Every now and then I come face-to-face with a contradiction. Usually, I look at it and do something else. Contradictions are difficult things, in that they force us to confront errors in our thinking. Since none of us ever admits to error except Sarge in Beetle Bailey (“I thought I was wrong about something once. Turns out I wasn’t.”), we have these protracted debates where we continually butt the same heads with the same points. It’s time for some new sauce.
I am writing here not to set others straight. I am more interested in straightening out my own mind.
I came to butt heads with Carol at Missoulapolis over a problem that liberals of old were loathe to admit, and that modern liberals simply don’t care about: The underclass. It’s mostly black. There doesn’t seem to be much progress. There seems to be mobility in the other minorities – Chinese and Vietnamese and Koreans come here and make new lives and commerce percolates among them. The blacks don’t much change, generation generation, except on TV where they are erudite, brilliant, insightful, and often own chains of laundries.
At Carol’s blog, I tried to address the problem as best I was able at that time, as I was hesitant to say what I just said above. It’s a touchy area, as racist attitudes which exist in all of us often surface and have to be quashed again. But I let go with a private thought:
I believe in the basic equality of people – not the lovey-dovey stuff that liberals preach, but rather in our basic equality of abilities. We’re pretty much of the same basic package. There are exceptional people on the far edges of the Bell Curve, but the curve itself is only as steep as it is because of our early-life experiences, in my opinion.
Our brain is comprised of switches that get turned on at various times during our development. The early years are critical. In a loving supporting and stern environment, children develop their talents and become mature and functioning adults.
But too many home environments are harsh places where kids learn early on defensive survival skills. The ones they need to survive in our world don’t develop. It passes on generation to generation, and goes all the way back to the days of slavery. Instead these kids develop street skills, and get subsumed into the underground economy you talked about.
As I said, I have no answer for this. I only want to make the point that we white guys who discuss this stuff, in their environment, would be them. It takes smarts to survive there too. We’re not that special. We’re just more fortunate.
Truthfully, the thing that was swirling in my head as I wrote this was the TV series I am watching, The Wire, and an interview I listened to with one of its creators, David Simon. That was mixing up with a movie that Denzel Washington directed in 2002, Antwone Fisher. I am all about popular culture.
The Wire is about street life in Baltimore, and that portion of the population that we have no use for, the black street people. “The Wire” itself is a wiretap where other people are employed in trying to convict the street people of crimes so they can imprison them. The weapon of choice for imprisonment are our onerous drug laws. They are enforced against minorities, and that’s about it.
The Wire shows the futility of the ongoing battle. Drugs are not interdicted, addicts are not cured, and for every one imprisoned, at least one other takes his place. The cops are cynical, trying to “juke” the numbers of arrests to get a promotion and better pay.
It’s all pointless. Shut out of the white economy, blacks have their own – the drug culture. Black kids go through school, some finish, but their real education is on the street. They look at white society and realize there is no place for them. They take their place on “the corners”, replacing their parents.Their kids will replace them.
The movie Antwone Fisher attacks the problem from another angle – a young man raised by a brutal aunt who knows nothing of kindness. He enters the military as damaged goods, and doesn’t play well. He is on his way out, but instead is interdicted by a kind counselor who leads him, by means of subtle prodding, to confront his past. It’s a little maudlin, as Antwone finds his real family, and they are right out of Little House on the Prairie. But in the process of moving from brutal aunt to kind family, Antwone learns about “slave behavior,” and that is the message in the movie.
Slaves were subject to abuse by masters, and had no way to pay it back. So they paid it downward, and abuse within families created a whole society so dysfunctional that they could in no way survive in white society. Families were broken, hope was a joke, cruelty was part of everyday existence. Then we set them free.
Patterns repeat from generation to generation. Parents that abuse their kids raise kids who abuse their kids. The dysfunction wrought by slavery is still apparent all around us. And rather than attack the problem head-on, our answer has been to make certain drugs that blacks are likely to use, like coke and heroin, illegal. We then attach monstrous jail sentences to their use as a means of putting them away and out of sight. Pot laws are another manifestation of this phenomenon. It’s about control of the underclasses.
I remember the words of John Taylor Gatto, the New York City school teacher who quit in utter frustration shortly after winning Teacher of the Year award. I can’t cite him other than a vague memory. He talked about New York police routinely swooping down through the neighborhoods and arresting the fathers for drug violations. That’s business as usual. They are juking the numbers. It’s a game, nothing more.
So what’s the solution? Other than taking all of the money we throw at drug enforcement and use it instead for rehab and job training and education, which is David Simon’s solution, I don’t have one.
What’s the contradiction? It’s the two faces of government – the iron fist, and the nurturing hand.
That contradiction surfaces in every debate I have -the government that kills millions in the Middle East and sends my mother her Social Security check. Right wingers are generally so fearful of that government that they insist that the Social Security check is a trap, and yet say that imprisonment of minorities for illusory offenses is a legitimate function.
In answer to my comment to Carol at Missouapolis, she went right to the lazy whites she encounters at the Post Office and the problems of people getting something for nothing. That’s indeed a problem. But the problem of the blacks goes so much deeper.
We’re all wrong about something. I’m trying to do my part here, and embrace my own internal contradictions. It’s part of a general revulsion I am having against Democrats. Major changes are rumbling deep inside. I’m about to go rogue. As if …
More later. I’m grappling and ask anyone reading this to carry forward with this.
Piece of Mindful 
It never hurts to compare what we do with what other countries do. Is it about control, or profiting?
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I’m not much in the mood to carry on greatly on this but I have to bring a couple of points to your attention.
First, if you have followed the drug prohibition debate its the conservatives who have mostly made the argument that the cure is worse than the disease. Buckly brought it to the fore in the 80’s calling, first, full legalization of marijuana. Later, he even endorsed a full legalization of all recreational drugs – although with the draconian proviso that dealers who sold to minors be treated to the death penalty.
I’m a member of the Drug Policy Alliance (which, BTW, gets significant funding from George Soros) and have been an activist for drug policy reform for a decade. I’m an easy mark for those that say that libertarians just want to get stoned and get laid (alas, I paraphrase you) but I no longer use drugs. I’ve been clean 12 years as of tomorrow and I can ell you, as a recovering addict, that the drug laws damaged me personally for several reasons. I have said for years that U.S. drug policy is systemically “racist.” I stand by that.
But single measures can have a dramatic effect on a culture and if we could begin simply by de-criminalizing recreational drugs we would see an immediate reduction in gang crime, a renewed focus in minority communities on education, and an uplifting of families whose father is incarcerated under the American drug gulag.
And the longer I make this argument the more resistance I get from “liberals” who are convinced that laws against non-violent crime change behavior. They do indeed – they cause criminal behavior but they don’t serve anyone but the police state.
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The drug laws in New York came from a liberal,Nelson Rockefeller. The comment above about right wingers was reflexive. I’ve got to break that pattern.
Happy anniversary tomorrow. You are a man with many insights and considerable depth.
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Mark,
The confusion of forces you describe that create massive contradiction are all rooted in errors of principles.
We’ve chatted about this before.
If one holds contradictions of beliefs, and holds those beliefs as immutable – man-made evil will manifest.
As long as the People cannot see that is the same core principle; the legitimizing of violence on the non-violent is exactly the same tool that kills millions in the Middle East that provides Social Security to your Mother by stealing those funds from others, the slaughter of millions will continue as will the enslavement of the People to the tyranny that must exist to enforce “legal” theft.
Change the idea, changes the thinking, changes the action, changes society.
Ideas have consequences.
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BF,
Actions also have consequences. What action would you suggest taking first, once the idea, and thinking has been addressed. Most people respond when change becomes visible. As you point out, “as long as people can’t see,” evil persists. One example of a success story employing your “core principle” would be useful, if you would kindly provide that. It requires at least a little light for one to see.
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Ladybug,
Review Gandhi for an example.
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Or put another way: “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; but in practice, there always is a difference.”
– Yogi Berra
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BF – you’re an either/or kind of guy. The money that finances my mother’s Social Security is not “stolen from others”. Taxes are the price we pay for civil society, and are legitimate. Yes, there is a point beyond which they are confiscatory, and that is where people of differing philosophies come to blows.
In other words, there are illegitimate and legitimate government functions. If you are saying that we cannot have one without the other, you have plenty of evidence to support you. I but I still think we need the former, and I have plenty of evidence to support me as well.
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Taxes are taken involuntarily by someone who did not earn. That is theft.
You are merely using what you hate others do to you – redefine words depending on what side of the argument you happen to be.
No action of government is legitimate. It is all based on a core of initiating violence on non-violent people.
Because government declares its own actions legitimate changes nothing of its actions.
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With any contradiction you need to examine your assumptions.
…racist attitudes which exist in all of us often surface and have to be quashed again.
Why do you feel inclined to quash your instincts? Are they that wrong?
We’re pretty much of the same basic package.
No, we’re not.
There are exceptional people on the far edges of the Bell Curve
Some of us in the middle like to think we’re pretty special.
That you acknowledge a bell curve type distribution starts one down the path to quantifying differences in persons and groups of people. Are you willing to accept the results?
It passes on generation to generation, and goes all the way back to the days of slavery.
A nostrum. The underclass is marked by indulgence in self destructive instinctive behaviors, behaviors that cut across ethnic and racial lines. The notion that it is a result of a carefully nurtured grudge in one particular ethnic/racial group through all these generations is an explanatory fiction cooked up by liberal academics who like to imagine their ancestors had the power to create such long lasting institutions.
we white guys who discuss this stuff, in their environment, would be them.
No, we would not.
The dysfunction wrought by slavery is still apparent all around us.
You overstate the case.
our answer has been to make certain drugs… illegal.
If otherwise law abiding people do drugs quietly, no one objects. Drug laws are often used to incarcerate those who have many other offenses, offenses that are more difficult to press.
It’s about control of the underclasses…They are juking the numbers. It’s a game, nothing more.
It is about controlling crime, which is important. Don’t be so quick to discount it as you sit in your relative safety. Under a liberal mayor, New York City had 3000 murders a year. Under the next, slightly conservative mayor, and the “swoop down” tactics, this was cut to 1000 murders per year. So as usual corpses are the price we pay for progressive social policy.
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A brief glimpse and NY crime statistics indicated that homicides peaked around 1990 at 2,245,during the crack cocaine epidemic. Homicides now are in the area of 5-700 annually, and the factors which produced/reduced them are beyond my grasp, but certainly not yours, as you seem to know that it was the particular policies of a given mayor. Others attribute it to an increase in the number of police over several administrations beginning with Dinckins. I like this:
Your statement that some of us in the middle like too think we’re pretty special is the closest thing I’ve ever heard you say that is an observably true statement. Conceit is a large part of our existence. I’ll give you yours, but I take this from my own existence: I’m pretty damned lucky to be who I am where I am when I am, and I owe a lot to the existence and efforts of others.
Your attitudes about race and slavery are interesting.
One thing that I am just beginning to grasp is the effects of high level stupidity – I tend to think that those who plan our wars think things through. But much of it is availability of high education to very ordinary people – the aristocracy, regression the the mean – it produces George W. Bush as president.
But then, I don’t see the president as being a uniquely powerful man so much as an occupier of a pivot point office, so again, I overstate my case.
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…the factors which produced/reduced them are beyond my grasp, but certainly not yours, as you seem to know that it was the particular policies of a given mayor.
The Guliani/Braaton approach to crime fighting is pretty famous, adopted elsewhere, and is generally acknowledged as the big contributor to the NYC drop in crime.
We see liberal/left/transgendered governance carry a higher crime rate, e.g. New Orleans, San Francisco, South Africa, Venezuela. This doesn’t seem to matter much to supporters, who otherwise caterwaul greatly over alleged loss of life from opponent’s policies.
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