I think overall you missed his entire point, which is basically that it is at best disingenuous to categorize every black person in America as having lived a life of struggle and hardship and at worst racist. His being an entrepreneur is certainly exceptional but his upbringing really isn't. Yet the publication in question basically made the decision that his "blackness" wasn't good material because it didn't contain that element of struggle. That's fine from a narrative perspective I guess but I think he is certainly within his rights to be offended by it.
http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-...
And it says: "In this definition, single-parent families may include cohabiting couples ..."
So it may not be quite that bad - co-habiting couples sharing children are not a particular risk setup even if they are not married. Where I live - north Europe - they are entirely normal.
But what is the proportion of kids, and black kids, actually living with just one parent in the US?
(Edit: Since you are European, let me explain that this is due to systemic racism and the fact that welfare only pays if you are an unwed mother. So very poor women cannot get married, because they would lose their welfare benefits. This is a horrible thing warping the Black community in directions that Whites then condemn as "immoral" behavior. I have known a White welfare mom who would not marry the father of her kids because he was an unemployed alcoholic and her Catholic mother was incredibly condemning of this, but a) her psycho bitch mother is part of why she was in this mess and b) her psycho bitch mother was not in any position to make sure the kids ate if her daughter lost her welfare benefits. There is a reason we have a saying about how you need to be able to afford middle class morality. Further, the U.S. has a terrible track record compared to Europe in areas such as paid maternity leave...etc. The U.S. is one of the richest countries in the world and most of our children are growing up in poverty because we have very serious issues. This is in no way like YOUR experience.)
Furthermore, from what I have read, the Black community in the U.S. is as resilient as it is because they brought a matrilineal orientation with them from Africa: Like a pride of lions, it is female blood relatives that are the backbone of the family for Black Americans. This helps them survive in the face of high unemployment and high incarceration rates, much of it completely unjust.
For example, see: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/20/derrick-hamilto...
There is also this (NSFW) piece about discrimination in the fashion industry:
http://globalnews.ca/news/3115014/black-mirror-project-highl...
Having said all that, I am very sympathetic to the author of this piece. I am female and I get a lot of flack from other women, apparently for failing to be as crapped on by men as they are and for failing to be as bitter about my life as a woman as they are -- at least, that seems to be the gist of it, as best I can tell. And when I try to talk about what I think works and is effective, the most common response is to accuse me of blaming the victim for telling women what they can do to try to handle life as a woman more effectively, in spite of the assholes in the world.
I find it enormously frustrating. Like "Do you actually want a fucking solution? Or do you just like being a victim and want someone to validate that it isn't possible to have anything better?"
I spend a lot of time wondering why the fuck I bother trying to be helpful to people. I spend a lot of time wondering if I need to just quit trying to be helpful and just focus on figuring out how to solve my own financial problems, and to hell with the rest of the world because it sure as hell does not give a flying fuck about me, so why should I give a flying fuck about it, only to be kicked in the teeth for it?
And I say that (about my own life experience) to say this:
Yes, the Black community in the U.S. has real and serious problems. This man's experience is not the norm. But I think he has a valid criticism of the media here. Blacks routinely complain that they are underrepresented in media and they lack good role models because of racism by Whites who control so much media, yet he can't get his story published in a major Black medium because it isn't enough of a sob story. I think that is a completely legitimate thing to point out as something very wrong with the system.
Secondly, you say "This man's experience is not the norm." but I'm wondering what you base that on?
Hispanic and African American neighbourhoods had been targeted by the sub-prime lending industry: renters were lured into buying bad mortgages, and homeowners were encouraged to refinance under riskier terms. Then it all came crashing down. Between 2007 and 2010, the average white family experienced an 11% reduction in wealth, but the average black family lost 31% of its wealth. The average Hispanic family lost 44.7%.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/12/americas-evi...
You may already know that, but since it's not a thing I ever would have figured out on my own, I thought it was worth mentioning.
(Hey, I just noticed: I'm a black man posting my experience in the comments to an article about a black man's experience, but my only comment is unsolicited advice to a woman about how not to offer unsolicited advice to women. My irony detector just crashed.)
This was a term coined by engineers to explain why the behavior that seemed, and still seems, so obviously right to a certain kind of brain can be so unwelcome in general.
I was pushing back against the wider phenomenon of telling people to clam up and stay disengaged when confronted with pain or discomfort in the people they care about. It's (perhaps ironically) a very narrow perspective that undermines people accepting and understanding one another.
To elaborate on this, if the solution involves the person doing something, people frequently will feel the need to defensively explain why they aren't already doing it or why they don't want to start.
A simple solution suggestion can magically simultaneously accuse someone of being stupid and lazy at the same time. I've stepped on this landmine before.
Note: They were also convinced whites had their whole life handled to them, never experienced ostracism, and so on. Other myths creating an us vs them attitude that I later found was human nature in general. All groups do it unless they explicitly counter it like, say, the two of us each stated trying to identify our biases & reduce them. Most folks don't do that enough, esp for heated topics. So, traditional beliefs (including bullshit) spread faster than objective analysis of past or current situation.
"Yes, the Black community in the U.S. has real and serious problems. This man's experience is not the norm. But I think he has a valid criticism of the media here. Blacks routinely complain that they are underrepresented in media and they lack good role models because of racism by Whites who control so much media, yet he can't get his story published in a major Black medium because it isn't enough of a sob story. I think that is a completely legitimate thing to point out as something very wrong with the system."
Great overview.
"wondering if I need to just quit trying to be helpful and just focus on figuring out how to solve my own financial problems"
A problem we share. I'm already doing R&D, online stuff, etc way too much. I probably should focus on short-term elimination of major problems (esp financial & some stressors) with most or all my effort with high focus. I give same recommendation to you, too. Just allocate a small amount of time to stuff like your blog or HN with majority on improving your situation. Just don't quit entirely as I doubt I'm only one who will miss your good comments whether they're those I agree with or disagree. It's what I'm going to do when I switch employers as this one drains my energy too much. R&D, HN, etc are how I recharge my brain. :)
"it sure as hell does not give a flying fuck about me, so why should I give a flying fuck about it, only to be kicked in the teeth for it?"
It's in your nature to be helpful and write. At least, I think so based on what you've said. So, you should continue doing it to some degree. Life might be tough being who you really are but far more satisfying than being fake out of bitterness or greed you don't really believe in. Again, if those are your traits. I have no idea.
As far as I understand, not most of American children are growing in poverty. There are figures of 20-25% of children living in poverty, but even there the numbers are skewed - here poverty is measured before social security transfers that are meant to alleviate poverty. So those numbers are just carefully selected to make the problem look worse. If you look at the post-welfare poverty figures, they are in the few percent range. If the same methods were applied in Europe, we might have a higher child poverty rate because average income is lower and living cost is higher.
(Only trust statistics you've forged yourself.)
Over here, the marriage status of mothers does not impact their welfare payments - their co-habiting status does. A big difference here (in Nordic countries) is that we have a Big Brother society where people actually report to the authorities where they live and everyone has an official address. You need an official address to get welfare (though you don't need a home). As a result, the new partner marrying (or not) has no impact on welfare payments of families with children; if the couple moves together, they are treated as two parents. Yes, the privacy in U.S. creates some perverse incentives, in this case to not to commit to a marriage.
As a result of the Big Brother thing, we don't do door-to-door census here, there's just someone who says things like SELECT COUNT(person_id) FROM persons WHERE permanent_resident=true; and it's actually reliable, except perhaps for some parts of the recent wave of immigration from Middle East which is creating a totally new class of paperless people.
Anyway, I agree and appreciate your point. People actually seem to like being and feeling victims, which results in more victims.
PS. The engineer in me can't help correcting that it's flak, not flack, because the word comes from German.
About 15 million children in the United States – 21% of all children – live in families with incomes below the federal poverty threshold, a measurement that has been shown to underestimate the needs of families. Research shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice that level to cover basic expenses. Using this standard, 43% of children live in low-income families.
I am old. The last time I looked at the figures, it was above 50%.
Still, I posit that one of the richest nations in the world having 43% of its children growing up in poverty is some incredibly fucked up, inexcusable shit. Even if it were, in fact, "only" 20-25%, we are falling down on the job in a really big way, imo.
Furthermore, studies have shown that every dollar spent on children under age five saves multiple dollars on things like prison costs. The appalling American record in terms of neglecting the nation's children is directly linked to our high incarceration rates.
This does not meet the test of civilized behavior in my book.
PS: Thanks for the FYI about the word flak.
What actually matters for poverty (and income equality etc) is income after taxes and transfers.
(I.e. before deciding if someone is in poverty, take into account income taxes, which are progressive, and social security payments which are meant to alleviate poverty).
> What actually matters for poverty (and income equality etc) is income after taxes and transfers.
The federal poverty line is used to define eligibility for many benefit programs (both state and federal), so "after taxes and transfers" would be problematic and make individual program beenfit decisions undecidable; post-tax pre-transfer would be sensible except that tax liability is settled far enough after the fact that, again, application of the FPL to things it is primarily used for (benefit eligibility) would be problematic.
But using pre-tax pre-transfers figures to describe shocking levels of child poverty is disingenuous, in my opinion. To assess poverty, we should look at the situation after all the actions that are already done to alleviate poverty.
At least you shouldn't argue for more benefits or social programs, if you don't take to account the existing benefits and social programs.
As far as I know, no one in this discussion is doing that. So, I have difficulty understanding why this comment is here.
If you are interpreting my remarks that way, you are in error.
"You shouldn't argue for...", i.e. "one often sees someone arguing for...".
I think it is incredibly hard to compare poverty rates in a meaningful way between such extremely different systems. I believe this in part because so many people new to the military look at the nominally low pay and bitch and moan about it and say they could do better outside of the military. Then they leave the military and find that their pay does not go as far as they think it will because they have to pay out of pocket for so many things that were free or had a nominal fee in the military.
For example, when we had on base housing, I had a phone bill but I don't think I had any other utility bills and I could go to a building on base, show my ID and check out a lawnmower for free or get free sod to get my lawn up to standard so it would pass inspection. When my kids were little, I could fill out a form at the military pharmacy once a month and get free OTC drugs, like cold medicine and Tylenol. (They no longer do this. Military benefits have been eroding for years. But cold medicine is not cheap and you need it endlessly when there are children at home.)
I have spent much of my life trying to figure out how to adequately compare the low pay and high benefits of the American military to the often higher pay and lower benefits of civilian jobs. I am good with numbers and it is really hard to do, even though it is the same country. I think the comparison you are trying to make is much, much harder to make than you realize. Different countries with very different systems for everything is very much an apples to oranges type comparison.
Please take my word for it that the quality of life of many American children is appallingly, shamefully bad for such a wealthy country.
We'll Ill be....
Was he destined to be black, and lucky to be among the 75% who aren't poor?
Or was he destined not to be poor, and unlucky to be among the tk% who are black?
In what sequence does your version of destiny execute its instructions?