I Love Black Conservatives Part 1

Clarence Thomas

Federal Income Taxes Charts

The rich don't pay enough in taxes?

YUCK

Bill and Hillary kissing

Sociology 102 Assignment #2

Assignment: How would I respond to that bitch's statement on the inner-city poor using information from assigned readings and discussing crime and cultural theories. (And be sure to sound liberal because this is a sociology class)

"Finished" and Printed by 8:01 A.M.

Woman: "I’ve read some Anderson. I think that if that’s the way those people want to live, then we should just let them alone. I mean, it’s their choice."

William: Slow down. I need you to define "those people," tell me how it is they live, and then give your reasons for why we should leave them alone.

Woman: The niggardly conditions of impoverished inner-cities are the inevitable result of the self-destructive behaviors practiced by its inhabitants. Individuals who graduate from high school, hold steady employment, and marry without first having children are virtually guaranteed a middle-class life. In the inner-cities, people seem almost oblivious to these realities. Individuals place little value on education, choose street life and crime over legitimate occupations, and the single-parent household has become the norm.

Public education offers universal access to the first condition. Census Bureau surveys suggest the number of involuntarily unemployed is small, and no one has a child without choosing to have sex. Students of inner-city schools are far more likely to drop out, and while young black males are far less likely to be employed than their Hispanic and white counterparts, one third of them will spend time in prison at some point in life. Two-thirds of black children are born out of wedlock. These are choices with predictable outcomes which only the individual can make, and until urban communities’ behavior changes, there’s nothing we can do.

William: Everyone agrees that behavior needs to change, but people don’t act in a vacuum. Decisions are made within a context of constraints and opportunities, and inner-city residents encounter obstacles that those in the middle-class do not. Moreover, the paucity of material and non-material resources available to individuals living in areas of concentrated poverty constricts the role of agency in determining outcomes. As Anderson points out, this means "decent" families that promote mainstream values suffer for reasons they have no ability to control (Anderson, 267). We seem to agree on some of the most important problems: schools, jobs, violent crime, and family deterioration. However, I believe we should focus on the culture of poverty instead of the faults of the individual. The failure to appreciate the central role of ghetto culture in shaping these choices, leads us to stereotype all urban families as degenerate and blinds us to possibilities for improvement.

Woman: It sounds like you’re saying we shouldn’t place any responsibility on the individual. How does this differ from shifting blame away from criminals and absent fathers and placing it on abstract forces beyond anyone’s control? Perhaps I overgeneralized by implying all inner-city residents placed themselves in that position, but I don’t think poverty or the criminal behavior of others determines one’s outcome. Why do you think these external cultural conditions are so important, how do you see their impact?

William: A look into violent crime’s importance in poor urban neighborhoods highlights the host of ways that inner-city residents are harmed by the rippling cultural effects beyond their control. Due to proximity, the most frequent victims of criminal acts are other poor people living in the ghetto. This threat increases incentives not to appear vulnerable and to convey an aura of toughness. As Elijah Anderson describes, this often means familiarizing oneself with the "code of the street" and adopting to its modes of behavior. Respect becomes key. The indirect consequences of crime, on the other hand, can often be more devastating.

Finding a job is an important way of distancing onself from the influences of street life; however, the concentration of violence deters businesses from entering their neighborhoods and thus makes it even harder to escape. Gang presences near inner-city schools result in an unruly and ineffective learning environment. As a result, decent inner-city kids are less likely to gain the skills and forms of human capital that are necessary for a life in the middle-class.

As crime grows, those who are capable leave. This further increases the concentration of poverty and bad role-models. Because cultural capital is transformed through life’s experiences and observations, poor youths are now less likely to acquire resources that apply away from the context of street life. The complexity of the causes and effects of crime on the well-being of inner-city persons demonstrates how cultural changes often victimize decent people unrelated to deviance in the form of losses in capital and opportunities to make the best choices. It also underscores the importance of addressing problems of the ghetto poor in a variety of what might seem to be unrelated areas.

Woman: If these problems are so interrelated, how can we realistically hope to fix them? What role can schools play in ending the present cycle?

William: Probably not much right now. The creation of voucher programs carry the potential to reverse this, and parents of children caught in failing schools overwhelmingly support it. How would this work? Students would receive vouchers equivalent to per-student costs and have the ability to use them at the school of their choice. The idea is that this would increase competitiveness by forcing bad schools to become more accountable and by rewarding successful schools. Perhaps of equal importance, a voucher program could enable students to escape the influences of "street" values and experience middle-class norms. They would be around people whom they could gain cultural capital from and have opportunities to build healthier networks, groups, and support systems through extracurricular activities such as sports. However, the success of such a program might be contingent on how far along the student was in his education. The key is to start as early as possible because this is when children are first beginning to form habits and skills. Adolescent voucher recipients who come from miserable inner-city schools find they don’t have the skills to cope with increased academic expectations.

Another way to fight violence and the culture of poverty is by making it less concentrated. Government public housing programs have, in the past, probably exacerbated this problem. However, a "mixed income" project currently underway in Atlanta that limits occupants receiving public assistance to 40% of all residents has seen a 90% reduction in crime and a considerable increase in employment.

Unfortunately, no reform is likely to yield radical changes overnight. It takes time to reverse decade long trends. Cultural norms and capital accumulation develop cross-generationally. However, seeing the problem of concentrated poverty as essentially one of culture will begin to help us along the right path.

Sociology 102 Assignment #1

The growing gap between high and low income earners coupled with stagnant to increasing rates of poverty reflect trends which many find troubling, if not inconsistent with America’s egalitarian principles. How can a nation that prides itself on the opportunities it offers for upward social mobility produce such realities, and what approach must it adopt to change them?

On this first question, pundits from across the political spectrum seem to agree on several main causes: globalization, a reduction in demand for unskilled labor, "skill biased" advances in technology, a falling real minimum wage, and a decline in unionization. Answers to the second question, on the other hand, are less apparent and often hotly debated. In light of the rising premium placed on highly skilled workers, some believe providing all citizens access to a college education could present a solution; however, this approach contains three major flaws: it miscalculates costs and benefits, neglects behavior problems associated with low income, and it overstates the extent of the problem.

One set of weaknesses in the "universal access" proposal arises in its excessive optimism towards low income students’ larger enrollment and conversely, in its insouciance to the possible negative side-effects. For example, although Germany offers its citizens the option of a free college education, a larger proportion of the poor receive higher education in America which has tuition fees. Extensive financial aid provisions make this possible so that, on average, students from median income families pay only 34% of prices charged by selective colleges (Economist, 9). Secondly, the observation that higher levels of education correspond to greater earning power can be misleading. According to the "skill bias" hypothesis, workers who receive the same amounts of education nevertheless experience disparate wages due to differences in the skills they possess (Ferguson, 72). This phenomenon might occur either as a result of technological changes that make some skills more valuable than others or simply because students’ skill level varies depending on the quality of the school they attended (Thernstrom, 15).

The failure to consider behavioral choices relating to education, family structure, and employment status constitute another major shortcoming of the "universal access" approach to fighting poverty. According to 2001 Census Bureau data, the household poverty rate of 12% drops to a mere 1% when the primary wage earner had completed high school, worked full-time, and was married with less than two children (Sawhill, 83). To some extent, employment opportunities lay outside the individual’s control. On the other hand, evidence suggests a relative small number of involuntarily unemployed. 1999 Census Bureau interviews of the jobless found that only 6% of women and 12% of men could not find employment. Additionally, when Wisconsin changed its welfare requirements to include work, its recipients declined by 76% (Sawhill, 86). Out of wedlock births represent another instance of self-detrimental behavior. Among those in the lowest income bracket, this rate his nearly tripled since 1960, whereas in the highest quintile they have remained fairly constant. 35% of such households fall below the poverty line, and on average, children growing up in female-headed households do worse in school, and have greater likelihoods of going to prison and living in poverty as adults. Thus, while structural barriers deserve attention, any solution to poverty must take into account some unpleasant but consequential agency based decisions.

Random Writings

The rise of the global economic order has brought with it a number of significant changes. The demand for unskilled labor in the manufacturing sector has declined precipitously, causing many of those affected to voice their frustrations. On the other hand, this decrease has been counteracted by the sharp increase in demand for a highly skilled labor force. Naturally, those now prospering from changes in the economy are less vociferous than the afflicted, and the public often tends to get a one-sided view of the effects of globalization.

Despite my conviction that through the "creative destruction" inherent in the free-market capitalist system society as a whole benefits, my empathy for the necessary plight of the unskilled labor force justifies a discussion of what some have put forth as methods to alleviate this suffering. One of these ideas centers around the creation of a universal entitlement to a college education. This suggestion originates from the recognition that education is essential to success in the new economy, and as such, income should not be a barrier to higher education. Reasons for opposing this plan are abundant, and we can start by looking at the European model.

In most European countries, access to a free or highly subsidized college education is already treated as an entitlement. Universities, which for all practical reasons are totally funded by the state, are compelled to educate large numbers of students on the cheap. In making this deal with the state, they have sacrificed much of their autonomy over selecting students and faculty. As a result, the quality of education being offered has suffered and universities find themselves competing amongst other interests for funding by the government which they have become dependents of.