Thank you gentlemen on continuing your version of what I am calling the inside stuff. Your no nonsense grounded ethical one two punch on myriad issues that speak to matters of race, class, cultural etc. comes at a most critical period in U.S. history.
One where everything and everybody appears to be becoming undone. Often times in favor of things and approaches that don’t require consensus. I cannot imagine what that spells for our nations melting pot. In fact, I don’t care to imagine what that spells for the masses. Kind of a hysteria if you ask me. Is this what devolution looks like? Or is it that we need assist each other on the importance of both the forest and the trees.
You know I reject the notion that one must always choose a side in a battle of words or straight up war on street’s of America. Quick comment on Bill Cosby! I wonder how many of us are aware of him and his wife’s philanthropic efforts when it comes HBCUs? $250, 000, 000. Talk about putting one’s money where his mouth is. So yeah I get it because folks would have preferred a behind the closed doors conversation. Bill Cosby, the man that he is, didn’t take any hostages. He called out the management of Harlems famous Apollo Theater for terrible bookkeeping. That was during a period when it’s owner Percy Sutton called on the community to assist them monetarily because they were a failing enterprise. After Bill Cosby examined their books he concluded he wouldn’t give them a dime.
So Bill often ranted, berated young persons of the day and rightly so. For him, like many others, we were coming up far short of the idea of excellence and leadership. Yeah then one should pull up their pants and dresses if you will. Even better many of us should have dug in our heels to help pull up both those sagging pants and dresses in the hood while at the same time pouring some knowledge and wisdom into those ears.
The biggest societal change would be for a person and that person's actions to be judged purely in that context. No mention of race or group or victimhood or the other excuses. Did you do the right thing? Great; so-and-so did something positive. Did you screw up? So-and-so screwed up. Until minorities are held to the same standard as anyone else with no mention of their minority status, there will not be substantive change.
We heard it through the Obama years - criticism of him = racism, as if no other president was ever criticized for anything. Same with Kamala, with minority status equating to a free pass. You want the opportunity? Fine, but you also take the heat that goes with it. Until a person of whatever group is judged by his/her actions with no mention at all of their group status, this poison will linger.
Another problem I see dragging down black culture are Black Pop and Hip Hop artists sexualizing very young girls through x rated lyrics and videos. Carti B singing WAP while in only underwear acting out a sex act (lesbian) seems to be grooming and distasteful even for an adult......Hip Hop often paints girls as "Bitches" and "whores". So strong in the black community is Carti B that Biden met with her during the campaign......Wet Ass Pussy ? Twerking? Glen I love your Substack (especially the Podcast) but you are dancing away from the avalanche of "over sexualized media" reaching very young kids. I would love to hear this discussed by You and John. Thanks. Educate me.....I am not a prude
"he went around the country renting out theaters. We should do this, John. Renting out movie theaters and drawing audiences in the thousands to hear him hold forth in this spirit."
Yes, Gentlemen, you should. You are both affable and interesting, good communicators and you both engender respect.
What strong woman will emerge as Lysistrata? The stratagem was difficult even for her to enforce. For a hilarious take on this very old extortion read or watch Aristophanes' play, Lysistrata.
Glenn, I appreciate your bravery here, but I think it's unfair to blame Black people for pandering to the criminal element in their community. Pew surveys show that Black Democrats are more conservative on crime issues than white Democrats. In the "Defund the Police" referendum in Minneapolis, Black voters were instrumental in voting down this initiative launched by white progressives who run the city.
This is not something new. Until recently, it was hard to find more than a token Black face on the boards of the ACLU or similar advocacy groups. The white media, also, has long pushed the narrative that Black neighborhoods live in fear of the police, not criminals.
(In the 1970's my white liberal social studies teacher in Westport, CT, took our class to some event at a Bridgeport inner city school. One Black Bridgeport kid complained about crime in the neighborhood and that the police are slow to respond. My teacher was incredulous: "Do you mean you actually WANT the police to come?")
With the elite promoting this message so heavily, it's no surprise that much of it's filtered down to the Black man and woman on the street. After all, many have had bad experience with racist cops. And of course there's lots of mistrust of whites in general.
“When crime committed by young black men is met with the response, “No, they shouldn’t do that, but they’re not really responsible for their actions because of historical oppression and systemic racism,” the signal gets distorted. The line between the acceptable and the unacceptable gets blurred.”
Yup. That’s exactly right. White woke progressives (Regressives) are exploiting low-income black people in order to gain online prestige and cultural power. It’s sickening. Sadly I don’t think the answer is Trump or Trumpism. We need new candidates. Preferably new parties. (I know: keep dreaming.)
Let's also address the elephant in the room - the lack of conviction regarding genetic racial equality among both white progressives and blacks themselves. Criminal and other anti-social behavior is tolerated or excused because of the fear that blacks, as a group, cannot do better. If you believe that genetics are at least partially responsible for the behavior of the black underclass, the only response left is to silence people who want to openly discuss the forbidden topic and punish them for daring to air it.
First in line for blame should be the blacks themselves, including the self-appointed black gatekeepers who claim to speak for them (including the likes of Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ibram X. Kendi). White progressives take their cues from black gatekeepers and do whatever they say.
I used to teach at The Bronx High School for Law Government and Justice on 163rd Street. It was not a charter school, but it had some charter like qualities. It's founding principal was (the now NYC DOE Chancellor) David Banks. All our students were required to wear uniforms. 50% of the incoming students were accepted after an application process that required an essay and an interview. We were required to select a certain percentage of students with low grades in middle school to prevent us from simply accepting the students with the best grades. But we could favor students who had good attendance. Many of our students were proud to have been accepted. The other 50% of incoming students were randomly assigned by the District.
One of those students that was randomly assigned to LGJ was a boy I will call T. T did not want to be there or at any school that required him to wear a tie. But since he had to wear a tie, he made sure his tie was red because he was a member of the Bloods street gang. My first semester teaching I wrote him up for threatening another student. Then I wrote him up for threatening to kill me. During my second year, T was again in one of my classes. A new student, I will call M, transferred to LGJ during the semester and was assigned to the class with T. During my second class with M, he suddenly launched himself at T and began beating him up. I called security and they were able to break up the fight. According to M, T had told him that he was going to get a bunch of other Bloods and they would kill M after school. M had decided to preempt the threat. While T was the "victim" of the assault, he was also found with a 12" long kitchen knife in his bag. According to DOE regulations that knife meant he was facing a mandatory 1 year suspension.
I was part of a disciplinary meeting with the school psychologist and the Director of Special Education. The psychologist argued that T suffered from an emotional disturbance and that emotional disturbance was the reason he brought the knife to school. The Special Ed director argued that his learning disability did not contribute to his bringing the knife. They were arguing past each other and finally I tried to synthesize their arguments. T's individual education plan (IEP) stated he suffered from ADHD. I asked the director "You are saying the ADHD had no connection to him bringing the knife?" She agreed. I asked the psychologist if she agreed that the ADHD did not contribute to him bringing the knife to school? She said Yes. But she was arguing that his emotional disturbance was the reason. I asked if the emotional disturbance was noted on the IEP? It wasn't. I asked if we could add a diagnosis of emotional disturbance now? I was told we couldn't. That meant, as far as I could see, that T should have been suspended for the full year. He was back at school in a month.
T was by almost any definition a thug. Even thugs have a right to an education. But unless and until he had a change of heart and decided to actually apply himself academically, he wasn't going to learn anything at LGJ and posed a serious obstacle to other students being able to learn. There were schools for suspended students he could have attended. It seemed to me that the LGJ administration, headed by then principal (later NYC DOE Chancellor) Miesha Ross Porter, should have been overjoyed to be able to get T out of our school for a year. Most likely if he had been suspended for a year he would have never returned.
This all happened over 15 years ago. I met his mother at that disciplinary meeting. She was a very attractive, well spoken, young woman that came to the meeting in a suit. I am terrible at guessing ages, but if I didn't know she had a 16-year-old son I would have guessed she was 25. She was probably closer to 30. It seemed obvious that she was too young when she became a mother and T probably suffered because of that. But she definitely seemed to have made something of herself. T would be in his early 30s today. I hope that he's been able to make something of himself. I kind of doubt it though.
The thing about education is that with the possible exception of kids with profound cognitive impairments, every kid can learn. Every kid can be taught. But it's like leading a horse to water. If a kid doesn't want to learn, it will be a struggle to teach them. If that kid not only doesn't want to learn but wants to be disruptive or even worse wants to threaten and/or commit violent acts, it is a disservice to every other student at the school to keep them in a regular school environment.
Having the power to withhold sex from teenage boys would probably work as a tremendous source of motivation. But I don't see how that could be done, at least not ethically. One of my other students, an extremely beautiful girl, confided in me that she had been dating T and that doing so was the biggest mistake of her young life. Girl's are attracted to bad boys. I am not sure what could be done to change that. There is a movie from 1998 called Learning Curve (aka Detention). In it, a recently released mental patient is hired as a substitute teacher. He stops one of his students from raping one of the teachers and both he and the teacher he saved are sued by the student and his parents. Using the pretense of a class trip he drugs and kidnaps 7 of his most disruptive students. They wake up naked in electrified cages. He then tells them that proper behavior and respect will earn things like food, water, and clothing while improper behavior will earn them electric shocks. Over the ensuing weeks or months he provides them with a first class classical education. That might work as a method of making kids like T learn, but I am pretty sure there is a DOE regulation that would prohibit doing that. At the very least, you would need the parents to sign consent forms. The movie has a 20% rating at Rotten Tomatoes but I enjoyed it. It can be really hard to track down, but somebody has actually uploaded the whole film to YouTube.
SOME young women love bad boys. It's one of those special tastes--like the taste of some men for really fat women. It's also in part the adolescent taste for transgressiveness. Boys transgress by doing bad stuff; girls transgress by hooking up with boys who do bad stuff.
Show me an 18-24 year old woman who doesn't wanna hook up with a bad boy and I'll show you a liar. Obviously its relative to the individual, a bad boy to some girls might just be the guy with the tattoos or rides a motorcycle, not necessarily a criminal, but nonetheless.
Once upon a time I was an 18-24 year old woman. I wanted to hook up with a man who made interesting conversation and was posh. My primary interest is in social class--had to be upper middle class. I would never look at a lower class guy with tatoos--or without tatoos.
Assuming you're from UK as nobody in the states says posh and we never talk about class, its implied but not explicitly stated. There are big cultural differences between the UK and US, much larger than Brits would like to admit since they are constantly appropriating from us.
That said, we are talking about sex here, not relationships. Of course people look within their social strata when choosing a potential partner. But when people are "sowing their oats" they are typically less discerning.
The issue I've always had with the "respectability" speeches, such as Cosby's so-called Pound Cake speech which was delivered at an NAACP Legal Defense Fund awards ceremony celebrating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board and Rev. Jasper Williams's eulogy of Aretha Franklin at her funeral (or homegoing as it is often called in the Black American community) at the well-known Detroit megachurch Greater Grace Temple, is that they essentially erase class distinctions within, and therefore homogenizes, the whole of Black America. Lectures directed at NAACP members/guests celebrating a milestone anniversary of the end of legalized segregated public education and mourners at an hours-long homegoing that could double as a Gospel music concert is almost literally preaching to the choir. One thing that I've noticed on right-leaning platforms in particular is that comments on articles about practically any subject involving Black Americans, even the most positive ones, inevitably end up becoming discussions about everything that's "wrong" with us. The "no progress" narrative is a feature of both the left and the right, albeit in different ways, and it's the most frustrating and irritating thing ever.
Also, the person who submitted the comment isn't considering how these days, opioid addicts and violent young men who are White get "compassionate" treatment in major media outlets and as part of the national discourse that similarly-situated Black Americans haven't ever really gotten. In the 90's, I don't recall a largely public health-oriented approach to crack addiction or the issues facing young Black men that often lead to lives filled with violence, unemployment, and familial instability having been framed as a social crisis of concern to the entire nation. And it's even worse today with hyperpolarized partisanship layered on top of race which results in significantly challenged Black American communities being characterized as essentially deserving of their plight because of the political dominance of the Democratic Party (as though there were typically a slate of competitive Republicans actively campaigning in the vast majority of these same communities in the first place).
Socioeconomic class and milieu is both everywhere and yet nowhere in this discussion. I know the person who raised this question didn’t want to get distracted or bogged down in issues of social class. But to me they’re inextricable from much of what we’re really talking about here. Is there a black or white or other cultural element that’s influential and distinct in shaping both behavior and how it’s perceived? For sure. For one thing, an essential part of being a respectable (mostly progressive, mostly solidly middle to upper middle class and above) white person today is that you cannot and must not ever judge a Blake person for their own behavior no matter how egregious or actually harmful. While, for the same cohort, mocking and ridiculing and condemning “lower whites” (insert all the epithets still openly embraced today) often for simply being poor or unfashionable or even simply being born in a low-status region of the country is both social duty and sport. When you consider that this cohort, plus allied affluent progressive people of every other ethnicity, are the same ones who hold power and influence across virtually all establishment institutions and who also curate or choose who curates and is given deference in reflecting and amplifying what’s acceptable attitudes and behavior for various groups, their collective influence may be as powerful as what is rewarded at the neighborhood level.
To illustrate yet another example of how the elite white progressive “do-gooder” mentality drives culture, policy, and expectations in ways that directly impact low-income black and other residents impacted most severely by violent career criminals, may I introduce one DC Councilman Charles Allen.
“”Many members of Congress in 1901 were former slave holders. When we have a criminal code like that, it welcomes bias," Councilman Charles Allen said in October. "We have a disproportionate, outdated hot mess of a criminal code right now." As head of the District's Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, Allen was an architect of the legislation and a driving force behind its passage.“
I’m sorry, but when I saw this guy’s photo I could immediately picture him fastidiously attaching the latest gear to his high-end commuter bike. Wtf is this guy doing talking about slavery in 2022? Can’t have any serious consequences for career violent criminals whose mayhem brutalizes and terrorizes very real victims - because obviously both the criminal code and the circumstances and behavior of said dangerous criminals are all the consequence of a horrific institution over a hundred and fifty years in the past. Disproportionate offending isn’t the issue, it’s those supposed former slave owners back in 1901 who are to blame for disparate outcomes. Does he think that this is what large majorities of black residents of DC believe and want to hear? Or is it like a parlor game among his affluent white and other allied progressive peers to try and connect any and every present day problem and behavior, somehow, someway, through some kind of absurdly convoluted, monocausal account of American history. We can’t keep vulnerable black residents of DC safe from violent predators because the law was tainted by its association with some white members of Congress a hundred and twenty-one years ago who were themselves tainted by their previous connection to slavery. That’s his rationale. He laid it right out there. People of his socioeconomic and ideological ilk will never stop doing this because it makes them feel virtuous and buys them cred and status within their social class. Doesn’t matter whom it hurts: mostly actual black fellow Americans who are actually alive today.
Via RealClearPolitics news and opinion aggregator.
It gives them a pass…no accountability ever. Easier to be a victim than be responsible for one’s actions. Until standards and expectations are raised for all we will suffer and things will get worse. Leftists are to blame in my mind with their ridiculous progressive policies since the 60s.
There are vast cultural differences now but it wasn’t always so. Do gooders thought they could buy out the problems by giving away free money. It only caused more problems!
In my experience the white community is not far behind the black community in tolerating and failing to condemn disgraceful behavior. Whether looking at people having children out of wedlock, having no ambition, or no job, being stoned all the time, becoming morbidly obese, or dressing like a slob in dirty clothes, the mantra is "I don't judge." As a society, we have been taught the lesson that only bad people judge and that everyone is equally justified in living their own life, no matter how unproductive or self destructive. If no one judges, then no one rises to a standard, and we are doomed.
Excellent. No one judges and therefor shame is non-existent. Coupled with this non-judgement, another reader commented that our young people throw away opportunities, and K-12 education results show this. We are heading down a very bad path.
A thug is a thug regardless of skin pigment. If someone uses thug only to refer to black criminals, that person is likely racist but the term itself is not. What we have across many "communities" is a lack of shame and a warped view of masculinity and femininity. Those females with their warped femininity who sleep with known thugs are, in my opinion, often thuggish themselves expressed in a particular female way and they contribute to bringing their community down. Shame those females and males. Social pressure is powerful. The wealthy, white antebellum south had a similar warped view of masculine and feminine and it created much misery and ended badly, with Jim Crow continuing the misery. But we are where we are today and there are choices and opportunities for everyone.
When you compare the long standing contribution to world music black Americans have made to the gangsta rap that took over, it is very sad.
From blues and big band jazz to post war jazz and the rock and roll, what would America look like without this? Jazz stands the test of time, blues stands the test of time, thats music a baby understands until they are 100 years old.
Years ago I went to this show in Oakland, I like bluegrass music and the best living banjo player was putting on a show at Yoshi's, a jazz platform in Jack London Square. I have seen a lot of the greats there, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Buena Vista Social Club, more than I can recall at the moment.
But this evening was Bela Fleck, a radically gifted banjo player who conquered bluegrass at an early age and went into jazz. I looked around, thought to myself, there's an awful lot of black people in here for a white bluegrass banjo guy, thats cool.
Lol, little did I know I was about to be introduced to a musical phenomenon. I hadn't checked the co billing. It was some kind of African name or something, my brain didn't register it.
Well, Bela came out and played his set and then told the crowd about how he went to Africa because it is the birthplace of the banjo and he was seeking people who understood the banjo from its origin.
Who he found was someone completely different, he found Toumani Diabate, a kho player, and when this guy came out and started playing, I felt something music had never given me, it sounded like the birthsong of your child.
I dont like thinking about things in this categorized way, the above story involves "the narrative" not mine really. But when industrial emphasis rewards a certain style, whats good gets left out of availability.
And then people can point their fingers and say, "see, I told you so".
The garden of beauty is constantly salted and the thorns are encouraged to rise. It is a scam against humanity.
My husband and I recently opened our home to a young woman who was from another country. She had a child and was alone at 17. She had community support in the way of free schooling, free meals, free daycare, etc. She was very disappointed in her schoolmates in similar circumstances that threw away the free food, skipped class to vap in the bathroom, and discounted the parenting classes. She could not believe the opportunity given to youth in the United States that is thrown away. This behavior was regardless of their melanin levels. There is great opportunity in this country for the youth to soar and those that have determination and gratitude will be leaving their peers in their dust regardless of their color. Keep up the good work gentlemen. As a melanin challenged old gal, I applaud your efforts.
You'd be surprised at how many people combine periodic public benefits with gig work, temp jobs (particularly in RTW states), and under-the-table/illegal work. Combined with all of the talk today about college education being nothing more than an expensive racket with no employment guarantees, I'm not surprised.
Agree but if you lived through the 60s and 60s you’d have seen how our welfare system, with zero strings attached, changed our culture. It is now a generational thing. Black culture has devolved if you’ve lived long enough to observe it. People need to get real and start speaking with honesty.
Thank you gentlemen on continuing your version of what I am calling the inside stuff. Your no nonsense grounded ethical one two punch on myriad issues that speak to matters of race, class, cultural etc. comes at a most critical period in U.S. history.
One where everything and everybody appears to be becoming undone. Often times in favor of things and approaches that don’t require consensus. I cannot imagine what that spells for our nations melting pot. In fact, I don’t care to imagine what that spells for the masses. Kind of a hysteria if you ask me. Is this what devolution looks like? Or is it that we need assist each other on the importance of both the forest and the trees.
You know I reject the notion that one must always choose a side in a battle of words or straight up war on street’s of America. Quick comment on Bill Cosby! I wonder how many of us are aware of him and his wife’s philanthropic efforts when it comes HBCUs? $250, 000, 000. Talk about putting one’s money where his mouth is. So yeah I get it because folks would have preferred a behind the closed doors conversation. Bill Cosby, the man that he is, didn’t take any hostages. He called out the management of Harlems famous Apollo Theater for terrible bookkeeping. That was during a period when it’s owner Percy Sutton called on the community to assist them monetarily because they were a failing enterprise. After Bill Cosby examined their books he concluded he wouldn’t give them a dime.
So Bill often ranted, berated young persons of the day and rightly so. For him, like many others, we were coming up far short of the idea of excellence and leadership. Yeah then one should pull up their pants and dresses if you will. Even better many of us should have dug in our heels to help pull up both those sagging pants and dresses in the hood while at the same time pouring some knowledge and wisdom into those ears.
The biggest societal change would be for a person and that person's actions to be judged purely in that context. No mention of race or group or victimhood or the other excuses. Did you do the right thing? Great; so-and-so did something positive. Did you screw up? So-and-so screwed up. Until minorities are held to the same standard as anyone else with no mention of their minority status, there will not be substantive change.
We heard it through the Obama years - criticism of him = racism, as if no other president was ever criticized for anything. Same with Kamala, with minority status equating to a free pass. You want the opportunity? Fine, but you also take the heat that goes with it. Until a person of whatever group is judged by his/her actions with no mention at all of their group status, this poison will linger.
Another problem I see dragging down black culture are Black Pop and Hip Hop artists sexualizing very young girls through x rated lyrics and videos. Carti B singing WAP while in only underwear acting out a sex act (lesbian) seems to be grooming and distasteful even for an adult......Hip Hop often paints girls as "Bitches" and "whores". So strong in the black community is Carti B that Biden met with her during the campaign......Wet Ass Pussy ? Twerking? Glen I love your Substack (especially the Podcast) but you are dancing away from the avalanche of "over sexualized media" reaching very young kids. I would love to hear this discussed by You and John. Thanks. Educate me.....I am not a prude
"he went around the country renting out theaters. We should do this, John. Renting out movie theaters and drawing audiences in the thousands to hear him hold forth in this spirit."
Yes, Gentlemen, you should. You are both affable and interesting, good communicators and you both engender respect.
If not you two, then who?
What strong woman will emerge as Lysistrata? The stratagem was difficult even for her to enforce. For a hilarious take on this very old extortion read or watch Aristophanes' play, Lysistrata.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYY88WNC_1Q
Glenn, I appreciate your bravery here, but I think it's unfair to blame Black people for pandering to the criminal element in their community. Pew surveys show that Black Democrats are more conservative on crime issues than white Democrats. In the "Defund the Police" referendum in Minneapolis, Black voters were instrumental in voting down this initiative launched by white progressives who run the city.
In fact, the "soft on crime" movement has long been driven by whites, especially white lawyers. Consider the Soros led initiative to elect progressive DAs. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/george-soros-criminal-justice-reform-227519.
This is not something new. Until recently, it was hard to find more than a token Black face on the boards of the ACLU or similar advocacy groups. The white media, also, has long pushed the narrative that Black neighborhoods live in fear of the police, not criminals.
(In the 1970's my white liberal social studies teacher in Westport, CT, took our class to some event at a Bridgeport inner city school. One Black Bridgeport kid complained about crime in the neighborhood and that the police are slow to respond. My teacher was incredulous: "Do you mean you actually WANT the police to come?")
With the elite promoting this message so heavily, it's no surprise that much of it's filtered down to the Black man and woman on the street. After all, many have had bad experience with racist cops. And of course there's lots of mistrust of whites in general.
White Liberals are very clueless sometimes.
Sometimes?
“When crime committed by young black men is met with the response, “No, they shouldn’t do that, but they’re not really responsible for their actions because of historical oppression and systemic racism,” the signal gets distorted. The line between the acceptable and the unacceptable gets blurred.”
Yup. That’s exactly right. White woke progressives (Regressives) are exploiting low-income black people in order to gain online prestige and cultural power. It’s sickening. Sadly I don’t think the answer is Trump or Trumpism. We need new candidates. Preferably new parties. (I know: keep dreaming.)
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Let's also address the elephant in the room - the lack of conviction regarding genetic racial equality among both white progressives and blacks themselves. Criminal and other anti-social behavior is tolerated or excused because of the fear that blacks, as a group, cannot do better. If you believe that genetics are at least partially responsible for the behavior of the black underclass, the only response left is to silence people who want to openly discuss the forbidden topic and punish them for daring to air it.
First in line for blame should be the blacks themselves, including the self-appointed black gatekeepers who claim to speak for them (including the likes of Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ibram X. Kendi). White progressives take their cues from black gatekeepers and do whatever they say.
I used to teach at The Bronx High School for Law Government and Justice on 163rd Street. It was not a charter school, but it had some charter like qualities. It's founding principal was (the now NYC DOE Chancellor) David Banks. All our students were required to wear uniforms. 50% of the incoming students were accepted after an application process that required an essay and an interview. We were required to select a certain percentage of students with low grades in middle school to prevent us from simply accepting the students with the best grades. But we could favor students who had good attendance. Many of our students were proud to have been accepted. The other 50% of incoming students were randomly assigned by the District.
One of those students that was randomly assigned to LGJ was a boy I will call T. T did not want to be there or at any school that required him to wear a tie. But since he had to wear a tie, he made sure his tie was red because he was a member of the Bloods street gang. My first semester teaching I wrote him up for threatening another student. Then I wrote him up for threatening to kill me. During my second year, T was again in one of my classes. A new student, I will call M, transferred to LGJ during the semester and was assigned to the class with T. During my second class with M, he suddenly launched himself at T and began beating him up. I called security and they were able to break up the fight. According to M, T had told him that he was going to get a bunch of other Bloods and they would kill M after school. M had decided to preempt the threat. While T was the "victim" of the assault, he was also found with a 12" long kitchen knife in his bag. According to DOE regulations that knife meant he was facing a mandatory 1 year suspension.
I was part of a disciplinary meeting with the school psychologist and the Director of Special Education. The psychologist argued that T suffered from an emotional disturbance and that emotional disturbance was the reason he brought the knife to school. The Special Ed director argued that his learning disability did not contribute to his bringing the knife. They were arguing past each other and finally I tried to synthesize their arguments. T's individual education plan (IEP) stated he suffered from ADHD. I asked the director "You are saying the ADHD had no connection to him bringing the knife?" She agreed. I asked the psychologist if she agreed that the ADHD did not contribute to him bringing the knife to school? She said Yes. But she was arguing that his emotional disturbance was the reason. I asked if the emotional disturbance was noted on the IEP? It wasn't. I asked if we could add a diagnosis of emotional disturbance now? I was told we couldn't. That meant, as far as I could see, that T should have been suspended for the full year. He was back at school in a month.
T was by almost any definition a thug. Even thugs have a right to an education. But unless and until he had a change of heart and decided to actually apply himself academically, he wasn't going to learn anything at LGJ and posed a serious obstacle to other students being able to learn. There were schools for suspended students he could have attended. It seemed to me that the LGJ administration, headed by then principal (later NYC DOE Chancellor) Miesha Ross Porter, should have been overjoyed to be able to get T out of our school for a year. Most likely if he had been suspended for a year he would have never returned.
This all happened over 15 years ago. I met his mother at that disciplinary meeting. She was a very attractive, well spoken, young woman that came to the meeting in a suit. I am terrible at guessing ages, but if I didn't know she had a 16-year-old son I would have guessed she was 25. She was probably closer to 30. It seemed obvious that she was too young when she became a mother and T probably suffered because of that. But she definitely seemed to have made something of herself. T would be in his early 30s today. I hope that he's been able to make something of himself. I kind of doubt it though.
The thing about education is that with the possible exception of kids with profound cognitive impairments, every kid can learn. Every kid can be taught. But it's like leading a horse to water. If a kid doesn't want to learn, it will be a struggle to teach them. If that kid not only doesn't want to learn but wants to be disruptive or even worse wants to threaten and/or commit violent acts, it is a disservice to every other student at the school to keep them in a regular school environment.
Having the power to withhold sex from teenage boys would probably work as a tremendous source of motivation. But I don't see how that could be done, at least not ethically. One of my other students, an extremely beautiful girl, confided in me that she had been dating T and that doing so was the biggest mistake of her young life. Girl's are attracted to bad boys. I am not sure what could be done to change that. There is a movie from 1998 called Learning Curve (aka Detention). In it, a recently released mental patient is hired as a substitute teacher. He stops one of his students from raping one of the teachers and both he and the teacher he saved are sued by the student and his parents. Using the pretense of a class trip he drugs and kidnaps 7 of his most disruptive students. They wake up naked in electrified cages. He then tells them that proper behavior and respect will earn things like food, water, and clothing while improper behavior will earn them electric shocks. Over the ensuing weeks or months he provides them with a first class classical education. That might work as a method of making kids like T learn, but I am pretty sure there is a DOE regulation that would prohibit doing that. At the very least, you would need the parents to sign consent forms. The movie has a 20% rating at Rotten Tomatoes but I enjoyed it. It can be really hard to track down, but somebody has actually uploaded the whole film to YouTube.
Now that's a movie I've got to watch. Thanks for the film review!
Wasn't this the plot of a Spike Lee movie about 10 years ago?
Young women love bad boys, story as old as time.
SOME young women love bad boys. It's one of those special tastes--like the taste of some men for really fat women. It's also in part the adolescent taste for transgressiveness. Boys transgress by doing bad stuff; girls transgress by hooking up with boys who do bad stuff.
Show me an 18-24 year old woman who doesn't wanna hook up with a bad boy and I'll show you a liar. Obviously its relative to the individual, a bad boy to some girls might just be the guy with the tattoos or rides a motorcycle, not necessarily a criminal, but nonetheless.
Once upon a time I was an 18-24 year old woman. I wanted to hook up with a man who made interesting conversation and was posh. My primary interest is in social class--had to be upper middle class. I would never look at a lower class guy with tatoos--or without tatoos.
Assuming you're from UK as nobody in the states says posh and we never talk about class, its implied but not explicitly stated. There are big cultural differences between the UK and US, much larger than Brits would like to admit since they are constantly appropriating from us.
That said, we are talking about sex here, not relationships. Of course people look within their social strata when choosing a potential partner. But when people are "sowing their oats" they are typically less discerning.
The issue I've always had with the "respectability" speeches, such as Cosby's so-called Pound Cake speech which was delivered at an NAACP Legal Defense Fund awards ceremony celebrating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board and Rev. Jasper Williams's eulogy of Aretha Franklin at her funeral (or homegoing as it is often called in the Black American community) at the well-known Detroit megachurch Greater Grace Temple, is that they essentially erase class distinctions within, and therefore homogenizes, the whole of Black America. Lectures directed at NAACP members/guests celebrating a milestone anniversary of the end of legalized segregated public education and mourners at an hours-long homegoing that could double as a Gospel music concert is almost literally preaching to the choir. One thing that I've noticed on right-leaning platforms in particular is that comments on articles about practically any subject involving Black Americans, even the most positive ones, inevitably end up becoming discussions about everything that's "wrong" with us. The "no progress" narrative is a feature of both the left and the right, albeit in different ways, and it's the most frustrating and irritating thing ever.
Also, the person who submitted the comment isn't considering how these days, opioid addicts and violent young men who are White get "compassionate" treatment in major media outlets and as part of the national discourse that similarly-situated Black Americans haven't ever really gotten. In the 90's, I don't recall a largely public health-oriented approach to crack addiction or the issues facing young Black men that often lead to lives filled with violence, unemployment, and familial instability having been framed as a social crisis of concern to the entire nation. And it's even worse today with hyperpolarized partisanship layered on top of race which results in significantly challenged Black American communities being characterized as essentially deserving of their plight because of the political dominance of the Democratic Party (as though there were typically a slate of competitive Republicans actively campaigning in the vast majority of these same communities in the first place).
Socioeconomic class and milieu is both everywhere and yet nowhere in this discussion. I know the person who raised this question didn’t want to get distracted or bogged down in issues of social class. But to me they’re inextricable from much of what we’re really talking about here. Is there a black or white or other cultural element that’s influential and distinct in shaping both behavior and how it’s perceived? For sure. For one thing, an essential part of being a respectable (mostly progressive, mostly solidly middle to upper middle class and above) white person today is that you cannot and must not ever judge a Blake person for their own behavior no matter how egregious or actually harmful. While, for the same cohort, mocking and ridiculing and condemning “lower whites” (insert all the epithets still openly embraced today) often for simply being poor or unfashionable or even simply being born in a low-status region of the country is both social duty and sport. When you consider that this cohort, plus allied affluent progressive people of every other ethnicity, are the same ones who hold power and influence across virtually all establishment institutions and who also curate or choose who curates and is given deference in reflecting and amplifying what’s acceptable attitudes and behavior for various groups, their collective influence may be as powerful as what is rewarded at the neighborhood level.
Yep. J.D. Vance wrote about this in Hillbilly Elegy. It’s all about class.
To illustrate yet another example of how the elite white progressive “do-gooder” mentality drives culture, policy, and expectations in ways that directly impact low-income black and other residents impacted most severely by violent career criminals, may I introduce one DC Councilman Charles Allen.
“”Many members of Congress in 1901 were former slave holders. When we have a criminal code like that, it welcomes bias," Councilman Charles Allen said in October. "We have a disproportionate, outdated hot mess of a criminal code right now." As head of the District's Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, Allen was an architect of the legislation and a driving force behind its passage.“
I’m sorry, but when I saw this guy’s photo I could immediately picture him fastidiously attaching the latest gear to his high-end commuter bike. Wtf is this guy doing talking about slavery in 2022? Can’t have any serious consequences for career violent criminals whose mayhem brutalizes and terrorizes very real victims - because obviously both the criminal code and the circumstances and behavior of said dangerous criminals are all the consequence of a horrific institution over a hundred and fifty years in the past. Disproportionate offending isn’t the issue, it’s those supposed former slave owners back in 1901 who are to blame for disparate outcomes. Does he think that this is what large majorities of black residents of DC believe and want to hear? Or is it like a parlor game among his affluent white and other allied progressive peers to try and connect any and every present day problem and behavior, somehow, someway, through some kind of absurdly convoluted, monocausal account of American history. We can’t keep vulnerable black residents of DC safe from violent predators because the law was tainted by its association with some white members of Congress a hundred and twenty-one years ago who were themselves tainted by their previous connection to slavery. That’s his rationale. He laid it right out there. People of his socioeconomic and ideological ilk will never stop doing this because it makes them feel virtuous and buys them cred and status within their social class. Doesn’t matter whom it hurts: mostly actual black fellow Americans who are actually alive today.
Via RealClearPolitics news and opinion aggregator.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dc-democrat-fights-own-party-violent-crime-response
It gives them a pass…no accountability ever. Easier to be a victim than be responsible for one’s actions. Until standards and expectations are raised for all we will suffer and things will get worse. Leftists are to blame in my mind with their ridiculous progressive policies since the 60s.
There are vast cultural differences now but it wasn’t always so. Do gooders thought they could buy out the problems by giving away free money. It only caused more problems!
🫰🫰
In my experience the white community is not far behind the black community in tolerating and failing to condemn disgraceful behavior. Whether looking at people having children out of wedlock, having no ambition, or no job, being stoned all the time, becoming morbidly obese, or dressing like a slob in dirty clothes, the mantra is "I don't judge." As a society, we have been taught the lesson that only bad people judge and that everyone is equally justified in living their own life, no matter how unproductive or self destructive. If no one judges, then no one rises to a standard, and we are doomed.
Excellent. No one judges and therefor shame is non-existent. Coupled with this non-judgement, another reader commented that our young people throw away opportunities, and K-12 education results show this. We are heading down a very bad path.
🫰🫰🫰
A thug is a thug regardless of skin pigment. If someone uses thug only to refer to black criminals, that person is likely racist but the term itself is not. What we have across many "communities" is a lack of shame and a warped view of masculinity and femininity. Those females with their warped femininity who sleep with known thugs are, in my opinion, often thuggish themselves expressed in a particular female way and they contribute to bringing their community down. Shame those females and males. Social pressure is powerful. The wealthy, white antebellum south had a similar warped view of masculine and feminine and it created much misery and ended badly, with Jim Crow continuing the misery. But we are where we are today and there are choices and opportunities for everyone.
🔥🔥🔥❤️🇺🇸
When you compare the long standing contribution to world music black Americans have made to the gangsta rap that took over, it is very sad.
From blues and big band jazz to post war jazz and the rock and roll, what would America look like without this? Jazz stands the test of time, blues stands the test of time, thats music a baby understands until they are 100 years old.
Years ago I went to this show in Oakland, I like bluegrass music and the best living banjo player was putting on a show at Yoshi's, a jazz platform in Jack London Square. I have seen a lot of the greats there, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Buena Vista Social Club, more than I can recall at the moment.
But this evening was Bela Fleck, a radically gifted banjo player who conquered bluegrass at an early age and went into jazz. I looked around, thought to myself, there's an awful lot of black people in here for a white bluegrass banjo guy, thats cool.
Lol, little did I know I was about to be introduced to a musical phenomenon. I hadn't checked the co billing. It was some kind of African name or something, my brain didn't register it.
Well, Bela came out and played his set and then told the crowd about how he went to Africa because it is the birthplace of the banjo and he was seeking people who understood the banjo from its origin.
Who he found was someone completely different, he found Toumani Diabate, a kho player, and when this guy came out and started playing, I felt something music had never given me, it sounded like the birthsong of your child.
I dont like thinking about things in this categorized way, the above story involves "the narrative" not mine really. But when industrial emphasis rewards a certain style, whats good gets left out of availability.
And then people can point their fingers and say, "see, I told you so".
The garden of beauty is constantly salted and the thorns are encouraged to rise. It is a scam against humanity.
My husband and I recently opened our home to a young woman who was from another country. She had a child and was alone at 17. She had community support in the way of free schooling, free meals, free daycare, etc. She was very disappointed in her schoolmates in similar circumstances that threw away the free food, skipped class to vap in the bathroom, and discounted the parenting classes. She could not believe the opportunity given to youth in the United States that is thrown away. This behavior was regardless of their melanin levels. There is great opportunity in this country for the youth to soar and those that have determination and gratitude will be leaving their peers in their dust regardless of their color. Keep up the good work gentlemen. As a melanin challenged old gal, I applaud your efforts.
Yep. That’s the real ‘privilege’: Being American.
Well when you give everything for “free” where’s the incentive to do for yourself? Been saying that since the 70s welfare buyout
You'd be surprised at how many people combine periodic public benefits with gig work, temp jobs (particularly in RTW states), and under-the-table/illegal work. Combined with all of the talk today about college education being nothing more than an expensive racket with no employment guarantees, I'm not surprised.
Agree but if you lived through the 60s and 60s you’d have seen how our welfare system, with zero strings attached, changed our culture. It is now a generational thing. Black culture has devolved if you’ve lived long enough to observe it. People need to get real and start speaking with honesty.
60s and 70s