Never evolved an indigenous culture? You've heard rap music, haven't you? Of course it's an indigenous culture... one that the mainstream cultures of the "blue and red tribes" finds alienating and strange. The indigenous culture of the African-American community has, among other things, created the basis of American music for over a century.
To argue that what culture they have is simply handed to them by the "blue tribe" liberals is shockingly ignorant and condescending. Seriously, man, check your privilege there!
Where I think you're on to something interesting is the idea of racial flight. Before the 1960s, blacks simply were not allowed to live in white neighborhoods, no matter how wealthy or successful or talented they were. Black neighborhoods were much more economically integrated, with more role models for kids (although a look into the history of redlining is valuable, something else you touched on. The theft of wealth accumulation via property values and rent is far greater than the petty crimes of burglary and mugging that justify the police state. Look into it, there's been great writing on the subject).
Anyway... come the 1970s, it became socially viable for more successful black professionals and entrepreneurs to move to nicer, safer, more valuable white neighborhoods, and they did so. The more they left, the worse the ghettos got, which drove even more away. This went hand in hand with the rise of the lucrative paramilitary police state, and a massive per-capita increase in black prisoners. So it's much, much more difficult for ambitious and talented young black kids to improve their lot in life today than it used to be - ironic, considering how much better life is for the black middle class.
There are other problems as well. A friend of mine, a successful upper middle class black professional (doctor), has devoted himself to teaching financial literacy to black teenagers. Lack of basic financial literacy is endemic among the poor, and contributes to the ongoing poverty. It's also endemic among black entrepreneurs. He is also working on a side business as a financial advisor and investment counselor for wealthy black individuals. They often invest very poorly, because they distrust the white-dominated financial industry - and for good reason, given the century-long tradition of outright theft and victimization. By putting a black face on sound investing, he can help them grow their wealth more effectively. So think about the impact that deliberate bad financial advice has had economically on the black community.
Your formulation of blue tribe welfare-for-votes versus red tribe police state is entertaining to read, but it is simplistic to the point of being seriously wrong. Look at the deeper issues.
"To argue that what culture they have is simply handed to them by the "blue tribe" liberals is shockingly ignorant and condescending."
I will not deny the charges of being condescending and privileged, though personally I would describe myself as being in advantaged position and having a sense of Noblesse Oblige. I do not appreciate the name calling on your part.
I will not admit to being ignorant, as I am both well-read on this issue and have considerable personal experience. To think is to generalize; to think is to take the raw data from the world and frame it in patterns that make sense. There will always be imprecision in so doing. There will be mistakes around the edges, or places where the point was not phrased perfectly correctly. If you start calling me names every time I make an imperfect generalization, while I am trying in good faith to explain the core dynamics the best that I can, then we cannot have a productive conservation and this will be my last comment.
Well, you are underestimating the role of white (liberal voting) producers and merchants of cool in the creation of hip-hop culture, but that is beside the point. Music is only one tiny part of culture.
More important aspects of culture include: messaging about what makes a good life, norms, mores, institutions, messaging and narratives about how to be successful, narratives explaining the way things are and how to deal with problems, etc, are the important part that I am talking about. And yes, there is some indigenous norms that have arisen, and hip-hop culture is more than music. But this culture is very, very recent, and it takes a long time for a culture to evolve to be pro-social and pro-civilization. Hip-hop culture is similar in some way to the honor culture and feuding culture of the old Scotch-Irish, medieval Europe, Homeric Greece, or many other primitive cultures. But the culture messaging and narratives coming down from blue tribe controlled schools and from ministers are very, very real and give a very flawed view of how the world actually works. And that messaging matters a lot when there is the absence of positive role models in the form of people building their own businesses and making it on their own.
I am quite aware of the history of segregation, red-lining, etc. But these do not explain what is going on. Every ethnic group is segregated. That is the definition of an ethnic group. Segregation doesn't explain why black ghettos have so much more crime than the Jewish or Chinese ghettos of old.
"The theft of wealth accumulation via property values and rent is far greater than the petty crimes of burglary and mugging that justify the police state."
You are going to explain yourself, because this is quite backwards.
There were indeed attempts by the WASP's in charge of the American cities to do slum clearance and move blacks out of their existing neighborhoods into the neighborhoods of working class ethnic poles, Irish, and Jews, who did not have the political clout to defend their turf. This has been written about extensively in books like "The Slaughter of the Cities" or "Canarsie".
However, the WASP's plans did not work out at all like intended. In some cases, blacks were pushed out of great real estate to slightly worse real estate. For instance, in Boston, some blacks who lived where the Prudential now is were pushed out toward Roxbury and Dorchester. But the bulk of the action was in blacks moving up from the south, who pushed out working class whites in neighborhoods like Roxbury and Dorchester. If you look at most cities, blacks live in great real estate from a location point of view - it is an easy commute to the central city, often near parks like Fairmount park in Philadelphia or Franklin Park in Boston. I don't know by what metric you can blacks in the Philadelphia area have the worst real estate. Now, the property values are very low. But that is because of the crime. By definition, any real estate occupied by a high-crime tribe is going to have low values, since people don't want to live near crime. This hardly constitutes left by white people.
Your formulation of blue tribe welfare-for-votes versus red tribe police state is entertaining to read, but it is simplistic to the point of being seriously wrong. Look at the deeper issues.
I have read dozens of books and hundreds of articles on the subject, ranging from the very liberal like the "New Jim Crow" or "When Work Disappears" to the more reactionary like "Slaughter of the City." I have spent years living near ghetto neighborhoods, and doing on-and-off volunteering in these neighborhoods. To think is to simplify, thinking is the act of condensing the raw data of the world into patterns and models that we can use. If you have a better model of what is happening, or can make improvements to my model, then make the argument. But I once believed the conventional segregation/red lining/de-industrialization caused all the problems hypothesis, and I now believe that hypothesis to be seriously wrong.
Lack of basic financial literacy is endemic among the poor, and contributes to the ongoing poverty. It's also endemic among black entrepreneurs. He is also working on a side business as a financial advisor and investment counselor for wealthy black individuals. They often invest very poorly, because they distrust the white-dominated financial industry - and for good reason, given the century-long tradition of outright theft and victimization.
While I wish your friend luck, this goes back to the question of intelligence. The deep problem is that someone of 130IQ will always be able to steal from the person of 80IQ. The stealing can take many forms - unfair financial contracts, convincing that buying Nike shoes will make them awesome at basketball, convincing them to vote for politician X, where politician X then funnels money to his own cronies. I'm not sure what can be done about this. It is a very hard problem. I don't know if history has an example of systematic, long-standing, altruism between ethnic groups.
"The theft of wealth accumulation via property values and rent is far greater than the petty crimes of burglary and mugging that justify the police state."
>> "You are going to explain yourself, because this is quite backwards."
There are lots of other sources for this type of information. Ta-Nehisi Coates has a comprehensive explanation in his Atlantic article "The Case for Reparations." Inflammatory title (also long), but well researched.
To argue that what culture they have is simply handed to them by the "blue tribe" liberals is shockingly ignorant and condescending. Seriously, man, check your privilege there!
Where I think you're on to something interesting is the idea of racial flight. Before the 1960s, blacks simply were not allowed to live in white neighborhoods, no matter how wealthy or successful or talented they were. Black neighborhoods were much more economically integrated, with more role models for kids (although a look into the history of redlining is valuable, something else you touched on. The theft of wealth accumulation via property values and rent is far greater than the petty crimes of burglary and mugging that justify the police state. Look into it, there's been great writing on the subject).
Anyway... come the 1970s, it became socially viable for more successful black professionals and entrepreneurs to move to nicer, safer, more valuable white neighborhoods, and they did so. The more they left, the worse the ghettos got, which drove even more away. This went hand in hand with the rise of the lucrative paramilitary police state, and a massive per-capita increase in black prisoners. So it's much, much more difficult for ambitious and talented young black kids to improve their lot in life today than it used to be - ironic, considering how much better life is for the black middle class.
There are other problems as well. A friend of mine, a successful upper middle class black professional (doctor), has devoted himself to teaching financial literacy to black teenagers. Lack of basic financial literacy is endemic among the poor, and contributes to the ongoing poverty. It's also endemic among black entrepreneurs. He is also working on a side business as a financial advisor and investment counselor for wealthy black individuals. They often invest very poorly, because they distrust the white-dominated financial industry - and for good reason, given the century-long tradition of outright theft and victimization. By putting a black face on sound investing, he can help them grow their wealth more effectively. So think about the impact that deliberate bad financial advice has had economically on the black community.
Your formulation of blue tribe welfare-for-votes versus red tribe police state is entertaining to read, but it is simplistic to the point of being seriously wrong. Look at the deeper issues.