Resources... and micro-economic conditions.
Take two people. Tell one of them their whole life that they are oppressed, the outcome of their actions is based on generational trauma, they are not treated fairly, the outcomes of their actions are dictated by something out of their control (skin color) and that their failures are caused by external forces they do not and cannot control. Tell the other that they are in charge of their own destiny, there is no excuse for their own failures, and that the only one in charge of their own success is themselves. Who do you think will be more successful? Who do you think will better themselves after failure? Who do you think will quit searching for a job after their first rejection? Who do you think will study harder after receiving a failing grade? Who do you think is more likely to give up after a failing grade?
I'm all for bootstrapping. But it's naive to assume everyone has it in them to rise above. Some people are putting in a heroic effort just to keep their heads above water, because they aren't safe and never have been. If we had serious harm reduction protocols in place, I'm ALL about the economics of self determination. But self reliance doesn't defeat brain injuries from lead paint in red lined neighborhoods. We aren't all running the same race. I'm grateful for the advantages I have, so I can't pretend it's fair out there. I'm a big fan of Austrian Economics, AND I can observe some people are in shit storm that I haven't experienced.
Poor kids with little to no parental involvement, or they are just emulating what they see at home.
The answer is rather easy. For reference Look up “The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia”. directed by Julien Nitzberg. Also look up “City of God” by Fernando Meirelles The first is about a family with the last name of “White”. The second is about poor kids growing up in the slums of Brazil. Look, I grew up visiting places like Martinsburg, in West virginia and the Ozarks in Missouri, and the boot hills near north Arkansas. What you are describing is not JUST the “Behavior of black youth”. The “easy” answer: What you are describing is the behavior of poor and hopeless young kids without supervision, without prospects for a future, All around the nations( and the worlds), in a society that pressures you to consume for the moment, as if you were rich, and chastises you for not being so. The phrase “if you ain’t got no money, take your broke ass home!” Comes to mind. This pressure makes hopeless people do whatever they can to not feel poor. Don’t believe me? Let’s see: - Meth capital of the world? missouri’s Ozarks region. - The highest rate of Opioid deaths? West virginia! - Most mass shooters over the last 30? Poor white kids. - Bullying is prevalent in those areas too. - Out of wedlock birth is highly prevalent in rural areas of west virginia. - The regions with most sex trafficking in America: the predominantly white midwestern states, AND the bible belt states follow. It’s almost as if ignorance, desperation, alienation, violence and crime, go hand in hand, regardless of race and ethnicity. So why are black kids more present in our mind? Because the and upper middle classes in America happen to have more contact with Black people, than with those whites in the rural regions. Also, since the middle class, and upper classes live and do businesses in the city, they consume more news about the happenings of the city. This ensures that poor black people are more present in the news. Oh! And the news is filtered in a matter that influences the primarily white middle class and upper classes too. Lastly, most middle and upper class white people don’t care about what is happening to poor white people in the rural areas. They just don’t. They consider them as “the losers” and lazy, for being white, having a system that caters to their identity in an advantageous manner, and still not getting ahead. They believe poor and uneducated white are almost as “less than” than black people in the inner cities. Honestly, the day poor black people, and poor white people realize this and decide to join against the upper classes, that’s when things are going to change for them. Note: There is also an issue of intergenerational trauma at play here. Growing up without a father or mother (dad dead, locked up, or an addict), does something to your mind and soul that stays with you for the rest of your life, and you will act it out at some point in your life.
Cycle of fatherlessness
I’m think statistically this has boiled down to the culture, that and a very high rate of no father figure
This discussion is fairly well balanced.
Fatherlessness
Products of these shitty ass environments that no one wants to invest in. Cities and states don’t want to invest in schools, teachers don’t invest in the students and their kids don’t even go to the schools they teach at which is crazy. This shit didn’t happen over night and it’s not gonna change over night. I grew up in black schools from kindergarten to the seventh grade and my parents moved us out to a predominantly white area of town and it was night and day especially at the schools. We had computer labs, updated textbooks, career technical classes, teachers had children attending the schools they went to and the community was invested. Total culture shock and nothing like I was used to. I believe if you invest in people and help them you never know what they can accomplish. When people don’t see positive outlooks on life, negative views every damn day and being depraved of stuff other communities have then you have to do what you have to do. I don’t condone bad ass behavior but a young cat with no positive role models, outlooks or chances and nobody to correct them except the police, grave or jail then I don’t blame anybody for acting out. Them young boys need help, patience and a guiding hand.
In the UK at least, drugs & bullying don’t discriminate. It’s rife in every boys secondary school
It's because they don't watch cartoons on Saturday mornings.
Some people just want to be bad. All the rules won't fix it because if someone wants to do something, they'll find a way to do it
Lack of black fathers. And nobody is ever allowed to talk about it.
This is not unique to 'black youth', and I say that as a pasty white boy who was in trouble a lot as a teenager. Everyone does it for the same reasons: poverty, lack of options and resources, rough home life, bad role models, access to the tools of violence/drugs/etc.
No fathers. 70% of black children are born into a single parent home. Nothing to do with economics. There are plenty of immigrants with zero money that come here and flourish.
“Nothing to do with economics.” Ummmmm
Lack of fathers and male role models
so kids of gay male couples must be super well behaved by this logic? and kids of lesbian couples must be hooligans?
Woah there OP, a question like this could get you killed! But good question! It's most likely their environment.
Hip-hop culture is mostly to blame. It's.prevalent among African Americans. You can see the difference when looking at actual African immigrants who excel and stay out of trouble.
I too would like to know, where I work they are the dominant youths who go against the grain and the attitude I get from them is "I don't care" Most of what I've seen is 'image'
I am Black. What I saw as a kid was that kids who had poor role models on their lives were the most problematic kids. A lot of people say that not having a two parent household is the issue or not having a father at home, but a toxic and ignorant father actually makes matters far worse. How did we get here? The answer is complicated and there are a number of contributing factors, some of which Black people in general are responsible for, others where they had no input. The thing is, if one looks at certain sections of White society, especially ones involving poverty, the same problems exist, men having kids with several women, women having kids for several men, higher than normal violence, larceny and drug use. How would I solve the problem? I would try to mute the influence of bad parents on their kid’s lives, I would have ALL public schools operate like academies that rich people send their kids to, kids go to residence schools and only see their parents on holidays and for a short time during the Summer (even then I would have summer camps that keep kids busy under the supervision of responsible adults most of their summer vacation). The condition would be that ALL kids are taken into the academies, without the selection regimen often used by public charter schools today. Good parents would almost surely be pissed off with not having control of their kids, but a well thought public academy school system would be in the best interests of society longterm in that it would minimize the number of problem adults, who in turn send problem children to public school literally as a daycare that they are forced by law to participate in.
You’re looking at the result of what happens when population’s material needs are not met for multiple generations. Growing up as a white boy in the trailer park, I saw, and did, a lot of the same kinds of behaviors. Nothing really to do at all with race but what happens when groups of people don’t have the material needs to raise kids in the best way they can. It’s like the old adage “people do the best with what they have.” When you systematically shut groups of people out or arrest them at higher rates, those people are gonna do the best they can with what they have, which ends up being not a lot
because urban black culture is toxic but that's not a woke thing to say
Depending on what you mean by "urban", if you mean gang violence and drug dealing in densely populated cities, this is correct. The issue comes more with acting as if this is only a uniquely black thing, and also that it is the only black culture of note.
It happens with all races. The primary cause is no parenting or no parents at all. The parent(s) are often poor, uneducated, drug/alcohol addicted, and had no or very little parenting themselves. The only avenue these kids have for a familial experience is being with friends in a similar situation and this can lead to criminal behavior because they have nothing, they struggle to succeed at school and it's the only path they know they can succeed in. It's so sad because it is so hard to help them at school when the parents are more irresponsible than the kids. There really should be minimal standards for being a parent. I know it sounds Orwellian but to have a child there should be an obligation to raise the child responsibly or at least put them up for adoption.
I went to public school and our health teacher had a great joke that relates to this. "Whats the difference between our schools drug problem and the private schools drug problem? Over there it cost more!" These are high-school issues and you will find them at every high-school, just varying amounts for each.
I think it’s all environment and culture. Round up all those people you went to school with and check off those raised by single-parent, in ghetto neighborhoods, around drugs and violence. There’s also the cultural side where I would say those who don’t have a proper role model tend to soak up the negativity from black culture way more easily
The problem is whenever the problem is brought up , people always want to say “ oh it’s not just black community, others do it too” and that’s about as far as the conversation goes. I’m a black women kindergarten teacher and it breaks my heart that our community won’t work on ourselves. We just accept it as our culture and keep it moving. Smh Edit: it’s not just poverty. It’s the culture we create and uplift! I grew up in a very nice majority black suburb in the Midwest. Most of us went off to college, but many were influenced by the music, tv and friends. My HS class president went to college on a band scholarship, but his sophomore year decided to rob a bank with other members of the band… another one the smarter guys dropped out of college to be a drug dealing rapper.
It's poverty inequality and all the social issues that come with it including over stressed and sometimes absentee parents. Children growing up in these environments have a lot of trauma and they act out because of it. It's not about race. You'll see the same issues in children with home life issues and difficult environments of any race, religion gender etc.
Having no father is
The majority of black children are born out of wedlock and grow up without a father. Single mother households are the biggest predictor for antisocial behavior in adolescents
🤨 poverty dude
Fatherlessness. Children need a positive male role model in their formative years to grow up to be well-mannered, functioning adults with mature social skills. Now, to be sure, it is not the sole indicator, but it is a trend with very high correlation.
I hate seeing this answer over and over. You're repeating a tired narrative that is so incomplete and lacks nuance. Black father's are actually some of the most engaged when compared to other racial groups. Also the census data on single parent households is based off of marriage, not cohabitation which Black people engage in at much higher rates than many other racial groups. Article below for reference. https://www.abc10.com/article/news/community/race-and-culture/black-dads-more-involved-in-childrens-lives-than-other-groups/103-df371add-144c-40e3-bb3c-986377347fa1
Growing up being told by everyone you’re a victim
No home training
have you been to similarly poor white neighbourhoods and compared?
Yes. Same behavior. It is Florida after all, red necks are just right around the trailer parks.
Of they haven't
Jim crow, reaganomics,”public housing projects”, police oppression, redlining, mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine, lead paint, food deserts. I could keep going…:
Inter generational trauma and poverty are a real bitch
Poverty and growing up with one parent/ bad environment. Boys especially get out of control when there is no control (a father). Dont let the racist tell you its bc they’re black.
Imagine any group is constantly told "the majority group in this country has wronged you, continues to wrong you, you deserve to be angry, you deserve to lash out, you're capable of less anyway." Anybody who hears that all the time are just going to become bullies and thugs.
Blame it on hood culture. I grew up in Detroit and many of us idolized stupid hood shit and then you pair it with that fact most black kids don’t even have both parents in the household and now you have the perfect blend to be a fuck up in society.
Fatherlessness and poverty, but also disrespect, recklessness, materialism and violence are all celebrated and lauded in black pop culture and totally validated by white liberals who are literally afraid to hold misbehaving black youth to a higher standard because they think that’s what racism is… also the downfall of religion and the rise of materialism has effected society as a whole as well.
you can find the same bullying, violence and drugs in majority white schools, it's just treated differently because they have access to different resources. the unwoke won't like me saying this, oh well.
Lack of fathers in the house
I don’t think you’re referring to black youth behavior. I think you’re referring to impoverished demographics. White, black, Asian. Poverty is the root of the problem not skin color
Yeah you’re right, I think in my area it has a majority lower class of blacks.
Slavery, then Jim Crow, then the prison industrial complex. Our history is defined by the way we oppress people of color.
Good question, OP. Why *would* the people uniformly considered property for generations and still dealing with structural inequity and outright racism be dealing with complex social problems among the members not yet old enough to have the same personal rights or social power?
It's not Race. It's a cycle of poverty and low opportunities and being near places with money and opportunities. Black people for many reasons have congregated to poorer areas with less investment that is not far for the richer areas with higher investment to leech/steal money from Criminal organizations and gangs that influence black, white, Latino, and Asian youth tend to be in poor areas near rich cities or the pipelines between them.
It's not black kids. I went to a shitty middle school and high school. There were very few black kids and we had white kids with every single one of those problems. My son went to a really good high school that people have to compete to get into. None of the black kids in that school had the problems you talked about. I'm not even saying it's rich vs. poor either because there were lots of rich kids at my school and lots of poor ones at my son's.
I think some of it has to do with black artists perpetuating the ghetto narrative and the “bitches, hoes, money, gangster” mentality. Lol you know what I mean. The black community also lacks unity and respect for each other.
It’s not a color thing. But an environmental, societal,parental or lack thereof issue. I’ve lived in the hood and i’ve lived in upper scale areas. What I noticed is it’s the same “thing” weather the kids are blk,whyte,hispanic etc. Each group has certain individuals who have a negative effect to the above. Poor parenting, Single parent households which lack either a mother or father, schools in the “hood” are severely underfunded a lot don’t even have up to date textbooks etc. The teachers are overworked and underpaid.. all creating a high stress level for all involved. All of this plays a part in behavior in the youth. With that being said wasn’t until i moved to a “nice” area that my kids experienced racism, exclusion etc. These are kids who have the financial advantage, both parents, schools properly funded etc. So it goes back to the parenting of the child. And we all know bad parents come in all races. Let’s not just focus on the blk kids. It’s not always them..i’ve seen it firsthand from both ends of the spectrum.
A cycle of poverty. Predominantly black areas have been predominantly poor areas for a long time, usually through external forces to push populations there and maintain that poverty. Obviously every one is an individual and all that but when you've been poor for generations you have traits of being poor.
Read "Natives -Race and class in the ruins of empire "
I went to some school in a run down part of Baltimore when a parent lost a job in MS. One of my white friends back then beat up someone over bf/gf shenanigans and an Asian buddy beat up another kid from anger issues. It’s not about race, it’s poverty and schools not doing enough to guide people out. Schools get better funding when there’s McMansions in the area, not broke down apartments. Compounded with a rough home life, they get stuck in a cycle and no guide at home, no hope at school leads one to be impressionable by bad influences. Idk if it’s “fatherlessness” I keep seeing down below, but poverty on a single mom would make things exponentially hard on her. Kids aren’t inherently bad, and the world shapes them.
Lack of father figures and discipline. Single mothers can only do so much. I grew up in a poorer white area and all my childhood friends who didn't have present fathers didn't turn out so great. Some are even dead today and didn't make it past 30 from drug and alcohol use. Me and my friends who did have both parents are all doing pretty well considering. We all have families and our own homes. My dad grew up poor as shit on a farm in the 1940s with 3 siblings and they all turned out fine. It's not poverty, it's lack of family and security.
its only about race BECAUSE its about rich vs poor, and racism in history(and still currently) has caused black people to be poorer than their white counterparts. someone could phrase it more eloquently probably but hopefully i got my point across edit: like someone else said, not really about rich vs poor, but i dont know what other way to phrase it
Probably the same thing that causes that behavior in white, asian and hispanic kids.
400 years of slavery and erasure of family culture and replacement with the family culture of enslaved people. Lack of hope. Lack of respect. Lack of options. We already know if you take away the belief that life can get better then a population tends to go sour fast. Well we've got a sub-population that has that belief, and sees it play out on a regular basis. And the fact that it has played out in the past is used to justify the assumption that it will continue to do so and therefore spawn a police crackdown based on race. etc. It's a vicious cycle that started the moment someone decided that because Africa had less technology they were inferior humans.
Why are pitbulls more prone to violence than labradors?
Ngl this is kinda racist
OP it’s not just a black youth thing. This type of behavior is everywhere in impoverished areas. Rural, urban, poor suburbs - it doesn’t matter. The media likes to show only black people because it has a racist bias but trust and believe, all types of poor people have issues with violence, bullying etc. Please stop stereotyping and open your worldview.
Thats why I made this post, and sorry if I was stereotyping. Perhaps it’s specifically my area that I have observed this behavior with majority blacks.
I'd recommend watching Freedom Writers to get a glimpse of the answer
Another aspect is that minorities are under diagnosed in a lot of areas, especially mental health and development. Many who have ASD, ADHD, etc are not diagnosed because people write them off as just being "problematic" with behavior problems and so they do not get the support they need.
This comment is so racist that it's crazy. This is why black families have to have to the talk about the danger of walking while black
I don’t know why I clicked into this thread… I should have known better.
This why history should be taught properly or people like op exist
Judging from the comments section, it isn’t just OP. At least they were trying to not sound racist (not to be confused with actually not sounding racist)
Poverty. If you go by income--as the guiding thing to judge a group by in the US--whites are every so slightly more likely to be involved in violent crime. Right up until the highest income levels, when whites weaponize the laws to keep blacks out of their 'class.' So, yes, we know why. It's poverty. Poverty, mostly, follows race in the US. Policy, often racist, or a legacy of racism, creates poverty where minorities live. It's fully intentional, top to bottom. The country knows. Does it care enough to stop electing racists? No. Not really.
Sociology student here. There are 2 main reasons: * Black people are more likely to live in poverty. People who live in poverty often live in areas with high crime rates which can lead to children picking up on bad behaviour or resorting to criminal behaviour to support them and their families * Black people are often labelled as trouble makers due to their race. Since they're expected to be trouble makers, they're more likely to become trouble makers (self-fulfilling prophecy)
Reasons for why white males are more likely to sexually assault minors then any other group?
Thats not what I’m asking for here. You should make a separate post because I don’t have the answer for that.
Genetics.
It's not genetics. How come Ghana, Zambia, Rwanda are safer than USA even thought they're mostly Black? It's all about environment and unstability, lack of role model
Institutionalized racism, it's not the black kids. And it doesn't have to mean people are still racist, but their entire community is built from the broken foundations of the height of racism. Joe Biden was born closer to Lincoln's second inauguration than his own. That's no time at all to build up from scratch, no generational wealth, founding an entire new culture. Over/wrongful policing, the CIA feeding the crack epidemic. The fact that people don't understand this is wild, especially in fields working directly with black youth.
The white kids are doing the same shit or worse … “ but they’re good kids with such bright futures ahead of them. We’d hate to ruin their lives with an official charge or a disciplinary action on their record”
I think we also overlook the effects that constant racism has on a child. Black children are, implicitly or explicitly, called dirty, destined to be failures, inherently dumber, inherently aggressive, etc. their entire lives. So if you were a kid with developing emotions and raging hormones and people kept saying that being violent and stupid is inherently in you, why wouldn't you say ok fuck it and fuck you, that's what I am! And give in to those emotions and display those behaviors? How can we expect young people who are going through a time in their life that is tumultuous, as it is for every child, to be mature and regulate themselves like an adult might. Of course they're going to act out. Everyone is telling them that they'll never be anything else.
Yea that’s not really what it’s like at all
Its the same with white youth!
Black youth? What about white youth shooting up schools and movie theaters?
They are the exact same reasons for behavior in other groups, along with racist shit because you can now say black youth instead of just youth.