Gun Policy Research

[Dill]

(06-22-2017, 09:27 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Are you really going to take the angle of "they are oppressed"?  C'mon man, the laws and policies in today's society give Black Men more preference in opportunity than most Whites.  The truth is that they choose to live the street life, hanging on to that "oppressed" moniker.  For example, my wife was a public school teacher, in predominately Black schools for 12 years.  She can attest to the times she heard a mother tell her "Why does my child need to learn this stuff?  He/She is going to make their living on the street.".  It's no wonder that she made the decision to take her skills to Child Protective Services, as now she is actually making bad parents accountable for their actions.

Back to my point, if those gang members wanted to be part of society, they could.  There are measures in place to guarantee their opportunity to gain education, land jobs, be productive citizens.  As ugly as it sounds, living on the street, making money from crime is just easier than working hard to be successful.

I doubt very much that living on the street is just easier than working to be successful.

In contrast to Bels, I am going to accept your Wife's anecdote about the mother who does not value education. Likely that mother's mother did not value it either. So a child growing up in that environment will make choices that replicate her role model's. That is how people "choose" the street life. Neighborhood and parents have a great deal to do with how a child turns out. Further, there is a strong correlation between literacy and incarceration which holds for people of all races. If black Americans are disproportionately in neighborhoods with bad schools, that alone could increase the incarceration rate.

I don't think "laws and policies" today give black men more preference. Some policies have been enacted to level the playing field after decades of slavery and segregation. But they don't prevent police from negatively profiling black pedestrians and motorists, nor do they prevent judges from sentencing them differently or prosecutors from excluding blacks from jury duty.

That leads to another issue. The high incarceration rates of blacks increases the population of blacks who cannot be hired for most jobs when they get out of prison.  That is in no one's interest.

"White culture" tends to be Calvinistic. It doesn't look for social/environmental causes of social problems. It views social problems as the result of bad individual choices.  Looking for data and considering history and class situation to understand causes is just making excuses.
Everyone can think of examples of like Ben Carson, who grew up in government housing living on food stamps and attending public school but managed to make it "without any help from government." A few such anecdotes kill rather than raise curiosity about the millions who don't "make it."