In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
On August 15 2014 11:52 Sermokala wrote: The problem is that the raceism goes both ways. Black communities are notorious for being hugely racist twords police departments. They treat black police officers worse then white ones calling them race traitors as if any one trying to solve the problem is a problem.
Institutions can be changed completely and they have repeatedly but when the community refuses to admit their own faults the cycle will just continue. People thinking that some people are racist or arn't racist based on the color of their skin is just another form of racism.
It's an antagonistic relationship and yes that antagonism goes both ways. The difference is that police is a public institution that I believe should be held accountable for its practices.
Anyways I don't see the over policing of black communities as the solution to the crime problems that plague these black communities. I see that over policing as a problem. I'm obviously not alone. Hence protests.
So your solution to crime is to not prevent it but to allow it to happen?
Rabble rouseing about problems doesn't solve them It just makes them worse. No one thinks that its a good situation.
No. My solution to crime is to tackle the root causes. Poverty, education, etc...
Also advocating police reform is not the same as saying "let's allow crime to happen"
The problems with poverty and education are caused by the high rate of crime. Dealing with crime solves poverty and poor education the same as dealing with poverty and poor education would solve crime. They couldn't be any less independent and blindly ignoring that fact is what caused the current mess to begin with.
The problems are all intertwined. A child born into a shit neighborhood is surrounded by poverty. Odds are at least one of his parents are not around. The adult he is with is probably working a dead end minimum wage job, maybe multiple jobs to make ends meet. If that adult is never around working to scrape by a living they're not around to raise that kid properly. The kid is accountable to no one, supervised by no one, with nothing to do. Odds are he's going to the worst school in the area so his education sucks dick, when he gets home there's no one to help with homework, no one to talk to, hang out with, play with, or discipline him. Even if the adult in his life is a great person and trying their absolute hardest they're still stuck in a shit situation.
So the kid's got no one, odds are he'll turn outside the home for friends, companionship, entertainment. All those kids with no supervision are going to make some awful choices, that's how even the best of kids work. But they're surrounded by poverty, education isn't instilled in them, crime is everywhere, those choices are going to be even worse. The kid sees hopelessness and squalor everywhere around him, sees adults working to get no where, maybe minimum wage if you can get it. Crime doesn't seem so bad now, he can make more money, he can work for himself or his friends, he doesn't need to be highly educated academically, maybe he can help lift his family up doing it! Odds are he ends up in jail sooner or later if not dead. Maybe somewhere along the line he ended up having a kid of his own who like countless others, and like himself, now doesn't have a dad, and so the cycle continues.
There's no miracle cure that fixes it all over night. Things have to change fundamentally, thought processes have to be rewired on all sides of the equation to tackle it properly. But, the journey of 1000 miles starts with but a single step. If you ask me starting with education is the first step to take. Get the children, teach them, show them the possibilities, make education important and cool. The young people can effect more change than the adults. It won't work for them all, but nothing ever works for 100% of the population.
If you were born in the shittiest ghetto in the asshole of the country you should have the same shot at a good education as anyone else. Try and stop the hopelessness before it takes root.
You are correct on the complexity of the issue and Sermokala's one way causal link and solution based on it are extremely suspect and unlikely. But your proposed solution - education - is a nice slogan, but making it work is much harder and as far as I can tell nobody actually succeeded at this. There are some marginally successful programs at making education more "cool", but they seem far from reliable. I think much better is to improve policing and governance of the area, but not in a way Sermokala is promoting. It needs to be targeted not at increasing actual crime fighting (although that never hurts), but on fairness and reliability of the police and law. The people in the area need to be shown that the police and government and law is fair and that they will profit by relegating their issues to the system. This is a long term plan and will not have results immediately, but that is the only way I know of to "civilize" such crime ridden areas. Simple "tough on crime" approaches that parts of US are so in love with will fail as they are ideological and dogmatic, not actually result-oriented. It does not actually matter if police are fair and law is too if the population of the area does not perceive them as such, as in such case you cannot expect any improvement. Not mentioning that fairness of the local police force is more than in doubt.
Education done right isn't easy. I think our education system as a whole sucks. When everything is about giving the right answer and regurgitating things to pass the class instead of critical thinking and reasoned discussion there's a problem IMO. School being a one size fits all prospect instead of letting kids learn more about fields they're interested sucks. Hell, the first time I recall thinking something I was learning was legitimately cool was when I started taking Physics, it was an actual mind fuck learning that stuff and I was excited to learn more. If it takes that long to reach a kid there's a problem. But going into the problems of our education system we could be here forever.
Targeting crime first to me probably means more people in prison which doesn't change anything. It's trying to deal with adults while none of the problems underneath are being dealt with. Yeah the whole "Children are our future" thing is cliche, but it's also true. If you don't deal with them then it'll be one more generation gone to waste. Young people have a knack for changing the way society sees things. Things that were one taboo become the way things are and they become more accepted. We had extreme racism and segregation, we got rid of the segregation and kids ended up thinking "hey, those black/white/asian/hispanic/etc kids aren't so bad!" and it became more normal. Then different races hanging out together and interracial relationships became more normal. Kids started having an openly gay friend or family member, homosexuality became more openly accepted. Video games will rot your brain and make you a serial killer, kids have grown up with them and now everyone plays them. Less and less people care about those things that were once huge issues because young people have grown up with them and made them no big deal in society, and that's a great thing.
Education IMO has become "cooler" over time. We went from nothing to Mr. Rogers who was a square, to Bill Nye, to Mythbusters, etc. Educational science programming is letting people see all the cool shit you can do and how the universe works, that stuff can be engaging to kids. Our technology, which most people love, is evolving so fast. Everyone wants the newest gadget, all this stuff that was seen as dorky is really sweet and everyone wants it. Video games for learning have been a boon. Number Munchers and Oregon Trail back in my day were sick, now the tech and what we can do is way way better.
The problems are all intertwined. Adults need to make enough money where they can be with their kids, parent, and help with homework. Crime needs to not be all the kids see or know, minorities can't get unequal treatment from the law. Education needs to be improved and given way more money. Stigmas must be changed. It's a fucking giant disaster that no one seem to legitimately give a shit about since none of these issues are being looked at let alone changed. But, in my opinion it all comes back to the education.
The heavily militarized police force in a St. Louis suburb is hardly an anomaly. Local police departments across the country deploy not just military-style equipment but actual castoffs from the U.S. military.
Federal grant programs fund the police acquisition of military weapons and vehicles, and a U.S. law has sent more than $4 billion of surplus Pentagon gear to law enforcement over the past 17 years. Now protests following the fatal police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.—and the heavily armed response by local police—seem likely to spark a national debate on the militarization of law enforcement. Do local cops from from Maine to New Mexico need military rifles and armored personnel carriers to do their jobs?
“I know that many Americans have been deeply disturbed by images we’ve seen in the heartland of our country,” President Barack Obama said Thursday, urging calm amid the investigation of the Aug. 9 shooting. Police have said Brown fought with a police officer and tried to grab his service weapon, while witness have said the 18-year-old did not struggle with police and was surrendering when he was shot.
“The images and scenes we continue to see in Ferguson resemble war more than traditional police action,” Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky wrote today in a column for Time, calling for police agencies to be demilitarized. Another U.S. Senator, Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill, has said local law enforcement officials need to “demilitarize” the situation in Ferguson.
Given the images from Missouri, some veterans have observed that they patrolled foreign combat zones equipped with less armor than the police in Ferguson, which is northwest of St. Louis. The American Civil Liberties Union has also criticized the militarization of police forces, saying that such equipment leads to “a warrior mentality” that causes police to see citizens as enemies. In a June report (pdf) that analyzed police SWAT team deployments in 2011-12, the ACLU said that most of the military equipment is being used for routine drug searches and warrant executions.
The Defense Logistics Agency, part of the Defense Department, says it transferred more than $449 million worth of property from the U.S. military to some 8,000 law enforcement agencies last year. Congress enacted the transfer program, called 1033, in 1997 to help save taxpayers’ money by finding new life for stuff the Pentagon wasn’t using. The 1033 program sends surplus military gear for civilian purposes, to be used by other federal agencies, states, and local police departments. Plenty of it is mundane office equipment, such as printers, fax machines, and copiers. The high-profile—and controversial—goods include armored mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) trucks and M-16 assault rifles.
On August 15 2014 04:59 Roswell wrote: Blacks kill white people at a much higher rate than the reverse and for black victims almost 90% of the offenders are black thttp://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/ttp://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/http://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/ttp://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/emselves. So who cares? If this policeman is a murderer then so be it, no need to start acting like this is the 1800s.
3127 were white offenders 2694 were black offenders
Yet blacks make up less than 10% of the population. Oh my god, we should start reversing our entire livelihoods and get all lame. I get that this is a policeman and things are different, but judging from theguardian it would appear unarmed blacks are being killed by the dozens every day by the great evil white people. Stupid shit to get riled up at. People are people. Race card is lamer than farcry 3s multiplayer
Don't be dumb. Over policing of black communities specifically in Missouri goes way beyond this one incident. Heres the data as collected by the States Attorney General s office. http://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/
Oh, sorry I thought we were talking about homicides not if someone was speeding too fast. Fact remains, black on black homicide rates are absurd, (as are any where blacks are the offenders.) If you want to talk about which car insurance hispanics drive vs hawaiian then that is cool though.
This is a social and cultural issue, poorer people in urban areas tend to commit more crime, unfortunately blacks represent a great portion of those statistics. There are bigger evils happening in america than 4/20,000 homicides annually occurring where a controversial he said she said between a white offender and a black victim. For a country moving away from superstition it sure is funny that somehow someway "If a person kills a member of a different race, the evil neutrons and energy manifests itself greater, and that perpetrator must be punished more, thus sayeth the emperor of black people, the honorable and talented mr sharpton."
Except we weren't talking about homicide. At least I wasn't. I was talking about the way police treat black communities differently. That's what the Ferguson protests are about. A white policeman shooting an unarmed black teenager is just the incident that brought these long lingering racial tensions to the surface. It's not about white on black violence. It's about a white police force that treats the black community its supposed to be serving antagonistically. That's why the racial profiling data is relevant. It is hard evidence that black people are targeted by the mostly white police more aggressively than other racial groups. It's not like you need the data to know that though. For the people who live there, it's obvious. So yeah, Don't be dumb. You don't seem to get what this is about.
Or maybe you're just unclear in your point. Maybe you believe that racial profiling and aggressive policing of black neighborhoods is warranted and you're pointing to homicide statistics to make that point. I would disagree. I have different values.
Well you were the one randomly throwing in fucking driving arrests, when I was solely talking about homicides. I still think, no one should give a rats ass about this event. Its like hyping up a mediocre movie, you are only feeding the fire. By the time this event/trial ends, we will have 300 black on black homicides. But the narrative here would make a much better movie than those other deaths.
Ok. I'm confused. What exactly is your point? I already explained why those traffic stops are relevant to this discussion.
Best I can tell your position is: Because black people kill each other all the time nobody should care about this one time a white guy killed a black guy.
My point was that people care about this incident because its representative of a larger issue about the how the police treat black people in Ferguson specifically, and Missouri more broadly. That traffic stop data is evidence of that police behavior. What don't you get?
I didnt know this young man was killed for a routine traffic stop. All you care about is the pointless aftermath. We dont know if this was racially charged, we just dont.
On August 15 2014 11:52 Sermokala wrote: The problem is that the raceism goes both ways. Black communities are notorious for being hugely racist twords police departments. They treat black police officers worse then white ones calling them race traitors as if any one trying to solve the problem is a problem.
Institutions can be changed completely and they have repeatedly but when the community refuses to admit their own faults the cycle will just continue. People thinking that some people are racist or arn't racist based on the color of their skin is just another form of racism.
It's an antagonistic relationship and yes that antagonism goes both ways. The difference is that police is a public institution that I believe should be held accountable for its practices.
Anyways I don't see the over policing of black communities as the solution to the crime problems that plague these black communities. I see that over policing as a problem. I'm obviously not alone. Hence protests.
So your solution to crime is to not prevent it but to allow it to happen?
Rabble rouseing about problems doesn't solve them It just makes them worse. No one thinks that its a good situation.
No. My solution to crime is to tackle the root causes. Poverty, education, etc...
Also advocating police reform is not the same as saying "let's allow crime to happen"
The problems with poverty and education are caused by the high rate of crime. Dealing with crime solves poverty and poor education the same as dealing with poverty and poor education would solve crime. They couldn't be any less independent and blindly ignoring that fact is what caused the current mess to begin with.
The problems are all intertwined. A child born into a shit neighborhood is surrounded by poverty. Odds are at least one of his parents are not around. The adult he is with is probably working a dead end minimum wage job, maybe multiple jobs to make ends meet. If that adult is never around working to scrape by a living they're not around to raise that kid properly. The kid is accountable to no one, supervised by no one, with nothing to do. Odds are he's going to the worst school in the area so his education sucks dick, when he gets home there's no one to help with homework, no one to talk to, hang out with, play with, or discipline him. Even if the adult in his life is a great person and trying their absolute hardest they're still stuck in a shit situation.
So the kid's got no one, odds are he'll turn outside the home for friends, companionship, entertainment. All those kids with no supervision are going to make some awful choices, that's how even the best of kids work. But they're surrounded by poverty, education isn't instilled in them, crime is everywhere, those choices are going to be even worse. The kid sees hopelessness and squalor everywhere around him, sees adults working to get no where, maybe minimum wage if you can get it. Crime doesn't seem so bad now, he can make more money, he can work for himself or his friends, he doesn't need to be highly educated academically, maybe he can help lift his family up doing it! Odds are he ends up in jail sooner or later if not dead. Maybe somewhere along the line he ended up having a kid of his own who like countless others, and like himself, now doesn't have a dad, and so the cycle continues.
There's no miracle cure that fixes it all over night. Things have to change fundamentally, thought processes have to be rewired on all sides of the equation to tackle it properly. But, the journey of 1000 miles starts with but a single step. If you ask me starting with education is the first step to take. Get the children, teach them, show them the possibilities, make education important and cool. The young people can effect more change than the adults. It won't work for them all, but nothing ever works for 100% of the population.
If you were born in the shittiest ghetto in the asshole of the country you should have the same shot at a good education as anyone else. Try and stop the hopelessness before it takes root.
You are correct on the complexity of the issue and Sermokala's one way causal link and solution based on it are extremely suspect and unlikely. But your proposed solution - education - is a nice slogan, but making it work is much harder and as far as I can tell nobody actually succeeded at this. There are some marginally successful programs at making education more "cool", but they seem far from reliable. I think much better is to improve policing and governance of the area, but not in a way Sermokala is promoting. It needs to be targeted not at increasing actual crime fighting (although that never hurts), but on fairness and reliability of the police and law. The people in the area need to be shown that the police and government and law is fair and that they will profit by relegating their issues to the system. This is a long term plan and will not have results immediately, but that is the only way I know of to "civilize" such crime ridden areas. Simple "tough on crime" approaches that parts of US are so in love with will fail as they are ideological and dogmatic, not actually result-oriented. It does not actually matter if police are fair and law is too if the population of the area does not perceive them as such, as in such case you cannot expect any improvement. Not mentioning that fairness of the local police force is more than in doubt.
Education done right isn't easy. I think our education system as a whole sucks. When everything is about giving the right answer and regurgitating things to pass the class instead of critical thinking and reasoned discussion there's a problem IMO. School being a one size fits all prospect instead of letting kids learn more about fields they're interested sucks. Hell, the first time I recall thinking something I was learning was legitimately cool was when I started taking Physics, it was an actual mind fuck learning that stuff and I was excited to learn more. If it takes that long to reach a kid there's a problem. But going into the problems of our education system we could be here forever.
Targeting crime first to me probably means more people in prison which doesn't change anything. It's trying to deal with adults while none of the problems underneath are being dealt with. Yeah the whole "Children are our future" thing is cliche, but it's also true. If you don't deal with them then it'll be one more generation gone to waste. Young people have a knack for changing the way society sees things. Things that were one taboo become the way things are and they become more accepted. We had extreme racism and segregation, we got rid of the segregation and kids ended up thinking "hey, those black/white/asian/hispanic/etc kids aren't so bad!" and it became more normal. Then different races hanging out together and interracial relationships became more normal. Kids started having an openly gay friend or family member, homosexuality became more openly accepted. Video games will rot your brain and make you a serial killer, kids have grown up with them and now everyone plays them. Less and less people care about those things that were once huge issues because young people have grown up with them and made them no big deal in society, and that's a great thing.
Education IMO has become "cooler" over time. We went from nothing to Mr. Rogers who was a square, to Bill Nye, to Mythbusters, etc. Educational science programming is letting people see all the cool shit you can do and how the universe works, that stuff can be engaging to kids. Our technology, which most people love, is evolving so fast. Everyone wants the newest gadget, all this stuff that was seen as dorky is really sweet and everyone wants it. Video games for learning have been a boon. Number Munchers and Oregon Trail back in my day were sick, now the tech and what we can do is way way better.
The problems are all intertwined. Adults need to make enough money where they can be with their kids, parent, and help with homework. Crime needs to not be all the kids see or know, minorities can't get unequal treatment from the law. Education needs to be improved and given way more money. Stigmas must be changed. It's a fucking giant disaster that no one seem to legitimately give a shit about since none of these issues are being looked at let alone changed. But, in my opinion it all comes back to the education.
Jesus Christ I need to stop writing novels ><
Just adding a tiny bit of my own thoughts on this. Education is very much a competitive aspect, so improving education for everybody doesn't help with the problems of racial discrimination (intentional or not). Not only that, but it doesn't even really help with poverty (or crime for that matter) if the floor somebody can be paid is at or below the poverty level. Thus, from a policy standpoint, it makes much more sense to approach poverty and crime first.
On August 15 2014 04:59 Roswell wrote: Blacks kill white people at a much higher rate than the reverse and for black victims almost 90% of the offenders are black thttp://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/ttp://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/http://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/ttp://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/emselves. So who cares? If this policeman is a murderer then so be it, no need to start acting like this is the 1800s.
3127 were white offenders 2694 were black offenders
Yet blacks make up less than 10% of the population. Oh my god, we should start reversing our entire livelihoods and get all lame. I get that this is a policeman and things are different, but judging from theguardian it would appear unarmed blacks are being killed by the dozens every day by the great evil white people. Stupid shit to get riled up at. People are people. Race card is lamer than farcry 3s multiplayer
Don't be dumb. Over policing of black communities specifically in Missouri goes way beyond this one incident. Heres the data as collected by the States Attorney General s office. http://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/
Oh, sorry I thought we were talking about homicides not if someone was speeding too fast. Fact remains, black on black homicide rates are absurd, (as are any where blacks are the offenders.) If you want to talk about which car insurance hispanics drive vs hawaiian then that is cool though.
This is a social and cultural issue, poorer people in urban areas tend to commit more crime, unfortunately blacks represent a great portion of those statistics. There are bigger evils happening in america than 4/20,000 homicides annually occurring where a controversial he said she said between a white offender and a black victim. For a country moving away from superstition it sure is funny that somehow someway "If a person kills a member of a different race, the evil neutrons and energy manifests itself greater, and that perpetrator must be punished more, thus sayeth the emperor of black people, the honorable and talented mr sharpton."
Except we weren't talking about homicide. At least I wasn't. I was talking about the way police treat black communities differently. That's what the Ferguson protests are about. A white policeman shooting an unarmed black teenager is just the incident that brought these long lingering racial tensions to the surface. It's not about white on black violence. It's about a white police force that treats the black community its supposed to be serving antagonistically. That's why the racial profiling data is relevant. It is hard evidence that black people are targeted by the mostly white police more aggressively than other racial groups. It's not like you need the data to know that though. For the people who live there, it's obvious. So yeah, Don't be dumb. You don't seem to get what this is about.
Or maybe you're just unclear in your point. Maybe you believe that racial profiling and aggressive policing of black neighborhoods is warranted and you're pointing to homicide statistics to make that point. I would disagree. I have different values.
Well you were the one randomly throwing in fucking driving arrests, when I was solely talking about homicides. I still think, no one should give a rats ass about this event. Its like hyping up a mediocre movie, you are only feeding the fire. By the time this event/trial ends, we will have 300 black on black homicides. But the narrative here would make a much better movie than those other deaths.
Ok. I'm confused. What exactly is your point? I already explained why those traffic stops are relevant to this discussion.
Best I can tell your position is: Because black people kill each other all the time nobody should care about this one time a white guy killed a black guy.
My point was that people care about this incident because its representative of a larger issue about the how the police treat black people in Ferguson specifically, and Missouri more broadly. That traffic stop data is evidence of that police behavior. What don't you get?
I didnt know this young man was killed for a routine traffic stop. All you care about is the pointless aftermath. We dont know if this was racially charged, we just dont.
yes we do. yes it is. just because the cop probably wasnt in the kkk doesnt mean it wasnt racially charged. you seem to be requiring proof of a hate crime or something. that kind of mentality blithely ignores the context suffusing the incident both before and after it happened.
On August 15 2014 11:52 Sermokala wrote: The problem is that the raceism goes both ways. Black communities are notorious for being hugely racist twords police departments. They treat black police officers worse then white ones calling them race traitors as if any one trying to solve the problem is a problem.
Institutions can be changed completely and they have repeatedly but when the community refuses to admit their own faults the cycle will just continue. People thinking that some people are racist or arn't racist based on the color of their skin is just another form of racism.
It's an antagonistic relationship and yes that antagonism goes both ways. The difference is that police is a public institution that I believe should be held accountable for its practices.
Anyways I don't see the over policing of black communities as the solution to the crime problems that plague these black communities. I see that over policing as a problem. I'm obviously not alone. Hence protests.
So your solution to crime is to not prevent it but to allow it to happen?
Rabble rouseing about problems doesn't solve them It just makes them worse. No one thinks that its a good situation.
No. My solution to crime is to tackle the root causes. Poverty, education, etc...
Also advocating police reform is not the same as saying "let's allow crime to happen"
The problems with poverty and education are caused by the high rate of crime. Dealing with crime solves poverty and poor education the same as dealing with poverty and poor education would solve crime. They couldn't be any less independent and blindly ignoring that fact is what caused the current mess to begin with.
The problems are all intertwined. A child born into a shit neighborhood is surrounded by poverty. Odds are at least one of his parents are not around. The adult he is with is probably working a dead end minimum wage job, maybe multiple jobs to make ends meet. If that adult is never around working to scrape by a living they're not around to raise that kid properly. The kid is accountable to no one, supervised by no one, with nothing to do. Odds are he's going to the worst school in the area so his education sucks dick, when he gets home there's no one to help with homework, no one to talk to, hang out with, play with, or discipline him. Even if the adult in his life is a great person and trying their absolute hardest they're still stuck in a shit situation.
So the kid's got no one, odds are he'll turn outside the home for friends, companionship, entertainment. All those kids with no supervision are going to make some awful choices, that's how even the best of kids work. But they're surrounded by poverty, education isn't instilled in them, crime is everywhere, those choices are going to be even worse. The kid sees hopelessness and squalor everywhere around him, sees adults working to get no where, maybe minimum wage if you can get it. Crime doesn't seem so bad now, he can make more money, he can work for himself or his friends, he doesn't need to be highly educated academically, maybe he can help lift his family up doing it! Odds are he ends up in jail sooner or later if not dead. Maybe somewhere along the line he ended up having a kid of his own who like countless others, and like himself, now doesn't have a dad, and so the cycle continues.
There's no miracle cure that fixes it all over night. Things have to change fundamentally, thought processes have to be rewired on all sides of the equation to tackle it properly. But, the journey of 1000 miles starts with but a single step. If you ask me starting with education is the first step to take. Get the children, teach them, show them the possibilities, make education important and cool. The young people can effect more change than the adults. It won't work for them all, but nothing ever works for 100% of the population.
If you were born in the shittiest ghetto in the asshole of the country you should have the same shot at a good education as anyone else. Try and stop the hopelessness before it takes root.
You are correct on the complexity of the issue and Sermokala's one way causal link and solution based on it are extremely suspect and unlikely. But your proposed solution - education - is a nice slogan, but making it work is much harder and as far as I can tell nobody actually succeeded at this. There are some marginally successful programs at making education more "cool", but they seem far from reliable. I think much better is to improve policing and governance of the area, but not in a way Sermokala is promoting. It needs to be targeted not at increasing actual crime fighting (although that never hurts), but on fairness and reliability of the police and law. The people in the area need to be shown that the police and government and law is fair and that they will profit by relegating their issues to the system. This is a long term plan and will not have results immediately, but that is the only way I know of to "civilize" such crime ridden areas. Simple "tough on crime" approaches that parts of US are so in love with will fail as they are ideological and dogmatic, not actually result-oriented. It does not actually matter if police are fair and law is too if the population of the area does not perceive them as such, as in such case you cannot expect any improvement. Not mentioning that fairness of the local police force is more than in doubt.
Education done right isn't easy. I think our education system as a whole sucks. When everything is about giving the right answer and regurgitating things to pass the class instead of critical thinking and reasoned discussion there's a problem IMO. School being a one size fits all prospect instead of letting kids learn more about fields they're interested sucks. Hell, the first time I recall thinking something I was learning was legitimately cool was when I started taking Physics, it was an actual mind fuck learning that stuff and I was excited to learn more. If it takes that long to reach a kid there's a problem. But going into the problems of our education system we could be here forever.
Targeting crime first to me probably means more people in prison which doesn't change anything. It's trying to deal with adults while none of the problems underneath are being dealt with. Yeah the whole "Children are our future" thing is cliche, but it's also true. If you don't deal with them then it'll be one more generation gone to waste. Young people have a knack for changing the way society sees things. Things that were one taboo become the way things are and they become more accepted. We had extreme racism and segregation, we got rid of the segregation and kids ended up thinking "hey, those black/white/asian/hispanic/etc kids aren't so bad!" and it became more normal. Then different races hanging out together and interracial relationships became more normal. Kids started having an openly gay friend or family member, homosexuality became more openly accepted. Video games will rot your brain and make you a serial killer, kids have grown up with them and now everyone plays them. Less and less people care about those things that were once huge issues because young people have grown up with them and made them no big deal in society, and that's a great thing.
Education IMO has become "cooler" over time. We went from nothing to Mr. Rogers who was a square, to Bill Nye, to Mythbusters, etc. Educational science programming is letting people see all the cool shit you can do and how the universe works, that stuff can be engaging to kids. Our technology, which most people love, is evolving so fast. Everyone wants the newest gadget, all this stuff that was seen as dorky is really sweet and everyone wants it. Video games for learning have been a boon. Number Munchers and Oregon Trail back in my day were sick, now the tech and what we can do is way way better.
The problems are all intertwined. Adults need to make enough money where they can be with their kids, parent, and help with homework. Crime needs to not be all the kids see or know, minorities can't get unequal treatment from the law. Education needs to be improved and given way more money. Stigmas must be changed. It's a fucking giant disaster that no one seem to legitimately give a shit about since none of these issues are being looked at let alone changed. But, in my opinion it all comes back to the education.
Jesus Christ I need to stop writing novels ><
Just adding a tiny bit of my own thoughts on this. Education is very much a competitive aspect, so improving education for everybody doesn't help with the problems of racial discrimination (intentional or not). Not only that, but it doesn't even really help with poverty (or crime for that matter) if the floor somebody can be paid is at or below the poverty level. Thus, from a policy standpoint, it makes much more sense to approach poverty and crime first.
I would think it would be obvious that people with more valuable skills are less likely to be poor. All research shows that when average human capital goes up, so does productivity, wages, and general well-being. Your own little thoughts are just dead wrong.
On August 15 2014 04:59 Roswell wrote: Blacks kill white people at a much higher rate than the reverse and for black victims almost 90% of the offenders are black thttp://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/ttp://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/http://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/ttp://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/emselves. So who cares? If this policeman is a murderer then so be it, no need to start acting like this is the 1800s.
3127 were white offenders 2694 were black offenders
Yet blacks make up less than 10% of the population. Oh my god, we should start reversing our entire livelihoods and get all lame. I get that this is a policeman and things are different, but judging from theguardian it would appear unarmed blacks are being killed by the dozens every day by the great evil white people. Stupid shit to get riled up at. People are people. Race card is lamer than farcry 3s multiplayer
Don't be dumb. Over policing of black communities specifically in Missouri goes way beyond this one incident. Heres the data as collected by the States Attorney General s office. http://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/
Oh, sorry I thought we were talking about homicides not if someone was speeding too fast. Fact remains, black on black homicide rates are absurd, (as are any where blacks are the offenders.) If you want to talk about which car insurance hispanics drive vs hawaiian then that is cool though.
This is a social and cultural issue, poorer people in urban areas tend to commit more crime, unfortunately blacks represent a great portion of those statistics. There are bigger evils happening in america than 4/20,000 homicides annually occurring where a controversial he said she said between a white offender and a black victim. For a country moving away from superstition it sure is funny that somehow someway "If a person kills a member of a different race, the evil neutrons and energy manifests itself greater, and that perpetrator must be punished more, thus sayeth the emperor of black people, the honorable and talented mr sharpton."
Except we weren't talking about homicide. At least I wasn't. I was talking about the way police treat black communities differently. That's what the Ferguson protests are about. A white policeman shooting an unarmed black teenager is just the incident that brought these long lingering racial tensions to the surface. It's not about white on black violence. It's about a white police force that treats the black community its supposed to be serving antagonistically. That's why the racial profiling data is relevant. It is hard evidence that black people are targeted by the mostly white police more aggressively than other racial groups. It's not like you need the data to know that though. For the people who live there, it's obvious. So yeah, Don't be dumb. You don't seem to get what this is about.
Or maybe you're just unclear in your point. Maybe you believe that racial profiling and aggressive policing of black neighborhoods is warranted and you're pointing to homicide statistics to make that point. I would disagree. I have different values.
Well you were the one randomly throwing in fucking driving arrests, when I was solely talking about homicides. I still think, no one should give a rats ass about this event. Its like hyping up a mediocre movie, you are only feeding the fire. By the time this event/trial ends, we will have 300 black on black homicides. But the narrative here would make a much better movie than those other deaths.
Ok. I'm confused. What exactly is your point? I already explained why those traffic stops are relevant to this discussion.
Best I can tell your position is: Because black people kill each other all the time nobody should care about this one time a white guy killed a black guy.
My point was that people care about this incident because its representative of a larger issue about the how the police treat black people in Ferguson specifically, and Missouri more broadly. That traffic stop data is evidence of that police behavior. What don't you get?
I didnt know this young man was killed for a routine traffic stop. All you care about is the pointless aftermath. We dont know if this was racially charged, we just dont.
yes we do. yes it is. just because the cop probably wasnt in the kkk doesnt mean it wasnt racially charged. you seem to be requiring proof of a hate crime or something. that kind of mentality blithely ignores the context suffusing the incident both before and after it happened.
Yeah, but on the flip side, ascribing a racial component to every one of these incidents results in the glossing over the indisputable existence of real societal and cultural problems within the black community. As I so popularly argued previously around here, racial profiling and stereotyping is, at its a core, a crude form of statistical analysis. There are reasons why cops view the black community and black suspects the way that they do.
On August 15 2014 11:52 Sermokala wrote: The problem is that the raceism goes both ways. Black communities are notorious for being hugely racist twords police departments. They treat black police officers worse then white ones calling them race traitors as if any one trying to solve the problem is a problem.
Institutions can be changed completely and they have repeatedly but when the community refuses to admit their own faults the cycle will just continue. People thinking that some people are racist or arn't racist based on the color of their skin is just another form of racism.
It's an antagonistic relationship and yes that antagonism goes both ways. The difference is that police is a public institution that I believe should be held accountable for its practices.
Anyways I don't see the over policing of black communities as the solution to the crime problems that plague these black communities. I see that over policing as a problem. I'm obviously not alone. Hence protests.
So your solution to crime is to not prevent it but to allow it to happen?
Rabble rouseing about problems doesn't solve them It just makes them worse. No one thinks that its a good situation.
No. My solution to crime is to tackle the root causes. Poverty, education, etc...
Also advocating police reform is not the same as saying "let's allow crime to happen"
The problems with poverty and education are caused by the high rate of crime. Dealing with crime solves poverty and poor education the same as dealing with poverty and poor education would solve crime. They couldn't be any less independent and blindly ignoring that fact is what caused the current mess to begin with.
The problems are all intertwined. A child born into a shit neighborhood is surrounded by poverty. Odds are at least one of his parents are not around. The adult he is with is probably working a dead end minimum wage job, maybe multiple jobs to make ends meet. If that adult is never around working to scrape by a living they're not around to raise that kid properly. The kid is accountable to no one, supervised by no one, with nothing to do. Odds are he's going to the worst school in the area so his education sucks dick, when he gets home there's no one to help with homework, no one to talk to, hang out with, play with, or discipline him. Even if the adult in his life is a great person and trying their absolute hardest they're still stuck in a shit situation.
So the kid's got no one, odds are he'll turn outside the home for friends, companionship, entertainment. All those kids with no supervision are going to make some awful choices, that's how even the best of kids work. But they're surrounded by poverty, education isn't instilled in them, crime is everywhere, those choices are going to be even worse. The kid sees hopelessness and squalor everywhere around him, sees adults working to get no where, maybe minimum wage if you can get it. Crime doesn't seem so bad now, he can make more money, he can work for himself or his friends, he doesn't need to be highly educated academically, maybe he can help lift his family up doing it! Odds are he ends up in jail sooner or later if not dead. Maybe somewhere along the line he ended up having a kid of his own who like countless others, and like himself, now doesn't have a dad, and so the cycle continues.
There's no miracle cure that fixes it all over night. Things have to change fundamentally, thought processes have to be rewired on all sides of the equation to tackle it properly. But, the journey of 1000 miles starts with but a single step. If you ask me starting with education is the first step to take. Get the children, teach them, show them the possibilities, make education important and cool. The young people can effect more change than the adults. It won't work for them all, but nothing ever works for 100% of the population.
If you were born in the shittiest ghetto in the asshole of the country you should have the same shot at a good education as anyone else. Try and stop the hopelessness before it takes root.
You are correct on the complexity of the issue and Sermokala's one way causal link and solution based on it are extremely suspect and unlikely. But your proposed solution - education - is a nice slogan, but making it work is much harder and as far as I can tell nobody actually succeeded at this. There are some marginally successful programs at making education more "cool", but they seem far from reliable. I think much better is to improve policing and governance of the area, but not in a way Sermokala is promoting. It needs to be targeted not at increasing actual crime fighting (although that never hurts), but on fairness and reliability of the police and law. The people in the area need to be shown that the police and government and law is fair and that they will profit by relegating their issues to the system. This is a long term plan and will not have results immediately, but that is the only way I know of to "civilize" such crime ridden areas. Simple "tough on crime" approaches that parts of US are so in love with will fail as they are ideological and dogmatic, not actually result-oriented. It does not actually matter if police are fair and law is too if the population of the area does not perceive them as such, as in such case you cannot expect any improvement. Not mentioning that fairness of the local police force is more than in doubt.
Education done right isn't easy. I think our education system as a whole sucks. When everything is about giving the right answer and regurgitating things to pass the class instead of critical thinking and reasoned discussion there's a problem IMO. School being a one size fits all prospect instead of letting kids learn more about fields they're interested sucks. Hell, the first time I recall thinking something I was learning was legitimately cool was when I started taking Physics, it was an actual mind fuck learning that stuff and I was excited to learn more. If it takes that long to reach a kid there's a problem. But going into the problems of our education system we could be here forever.
Targeting crime first to me probably means more people in prison which doesn't change anything. It's trying to deal with adults while none of the problems underneath are being dealt with. Yeah the whole "Children are our future" thing is cliche, but it's also true. If you don't deal with them then it'll be one more generation gone to waste. Young people have a knack for changing the way society sees things. Things that were one taboo become the way things are and they become more accepted. We had extreme racism and segregation, we got rid of the segregation and kids ended up thinking "hey, those black/white/asian/hispanic/etc kids aren't so bad!" and it became more normal. Then different races hanging out together and interracial relationships became more normal. Kids started having an openly gay friend or family member, homosexuality became more openly accepted. Video games will rot your brain and make you a serial killer, kids have grown up with them and now everyone plays them. Less and less people care about those things that were once huge issues because young people have grown up with them and made them no big deal in society, and that's a great thing.
Education IMO has become "cooler" over time. We went from nothing to Mr. Rogers who was a square, to Bill Nye, to Mythbusters, etc. Educational science programming is letting people see all the cool shit you can do and how the universe works, that stuff can be engaging to kids. Our technology, which most people love, is evolving so fast. Everyone wants the newest gadget, all this stuff that was seen as dorky is really sweet and everyone wants it. Video games for learning have been a boon. Number Munchers and Oregon Trail back in my day were sick, now the tech and what we can do is way way better.
The problems are all intertwined. Adults need to make enough money where they can be with their kids, parent, and help with homework. Crime needs to not be all the kids see or know, minorities can't get unequal treatment from the law. Education needs to be improved and given way more money. Stigmas must be changed. It's a fucking giant disaster that no one seem to legitimately give a shit about since none of these issues are being looked at let alone changed. But, in my opinion it all comes back to the education.
Jesus Christ I need to stop writing novels ><
Just adding a tiny bit of my own thoughts on this. Education is very much a competitive aspect, so improving education for everybody doesn't help with the problems of racial discrimination (intentional or not). Not only that, but it doesn't even really help with poverty (or crime for that matter) if the floor somebody can be paid is at or below the poverty level. Thus, from a policy standpoint, it makes much more sense to approach poverty and crime first.
I would think it would be obvious that people with more valuable skills are less likely to be poor. All research shows that when average human capital goes up, so does productivity, wages, and general well-being. Your own little thoughts are just dead wrong.
You must have missed the last 30 years of tremendous productivity growth with stagnating wages...
On August 15 2014 12:18 IgnE wrote: they are the bad guys for the most part. and who do you think owns those businesses getting looted? black people from ferguson? dont think so.
So black people don't have the ability to own small business's in their communities.
who do you think works at those business's and shops at those business's? is it not black people again?
Work on your logic. Possibility is not reality. And who cares who shops there?
Bringing in riot police from outside the community to intimidate the crowds is an act of violence against the community.
Bringing in riot police from outside the community to intimidate the crowds to restore the rule of law isn't violence against the community its the whole purpose of having constables to patrol for you.
Are you advocating them to just allow anarchy to envelope the community and to just stand back while the whole city burns to the ground while they dwadle their thumbs?
Please tell me what you would have the local government do in this situation.
It is violence against the community. Those cops are there to protect the property of whites who don't live in the community. I would want the local government to arrest the cop who shot mike brown, apologize, vow justice, and open a dialogue to discuss the community's concerns with a delegation of it's democratically-appointed leaders.
. Its physically impossible for them to protect only the property of white people who don't live in the community. You're assuming that the cop did anything wrong which you have no proof for. The democratically appointed leaders were elected by the community, thats the literal definition of being democratically elected. If the black portion of the city doesn't feel the need to vote then they shouldn't complain when the government doesn't represent them.
Did anyone at all learn anything from the trayvon martin event that happened not that long ago?
wtf dude your reading comprehension seems very poor. i didnt say they were protecting only white property, that would be a stupid thing to say. there is some evidence based on eyewitness accounts that he unlawfully murdered a young black man. you don't need proof beyond a reasonable doubt to arrest someone. black prople know this very well. proof is for trials. if you want to relieve tensions with a community then open a dialogue with them. stop being so willfully stupid. this has nothing to do with locally elected officials. the only question here is whether you learned anything from trayvon or eric gardner or any one else. apparently not
You literally said that the cops are there to protect the property of whites who don't live in the community. You can't come back on it saying that you didn't mean it when you clearly said it. How is anyone suppose to know what you mean if you don't say what you mean?
There is evidence to prove that he attacked the police officer inside his car and tried to grab his gun. You don't need proof beyond a reasonable doubt but you need proof within reason to arrest someone. There was no reason to arrest Zimmerman and there is no reason to arrest the officer involved in the shooting. Sensationalist racism is the cause of the tension in the community. You can't say that that there is nothing to do with locally elected officials when you advocated for the localy elected officials to do something. Really the locally elected officials have everything to do with the current events. They are the ones making all the decisions in this. How you don't understand this I have no idea.
People said that trayvon was shot in the back by a white guy because he hated black people. eric gardner has nothing to do with this because he didn't try to grab the polices gun before dieing.
You almost incomprehensible and flip floping from one thing or another constantly. It makes it very hard to read what you are trying to say when you discredit what you are saying from being what you are trying to say.
On August 15 2014 12:18 IgnE wrote: they are the bad guys for the most part. and who do you think owns those businesses getting looted? black people from ferguson? dont think so.
So black people don't have the ability to own small business's in their communities.
who do you think works at those business's and shops at those business's? is it not black people again?
Work on your logic. Possibility is not reality. And who cares who shops there?
Bringing in riot police from outside the community to intimidate the crowds is an act of violence against the community.
Bringing in riot police from outside the community to intimidate the crowds to restore the rule of law isn't violence against the community its the whole purpose of having constables to patrol for you.
Are you advocating them to just allow anarchy to envelope the community and to just stand back while the whole city burns to the ground while they dwadle their thumbs?
Please tell me what you would have the local government do in this situation.
It is violence against the community. Those cops are there to protect the property of whites who don't live in the community. I would want the local government to arrest the cop who shot mike brown, apologize, vow justice, and open a dialogue to discuss the community's concerns with a delegation of it's democratically-appointed leaders.
. Its physically impossible for them to protect only the property of white people who don't live in the community. You're assuming that the cop did anything wrong which you have no proof for. The democratically appointed leaders were elected by the community, thats the literal definition of being democratically elected. If the black portion of the city doesn't feel the need to vote then they shouldn't complain when the government doesn't represent them.
Did anyone at all learn anything from the trayvon martin event that happened not that long ago?
wtf dude your reading comprehension seems very poor. i didnt say they were protecting only white property, that would be a stupid thing to say. there is some evidence based on eyewitness accounts that he unlawfully murdered a young black man. you don't need proof beyond a reasonable doubt to arrest someone. black prople know this very well. proof is for trials. if you want to relieve tensions with a community then open a dialogue with them. stop being so willfully stupid. this has nothing to do with locally elected officials. the only question here is whether you learned anything from trayvon or eric gardner or any one else. apparently not
You literally said that the cops are there to protect the property of whites who don't live in the community. You can't come back on it saying that you didn't mean it when you clearly said it. How is anyone suppose to know what you mean if you don't say what you mean?
There is evidence to prove that he attacked the police officer inside his car and tried to grab his gun. You don't need proof beyond a reasonable doubt but you need proof within reason to arrest someone. There was no reason to arrest Zimmerman and there is no reason to arrest the officer involved in the shooting. Sensationalist racism is the cause of the tension in the community. You can't say that that there is nothing to do with locally elected officials when you advocated for the localy elected officials to do something. Really the locally elected officials have everything to do with the current events. They are the ones making all the decisions in this. How you don't understand this I have no idea.
People said that trayvon was shot in the back by a white guy because he hated black people. eric gardner has nothing to do with this because he didn't try to grab the polices gun before dieing.
You almost incomprehensible and flip floping from one thing or another constantly. It makes it very hard to read what you are trying to say when you discredit what you are saying from being what you are trying to say.
lol honestly? they were there to protect white property because most is probably owned by whites. i didnt say they only protected white property to the exclusion of black property because that would be stupid. almost as stupid as your replies and confused scrambling in the last two responses. this isnt a difficult concept. im not discrediting anything i said. im responding to your ridiculous straw man arguments.
you are aware that black males get arrested all the the time under mere suspicion (or the crime of being black?) right?
and there is clearly a connection between eric gardner and trayvon and mike brown and rodney king and john parker and ezell ford and dante parker. the connection is racism.
edit: i forgot you brought up the elected officials thing again. i did NOT bring up elected officials from the black community there but you seem too obtuse to conceive of a meeting between democratically chosen community leaders in ferguson and the elected/appointed officials who have turned it into an oppressive police state. once again this is not a difficult concept and i cant tell if you really dont get it or are just being extremely obtuse because you think people wont notice
On August 15 2014 12:55 sc2isnotdying wrote: [quote]
It's an antagonistic relationship and yes that antagonism goes both ways. The difference is that police is a public institution that I believe should be held accountable for its practices.
Anyways I don't see the over policing of black communities as the solution to the crime problems that plague these black communities. I see that over policing as a problem. I'm obviously not alone. Hence protests.
So your solution to crime is to not prevent it but to allow it to happen?
Rabble rouseing about problems doesn't solve them It just makes them worse. No one thinks that its a good situation.
No. My solution to crime is to tackle the root causes. Poverty, education, etc...
Also advocating police reform is not the same as saying "let's allow crime to happen"
The problems with poverty and education are caused by the high rate of crime. Dealing with crime solves poverty and poor education the same as dealing with poverty and poor education would solve crime. They couldn't be any less independent and blindly ignoring that fact is what caused the current mess to begin with.
The problems are all intertwined. A child born into a shit neighborhood is surrounded by poverty. Odds are at least one of his parents are not around. The adult he is with is probably working a dead end minimum wage job, maybe multiple jobs to make ends meet. If that adult is never around working to scrape by a living they're not around to raise that kid properly. The kid is accountable to no one, supervised by no one, with nothing to do. Odds are he's going to the worst school in the area so his education sucks dick, when he gets home there's no one to help with homework, no one to talk to, hang out with, play with, or discipline him. Even if the adult in his life is a great person and trying their absolute hardest they're still stuck in a shit situation.
So the kid's got no one, odds are he'll turn outside the home for friends, companionship, entertainment. All those kids with no supervision are going to make some awful choices, that's how even the best of kids work. But they're surrounded by poverty, education isn't instilled in them, crime is everywhere, those choices are going to be even worse. The kid sees hopelessness and squalor everywhere around him, sees adults working to get no where, maybe minimum wage if you can get it. Crime doesn't seem so bad now, he can make more money, he can work for himself or his friends, he doesn't need to be highly educated academically, maybe he can help lift his family up doing it! Odds are he ends up in jail sooner or later if not dead. Maybe somewhere along the line he ended up having a kid of his own who like countless others, and like himself, now doesn't have a dad, and so the cycle continues.
There's no miracle cure that fixes it all over night. Things have to change fundamentally, thought processes have to be rewired on all sides of the equation to tackle it properly. But, the journey of 1000 miles starts with but a single step. If you ask me starting with education is the first step to take. Get the children, teach them, show them the possibilities, make education important and cool. The young people can effect more change than the adults. It won't work for them all, but nothing ever works for 100% of the population.
If you were born in the shittiest ghetto in the asshole of the country you should have the same shot at a good education as anyone else. Try and stop the hopelessness before it takes root.
You are correct on the complexity of the issue and Sermokala's one way causal link and solution based on it are extremely suspect and unlikely. But your proposed solution - education - is a nice slogan, but making it work is much harder and as far as I can tell nobody actually succeeded at this. There are some marginally successful programs at making education more "cool", but they seem far from reliable. I think much better is to improve policing and governance of the area, but not in a way Sermokala is promoting. It needs to be targeted not at increasing actual crime fighting (although that never hurts), but on fairness and reliability of the police and law. The people in the area need to be shown that the police and government and law is fair and that they will profit by relegating their issues to the system. This is a long term plan and will not have results immediately, but that is the only way I know of to "civilize" such crime ridden areas. Simple "tough on crime" approaches that parts of US are so in love with will fail as they are ideological and dogmatic, not actually result-oriented. It does not actually matter if police are fair and law is too if the population of the area does not perceive them as such, as in such case you cannot expect any improvement. Not mentioning that fairness of the local police force is more than in doubt.
Education done right isn't easy. I think our education system as a whole sucks. When everything is about giving the right answer and regurgitating things to pass the class instead of critical thinking and reasoned discussion there's a problem IMO. School being a one size fits all prospect instead of letting kids learn more about fields they're interested sucks. Hell, the first time I recall thinking something I was learning was legitimately cool was when I started taking Physics, it was an actual mind fuck learning that stuff and I was excited to learn more. If it takes that long to reach a kid there's a problem. But going into the problems of our education system we could be here forever.
Targeting crime first to me probably means more people in prison which doesn't change anything. It's trying to deal with adults while none of the problems underneath are being dealt with. Yeah the whole "Children are our future" thing is cliche, but it's also true. If you don't deal with them then it'll be one more generation gone to waste. Young people have a knack for changing the way society sees things. Things that were one taboo become the way things are and they become more accepted. We had extreme racism and segregation, we got rid of the segregation and kids ended up thinking "hey, those black/white/asian/hispanic/etc kids aren't so bad!" and it became more normal. Then different races hanging out together and interracial relationships became more normal. Kids started having an openly gay friend or family member, homosexuality became more openly accepted. Video games will rot your brain and make you a serial killer, kids have grown up with them and now everyone plays them. Less and less people care about those things that were once huge issues because young people have grown up with them and made them no big deal in society, and that's a great thing.
Education IMO has become "cooler" over time. We went from nothing to Mr. Rogers who was a square, to Bill Nye, to Mythbusters, etc. Educational science programming is letting people see all the cool shit you can do and how the universe works, that stuff can be engaging to kids. Our technology, which most people love, is evolving so fast. Everyone wants the newest gadget, all this stuff that was seen as dorky is really sweet and everyone wants it. Video games for learning have been a boon. Number Munchers and Oregon Trail back in my day were sick, now the tech and what we can do is way way better.
The problems are all intertwined. Adults need to make enough money where they can be with their kids, parent, and help with homework. Crime needs to not be all the kids see or know, minorities can't get unequal treatment from the law. Education needs to be improved and given way more money. Stigmas must be changed. It's a fucking giant disaster that no one seem to legitimately give a shit about since none of these issues are being looked at let alone changed. But, in my opinion it all comes back to the education.
Jesus Christ I need to stop writing novels ><
Just adding a tiny bit of my own thoughts on this. Education is very much a competitive aspect, so improving education for everybody doesn't help with the problems of racial discrimination (intentional or not). Not only that, but it doesn't even really help with poverty (or crime for that matter) if the floor somebody can be paid is at or below the poverty level. Thus, from a policy standpoint, it makes much more sense to approach poverty and crime first.
I would think it would be obvious that people with more valuable skills are less likely to be poor. All research shows that when average human capital goes up, so does productivity, wages, and general well-being. Your own little thoughts are just dead wrong.
You must have missed the last 30 years of tremendous productivity growth with stagnating wages...
Productivity has more components than human capital, and it is not required for wages and productivity to be perfectly correlated for education to be a worthwhile investment. Increasing human capital investment is an incredibly succesful method of reducing poverty, crime, and all sorts of other social costs. People who come from the most disadvantaged backgrounds benefit the most from increased human capital investment due to diminishing returns (meaning additional units of education are more valuable if you have had little). Not only can this be understood intuitively, it has been shown so many times emperically it really isn't worth debating.
education is a great tool for social indoctrination and population pacification. maybe the social injustices of the ghetto are just too strong to be overcome by the classic american educational propaganda
On August 15 2014 13:17 Sermokala wrote: [quote] So your solution to crime is to not prevent it but to allow it to happen?
Rabble rouseing about problems doesn't solve them It just makes them worse. No one thinks that its a good situation.
No. My solution to crime is to tackle the root causes. Poverty, education, etc...
Also advocating police reform is not the same as saying "let's allow crime to happen"
The problems with poverty and education are caused by the high rate of crime. Dealing with crime solves poverty and poor education the same as dealing with poverty and poor education would solve crime. They couldn't be any less independent and blindly ignoring that fact is what caused the current mess to begin with.
The problems are all intertwined. A child born into a shit neighborhood is surrounded by poverty. Odds are at least one of his parents are not around. The adult he is with is probably working a dead end minimum wage job, maybe multiple jobs to make ends meet. If that adult is never around working to scrape by a living they're not around to raise that kid properly. The kid is accountable to no one, supervised by no one, with nothing to do. Odds are he's going to the worst school in the area so his education sucks dick, when he gets home there's no one to help with homework, no one to talk to, hang out with, play with, or discipline him. Even if the adult in his life is a great person and trying their absolute hardest they're still stuck in a shit situation.
So the kid's got no one, odds are he'll turn outside the home for friends, companionship, entertainment. All those kids with no supervision are going to make some awful choices, that's how even the best of kids work. But they're surrounded by poverty, education isn't instilled in them, crime is everywhere, those choices are going to be even worse. The kid sees hopelessness and squalor everywhere around him, sees adults working to get no where, maybe minimum wage if you can get it. Crime doesn't seem so bad now, he can make more money, he can work for himself or his friends, he doesn't need to be highly educated academically, maybe he can help lift his family up doing it! Odds are he ends up in jail sooner or later if not dead. Maybe somewhere along the line he ended up having a kid of his own who like countless others, and like himself, now doesn't have a dad, and so the cycle continues.
There's no miracle cure that fixes it all over night. Things have to change fundamentally, thought processes have to be rewired on all sides of the equation to tackle it properly. But, the journey of 1000 miles starts with but a single step. If you ask me starting with education is the first step to take. Get the children, teach them, show them the possibilities, make education important and cool. The young people can effect more change than the adults. It won't work for them all, but nothing ever works for 100% of the population.
If you were born in the shittiest ghetto in the asshole of the country you should have the same shot at a good education as anyone else. Try and stop the hopelessness before it takes root.
You are correct on the complexity of the issue and Sermokala's one way causal link and solution based on it are extremely suspect and unlikely. But your proposed solution - education - is a nice slogan, but making it work is much harder and as far as I can tell nobody actually succeeded at this. There are some marginally successful programs at making education more "cool", but they seem far from reliable. I think much better is to improve policing and governance of the area, but not in a way Sermokala is promoting. It needs to be targeted not at increasing actual crime fighting (although that never hurts), but on fairness and reliability of the police and law. The people in the area need to be shown that the police and government and law is fair and that they will profit by relegating their issues to the system. This is a long term plan and will not have results immediately, but that is the only way I know of to "civilize" such crime ridden areas. Simple "tough on crime" approaches that parts of US are so in love with will fail as they are ideological and dogmatic, not actually result-oriented. It does not actually matter if police are fair and law is too if the population of the area does not perceive them as such, as in such case you cannot expect any improvement. Not mentioning that fairness of the local police force is more than in doubt.
Education done right isn't easy. I think our education system as a whole sucks. When everything is about giving the right answer and regurgitating things to pass the class instead of critical thinking and reasoned discussion there's a problem IMO. School being a one size fits all prospect instead of letting kids learn more about fields they're interested sucks. Hell, the first time I recall thinking something I was learning was legitimately cool was when I started taking Physics, it was an actual mind fuck learning that stuff and I was excited to learn more. If it takes that long to reach a kid there's a problem. But going into the problems of our education system we could be here forever.
Targeting crime first to me probably means more people in prison which doesn't change anything. It's trying to deal with adults while none of the problems underneath are being dealt with. Yeah the whole "Children are our future" thing is cliche, but it's also true. If you don't deal with them then it'll be one more generation gone to waste. Young people have a knack for changing the way society sees things. Things that were one taboo become the way things are and they become more accepted. We had extreme racism and segregation, we got rid of the segregation and kids ended up thinking "hey, those black/white/asian/hispanic/etc kids aren't so bad!" and it became more normal. Then different races hanging out together and interracial relationships became more normal. Kids started having an openly gay friend or family member, homosexuality became more openly accepted. Video games will rot your brain and make you a serial killer, kids have grown up with them and now everyone plays them. Less and less people care about those things that were once huge issues because young people have grown up with them and made them no big deal in society, and that's a great thing.
Education IMO has become "cooler" over time. We went from nothing to Mr. Rogers who was a square, to Bill Nye, to Mythbusters, etc. Educational science programming is letting people see all the cool shit you can do and how the universe works, that stuff can be engaging to kids. Our technology, which most people love, is evolving so fast. Everyone wants the newest gadget, all this stuff that was seen as dorky is really sweet and everyone wants it. Video games for learning have been a boon. Number Munchers and Oregon Trail back in my day were sick, now the tech and what we can do is way way better.
The problems are all intertwined. Adults need to make enough money where they can be with their kids, parent, and help with homework. Crime needs to not be all the kids see or know, minorities can't get unequal treatment from the law. Education needs to be improved and given way more money. Stigmas must be changed. It's a fucking giant disaster that no one seem to legitimately give a shit about since none of these issues are being looked at let alone changed. But, in my opinion it all comes back to the education.
Jesus Christ I need to stop writing novels ><
Just adding a tiny bit of my own thoughts on this. Education is very much a competitive aspect, so improving education for everybody doesn't help with the problems of racial discrimination (intentional or not). Not only that, but it doesn't even really help with poverty (or crime for that matter) if the floor somebody can be paid is at or below the poverty level. Thus, from a policy standpoint, it makes much more sense to approach poverty and crime first.
I would think it would be obvious that people with more valuable skills are less likely to be poor. All research shows that when average human capital goes up, so does productivity, wages, and general well-being. Your own little thoughts are just dead wrong.
You must have missed the last 30 years of tremendous productivity growth with stagnating wages...
Productivity has more components than human capital, and it is not required for wages and productivity to be perfectly correlated for education to be a worthwhile investment. Increasing human capital investment is an incredibly succesful method of reducing poverty, crime, and all sorts of other social costs. People who come from the most disadvantaged backgrounds benefit the most from increased human capital investment due to diminishing returns (meaning additional units of education are more valuable if you have had little). Not only can this be understood intuitively, it has been shown so many times emperically it really isn't worth debating.
You forgot the part where he said education was competitive. If you give a bachelor degree to everyone, it will increase human capital and productivity, but it can have no or almost no impact on income distribution as long as the distinctions between class or groups stays the same (all the rich get a master to distinguish themselves). It has been done in France actually, with the 80% bachelor goal from Mitterand. Our labor productivity is one of the best of the world, but inequality and poverty are rising (despite a social safety net and a huge welfare program). Things are much more complicated in real life than in the "intuitive understanding" of the market.
And it should now be clear why the axiomatic thinking of many economists ought not ever be implemented when attempting to understand societal dynamics.
On August 15 2014 11:52 Sermokala wrote: The problem is that the raceism goes both ways. Black communities are notorious for being hugely racist twords police departments. They treat black police officers worse then white ones calling them race traitors as if any one trying to solve the problem is a problem.
Institutions can be changed completely and they have repeatedly but when the community refuses to admit their own faults the cycle will just continue. People thinking that some people are racist or arn't racist based on the color of their skin is just another form of racism.
It's an antagonistic relationship and yes that antagonism goes both ways. The difference is that police is a public institution that I believe should be held accountable for its practices.
Anyways I don't see the over policing of black communities as the solution to the crime problems that plague these black communities. I see that over policing as a problem. I'm obviously not alone. Hence protests.
So your solution to crime is to not prevent it but to allow it to happen?
Rabble rouseing about problems doesn't solve them It just makes them worse. No one thinks that its a good situation.
No. My solution to crime is to tackle the root causes. Poverty, education, etc...
Also advocating police reform is not the same as saying "let's allow crime to happen"
The problems with poverty and education are caused by the high rate of crime. Dealing with crime solves poverty and poor education the same as dealing with poverty and poor education would solve crime. They couldn't be any less independent and blindly ignoring that fact is what caused the current mess to begin with.
The problems are all intertwined. A child born into a shit neighborhood is surrounded by poverty. Odds are at least one of his parents are not around. The adult he is with is probably working a dead end minimum wage job, maybe multiple jobs to make ends meet. If that adult is never around working to scrape by a living they're not around to raise that kid properly. The kid is accountable to no one, supervised by no one, with nothing to do. Odds are he's going to the worst school in the area so his education sucks dick, when he gets home there's no one to help with homework, no one to talk to, hang out with, play with, or discipline him. Even if the adult in his life is a great person and trying their absolute hardest they're still stuck in a shit situation.
So the kid's got no one, odds are he'll turn outside the home for friends, companionship, entertainment. All those kids with no supervision are going to make some awful choices, that's how even the best of kids work. But they're surrounded by poverty, education isn't instilled in them, crime is everywhere, those choices are going to be even worse. The kid sees hopelessness and squalor everywhere around him, sees adults working to get no where, maybe minimum wage if you can get it. Crime doesn't seem so bad now, he can make more money, he can work for himself or his friends, he doesn't need to be highly educated academically, maybe he can help lift his family up doing it! Odds are he ends up in jail sooner or later if not dead. Maybe somewhere along the line he ended up having a kid of his own who like countless others, and like himself, now doesn't have a dad, and so the cycle continues.
There's no miracle cure that fixes it all over night. Things have to change fundamentally, thought processes have to be rewired on all sides of the equation to tackle it properly. But, the journey of 1000 miles starts with but a single step. If you ask me starting with education is the first step to take. Get the children, teach them, show them the possibilities, make education important and cool. The young people can effect more change than the adults. It won't work for them all, but nothing ever works for 100% of the population.
If you were born in the shittiest ghetto in the asshole of the country you should have the same shot at a good education as anyone else. Try and stop the hopelessness before it takes root.
You are correct on the complexity of the issue and Sermokala's one way causal link and solution based on it are extremely suspect and unlikely. But your proposed solution - education - is a nice slogan, but making it work is much harder and as far as I can tell nobody actually succeeded at this. There are some marginally successful programs at making education more "cool", but they seem far from reliable. I think much better is to improve policing and governance of the area, but not in a way Sermokala is promoting. It needs to be targeted not at increasing actual crime fighting (although that never hurts), but on fairness and reliability of the police and law. The people in the area need to be shown that the police and government and law is fair and that they will profit by relegating their issues to the system. This is a long term plan and will not have results immediately, but that is the only way I know of to "civilize" such crime ridden areas. Simple "tough on crime" approaches that parts of US are so in love with will fail as they are ideological and dogmatic, not actually result-oriented. It does not actually matter if police are fair and law is too if the population of the area does not perceive them as such, as in such case you cannot expect any improvement. Not mentioning that fairness of the local police force is more than in doubt.
Education done right isn't easy. I think our education system as a whole sucks. When everything is about giving the right answer and regurgitating things to pass the class instead of critical thinking and reasoned discussion there's a problem IMO. School being a one size fits all prospect instead of letting kids learn more about fields they're interested sucks. Hell, the first time I recall thinking something I was learning was legitimately cool was when I started taking Physics, it was an actual mind fuck learning that stuff and I was excited to learn more. If it takes that long to reach a kid there's a problem. But going into the problems of our education system we could be here forever.
Targeting crime first to me probably means more people in prison which doesn't change anything. It's trying to deal with adults while none of the problems underneath are being dealt with. Yeah the whole "Children are our future" thing is cliche, but it's also true. If you don't deal with them then it'll be one more generation gone to waste. Young people have a knack for changing the way society sees things. Things that were one taboo become the way things are and they become more accepted. We had extreme racism and segregation, we got rid of the segregation and kids ended up thinking "hey, those black/white/asian/hispanic/etc kids aren't so bad!" and it became more normal. Then different races hanging out together and interracial relationships became more normal. Kids started having an openly gay friend or family member, homosexuality became more openly accepted. Video games will rot your brain and make you a serial killer, kids have grown up with them and now everyone plays them. Less and less people care about those things that were once huge issues because young people have grown up with them and made them no big deal in society, and that's a great thing.
Education IMO has become "cooler" over time. We went from nothing to Mr. Rogers who was a square, to Bill Nye, to Mythbusters, etc. Educational science programming is letting people see all the cool shit you can do and how the universe works, that stuff can be engaging to kids. Our technology, which most people love, is evolving so fast. Everyone wants the newest gadget, all this stuff that was seen as dorky is really sweet and everyone wants it. Video games for learning have been a boon. Number Munchers and Oregon Trail back in my day were sick, now the tech and what we can do is way way better.
The problems are all intertwined. Adults need to make enough money where they can be with their kids, parent, and help with homework. Crime needs to not be all the kids see or know, minorities can't get unequal treatment from the law. Education needs to be improved and given way more money. Stigmas must be changed. It's a fucking giant disaster that no one seem to legitimately give a shit about since none of these issues are being looked at let alone changed. But, in my opinion it all comes back to the education.
Jesus Christ I need to stop writing novels ><
Just adding a tiny bit of my own thoughts on this. Education is very much a competitive aspect, so improving education for everybody doesn't help with the problems of racial discrimination (intentional or not). Not only that, but it doesn't even really help with poverty (or crime for that matter) if the floor somebody can be paid is at or below the poverty level. Thus, from a policy standpoint, it makes much more sense to approach poverty and crime first.
I would think it would be obvious that people with more valuable skills are less likely to be poor. All research shows that when average human capital goes up, so does productivity, wages, and general well-being. Your own little thoughts are just dead wrong.
The original problem was how to solve the issues of specific areas. If you just give better access to education, those that actually will achieve it, will just move away from that area and problems remain.
As for the whole "education is the way to solve it" idea, much poorer and much less educated populations enjoy lesser crime rates and higher social cohesion. So the education is definitely not necessary and I would even argue not enough.
On August 15 2014 13:29 sc2isnotdying wrote: [quote]
No. My solution to crime is to tackle the root causes. Poverty, education, etc...
Also advocating police reform is not the same as saying "let's allow crime to happen"
The problems with poverty and education are caused by the high rate of crime. Dealing with crime solves poverty and poor education the same as dealing with poverty and poor education would solve crime. They couldn't be any less independent and blindly ignoring that fact is what caused the current mess to begin with.
The problems are all intertwined. A child born into a shit neighborhood is surrounded by poverty. Odds are at least one of his parents are not around. The adult he is with is probably working a dead end minimum wage job, maybe multiple jobs to make ends meet. If that adult is never around working to scrape by a living they're not around to raise that kid properly. The kid is accountable to no one, supervised by no one, with nothing to do. Odds are he's going to the worst school in the area so his education sucks dick, when he gets home there's no one to help with homework, no one to talk to, hang out with, play with, or discipline him. Even if the adult in his life is a great person and trying their absolute hardest they're still stuck in a shit situation.
So the kid's got no one, odds are he'll turn outside the home for friends, companionship, entertainment. All those kids with no supervision are going to make some awful choices, that's how even the best of kids work. But they're surrounded by poverty, education isn't instilled in them, crime is everywhere, those choices are going to be even worse. The kid sees hopelessness and squalor everywhere around him, sees adults working to get no where, maybe minimum wage if you can get it. Crime doesn't seem so bad now, he can make more money, he can work for himself or his friends, he doesn't need to be highly educated academically, maybe he can help lift his family up doing it! Odds are he ends up in jail sooner or later if not dead. Maybe somewhere along the line he ended up having a kid of his own who like countless others, and like himself, now doesn't have a dad, and so the cycle continues.
There's no miracle cure that fixes it all over night. Things have to change fundamentally, thought processes have to be rewired on all sides of the equation to tackle it properly. But, the journey of 1000 miles starts with but a single step. If you ask me starting with education is the first step to take. Get the children, teach them, show them the possibilities, make education important and cool. The young people can effect more change than the adults. It won't work for them all, but nothing ever works for 100% of the population.
If you were born in the shittiest ghetto in the asshole of the country you should have the same shot at a good education as anyone else. Try and stop the hopelessness before it takes root.
You are correct on the complexity of the issue and Sermokala's one way causal link and solution based on it are extremely suspect and unlikely. But your proposed solution - education - is a nice slogan, but making it work is much harder and as far as I can tell nobody actually succeeded at this. There are some marginally successful programs at making education more "cool", but they seem far from reliable. I think much better is to improve policing and governance of the area, but not in a way Sermokala is promoting. It needs to be targeted not at increasing actual crime fighting (although that never hurts), but on fairness and reliability of the police and law. The people in the area need to be shown that the police and government and law is fair and that they will profit by relegating their issues to the system. This is a long term plan and will not have results immediately, but that is the only way I know of to "civilize" such crime ridden areas. Simple "tough on crime" approaches that parts of US are so in love with will fail as they are ideological and dogmatic, not actually result-oriented. It does not actually matter if police are fair and law is too if the population of the area does not perceive them as such, as in such case you cannot expect any improvement. Not mentioning that fairness of the local police force is more than in doubt.
Education done right isn't easy. I think our education system as a whole sucks. When everything is about giving the right answer and regurgitating things to pass the class instead of critical thinking and reasoned discussion there's a problem IMO. School being a one size fits all prospect instead of letting kids learn more about fields they're interested sucks. Hell, the first time I recall thinking something I was learning was legitimately cool was when I started taking Physics, it was an actual mind fuck learning that stuff and I was excited to learn more. If it takes that long to reach a kid there's a problem. But going into the problems of our education system we could be here forever.
Targeting crime first to me probably means more people in prison which doesn't change anything. It's trying to deal with adults while none of the problems underneath are being dealt with. Yeah the whole "Children are our future" thing is cliche, but it's also true. If you don't deal with them then it'll be one more generation gone to waste. Young people have a knack for changing the way society sees things. Things that were one taboo become the way things are and they become more accepted. We had extreme racism and segregation, we got rid of the segregation and kids ended up thinking "hey, those black/white/asian/hispanic/etc kids aren't so bad!" and it became more normal. Then different races hanging out together and interracial relationships became more normal. Kids started having an openly gay friend or family member, homosexuality became more openly accepted. Video games will rot your brain and make you a serial killer, kids have grown up with them and now everyone plays them. Less and less people care about those things that were once huge issues because young people have grown up with them and made them no big deal in society, and that's a great thing.
Education IMO has become "cooler" over time. We went from nothing to Mr. Rogers who was a square, to Bill Nye, to Mythbusters, etc. Educational science programming is letting people see all the cool shit you can do and how the universe works, that stuff can be engaging to kids. Our technology, which most people love, is evolving so fast. Everyone wants the newest gadget, all this stuff that was seen as dorky is really sweet and everyone wants it. Video games for learning have been a boon. Number Munchers and Oregon Trail back in my day were sick, now the tech and what we can do is way way better.
The problems are all intertwined. Adults need to make enough money where they can be with their kids, parent, and help with homework. Crime needs to not be all the kids see or know, minorities can't get unequal treatment from the law. Education needs to be improved and given way more money. Stigmas must be changed. It's a fucking giant disaster that no one seem to legitimately give a shit about since none of these issues are being looked at let alone changed. But, in my opinion it all comes back to the education.
Jesus Christ I need to stop writing novels ><
Just adding a tiny bit of my own thoughts on this. Education is very much a competitive aspect, so improving education for everybody doesn't help with the problems of racial discrimination (intentional or not). Not only that, but it doesn't even really help with poverty (or crime for that matter) if the floor somebody can be paid is at or below the poverty level. Thus, from a policy standpoint, it makes much more sense to approach poverty and crime first.
I would think it would be obvious that people with more valuable skills are less likely to be poor. All research shows that when average human capital goes up, so does productivity, wages, and general well-being. Your own little thoughts are just dead wrong.
You must have missed the last 30 years of tremendous productivity growth with stagnating wages...
Productivity has more components than human capital, and it is not required for wages and productivity to be perfectly correlated for education to be a worthwhile investment. Increasing human capital investment is an incredibly succesful method of reducing poverty, crime, and all sorts of other social costs. People who come from the most disadvantaged backgrounds benefit the most from increased human capital investment due to diminishing returns (meaning additional units of education are more valuable if you have had little). Not only can this be understood intuitively, it has been shown so many times emperically it really isn't worth debating.
You forgot the part where he said education was competitive. If you give a bachelor degree to everyone, it will increase human capital and productivity, but it can have no or almost no impact on income distribution as long as the distinctions between class or groups stays the same (all the rich get a master to distinguish themselves). It has been done in France actually, with the 80% bachelor goal from Mitterand. Our labor productivity is one of the best of the world, but inequality and poverty are rising (despite a social safety net and a huge welfare program). Things are much more complicated in real life than in the "intuitive understanding" of the market.
Exactly.
I'm talking about all this from a policy standpoint though. I think each individual can better their lot in life if they seek more education and that is the advice I would give to any single person. Once you take a step back, however, that no longer is a viable option to better the lot of an entire population.
This goes back to the same issues with unemployment right now. If there are 4+ unemployed people applying for a job per job opening, getting everybody to show up in a suit and tie to an interview with a perfectly edited résumé isn't going to magically bring unemployment down. There are solutions that are viable for individuals that cannot be extrapolated for an entire population, and there are solutions that affect an entire population that will not help many individuals. It's important to recognize where each solution belongs before suggesting it as a blanket fix to any problem you see.
On August 15 2014 13:29 sc2isnotdying wrote: [quote]
No. My solution to crime is to tackle the root causes. Poverty, education, etc...
Also advocating police reform is not the same as saying "let's allow crime to happen"
The problems with poverty and education are caused by the high rate of crime. Dealing with crime solves poverty and poor education the same as dealing with poverty and poor education would solve crime. They couldn't be any less independent and blindly ignoring that fact is what caused the current mess to begin with.
The problems are all intertwined. A child born into a shit neighborhood is surrounded by poverty. Odds are at least one of his parents are not around. The adult he is with is probably working a dead end minimum wage job, maybe multiple jobs to make ends meet. If that adult is never around working to scrape by a living they're not around to raise that kid properly. The kid is accountable to no one, supervised by no one, with nothing to do. Odds are he's going to the worst school in the area so his education sucks dick, when he gets home there's no one to help with homework, no one to talk to, hang out with, play with, or discipline him. Even if the adult in his life is a great person and trying their absolute hardest they're still stuck in a shit situation.
So the kid's got no one, odds are he'll turn outside the home for friends, companionship, entertainment. All those kids with no supervision are going to make some awful choices, that's how even the best of kids work. But they're surrounded by poverty, education isn't instilled in them, crime is everywhere, those choices are going to be even worse. The kid sees hopelessness and squalor everywhere around him, sees adults working to get no where, maybe minimum wage if you can get it. Crime doesn't seem so bad now, he can make more money, he can work for himself or his friends, he doesn't need to be highly educated academically, maybe he can help lift his family up doing it! Odds are he ends up in jail sooner or later if not dead. Maybe somewhere along the line he ended up having a kid of his own who like countless others, and like himself, now doesn't have a dad, and so the cycle continues.
There's no miracle cure that fixes it all over night. Things have to change fundamentally, thought processes have to be rewired on all sides of the equation to tackle it properly. But, the journey of 1000 miles starts with but a single step. If you ask me starting with education is the first step to take. Get the children, teach them, show them the possibilities, make education important and cool. The young people can effect more change than the adults. It won't work for them all, but nothing ever works for 100% of the population.
If you were born in the shittiest ghetto in the asshole of the country you should have the same shot at a good education as anyone else. Try and stop the hopelessness before it takes root.
You are correct on the complexity of the issue and Sermokala's one way causal link and solution based on it are extremely suspect and unlikely. But your proposed solution - education - is a nice slogan, but making it work is much harder and as far as I can tell nobody actually succeeded at this. There are some marginally successful programs at making education more "cool", but they seem far from reliable. I think much better is to improve policing and governance of the area, but not in a way Sermokala is promoting. It needs to be targeted not at increasing actual crime fighting (although that never hurts), but on fairness and reliability of the police and law. The people in the area need to be shown that the police and government and law is fair and that they will profit by relegating their issues to the system. This is a long term plan and will not have results immediately, but that is the only way I know of to "civilize" such crime ridden areas. Simple "tough on crime" approaches that parts of US are so in love with will fail as they are ideological and dogmatic, not actually result-oriented. It does not actually matter if police are fair and law is too if the population of the area does not perceive them as such, as in such case you cannot expect any improvement. Not mentioning that fairness of the local police force is more than in doubt.
Education done right isn't easy. I think our education system as a whole sucks. When everything is about giving the right answer and regurgitating things to pass the class instead of critical thinking and reasoned discussion there's a problem IMO. School being a one size fits all prospect instead of letting kids learn more about fields they're interested sucks. Hell, the first time I recall thinking something I was learning was legitimately cool was when I started taking Physics, it was an actual mind fuck learning that stuff and I was excited to learn more. If it takes that long to reach a kid there's a problem. But going into the problems of our education system we could be here forever.
Targeting crime first to me probably means more people in prison which doesn't change anything. It's trying to deal with adults while none of the problems underneath are being dealt with. Yeah the whole "Children are our future" thing is cliche, but it's also true. If you don't deal with them then it'll be one more generation gone to waste. Young people have a knack for changing the way society sees things. Things that were one taboo become the way things are and they become more accepted. We had extreme racism and segregation, we got rid of the segregation and kids ended up thinking "hey, those black/white/asian/hispanic/etc kids aren't so bad!" and it became more normal. Then different races hanging out together and interracial relationships became more normal. Kids started having an openly gay friend or family member, homosexuality became more openly accepted. Video games will rot your brain and make you a serial killer, kids have grown up with them and now everyone plays them. Less and less people care about those things that were once huge issues because young people have grown up with them and made them no big deal in society, and that's a great thing.
Education IMO has become "cooler" over time. We went from nothing to Mr. Rogers who was a square, to Bill Nye, to Mythbusters, etc. Educational science programming is letting people see all the cool shit you can do and how the universe works, that stuff can be engaging to kids. Our technology, which most people love, is evolving so fast. Everyone wants the newest gadget, all this stuff that was seen as dorky is really sweet and everyone wants it. Video games for learning have been a boon. Number Munchers and Oregon Trail back in my day were sick, now the tech and what we can do is way way better.
The problems are all intertwined. Adults need to make enough money where they can be with their kids, parent, and help with homework. Crime needs to not be all the kids see or know, minorities can't get unequal treatment from the law. Education needs to be improved and given way more money. Stigmas must be changed. It's a fucking giant disaster that no one seem to legitimately give a shit about since none of these issues are being looked at let alone changed. But, in my opinion it all comes back to the education.
Jesus Christ I need to stop writing novels ><
Just adding a tiny bit of my own thoughts on this. Education is very much a competitive aspect, so improving education for everybody doesn't help with the problems of racial discrimination (intentional or not). Not only that, but it doesn't even really help with poverty (or crime for that matter) if the floor somebody can be paid is at or below the poverty level. Thus, from a policy standpoint, it makes much more sense to approach poverty and crime first.
I would think it would be obvious that people with more valuable skills are less likely to be poor. All research shows that when average human capital goes up, so does productivity, wages, and general well-being. Your own little thoughts are just dead wrong.
You must have missed the last 30 years of tremendous productivity growth with stagnating wages...
Productivity has more components than human capital, and it is not required for wages and productivity to be perfectly correlated for education to be a worthwhile investment. Increasing human capital investment is an incredibly succesful method of reducing poverty, crime, and all sorts of other social costs. People who come from the most disadvantaged backgrounds benefit the most from increased human capital investment due to diminishing returns (meaning additional units of education are more valuable if you have had little). Not only can this be understood intuitively, it has been shown so many times emperically it really isn't worth debating.
You forgot the part where he said education was competitive. If you give a bachelor degree to everyone, it will increase human capital and productivity, but it can have no or almost no impact on income distribution as long as the distinctions between class or groups stays the same (all the rich get a master to distinguish themselves). It has been done in France actually, with the 80% bachelor goal from Mitterand. Our labor productivity is one of the best of the world, but inequality and poverty are rising (despite a social safety net and a huge welfare program). Things are much more complicated in real life than in the "intuitive understanding" of the market.
One of the big sources of inequality in the US is the growing difference between those with a college education and those without. I don't think it's far-fetched at all to assume that closing that skills gap would make a difference.
Isn't wages beating inflation more of a pipe dream, I'm not big on macro economics but isn't wages and inflation basically the same thing? I mean an individuals wages can beat inflation by being part of sector or demographic trends, opening of larger markets, and increasing productivity/skills, but society as a whole cannot beat inflation over the long haul. The better way to measure societal progress is lifestyle improvements.
On August 16 2014 02:48 Wolfstan wrote: Isn't wages beating inflation more of a pipe dream, I'm not big on macro economics but isn't wages and inflation basically the same thing? I mean an individuals wages can beat inflation by being part of sector or demographic trends, opening of larger markets, and increasing productivity/skills, but society as a whole cannot beat inflation over the long haul. The better way to measure societal progress is lifestyle improvements.
Inflation is based on supply and demand. Constrained supply or excess demand will cause inflation. You can grow both supply and demand at the same time with a net effect of 0. An increase in worker pay creates and increase in demand. Without a complementary increase in supply, inflation occurs.
Of course, this is using the perfect model. In the imperfect world, you get behavior that creates price and wage stickiness that can also influence inflation a great deal, as well as anchored expectations that create markets of self-fulfilling prophecy.
EPT
