N.I. Krasnov wrote: > Can the academics - and you - explain how my parent's > generation - those who lived through the Depression - > were somehow able to live in poor but safe > neighborhoods, get an education, go on to Brooklyn College, CCNY, and > Brooklyn PolyTech to become successful citizens of this country?
For most of us our ancestors made a choice to come to this country and when they arrived here they were able to form communities (ghettos) that helped provide cultural continuity for the two or three generations it took to become assimilated. The ancestors of African Americans were brought here by force and dispersed across a wide geographic area and not allowed to maintain cultural or familial continuity. Even after emancipation they were not allowed to assimilate into the dominate culture for more than a century. This freedom to fully integrate into American Society has developed gradually only over the last fifty years (some would say that it doesn't exist now). Is it really surprising that there are differences in attitudes about achievement between different subgroups in the U.S.? Doug Mann wrote: > I also think that institutionalized racism has always had > its broadest and deepest support among the propertied classes. > Poor whites and poor blacks have a lot more in common with each > other than they do with rich people who look like them. The problem with Mr. Mann's argument is that rather than a ruling class, the most populous propertied class in America is middle class. It is not the rich that have to be convinced of the need to establish educational equality, it's White Middle Class Minnesotans. Ron Edwards wrote: > But he [Gallman] gets it wrong twice when he says, first, "That > piece is no longer the bedrock for the African American > community...we have gotten away from the African-American > community having a culture, an environment that says education > is important." This is an indictment of the local branch of the > NAACP, which does nothing but foster the kind of negligence he > outlines. He also gets it wrong when he is reported as saying > it "will take generations" to fix. Although it is now possible for any individual African American to be successful in today's American, it is likely that it "will take generations" for African American culture to develop the supports and needed emphasis on education opportunity. To deny this reality fosters its perpetuation. Michael Atherton Prospect Park TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
