To refuse to set limits on dangerous people is not kindness, though it is often framed that way, but unkindness to the decent people who have to live near them. The City Journal article on the sidebar is a discussion about white flight from Chicago, with particular reference to the accusations of Michelle (Robinson) Obama, who grew up in a changing, white-flight neighborhood. She follows the stereotypical belief of what happened - which is not surprising, as most of us do that when we don't have time or inclination to study things further - but has its usual unfortunate, even terrifying consequences in the hands of the powerful.
Indeed, a further reason to doubt that white flight was simply, or even primarily, due to racial prejudice is that “black flight,” a more recent development, is following the same course. Examining a development “crushing South Shore and other once-stable neighborhoods on the city’s South and West Sides”—namely, the “exodus of middle-class African-American families seeking safe neighborhoods and job opportunities”—a 2017 Tribune article quoted Jennifer and Jason Parks, who once lived on the block where Michelle Robinson grew up. The Parks family’s enough-is-enough moment came in 2014, when a 20-year-old man was fatally shot on their street while walking his younger brother to school. “South Shore ranks sixth among the city’s 77 community areas for incidents where one or more people were killed over the past decade,” the Tribune reported.
Detroit neighborhoods are also mentioned, as well as the "urban cores" in general.
Its a product of your take on civilization, which I do not admire. If your society is so dangerous that people have to move about the place to avoid that danger, perhaps you should fix your society. More guns is not a solution.
ReplyDeleteA lot of this kind of thing comes from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which s passed down from generation to generation. The main cause of that is poverty. You have a lot of that, as well as more people in jail than anyone. There is little to admire in America today.
I've been hearing people say that for as long as I can remember. The complaints about America never change. We never asked you, either.
ReplyDeleteNow, if I wanted to raise an old objection here, it would be with this continued use of the word "dangerous" as a synonym for "bad" or "harmful." Remember Gandalf! You're surrounded by dangers; you are dangerous yourself, Gimli son of Gloin.
"Now, if I wanted to raise an old objection hereit would be with this continued use of the word "dangerous" as a synonym for "bad" or "harmful."
ReplyDeleteThe piece is about people who thought they had to move because it was too dangerous for them to stay where they were. If its dangerous where your family is, both bad and harmful, are entirely appropriate.
If your country is a dangerous place to live, you have screwed the pooch. If you have to arm yourselves as a normal thing, you have screwed the pooch. Its called civilization, and that word is full of meaning.
Yes, I know the Latin. Our cities have always been dangerous; Rome wasn't exactly safe, and Athens put poor Socrates to death in between its wars and conquests by Thirty Tyrants.
ReplyDeleteA few more dangerous men on the right side might clear out even so miserable a place as Detroit. It's happened before -- unremarked by the sort of people who run down America. We dropped our murder rate by half while increasing the number of privately-held firearms by millions. Until this year, when we decided to defund and disband the police, and let rioters go unprosecuted, and murder rates have skyrocketed in the cities.
That wasn't a failure, it was a betrayal -- of us, by our political class. And the answer to that betrayal does not include laying down arms.
In China a lone woman can walk in a large city and be safe. A civilized country.
ReplyDeleteYou push your poor and damaged to the wall, with almost no services to help them. This creates a lower class that will always be a problem. A damaged and sick population.
You act so tough: "A few more dangerous men on the right side might clear out even so miserable a place as Detroit." But I doubt most of you have actually ever been in a serious fight, as those who have, have a more nuanced view of violence and its usefulness.
Pen Gun, I have taken to not responding because you really are a complete idiot. As someone who spent my career providing services to the poor, your statement is simply untrue, not in approximation, but at a profound level. As for China, within living memory they exterminated 25 million of their own people via famine, torture, and forced labor camps. They continue to persecute a wide variety of people, including Tibet, internal minorities, and all religious groups.
ReplyDeleteThe sad truth, to which I have no solution, and neither does Canada in the slightest (see Toronto, for example) is that the African-descended populations have a much higher crime rate, not only in America, but across the world. This is not to say that most of them are criminals, because the article linked stressed how it was decent black people who suffer most from the high criminality and low school performance of "the element." Most of every American group are very decent and very productive people.Crime and education rates mirror ancestry, not only in America - a nation that actually does have racial diversity that largely works, as opposed to Canada which cannot even keep the Quebecois all that happy, - but everywhere. I have linked a few times, including so recently as to be within the period you have been reading, a saved link of FBI statistics. Such things have no effect because of your surety that your fantasy is true instead. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/43tabledatadecoverviewpdf
You live in a world of your own making based entirely on selective intake. I have hoped for your repair, but you are unable to make even the slightest effort. Your repeated insistence how intelligent you are and how varied your sources are is actually evidence of the opposite. You will learn to give evidence of questioning your own wisdom at least superficially, as occurs in normal human discourse or you will be banned as a complete waste of time.
"Your repeated insistence how intelligent you are and how varied your sources are is actually evidence of the opposite."
ReplyDeleteYou have this backward. You are the one who rattles on about how smart you are. All I ever did was say that you calling me smart, meant nothing to me.
You are the one with very selective input. You are actually afraid some smart person might influence you and avoid looking at stuff that might. I am open to the facts, which is why I have a large string of conflicting news sources to browse.
" how varied your sources are is actually evidence of the opposite."
How how a large selection of varied sources, is actually evidence for the opposite is puzzling. You will have to explain, or as is more likely, move on.
First, try reading my comment again and not confusing the meaning of sentences. Not a good look for you there.
ReplyDeleteThere will be no repair. Ban my ass. You are not stupid, and not a particularly bad man, but you live in a cage, that you like.
ReplyDeleteI still have no idea what this means: "Your repeated insistence how intelligent you are and how varied your sources are is actually evidence of the opposite." I guess it could be that if I was smart, I would know what was right, and avoid the sources that did not support my "right" view, but that makes no sense.
I will make what points I see fit so ....
It is the community acceptance/tolerance of gangs that matters. You may remember the Westies in NYC in the 1970s/80s of really violent Irish guys. Or farther back the Purple Gang in Detroit of Eastern European Jewish thugs that were brutal killers. Not too many Jewish gangs left but the Bulger clan was tolerated in Boston until very recently.
ReplyDeleteA few years ago I was in a large airport, just putting my shoes on after TSA. A black family was coming through the check point. The parents were well dressed and middle class. The young teen-age son set off something in the check point and the airport police were called. The kid had a pexiglass set of brass knuckles and was aping the gangster look. But clearly he was a good kid trying to look cool. The cop was great and handled the situation with a kind lecture while confiscating the plastic knuckles. Both parents looked relieved. Dropping the gangster vibe will be essential.
PenGun
ReplyDeleteYou push your poor and damaged to the wall, with almost no services to help them.
The above is total nonsense. Yes, the effectiveness of said services can be questioned, such as the money that cities like LA, Seattle, or SF spend on the homeless. Effective or not, there are such services. Time for PenGun to take a hike out of the site. Boot the sneering forest critter out of here.
"In China a lone woman can walk in a large city and be safe."
ReplyDeleteThat was said of the Mongol Empire, of which perhaps it was true; but it's certainly not true in the PRC. I lived there in 2000-2001. Kidnapping and sex trafficking is a huge deal there. The condition of women and the poor in the PRC is not enviable. If you think American capitalism is hard on the poor, we knew welders who had gone blind because their employers wouldn't even provide them with welding goggles. Nor could they buy any with their own resources, like even a poor man could here.
"You act so tough... I doubt most of you have actually ever been in a serious fight..."
Another place I spent time in was Iraq, 2007, 2008, and 2009.
"You act so tough... I doubt most of you have actually ever been in a serious fight..."
ReplyDeleteIn the year after I graduated from high school, serious enough. Such as hitching through Amarillo (recalling the song about Will the last person leaving Amarillo turn out the lights?) on my way to LA during spring break and getting picked up by some white rednecks who gave me the option of getting a haircut or a fight. I lost the fight, and needed to go to the hospital to get stitched up, necessitating the hospital calling my parents for permission to do so. Serious enough for me.
Then as a hippie dropout ecoactivist in Berserkeley some months later, I took over the remaining weeks of a rented room that a colleague vacated due to a freakout. I didn't know the people in the house. One day I was standing by the kitchen table while a conversation ensued about a black guy wanting a white guy to loan him the use of his "rig.(later learned that meant a hypodermic needle.) The black guy replied, "Are you prejudiced?" and put a pistol to my temple. I was just a bystander. He ordered us to lie down on the floor, and proceeded to trash the house, including the room of another black guy. No, that wasn't a "serious fight," if you talk about bodily damage, but having a pistol placed against one's temple qualifies for something.
Last time I communicate with PenGun.
I don't think of it as white flight or black flight, but as the flight of people who know how to recognize a no-win situation and aren't wedded to lifetime victimhood as a ready excuse for failure. Some neighborhoods may be beyond saving; the only solution is to re-locate. If so, it's good to have a little education, the innate honesty that permits living within a tight budget until you can pull ahead a bit, the modest savings that will result, a faithful kin/comrade structure, and creativity about how to earn an honest living. The really important quality is the ability to assess whether a neighborhood is basically OK and just needs to do a bit of self-policing, or instead is hopeless and needs to be abandoned. It's not so hard to abandon a hopeless neighborhood (or other cultural milieu) if you can quit thinking "It's not my fault, there's no use trying to change anything, the system is rigged." If you do decide to stay and fight, do something effective--by which I don't mean petition for outside relief, but instead join forces with whatever social structure is left that resists the internal pathology of the neighborhood. If you can't find that social structure and you can't be it yourself, get out and go somewhere you can. If you don't know what it looks like, you're part of the problem.
ReplyDeleteIf you read Chris Anrade's Dignity which i about that subject and supposed to be very good, let me know what you think.
ReplyDelete