John McWhorter looks at life between half closed venetian blinds

[donsu]

John was representing the Manhattan Inst. on Wash. Journal this morning.

he wants to build an all black middle class NO

because

black communities before 1950 were doing grand but the Welfare acts of the 60's ruined them.

so he thinks that if they would build a new middle class black NO that was like the black communities of the 50's (where fathers took care of their children - his words) things would be peachy keen in NO.

when asked about city/state/fed corruption he actually said:

corruption built a lot of nice things

the man said that! with a smile.

he also said white liberals were the cause of poverty in NO

he's also mad at NO cops


somebody please keep him home, duct taped to a chair

[1932]

1. This reminds me of the something Amartya Sen writes about in

Development and Freedom.

He argues that "developmen" can't just be measured in terms of GNP and income. "Doing well" includes many things you can't reduce to dollars. He notes that black men in Harlem live half as long as poorer people in some poor African and Asian countries. Obviously being comparitively wealthier and dead isn't a better life.

He talks about how "freedom" should not only be the goal of development but it should be the means of development.

An interesting point he makes is that slaves before the civil war actually had a better standard of living measured in material terms (IIRC, housing, material consumption, etc. -- even life expectancy) than people who were not slaves but did the same exact job. Nonetheless, slaves constantly tried to escape. Furthermore, after the civil war, when "employers" could no longer compel work with force, they couldn't recreate their labor forces with 100% increases in the material compensation for that kind of work.

The point is that freedom to chose the work that you do is worth a great deal and might mean that you're willing to take a job that can contribute less to your financial bottom line so long as that it doesn't have (in fact, or the vestiges of) the characeristics of slavery.

It's kind of strange for someone to be idealizing pre-Civil Rights Act/Voting Rights Act America as a golden moment for black America and then blaming an era when increasing freedoms prevailed for society's problems. And rather than using welfare as the measure, maybe this guy should back up and ask why society isn't educating people and providing health care and other services to people so that they can actually enter into the job force.

[European Socialist]

2. life was wonderful for black people before welfare...

-what a crock-where do the pukes keep finding these people.

[donsu]

3. McWhorter was found at the Manhattan Inst.

nt

[European Socialist]

5. Only repukes talk that way -to my experience.

[Stinky The Clown]

4. You know ... one thing that really struck me was how we watched

coverage of the whole Katrina thing and there were MANY black fathers crying about their families ..... losing touch with them in the mess that was the evacuations, mourning the losses of wives or children, holding their children and begging for help.

Do some black men abandon their families? Of course. There are also white men who do the same thing.

Goddamit, but I hate sterotypes.

And I hate those who push them.

[Tomee450]

6. Exactly

I keep hearing the right wingers complaining about the lack of fathers in the picture. What were they watching? I saw lots of men with their children, others worried about those that were missing. The right wingers also keep talking about people being on welfare. I saw individual being interviewed who had had jobs, owned homes. I guess people see what they wish to see.