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As 1967 drew to a close there seemed little indication that the required massive efforts from the total American society would be toward meeting the Negroes' demands for full equality and participation, and a decent life, in an affluent society. Rather, it seemed more probable that the violent unrest in the black ghettos would be met with even more stringent police action designed to maintain 'law and order' and 'national security.' It seemed a pity that all concerned could not heed what might have been a warning by the late George Bernard Shaw. 'Security, the chief pretense of civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs over everyone's head,' Shaw wrote. 'All other crimes are virtues beside it...It degrades the poor and infects with its degradation the whole neighborhood in which they live. And whatever can degrade a neighborhood can degrade a country and a continent and finally a whole civilization.' Hoyt W. Fuller, The Black Temper (1968)Fuller, who was black, wrote that piece about American race riots up to 1967, the year before Time's chosen date of similitude, 1968. The unrest did get worse the next year but then it got better.
Fuller quotes George Bernard Shaw, from a play called Major Barbara. The play is a polemic, and probably relevant today, especially for those arguing for a general redistribution of wealth, like George Bernie Sanders. The fuller Shaw quote is:
Security, the chief pretence of civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs over everyone's head, and where the alleged protection of our persons from violence is only an accidental result of the existence of a police force whose real business is to force the poor man to see his children starve whilst idle people overfeed pet dogs with the money that might feed and clothe them. LinkI had the oddest thought while reflecting on this. Most of the nation's worst race riots have occurred under Democratic Administrations: the 1943 riots in Detroit; the 1964 riots in Harlem; the Watts riots in 1965; the Chicago and Cleveland riots in 1966; the Boston, Newark, and Detroit riots in 1967; and finally, riots in the aftermath of MLK's assassination. To borrow a page from the President's approach to Cuba:
In the most significant changes in our policy in more than fifty years, we will end an outdated approach that, for decades, has failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to...
19 comments:
Derbyshire says it's actually just fiction writers in Hollywood. None of it actually happens.
No one on the left talks about the destruction of the black family. The State is the daddy-replacement, and The State has failed.
So they cry out in unison - more urban money! OK - sure. Pony up, tax payer. Pay up and sit back and watch the party in control of these urban experiments continue to stuff their own pockets. (oh Hillary wants that job- oh wow does she want that job) Decades of insanity and you have Sandy Kohn, white elite lesbian prog - blaming a party that had nothing to do with it.
Iran-Contra! Koch!
At what point will we hear the left take responsibility for their own failures? Six.five years of the first black president, and it's still falling apart. No introspection on the left – just more opportunistic blame.
One thing that has changed since 1968 is this notion that we are an "affluent society." Income inequity is more pronounced, but overall wealth has probably decreased across the board if debt is factored in.
The bit about poverty is not ringing true when poverty itself is uplifted. People are not starving, they are not left homeless, and they are not left to tattered clothing as we understand poverty. Modern poverty included access to all type of food so that obesity is a problem, people are clothed so that poverty now includes sports shoes costing hundreds of dollars, wide screen flat t.v.s with cable connection, internet connection, so, access to real information, and access to education, public transportation, along with hundreds and hundreds of services far too numerous to list.
It's not poverty. Not anymore. It must be relative-poverty. And it will always be so. I don't like to rely on argumentum authoritah but even Jesus mentioned this and why would he say such a thing? Because he the creator knows there are always people who simply will not fit no matter what. No matter what. But we are not talking about them. We are talking about the larger number who were helped by "the system" and now their progeny find themselves captured.
The guy who snatched the reporter's purse is a boy.
The guy who's mother got off the street is a boy.
The guy photographed jumping on a car is a boy.
The guy dancing in like Michael Jackson in front a fire is a boy.
They're mostly but not entirely boys. They see everybody else as racial groups doing so well and their own group doing so comparatively poorly. And of all the racial groups which of the racial groups is most wrapped up with government, by housing, food, welfare, communications, political party affiliation, and other assistance, for example the one black student recently accepted into ALL ivy league schools he applied. Now, that right there is a very VERY VERY significant imbalance put into place and hard as law and set in place specifically to the disadvantage seen in this specific poverty. And yet so few avail.
I watched a very odd show called the Prancing Elites about a group of black gay boys who prance. Their story is about acceptance. They're a bit hard to accept. I must say, they are fascinating. The audience of staid classic white people is the Pan Society, or something like that, sexual oddballs.
On the t.v. show the group is talking to their new agent. They're trying to get into a parade to prance. The viewer realizes while observing that no matter how fierce, no matter how militant, no matter how far afield they've gone, they're all still just boys. They don't even know what ordinary words mean. They ask the meaning of simple words and you go, wow, that man's body made up like an actress is activated by a boy. A little boy.
They get up to leave. Upon standing up they take one last look at the candy bowl on the coffee table in front of them. A few of the boys take a candy. The fat one takes the whole bowl, tucks it in, and walks off and the viewer cheers his boldness, his entitlement, just take it.
The boy in Baltimore sees the white woman come to record their riot, sees her purse dangling there offering itself like candy and he just takes it with the precisely same entitlement that the prancer snatched the candy and some observers thought, good for you, just take what you want like everybody else does.
And that's what happens when people have so much that is unearned that their entire lives are unearned and there is nothing else besides unearned wealth, then the differences become more acute and unfairness of unearned wealth distribution is forefront, and just take it. Not poverty per se, rather the differences in perceived unearned wealth, To this perception there is not one whit of difference between the Baltimore boys and, say, Chelsea Clinton save for raw anger and fire.
As Victor Davis Hanson has noted, we have the most comfortable poverty in human history.
How many of those "protesters" look starved?
Or are dressed in rags?
Or don't have a smartphone?
What changed is that now you can have a black mayor, black chief of police, and three black out of six total police officers involved in a disturbance, and still call the event "racist".
This is "pro-incompetence". If the policies in place led to this then FFS direct complaints to the fucking black mayor and police chief and officers who allowed them! Can a black person do a single fucking thing wrong without them blaming "racism" for what happened? GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!!
Things are changing with this shit. Check out how many commenters are fed up with the NYT giving space to an idiot professor who emphatically insists that a black "culture" that hates education and conventional achievement is IN NO WAY ANY PROBLEM WHATSOEVER!
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/opinion/black-culture-is-not-the-problem.html?_r=0
Culture is ALWAYS the problem.
The vast majority of people (usually young men) in Baltimore and Ferguson were rioting for Fun and profit. The idea that these lawless characters were all broken up about Freddie Gray and just had to "do something", is silly.
You also have guys like Sharpton and Jesse jackson who benefit from the riots and left-wing billionaires like Soros who love this stuff for other reasons.
That word the left keeps using "poverty" I don't think they understand what it means. Cell phones, big screen TV, expensive clothes, expensive watches, expensive drugs, a free check every month, free food, housing, etc.
I see these impoverished people in line at the grocery store, and they are usually spending money more freely than I do on a lot of things, and yet no actual cash, or anybody cashing a paycheck in sight.
Our poor today are richer than most people in the world ever were or are today. When they say "poor", they mean someone, somewhere has it better.
Status matters more to them than being happy with what one has, Bag. Are you saying there's something in American values or your own values that should indicate to them otherwise?
I read the article R&B cited. I wondered why blacks-seemingly unique among other ethnic groups and races--always destroy their own neighborhoods. The answer I believe is still the legacy of slavery. They truly believe that other people own everything. Burning down their own homes and businesses is like burning down the slave quarters and hopefully (for them) "the Master's House" as well. There is no escape from that mentality.
I have commented on many blogs that our ancestors were obviously made of sterner stuff, e.g., in the S,F. earthquake of 1908 Congress authorized both the Army AND the local police to shoot looters on sight. There was little looting. Also note that pics and videos/film of the '68 riots show the National Guard troops with fixed bayonets. Were that authorized today the left and the media would go absolutely Able Sugar. The people in charge in those days were obviously adults who took things more seriously...We have infantilized the entire nation..
@bagoh20/
I lived in the "Central Park"/St James Place part of "Old Louisville" in the mid 70s& 89s when it began to be "gentrified" by a smattering of the black professional class (Dentists, Doctors, etc.) Of course their "grey-collar" orderlies Nurses aids, etc who had less disposable income followed them onto the beach-head. I was talking one day with the owner of the local liquor store as to how they affected his business. "Oh," it improves it tremendously," he replied. "They only purchase the highest profit-margin liquors like cognac, the best Champagne, Wild-Turkey Bourbon, the highest priced scotch, etc." My business has improved greatly."
All this at a time when the combined salaries of my wife and I were roughly twice that of even the black doctors, yet here I was sticking to the cheapest grades of rum avail (*in a Cuba Libre the grade of liquor doesn't matter that much :) ) So yes, I know what you mean..
Chickelit @ 9:52 on 02 May may have point. One I don't understand, but plausible. Sometimes a "narrative" just sticks no matter how illogical. I recall the black business owners joining together to protect their shops in 1967...as well as their individual homes.
In short, some seemed to "get it" that the greatest harm was to themselves by their own brethren...a "term" I doubt most of those with something to protect actually felt. A true conundrum in every way. Detroit paid a heavy price and had a follow on of con artists in politics who made it worse, until very recently. We've turned the corner, now the question is "can we stay the course?" Let's hope so.
virgil x. ....certainly I agree with you that for "mixed" drinks, the high price brands are meaningless. For a while the "cognoscenti" here thought Cognac VSOP or XO was mixed with Pepsi or Coke ....yee f'in' gawd. $20+ (per a long shot) worth of hotch in 5 cents worth of mix. Imagine Kelt XO mixed with Pepsi? Retch :-) Do it with Remy Louis XIII Black Pearl and someone should just shoot you :-) ...for the obscenity if nothing else.
In my drinking days I drank everything "neat" straight up (including Gin) with ice water, beer, or coffee as a side if necessary ....sole exception was margaritas.
Today I am quite boring....just fuss over what coffee beans to grind up.
Question: Everybody has an opinion about Margaritas, right?
So where are the best ones made and served?
Best ever for me was some 15 years ago in Fort Worth, Texas. Everything was fresh and top shelf.
Yeah, I know, I was a visiting Army dude who wouldn't better if it bit me :-)
Pbbbfffftt!
@Aridog: My wife invented a gin-based alternative to the marg called a "Maggie." link
Cointreau (not triple sec) and fresh-squeezed limes are key.
chickelit ..thanks to your wife, but I can no longer partake of "Maggies." They tend to make me a raging Mexican-Irish drunk...and who wants that, eh :-)
I mean, think about THAT ethnic propensity?! Mexicans just may be proof that the original explorers of the American continents were in fact Irish! :-)
Given today is Cinco de Mayo, we certainly act a lot a like the combo...although I am aware Cinco de Mayo is more of a big deal here than in Mexico. My Mexican Parish is rather noisy tonight...good for them...just not good for me. Dang.
However...I do make some great coffee from fresh ground, to spec's, or by myself, to spec beans (70% Arabica Italian Roast plus 30% "medium roast Supremo Arabica) , and it is all I need now-a days. Make it double+ strong and you will like it better than espresso...I promise.
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