Come on. Go check the sources I cited two posts ago. The systematic racism is still severe. Brown died with Thurgood Marshall. After Brown things got better and now things are getting worse. Reagen and Bush have stripped the power from Civil Rights legislation. The laws are there but are only effective when enforced. But the white mainstream doesn't think this is happening even when everything says that it is. Instead they elect leaders like Bush and Reagen and Nixon. We can't expect achievment to be equal whe.
I am familiar with the sources. It hasn't been that long ago that I was helping compile some of the data that went into those sources. I work with and have employees and had one boss who have experienced all the unfairness you describe and then some. They chose the Bill Cosby prescription to overcome it, however, and they bow their head or feel inferior to nobody. They don't have to worry about aids or how the police treat them or going to jail or dying any younger than anybody else in their age groups. Why? Because they live their lives so that these things are not a problem.
That is what you should be telling those kids on your block. And you shouldn't let them get away with making excuses or giving up after setbacks or failures. Tell them they can succeed, show them that it is possible to succeed. Once they believe it, they'll do it.
So you came from a bad enviorment. You had odds to overcome. Would you not sympathize with those who come from the same position? Not everyone can overcome the odds. If they could would they really be odds? But we can dismantle enviorments that create them. We can guarantee equal opportunity. There is no reason we shouldn't.
Sure I can emphathise and sympathise and every other kind of -ise those who came up through the school of less privilege, discrimination, unfair treatment, and hard knocks. I learned to never use that as an excuse, however. And I think it is the worst kind of discrimination and destructive policy to allow those kids on your block to use it as an excuse either.
I go back to my block all the time and try to help the kids there. But while I tell them try and you will succeed. They will tell me "Well Derek down block did that and he's still here. Mike across the street did that and he's still here." They will tell me they are better off doing what they want then work for nothing. These kids don't have the opportunity they should be garunteed. They are not supposed to go to college. Instead they see drug dealers flaunting their money and see opportunity there. What do I tell the ones that do try and still fail? You didn't try hard enough. The hardest workers have always been the marginalized. If they do succeed they won't change the state of black america. They will leave because they don't have to live there anymore. You can't blame them. So they leave and no new resources come to the neighborhood. Ghettos aren't going to break up through some massive achievement movement. The system makes it so that someone has to be poor.
Yes, sometimes we do have to leave where we are to get what we want, even before we succeed. Do you plan to go back to the ghetto now that you are on the path to success? Then again, whether black, white, or polka dot, kids are going to grow up disadvantaged when fathers don't take responsibility for their family, when women have a whole litter of kids, often by different fathers, and try to raise them alone, when parents don't teach their kids how to succeed, how to learn a trade; don't instill in them the simple prescription for how to succeed in the world no matter who you are or what circumstances you were born to. As long as you look to "whitey", especially the government, as the solution to your problems, the problems won't be solved. But if black folks do the same things successful black, white, etc. folks do to succeed, I think you would see that black folks are just as smart, capable, and able as anybody else and just as likely to succeed. This is what those kids on your block need to be told.
In his new book Cosby writes, "The schools don't help, they're often terrible quality." Well isn't that part of the problem? We don't have the resources to properly fund the schools. We don't choose the schools our kids go to
Nope, but we could get behind those who believe the key to getting the schools back to educating kids is by allowing the parents to choose the school their kid will go to. When schools are having to compete for those government dollars, you will see the standards improved virtually overnight. Why should anybody have to settle for a substandard education just because some bureaucrat says your kid has to go to a particular school that gets a lot of government money whether they educate your kid or not?