For centuries, black folks were the victims of systematic racism that at first enslaved them and then segregated them. Despite isolated success stories, this prevented the vast majority of black folks from bettering their station in life and accumulating wealth and influence that could have been passed on to the next generation. In essence, each generation of black folks had to start from zero. The impact still echoes today.I live in Upper St Clair. Your community seems a lot like mine. You can say the same about Fox Chapel.The Civil Rights Act was signed into law in 1964. So we are now into our third generation since then. Things have gotten much better since then. You listed two major reasons why things are tough for inner city communities. Lack of the nuclear family and bad schools. Sometimes you have to look within to improve instead of pointing fingers. Maybe Elmo should pick up a book from Thomas Sowell to get a different POV.
I have no doubt that racism is still a factor as to why black economic, health, and educational outcomes lag. However, I do not believe systematic racism is the primary driver of these lagging outcomes TODAY. The key to fixing these outcomes is to create a culture that:
-prioritizes education
-emphasizes the importance of stable family life
Asian-american culture prioritizes to the point of fetishizing these 2 things... and they are killing it in this country. If you want to say that historic systematic racism is the reason schools in black neighborhoods are failing and is the reason why most black kids are born to single mothers, I won't argue. But nobody has a time machine to fix that. Eliminating all racism wouldn't solve those culture issues even if it were possible.
Anyway, we were talking about why Pittsburgh is so racist that middle-class black folks don't have to all live in the same neighborhood... Never accept an anecdote as evidence and never ever believe anything that you read on a hooker board, but I live in possibly the most affluent suburban neighborhood in Allegheny County and, starting at the corner house, my neighbors on my side of the street are:
white couple (old money), interracial couple (new money), white couple (new money), white couple (old money), interracial couple (new money), white couple (old money), asian couple (new money), black couple (new money), white couple (new money).
My street is definitely not middle-class, but my street is typical of my particular suburb and it is a mix of old (inherited) and new (earned) money. Is that segregation? Doesn't look like it to me. Originally Posted by bkfantasy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell