Race Relations roundup

Boston Firefighter Stabbed - "A Boston firefighter is mending from what could have been deadly stab wounds he suffered early yesterday morning when he was allegedly jumped in East Boston while off duty by a group of Hispanic males who told him they 'don't want any gringo here.'"

Bay Area counties toughest on black drug defenders - "San Francisco imprisons African Americans for drug offenses at a much higher rate than whites, according to a report to be released today by a nonprofit research institute."  Yet another example of blacks suffering disproportionately in a city dominated by white liberal Democrats.

MTA looks at racial role in city bus attack - "Maryland Transit Administration Police said last night that they have found no evidence that the severe beating of a 26-year-old woman on a city bus this week was provoked and that they are investigating the attack as a possible racially motivated hate crime ... the suspects, who have been released to their parents, are African-American while the two originally identified victims are white. Marzola said the suspects are also believed to have menaced an elderly passenger, who is white, and to have assaulted the bus operator, an African-American male who defended his passenger."

Worms infect more poor Americans than [previously] thought - Roundworms may infect close to a quarter of inner city black children, tapeworms are the leading cause of seizures among U.S. Hispanics and other parasitic diseases associated with poor countries are also affecting Americans, a U.S. expert said on Tuesday.

How to talk about race in the year 2008 - written by Michael Myers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition and a former assistant national director of the NAACP.

Videotape shows Sharpton cutting a deal :

With a hidden FBI camera rolling inside a New York hotel suite in 2003, an unsuspecting Rev. Al Sharpton, Democratic candidate for president, spoke candidly.

Sharpton offered to help Philadelphia fund-raiser Ronald A. White win a multimillion-dollar business deal, if White helped him raise $50,000 for politics.

White offered $25,000. "If you bring my guys up on this hedge fund, and I have the right conversation," White said, "I'll give you what you need."

"Cool," Sharpton said.

Housing changes begin to unravel Katrina victims' lives - Over two years after being forced out of New Orleans, many NOLA residents living in Houston still rely on government subsidies as the major source of their income or as their sole source of income.  "... [T]he lives of the most vulnerable — the unemployed and working poor — are starting to unravel. Once kept afloat on federal rental assistance, these families are losing their benefits and are ending up on Houston's streets, activists and social workers say."

Things aren't any better in New Orleans.  An organized rally of indignant blacks pushed the New Orleans City Council to reconsider their plans to demolish four heavily damaged and dilapidated public housing projects and replace them with mixed-income neighborhoods.  The council meeting turned ugly, with blacks shouting racial attacks at white attendees.

One of the attackers was Sharon Jasper, recently quoted by the New Orleans Times-Picayune as saying, "I might be poor but I don't like to live poor.  I thank God for a place to live but it's pitiful what people give you."  Ironically, the photo accompanying the quote shows Jasper sitting in an apartment with apparently new furniture, hardwood floors, and what appears to be a 60" flat screen television.

Laura at Pursuing Holiness pithily sums up the outsider's view of the sorry state of those in perpetual poverty who are trapped in a lifestyle defined by generational dependence on welfare:

I’ve been on welfare.   I’m in favor of a temporary, limited welfare system for those who need it. People who can furnish their subsidized apartment with nice furniture and a 60 inch flat screen TV don’t need it. Maybe the TV was a gift. If so, she should sell it, and pay that electric bill she’s griping about in the article. That’s how it works for the rest of us. The majority of my Christmas budget was spent yesterday on a hot water heater. That’s life.

... Those people are not going to support themselves until there is absolutely no other option, and possibly not even then. Part of the current political flap is the so called “right to return” for New Orleans “refugees.” The right to come back and be supported by taxpayers? There are jobs going to spare here. We’ve absorbed tens of thousands of illegal aliens and we still don’t have enough workers. People can return anytime they please, if they’re willing to pay their own way.

... Who’s really doing more to help poor people?  Those who would continue warehousing them in places like this?

Or those who push them - however unwilling some may be - into apartments like the one Sharon Jasper enjoys, or this new mixed-income housing?

It's difficult to understand, but with my own eyes I have seen that those who suffer in generational poverty would rather continue to suffer than to face the frightening, unknown world of self-sufficiency.  I believe that part of this, particularly where blacks are concerned, stems from a century-long system in which whites could take virtually anything away from blacks at any time, with blacks having little or no hope for justice.  Sadly, this has ingrained the notion that the only "safe" life is one where food, shelter, clothing, school, medical care, spending money, etc. are all provided -- guaranteed -- by the Federal government.  Witness the abject panic among poor blacks whenever the sunset clause in the 1965 Voting Rights bill is mentioned, and you'll understand what I'm talking about.

The longer this myth is perpetuated, the deeper these people are mired in poverty, with their self-esteem crushed and their will to achieve destroyed.  How do we end this debilitating lifestyle? 

 

Comments

[datingstips]

Dating someone outside of your race has been controversial for many centuries. At one point Canada, Australia, and the United states all banned interracial relationships. The origin of such debates stem from a hair brained notion that interracial relationships diluted racial purity.