From the Arts and Letters Daily - “Some black neighborhoods in Indianapolis have been turned into war zones. How to explain it? Racism? Failed industry? Bad bus service? John McWhorter wonders…” The conventional excuse for the Urban underclass:
In the sixties, the blue-collar jobs that supported previous generations of urban blacks moved out of town, beyond the reach of public transit. Left behind by this ìdeindustrializationî was a core of ill-educated young blacks. With little hope of finding employment, these young people understandably became skeptical of the value of work. With an attitude problem imposed upon them by forces beyond their control, they then frightened off any potential employers who might be willing to set up shop in the inner city, thus completing the vicious circle.Those who hold this view see the self-destructive behavior of todayís black underclass as a natural response to an economically unjust and institutionally racist society. The only humaneóor realisticósolution: a radical restructuring of society.
McWhorter debunks this myth thoroughly.
…history makes it painfully clear that what really did in the cityís poor blacks was not a dearth of jobs but instead a destructive cultural mix: equal measures of the blame game and the formulaic rage that goes along with it, the welfare dependency that a sense of black grievance fostered, and the condescending ìbenevolenceî of white liberals who championed rage as admirable and dependency as justice.
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