The best thing about stirring you up is the 'stream of consciousness' that results. We must be grateful to your mother for working on your typing.
Ray wrote:
I've been trying to lurk for a while but this is just too California for words.
Hello Bruce, Harry, Chris, Keith, and to the rest of the list,
Happy Holidays,
Let's end the year with a little conflict,
Consider,
Harry Pollard told Bruce on December 26, 2001 12:06 PM
>(snip)
>
> Not blather, Bruce. It's just reality. I was replying to Chris' statistical bits, pointing out that US statistics are completely skewed by those of the inner cities.
Are you implying that we inner cities are not a part of the American way of life Harry? The following is a little bit of equivocating. Are you in or are you out Harry? You said:
> Also, that overwhelmingly the black population are victims rather than killers.
Yes but they are not the group with the highest level of crime perpetrated against them. Do you know who that is? The perpetrators are not members of the group but outsiders who simply commit violence and continue to steal them blind in spite of court cases won against the perpetrators.
Are you implying that another group of Americans kill each other in alarming proportions?
You said:
> I didn't mention that during the later stages of our boom, as the jobless
> dwindled so did the crime rate. There may be a connection.
That is the story, but the boom didn't really reach the ghetto. The only thing that got there was the promise of jobs if they would do workfare as I said in my earlier article called "Dickens."
The promise of jobs was already there. What was different was a labor shortage sufficient to employ the previously unemployable.
Certainly, the
> black kid leaving high school has something like a 50% chance of getting a job of any kind - not exactly an encouraging prospect for a new grad. I mentioned earlier on FW that my heart would sink when facing an inner city class of black kids, bright eyed and bushy tailed, for I would know that probably half of them would never get a worthwhile job.
Well, would your heart sink when confronting an 80% unemployment? Or would you complain about their turning to gaming as their way of being able to stay in their own family and communities while getting their clients to drive to them for business?
I was talking about the black inner-cities. If you want to talk about Indians - which you do constantly - we'll do so in another post, perhaps starting with the Blackfoot lands across the American/Canadian border, the Indian owners of land around Palm Springs, and the highly successful Indian Casinos up and down the West Coast (opposed by Las Vegas and about $60 million - but overwhelmingly supported by the non-Indian people of California.
How about a 98% unemployment of highly trained professionals? Would your heart sink upon hearing a magnificently trained concert pianist who makes his living working in a bank, an insurance company or the U.S. Customs? How about Citi-bank offering a whole company of dancers $150 for a concert in the atrium while paying $500 for a bottle of wine or a purse for their wives?
Banking is a good job - though not well paid for most. The company should refuse to dance for such a pittance. Yet, of course they probably want to dance. The bank did them a favor by providing an audience. The arts of every kind don't provide a great living for most (a very good living for a few). If an artist wants money, he should sell shoes, or something.
That's what the rest of us have to do.
But, please don't force me to contribute whether I like it or not to "Art" because someone else thinks I should.
The issue with the black population has never, for me, been one of jobs but of fairness and debts owed by American culture to the families of former slaves. Most of the non-blacks especially the recent arrivals, (and even some blacks) don't consider that they owe the culture or society a thing. Personally, that kind of attitude belongs back at their homes. That is not the citizenship I was taught on the reservation. Nor that I believe as an American.
This is a campaign born out of the deep pockets of the US - always fair game for someone who is not too interested in earning a living. Call it "culture" if you wish. In reality, it's the usual American game of suing every deep pocket in sight. The suit is nonsense.
The reparations have been paid by 600,000 dead - far too high a payment - particularly as slavery would probably have died of natural causes before many years had passed.
(snip) > You continued:
> However, if there were not a single black person in the US, we would still have the inner city ghettos with all the problems of jobs, education, and employment we confront now.
>
> Wouldn't we? Be careful how you answer that. If you say yes, then it isn't a black problem. If you say no, yes it is.
Ghetto is not a black word. All of the groups who arrived and are still arriving, have come out of the ghettos. I still say that the issue with the descendants of former slaves has nothing to do with anything but a debt owed. You can't take refuge in the fact that they now live OK here. A debt is a debt. They didn't live OK here prior to 1954. If there is any doubt about the injustice of American Apartheid then just look at how quickly they have raised themselves up from a position far beneath anything the Irish, the Italians, the Jews or any other group started with except the one group mentioned above. There were quotas on various ethnic groups before 1954 and the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s but as a light Indian I would never lie about it being easier for me under certain circumstances in the dominant culture than for darker Indian people. It is easier as long as I don't tell. The moment the jewelry comes out I'm either a cowboy, a businessman from the Southwest or one of them "others." I have lost business from being an "other." Especially in a business where connections are so important.
My problem was a "lower class" cockney accent. This forever barred me from halls of the high and mighty. However, I could learn a different accent. A black skin - or a bronze one -isn't so easily handled.
My ancestors were treated just as badly as yours, Indians do not own a monopoly on grief. We lived our generations in poverty and toil, everywhere we encountered filth and disease - we didn't have the advantage of the Indians who, at least, has boundless forest and prairie.
Our forests belonged to the local Lords of the Manor (and still do) and when we entered one to try to trap a rabbit we would be likely to finish with a broken leg caught in a mantrap.
Which was perhaps more fortunate than a common thief who might pay for his stolen bread with an amputated hand.
I demand reparations for the sins committed against my ancestors!
Balderdash!
> Anyway, if we wish to discuss jobs, education, and unemployment, >we must start with the inner cities, where enormous amounts of >money are spent to achieve nothing. We patch, and putty, and >calk effects even as the causes are lost in the noise.
That is over-simple beyond belief. Let me give you an example. A few years ago a group of Hispanics won a law suit about multi-lingual education. Across the country programs sprang up to be sure that children who didn't speak English would not be hampered in non-language courses for not knowing English.
<snip>
The problem Harry, is not patching and putty. It is people with a Messianic attitude about their own solutions that push them and listen to no one as if the rest of the world had been sitting around doing nothing for the last million years or so. Chauvinism, provinciality and paternalism. The three Brothers. People who believe they are the only REAL people here and therefore must help those who aren't real. Inadaquate systems thought and models in their minds that are unconscious and poorly evolved.
Exactly! We have to endure the Messiahs, whose solution to everything is money. Throw money at the problem (particularly other people's money - and then it will be solved. The patriotism, superiority, and arrogance, of those in government is beyond belief. I'm glad we agree on this.
The problem with Europe is that they already have a half-dozen languages that would be useful for the educated person to learn. I remember that to complete a science degree 60 years ago, you would need to pass an examination that had one question in French and one in German.
No syllabus time was given to languages. It was assumed that you would have enough grasp of scientific French and German to answer the questions.
In Canada and the US, an area more than twice the size of Europe, there is a common language. Language is a way we communicate with each other. So, it makes sense to have one language for all our communication. And from the sound of it, North American English may soon contain Hopi and Navajo.
Meantime, in India, when people come together in conference from all over India, the language is English - no matter how many other languages may be known by the participants, for the primary job of a language is communication. (A good language is also essential for effective thinking. We think in shorthand. It had better be good!)
So, don't say "they even speak English". English is their language. Another problem of the messianic government superiority and arrogance you mentioned is their attempt to force a native language on their people - supposedly to maintain a "culture". Kids are actively prevented from speaking a preferred language, so that a native language - useless in the real world - can be ground into young minds.
Of course, it doesn't work.
Neither does the patching, the puttying and the caulking. Can you think of many government "solutions" that have worked? Can you think of any government solutions that have worked?
One last point - I told the story of the unemployed Toronto welder in my class. He got a government job training unemployed people to be welders. I asked him what happened after his class of 22 graduated. He said: "We had 23 unemployed welders."
So, Ray, at last you ask a question.
"Where was the construction business?"
Let, me throw it back to you. Where was the construction business?
Have a Great New Year!
Harry
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Harry Pollard
Henry George School of LA
Box 655
Tujunga CA 91042
Tel: (818) 352-4141
Fax: (818) 353-2242
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