No one I knew ever came close to an interaction with police
Really? Not even having a personal stash confiscated? Because this was pretty common experience among my mainly white high school crowd, and happened to me. Not to mention getting ticketed for public drinking -- but I don't know if you are considering that under the same rubric.
I started to read the Patterson article but lost interest pretty quickly. It seemed to me like he was setting up a conventional wisdom which excludes cultural explanations as a sort of "p.c. police" construct.
A similarly-themed editorial from this weekend's WaPo: "Marriage is for White People".
Wait, I'm doing a post on that! Don't comment!
Actually, okay, comment, since my post is really only loosely inspired by the marriage article.
Eh, I should have said having an interaction with the courts. I've been, e.g., rousted off street corners as a teen (hanging out with a bunch of people trying vainly to look dangerous); some friends were actually arrested and spent a night in jail for a turf-related prank in college (stealing leftover sod from a park); but no one I knew ever got a conviction for anything or appeared to be in any danger of getting one.
No one I knew ever came close to an interaction with police, much less incarceration
A college roommate of mine got popped with ~6000 hits of ecstasy in the late '80s. He did get about a year incarceration, but it was at an Air Force base rather than prison, and nearly everybody there was a white-collar criminal (including one of Jim Bakker's associates) and were on their best behavior in order to not to get transferred to real prison.
I've known lots of folks who got charged with marijuana possession, but in NC that mostly is a fine and community service.
A friend of mine got busted for dealing acid during college. Somehow he managed not to get jail time in exchange for getting expelled and never returning to the state in question. After working construction jobs for five years (his dad was the contractor who hired him on), he managed to send himself back to undergrad. Of course, with a drug conviction he would have been ineligible for any federal student loans, so it's a good thing he and his family could pony up the cash.
with a drug conviction he would have been ineligible for any federal student loans
That prohibition is one of the more blatantly insane and self-defeating artifacts of the I'm-tougher-than-you posturing of the Drug War.
If I sounded as if I was claiming that white kids never get arrested or convicted when they commit crimes, obviously that's wrong. The odds of arrest in the first place, and severe treatment in the second place, though, seem to be different.
I'm in agreement, generally, with the Patterson piece. It's possible that jail is the determinitive factor, and I do think he's weakened his argument by not addressing the drug issue more straightforwardly. But there are bad outcomes even for black males who don't go to jail, as I recall. You'd need to explain that away, I'd think.
And, broadly, I think he's right about culture and how we think about it.
DC recently loosened its tough stance on juvenile crime, releasing a lot of kids from the awful Oak Hill facility and advocating relaxed sentencing standards. The result has been a wave of juvenile crime, particularly in my (and Smasher's) neighborhood -- robberies, lots of joyriding, some beatings, and a few murders (although in that last case it's unclear if kids are to blame).
I agree that the way these kids are dealt with is a big problem, but I don't believe it's the justice system that's ruining them. They seem to be pretty well rotten by the time they hit puberty. The poisonous environment extends well beyond the courthouse and juvenile hall -- I really think you'd have to get them out of the city if they're going to be saved. That, plus dumping more money in Head Start-style programs is the best suggestion I can offer.
there are bad outcomes even for black males who don't go to jail, as I recall
This reminds me of our earlier discussions about felon disenfranchisement, in that once again I want to postulate some kind of tipping point: when 1/4 of black men in certain areas have lost the right to vote, how many of the 3/4 who can vote will exercise that right? If Dad can't vote, will the children grow up thinking that voting is a useful and important exercise? Etc.
Maybe we're talking past each other since what I'm postulating as a kind of tipping point would have its effects through "culture," broadly understood.
I haven't lived in the District area as long as tom has but I have lived in my particular neighborhood longer than he has, and I see another factor in the (very real) recent uptick in crime. When I first moved to the area, there was a police car parked on my block all night, every weekend night. And on some weekdays, too, until very late. Now, there isn't.
But there are bad outcomes even for black males who don't go to jail, as I recall. You'd need to explain that away, I'd think.
The obvious explanation is that their accurately perceived risk of incarceration rationally (in the homo economicus sense of 'rationally') shapes many black kids' expectations of what they're going to get out of various fields of endeavor. Academic success looks less rewarding if you discount it by the risk that your college career will be pre-empted by jail time; rap stardom, which is compatible with a certain amount of incarceration, on the other hand, looks more rewarding.
Then there are the effects of other people's perceptions -- if people see you as a member of a class that has a one out of, what is it, six? chance of having been incarcerated, that can't be good any time anyone is assessing you subjectively.
I agree that the way these kids are dealt with is a big problem, but I don't believe it's the justice system that's ruining them. They seem to be pretty well rotten by the time they hit puberty.
Role model effect from incarcerated older boys? And I'm not suggesting that we should just shut down the justice system -- more on efforts to interrupt the cycle without rendering the individual kids who commit crimes unsalvageable.
There is something weird about a cultural explanation for how badly black men do in our society that stipulates that white men share the same culture, but don't share the ill-effects.
I would think the Patterson piece to be horribly wrong if I agreed that it was making this claim. Many poor African American men share the same culture as professional class Caucasian men in only a trivial sense--the realities of incarceration are just one of the many differences between growing up suburban, white and middle class and urban, African American and poor.
I do not think that Patterson is trying to make the point you think he is making. I think he recognizes that differnces in experience create differences in culture. He's just saying (I think) that it is not just the experiences, but also the culture which grows from them, that are a problem. Equally obviously, you can't reasonably expect to address the culture without changing the realities which create it.
14: I'm not sure if that clean of an analysis can hold up. If these kids are approaching career selection in that rational a manner, they'll surely realize that the odds of rap stardom are extremely remote.
But I do agree with the general point that they probably perceive their odds of success within the system to be low, and therefore spend their energy trying to find some way to cheat or short-circuit it.
Role model effect from incarcerated older boys? and The obvious explanation is that their accurately perceived risk of incarceration rationally (in the homo economicus sense of 'rationally') shapes many black kids' expectations
I think this is precisely the sort of culture issue that Patterson is talking about. He might say it is an irrational fear, though I don't think it's necessary to his argument. I think he also shorts the difficulty in changing culture.
If these kids are approaching career selection in that rational a manner, they'll surely realize that the odds of rap stardom are extremely remote.
But the calculation includes the magnitude of the payoff from stardom (very high) versus diligent application in school (moderate). When you knock the moderate returns from education down by the factor that for someone who ends up in jail, the returns may be zero, the less-likely but higher-payoff plans like basketball or music look more attractive. (I'm of course not saying that kids who make this calculation are being sensible -- just that the millieu they live in affects the odds of different possible outcomes such that they are being more sensible than they appear.)
I think this is precisely the sort of culture issue that Patterson is talking about. He might say it is an irrational fear, though I don't think it's necessary to his argument.
If it is, then I think he's wrong to call it a culture issue, if the implication is that it needs to be changed by cultural rather than structural means. If the problem is that kids are rationally responding to a perceived risk of incarceration, the solution isn't to get them to behave irrationally (which is going to be very difficult) it's to change their perceptions of that risk.
I think he also shorts the difficulty in changing culture.
Yeah, I'm not a sociologist but what was he saying about Jim Crow? It would be possible to read his article and not realize that Jim Crow had legal aspects, and that a big part of the change involved throwing out all of those laws. I also doubt that the cultural aspects of Jim Crow are all gone.
I wonder if a big part of the problem with black men being criminalized/arrested/imprisoned for the kinds of things that, when white men do them, get written off as adolescent mistakes and receive lower jail times/probation/etc. isn't in part because white kids break laws in what we might call the "private realm"--they deal drugs out of their homes or cars rather than on streetcorners, their girlfriends get abortions, they steal from their families, etc. Of course I'm thinking of poor blacks v. middle-class whites--I think that poor whites end up with a lot of the same problems poor blacks do, but on a smaller scale b/c poor whites are outnumbered by m-c whites, while poor blacks are, or at least seem to be (a visibility issue having to do with concentration in ghettos?), more numerous than m-c blacks?
This is a hell of a revealing statement:
Not only was living this subculture immensely fulfilling, the boys said, it also brought them a great deal of respect from white youths.
The culture/structural dichotomy is a false one. 'Culture' as used generally before this article, was a nice way of saying 'They have the options, they're not taking them, this isn't our fault.' 'Structure' pointed to any number of legal, social and cultural phenomena that helped construct the problem. The real dichotomy was between (perceived) personal responsibility/social responsibility.
Now, when the author is using the word 'culture' to mean, he insists, no slight on anyone's personal initiative, he seems to be left with largely structural explanations: lack of role models, etc. What he seems to be saying is that the structural solutions we've tried haven't worked very well, but he's calling that 'culture.'
If I were in charge of the state, I would immediately seek the rectification of names.
Also, I think it's wrong to characterize Patterson's position as saying that white youth and black youth share the same culture. The groups may share a love of hip-hop music, but that's not the same thing as sharing the same culture, and I took him to be making the claim that there seems to be no structuralist explanations as to why hip-hop plays a different role in the two youth cultures.
23: Revealing of the ongoing problem of structural racism--whites admire blacks more for playing up to stereotype than for breaking it--and also of the fact that so-called "black culture" doesn't exist in a vacuum, but in dialectical relationship with the larger (white) culture.
Great. Verification by being the embodiment of somebody else's romance. The romance of what my son calls "Wangstas," whose existance and impact on record sales are by now proverbial. Who can drop the style at a moment's notice.
Which is to say, I'm disagreeing with 26. Hip-hop is popular for white and black kids both, but for white kids liking hip-hop, while "cool" among peers, is seen more broadly as "just" a musical preference, and a temporary, adolescent one at that.
Middle-class white kids may find hip-hop cool, but they're going to get way more respect for keeping that liking within certain bounds. And they have alternate paths for cultural respect: think of the steretype of the successful white businessman, the successful white wall-street broker, whatever. There's no black Donald Trump.
25: Roughly what I think, though I believe what he's saying is that by thinking of it as "structural" rather than "cultural," we are obliquely approaching the issue, rather than dealing with it head on. Or at least, I agree with him to the extent that one of the real failings of policy to date is that we keep trying to fix everything for everyone all at once; when we, as should be expected, fail, we've delivered another nail for the coffin to the other side. The other problem is that we don't really care that much as long as the crime rate is low and what crime there is confines itself to "that neighborhood over there," so our attempts are further doomed by our unwillingness to pour money (and wasted money) into them. Cf. Iraq.
Isn't that what I said? Same music, different cultural significance?
You're right about the role models, though. And that shapes a lot of expectations. It's easier to believe that you'll grow up to go to college if everyone you know and every representation of someone who looks like you on TV studies hard and goes to college and does fabulously well.
21: He's also not taking into account the massive changes and huge disruptions that took (and are still taking place): affirmative action, judicial unwillingness to sanction restrictive covenants, busing, effects on our thinking about the necessity of education being public, etc. It's not as if these policies and others were popular across the board, or that they didn't engender responses that were not helpful. Cf. The Administration.
33: Me. Also - There's no black Donald Trump - you clearly never check out Jet in the checkout line.
My blinding hatred for Donald Trump prevents me from seeing what good a black Donald Trump could do.
I think you were saying they don't share a culture. And I'm saying they do: we're all aware of the culture in which "respect" for black men means one thing, and "respect" for white men means something else. Both are about money, power, and women (and, arguably, being an asshole). So young guys are gonna want that. Young white guys are gonna play around with the "gangsta" stereotype b/c it's more available to them at that age than the Trump stereotype, but there are other role models that they can age into. Young black guys are gonna play around with the "gangsta" stereotype for the same reasons young white guys do, but then the role models they age into are gonna be things like "reformed gangsta who now Speaks Truth to the Youth" or "cop." And that's going to affect the broader culture (judges, etc.) as well: a young black man who's in trouble, what is he going to be? If he doesn't die, he'll be an older black man who is still defined by his relationship to crime. OTOH, it's easier to look at a white kid in trouble and say, "he'll grow out of it": the imagined trajectory for him is different.
33: That's exactly my point. I've never watched DT's show, and I hate him too: but I know who he is. Black kids aren't stupid: they know that there's a big difference between being "important in the community" and being "Important" to the broader culture.
a black Donald Trump
Robert Johnson ain't doin' too shabby.
In a general sense, what irritates me about 'the problem is the culture' explanations is that they're useless even if accurate. You can't change a culture through exhortation, you change it through structural factors. Structural factors are where all the levers are.
It's like people talking about how you can't blame the schools for bad educational outcomes, when the problem is poor parenting. Even where that's true, we can't fix the parenting, but we can change the schools. If there is a societal solution, it's going to be a structural one.
Note B's "being an asshole" qualification. Being a tycoon isn't enough. Oprah would work, but wrong gender.
Is Oprah widely reputed to be an asshole?
#38: Johnson is exactly whom I was thinking of. He did, after all, name his team the Bobcats.
Yes but if it is true that it's poor parenting, but we can change the schools, how do we qualify what to expect from doing what we can, even if it might not be the root of the problem?
how do we qualify what to expect from doing what we can
We don't? There's an FDR line I like: (from memory) "Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else, but do something."
Two ideas in the FDR example. Probably the most important is that doing something is valuable in itself, because of the social cohesion, gets everybody pulling, etc., shows the country cares.
Second, though, is that the problem is amenable to some solution from among those you might try, i.e. that one of the things you can try will work.
If I believe the first but not the second, then I'm going to be pretty ambivalent about this, as a number of very good people were about the New Deal.
re: 39
Structural factors are where all the levers are.
I think you are wrong here. I would agree that structural changes often are necessary to address problems, but they often are not sufficient.
I do not have links handy, but I think there is a fair amount of empirical support for the notion that things are not as obviously mechanistic as you posit. For example, if purely structural factors explained everything, how do you account for different rates of success (however defined) for different immigrant groups. In particular how does your purely structural perspective explain different outcomes for recent African immigrants and African-Carribean immigrants vis-a-vis African Americans whose families have been here for generations? Nor, indeed, does it explain the persistent existence of a (tragically small, but real) African-American upper class. The differences are cultural.
This does not in any way say that structural changes are not important (although we likely disagree on what some of those changes might be), I just do not think they would be sufficient.
Second, though, is that the problem is amenable to some solution from among those you might try, i.e. that one of the things you can try will work.
Isn't the truth of this inherent in the fact that 'cultural' problems do, sometimes, get solved? It's not necessarily possible to be sure of what will work before you've tried it, but cultures change, and they change because of changes in the structural environment in which they operate.
In particular how does your purely structural perspective explain different outcomes for recent African immigrants and African-Carribean immigrants vis-a-vis African Americans whose families have been here for generations?
Different perceived (and actual) risk of incarceration for boys from those cultures? That is, when the assumption that one will be involved in the criminal justice system becomes a norm, it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'd be interested to see research on whether the beneficial effect of being a Carribean/African immigrant is persistent across generations -- my guess is that it's not.
LB:
Structural factors are where all the levers are.
Idealist:
I think you are wrong here. ... For example, if purely structural factors explained everything, ... This does not in any way say that structural changes are not important ... I just do not think they would be sufficient.
She's not saying they explain everything, she's saying they're all we can really affect through policy. Certain structural differences can encourage cultural changes, others can impede them. Certainly I think our analysis needs an emphasis on understanding these cultural factors so that they can inform our policy decisions, but nothing you say refutes LB's assertion that "structural factors are where all the levers are."
I'm closer to you than it may appear, but I want room for scepticism.
A good example of a cultural change that has moved some is the prevalence of cigarette smoking. There were the Surgeon General's warnings, and the ever higher sin taxes, and now there is more and more no-smoking space, due in part to the ideology of second-hand-smoke.
The question is how much of the sea change in attitudes is cause and how much is effect.
I'd say that the difference between structural and internal cultural factors is that "we"--white folks who have positions whereby we can affect policy/discourse--only really have any power over the former. We also, of course, have power over *broader* cultural factors, like which stereotypes get put up on tv and so forth. But internal cultural factors--the thinks black people themselves say, think, and do, are largely things that we white members of the chattering classes can't affect directly.
Which is one reason why the usual op-eds about "what's wrong with black culture" are so fucking annoying. Not the present one, which I think avoids that trap (and for all I know, the author is black). But god knows there are a fair number of conservative pundits who have had their five minutes of scandal by declaring that really, there's nothing *we* can do about black poverty/crime/incarceration/dropout rates; it's all the fault of bad black parenting (or whatever).
FWIW, I believe Patterson himself is an Afro-Caribbean immigrant.
B, I think we're just using 'culture' differently. I say a white kid who goes to a private school, listens to hip-hop, and dreams of college isn't treating hip-hop the same as the black kid from the inner city. (Or, pace everyone, the rural kid from the sticks, etc.) That is, there's no reason to expect similar trajectories just because the groups both like hip-hop, and to say they have the 'same culture', or that the author says that, seems misleadinh (as I saw him making only the narrower point that it wasn't that the two groups had nothing in common.)
I agree with everything you've said, so I suspect the problem is just that 'culture' is a sucky word to try to use precisely..
#48:
Can't offer research, although some may be referred to in the link. I never thought the day would come when I would do this, but Malcolm Gladwell wrote very well on this subject in this long New Yorker piece:
http://www.gladwell.com/1996/1996_04_29_a_black.htm
An early piece, very personal to him. The image of African-Americans pretending to be Jamaicans to get jobs is unforgettable
Sarcasm. The cultural explanation may be right, but it's hardly daring these days -- hasn't it been the conventional wisdom since Moynihan?
Not among the academics Patterson is arguing against.
58-- Huh. You know, I think a vague memory of that Gladwell piece is where I was drawing my sense that the Caribbeanness effect wasn't persistent across generations.
Wow, I'm listening to Patterson and Ron Minsy (sp?), one of the editors of Black Men Left Behind argue on WNYC, and Patterson--whose accent is very educated Afro-Caribbean, btw--actually argued that parenting classes should be required at every educational level. That's just a stupid talking point. Everything the guy is saying makes me think that the criticisms of him here are pretty fair.
Here's a link to Radio Open Source project that created the show: link. I don't know for how long the audio stream works.
btw--actually argued that parenting classes should be required at every educational level.
I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean that as the kids progress through different grades, the parents should be required to go to new parenting classes? That doesn't necessarily sound so crazy - did you ever read (IIRC) The Hunger of My Memory?
No, that the kids should take classes in parenting. He even threw out the idea that there should be a parenting section on the SAT.
In some ways, the article that Tia linked to, where the kids want to hear about being mothers and fathers, suggests that I'm wrong to be so dismissive. And you're right that more resources for actual parents--other than social workers and help nurses--could only be a good thing.
a parenting section on the SAT
Oh give me a fucking break.
(The scorn in 64 is in no way directed towards JM, just Patterson.)
63, except for the SAT part, strikes me as more sensible than 62. How can you make parents take parenting classes anyway? Isn't it a free country. Whereas, teaching kids stuff they might want to know doesn't seem like such a bad idea. (Disadvantage: They might get taught the equivalent of "tears and sweat transmit AIDS."*)
As a teacher and non-parent, I compare it to this: Would you rather have instruction on how to teach before you step into a classroom, or would you rather have them make you go to some class while you're trying to juggle your classes and grading and everything else you're supposed to do and you're not that likely to change what you're supposed to be doing? I haven't read that book SCMT cites, though.
*Incidentally, why do abstinence educators teach that? Isn't the moral "So go ahead and fuck! Might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb!"
The SAT thing is just ridiculous but I'm not completely against the idea of parenting classes or whatever you would call a class that teaches kids skills that would help them with healthy relationships later on, like conflict resolution. I just don't see how that's going to happen when, at the same time, a lot of these same kids aren't even allowed to take history and science classes anymore thanks to NCLB.
Just to throw something new in the mix, a lot of times when girls get pregnant in school, they get shifted out of academic courses into parenting courses in order to graduate. Nice, huh?
Do any of you have any guesses as to what a parenting class for kids would look like?
As a teacher and a non-parent, I found my teaching-training class before actually teaching to be vague, hypothetical, and boring.
I'm still thinking about those kids in Tia's linked article. It might depend on how old they are, but can't their desire to know about how to be a good parent be read more as an awareness that their parents are fucking up at the job? That it's not so much that they want to become parents immediately but that they want to alter the parenting situation they're in?
I should have revised that last rhetorical question. Non! Je ne regrette rien!
From link in 67:
Sydney Smith, a vice principal who oversees instruction at the school, said she had heard only minimal grumbling from students excluded from electives. "I've only had about two students come to my office and say: 'What in the world? I'm just taking two courses?' " Ms. Smith said. "So most students are not complaining about being miserable."
Oof. Not spontaneously dropping by vice-principal's office ≠ not complaining, perhaps.
What a depressing piece. It seemed like a lot of the back-and-forth in that article was, "students aren't getting a well-rounded education"; "but it's helping the school pass its tests!" as if the second contradicted the first. Not that it mightn't be a good idea to focus primarily on teaching kids to read, if they can't, but it's not clear that that's driving the policy.
Yeah, I thought it was depressing, too. Schools are supposed to prepare people to participate in our democratic society, right? How can they do that if kids come out of school complete cultural illiterates? There are ways to teach history and science so that you reinforce math and reading concepts. I'm sure it's much harder to revamp the curriculum to stress the fundamentals on the test throughout all subject matters than it is just to send the kids who can't pass the tests to extra reading and math classes and, given their limited resources, it's tempting just to take the easy way out. It's a real disservice to those kids and to society, though.
On the principle that you can't be too cynical enough around these people, maybe Margaret Spellings won't be absolutely broken-hearted if the kids come out trained to be good unskilled workers but not informed participants in our democratic society.
Because! If kids don't learn history or civics, they'll believe whatever Fox News tells them is in the Constitution and they'll think Intelligent Design makes perfect sense.
Can I just say that I'm awesome? I scooped the WaPo.
OK. Maybe not. I see it was actually published on Saturday. But it didn't show up in my RSS reader until after I wrote 72.
How can you make parents take parenting classes anyway? Isn't it a free country.
In the UK (which is arguably both less free and more politically pleasant than the US), there are parenting classes for some parents of kids who get into frequent trouble with the law. If I understand the situation correctly, the classes (which are fairly new, with this still being a very small programme) are mandated by the government, but are run by specialist agencies. I have a friend who works at a charity specialising in kids who are in trouble with the law, and his charity runs parenting courses for some of their parents. His research shows that 90% of the parents who take the courses think they are a great idea - and this figure includes parents who are taking the course against their will.
As for parenting courses for kids, I'd tend to go with the earlier commenter who said that the important thing is to keep trying things. Why not do pilot programmes within DC or some other major cities, track them, and see if they make any difference? At the very least, it might make teen mums slightly less clueless about the health and behaviour of their infants.
Some interesting letters in the Times this morning, in response to 67.
It's early, so at first, I thought the heading on the link in 78 -- "Reading, Rehashing, 'Rithmetic (6 Letters) -- was some kind of cryptic crossword clue.
You know, one way to do parenting classes is to have community centers that have free baby playtimes scheduled: the parents come in with the babies, and someone can get an informal discussion going on parenting methods and so on. Of course, this would require something like actual investment in a public sphere.