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Comment by nadam | Hacker News Reader

"I think a lot of African Americans are getting a bum deal out of life. Murder and drug dealing are wrong, but society doesn't give them a lot of other realistic options."

I think this is bullshit. I am living in an eastern European country (Hungary), do you think it is a place where poor people can advance more easily than in the USA? And we don't have the kind of brutal gun violence that is present in the USA. This is very much a cultural thing. It has nothing to do with being poor, or having few opportunities to 'advance'.

These people are making their own life miserable due to very very bad cultural influences from their peers. It is not the case that someone could starve in the USA or anywhere in the first world. They could live a very modest but relatively happy life with full of love (on a farm or in a small village) if they would have that kind of culture...

Now avoiding the cultural influences of your environment is hard. Very very hard.

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> do you think it is a place where poor people > can advance more easily than in the USA?

If you go to a store to buy something, do the police gun you down because of the product that you choose? That happens to black people in the USA:

http://bearingarms.com/ex-marine-swatted-black-shopper-death...

If you are walking down the street, do the police kill you because of the color of your skin? That happens in the USA:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/08/14/michael-bro...

If your family owns a farm, does the government steal it from you whenever a white-owned business wants your land? That happens to black people in the USA:

http://www.ag.auburn.edu/auxiliary/srsa/pages/Articles/SRS%2...

If your family owns land, does the government steal your land because of the color of your skin? That happens in the USA:

http://www.castlecoalition.org/index.php?option=com_content&...

If you commit a crime, does the government lower or increase the years you will spend in prison, based on the color of your skin? That happens in the USA:

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/08/03/data-show-rac...

If you peacefully walk down a street, and someone decides to kill you, are they allowed to kill you based on the color of your skin? That happens in the USA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin

When the government builds a school, does it offer more funding if the children are white, and less funding if the children are black? That happens in the USA:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2011...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/business/a-rich-childs-edg...

Warning - opinionated rant. I might be completely wrong.

I don't think this is helpful.

The big problem isn't oppression. It's a problem, but it hasn't been the main one for a long time. The big problem is the poverty cycle.

White flight is another problem. Peer effects (black kids bullying black kids who "act white") is a problem. These are not racial oppression.

Prejudice and oppression (from teachers, employers, police) is still a problem, but it's not the big one. And pretending it is will encourage people to fight black poverty in ways that probably won't actually work very well.

> The big problem isn't oppression. It's a problem, but it hasn't been the main one for a long time. The big problem is the poverty cycle.

The poverty cycle IS a part of the continuum of oppression for black people. Economic advancement has been denying and outright destroyed for these folks ever since being forcefully brought to the US as slaves.

> White flight is another problem. Peer effects (black kids bullying black kids who "act white") is a problem. These are not racial oppression.

White flight is entirely about anti-blackness and racial oppression. Peer effects are also entirely about anti-blackness and racial oppression. These have been studied in such great detail.

> Prejudice and oppression (from teachers, employers, police) is still a problem, but it's not the big one. And pretending it is will encourage people to fight black poverty in ways that probably won't actually work very well.

This is total nonsense and is entirely divorced from the reality of racial oppression in the United States, both in the past and today.

>> White flight is entirely about anti-blackness and racial oppression. [...] These have been studied in such great detail.

Does international research really support that middle class people leave areas where the crime levels go up only where crime is from people of a different colour?

Not American. I can tell you that the "white flight" efects in Sweden is at least hard to distinguish from flight from bad areas; I lived in a couple of those areas (Gottsunda and Akalla). The main differences were the food prices and the crime levels. Not close to the US ghettos -- yet.

I don't know about internationally, but in the US it is absolutely about race. White people simply do not feel comfortable living near a critical mass of black people, and are even less comfortable sending their kids to school with a critical mass of black people -- and that critical mass is low enough to cause significant racial segregation throughout the nation.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin

You're citing a case where the defendant was found not guilty of 2nd degree murder. How are you so sure it proves anything? Do you have a better handle on the situation than the jury did?

To me, it proves that racism is systemic, and not just a cultural problem. I have a hard time understanding the mindset of folks who can look at the Trayvon Martin case and say, "See, Zimmerman was found not guilty, which proves it was not racially motivated and that he did nothing wrong! Everything is fine, racism is dead. God bless America!"

The fact that Zimmerman was found not guilty is the perfect example of how racist our nation remains. Had Martin been a white kid, Zimmerman would be in prison (possibly even facing the death penalty, since Zimmerman is Hispanic).

Edit: I feel like I should be more clear here...Zimmerman's defense was the Stand Your Ground law. However, Zimmerman was the armed adult who stalked and approached an unarmed teenager; Martin was on his way home. In what bizzaro world does the jury, the police, and a whole lot of white Americans, live in that the aggressor could ever be interpreted as the kid? Even if Martin responded with force to the aggressive armed adult, the "Stand Your Ground" right belonged to Martin. Not the armed adult chasing him. If Martin had successfully defended himself from the psychopath chasing him, he'd likely be in jail today. Which is what a racist system and culture looks like.

In response to your edit: Zimmerman's defense did not invoke Florida's Stand Your Ground law.

The reason police gave for not arresting Zimmerman at the scene was the Stand Your Ground law. If that wasn't the defense used, that's interesting, but doesn't alter the facts.

An armed nutbag stalked an unarmed teenager who was walking home from the store. And, somehow, according to police, judge, and jury it was the teenager's fault he ended up dead and his killer walks free. Only in a deeply racist society is a guy with a gun given the right to kill children for no crime other than being black. The "suspicious" behavior that Zimmerman used to justify him grabbing his gun and chasing Martin: he was wearing a hoodie (it was raining and he was covering his head like any sane person would do), he was "looking around" (wearing a hood restricts your peripheral vision...I look around quite a bit, too, when I wear a hoodie), and he took a shortcut through someone's yard (something I did literally thousands of times in my childhood, without ever being murdered for it).

Racism is alive and well.

> They could live a very modest but relatively happy life with full of love (on a farm or in a small village)

Did you read the article?

This kids grew up in partially-destroyed houses, to drug-addicted, low income parents. They were probably never given good guidance about what's important in life, might have been physically abused. Their upbringing showed them that you should use violence to solve any kind of problems. No wonder they can't see the benefit of school and hard work, they can't sit still in the classroom and fight other kids in the yard. Then they fall behind, get penalized, the school system spits them out. Their only legitimate possibility for advancement is taken away from them, and they are back to their basements getting bitten by rats. No wonder they seek any kind of escape, including organized crime. Getting killed doesn't sound so bad when you have nothing to live for, no hopes for the future. The only way out is to earn enough money (via crime) and physically move away (into safer neighborhoods, better houses).

The difference between this and formerly-communist countries is that under communism, people didn't really live that bad. Sure, we didn't have the latest technologies, and we couldn't talk about certain things, but we all had a place to live and food to eat, and there were no significant social differences, no one to look up to. No wonder so many people nowadays feel nostalgic for the "good old days". (Not sure if that was also the case in Hungary, but it was in Slovenia.)

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/sep/02/dying-russi... was here on HN recently and it had an interesting take on how "no significant social differences" was an illusion that helped keep people positive etc. Good reading.

The National Geographic ran a story on hunger in the USA last month. It was fascinating, and talked about the 40M (really!) who are foodily-challenged or whatever the term is. If those people took a longer term vision and started growing vegetables etc, as one the Nat Geo story interviewed did, their lot would improve dramatically.

Hungaria does not have the kind of poverty USA have. Hungaria is poorer then USA overall, but the poorest in Hungaria have it better then poorest oversees. There are many structural reasons that make it hard to "climb up" for poor which do not exist in Hungaria.

The part about "relatively happy life with full of love (on a farm or in a small village)" is very out of touch with what the life of poor is. Being poor is about not being able to afford farm, healthcare and living in a bad school district. It is also about being disproportionaly targeted by law enforcement (up to asset forfeiture) and not being able to pay for lawyer or navigate the system. How much would you appreciate being arrested over loitering or similar charge that amounts to "existing and being poor"?

All that creates structural barriers that block you even if you manage to overcame "cultural problem". Which in turns makes people more likely to give up and not even trying. Which in turns leads to even bigger disdain against poor and more targeting and punishment. And so on and so forth.

War on drugs is nice example. If you have been caught with marijuana, you not only get conviction, you also loose the right to work in many licensed professions (such as barber), the right to government help with school tuition or living. It is punishment that matters only to poor and only makes it harder for them to put lives back together after they made mistake. Comparatively, if your poor in Hungaria have easier time to get back into normal live.

A quick three second search turns up this: 92% of black male teens unemployed in Chicago, 83% nationally: http://www.blackyouthproject.com/2014/01/92-of-black-male-te...

Doesn't look to me that young African Americans are given the same employment opportunities. They are disadvantaged from the start.

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