(December 12, 2012 at 11:36 am)A Theist Wrote: On the otherhand mine is the reversal, the complete opposite of what they experienced growing up... I grew up and lived and worked in the poor neighborhoods in the inner city, (until about 12 years ago), the South Side of Columbus, Ohio. My parents were the working poor and that's how our family lived...poor. ...selfish, lazy, and will sacrifice nothing that interferes with their leisure time...I went to racially mixed inner-city public schools, poor whites and poor blacks......and the poor whites who lived in those neighborhoods were no better...and still aren't....they all have a con game and they all have some sad story...and they all think they're owed something without working for it....Opportunities to do better?...pssshhhttt.....not if those opportunities mean giving up their leisure time and their drugs, their whoring about, and their alcohol...So you are basically saying that poverty, not race has more to do with the problems America is facing. I tend to agree with this, though race is a factor and an important issue in and of itself.
So my question is: How can you, in good conscious, not support a leveling of the playing field? How can you justify a system designed to keep poor people poor, through the ineffectual educational systems found in most inner-city environments, through the curtailing of labor rights, through the abject demoralization that the poor of our country face? How do we, as a nation, help those who need it? How do we give people hope that they can do better and achieve their goals? This certainly will not occur by keeping them in their current societal position.
(December 12, 2012 at 11:36 am)A Theist Wrote: Ha ha....try actually growing up and living in the inner-city and see what it's really all about....you liberal whites who lived sheltered lives and who've probably never been to an inner city have no clue what you're talking about...but somehow a college course in social studies makes you an expert...When I was young, my family was poor. I remember coming home to the lights being shut off because my mom had to make a choice between groceries and the electric bill, all because my dad would gamble or drink away the income she brought home. We lived in a crummy, run-down apartment complex on the wrong side of town. After my parents divorced, we moved to the hometown of Wal*Mart where my mom had gotten a good job. We went from being poor to being middle-class to being upper-middle class (mom's a workaholic which meant I was a latch-key kid, which has it's own issues). From what I experienced living with the kids of millionaires (and billionaires), they have no fucking clue how the other half lives. They don't comprehend how non-wealthy people live, because they simply have never seen or experienced anything like it. They can't fathom having to make difficult choices with their money, like choosing between buying shoes for your kids or putting food on the table. It's simply not something they have ever had to consider. Hence why they have a Marie Antoinette attitude of, "Let them eat cake." Educating and exposing them to poverty is the only solution.
For the working poor, busting one's ass doesn't provide the payoffs of earning more, being promoted, of being able to provide something better for their families, so what's the point? Social mobility is at a standstill. It's even starting to run backwards. Why bust your ass if there is no benefit to it?
