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Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

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Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#201

Post by dang »

maxaf wrote: post #3

Or, you know, fathers. Half of success in fatherhood comes from simply showing up. Absentee fathers contribute to the generational erosion of the family fabric that is almost impossible to undo.

There's a legitimate point here but if you introduce it with snarky one-liners like "Or, you know, fathers", you damage both the conversation and the community. Please don't do that. Instead, please follow the site guidelines, which include:

"Don't be snarky."

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#202

Post by _hardwaregeek »

trentnix wrote: post #159
jenkins6g wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but as a black man who grew up fatherless be mindful why black fathers are absent. Many times it's not by choice. There were and still are intentional systems in place to make it difficult for fathers to get jobs, stay within the prison system, and have access to quality education. I urge people commenting to ask their black friends for their insights. I came from an inner city and graduated from CMU. The two…

I struggle to buy this line of thinking that, somehow, the epidemic of single-parent (and no parent) households among blacks (or any ethnic or economic group) is the consequence of discriminatory systems or conspiracy or racism. Such systems of discrimination surely aren't more powerful now than when the government was enforcing Jim Crow, when schools were segregated by force, when the Ku Klux Klan was not only activ…

The infamous Lee Atwater (advisor to Reagan, Bush 1 and chairman of RNC) quote comes to mind:

> Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

I'm not saying the people within the government are more racist than before. But the systems that the government put into place in the 60's through the 80's were specifically designed to be racist in effect without appearing racist in intention.

If you reduce funding in segregated schools, then when desegregation happens, you protest "forced busing", you're effectively keeping black kids in worse schools.

Turns out if you criminalize marijuana and declare a "War on Drugs", you can arrest a whole bunch of young black men, lock them away and give them criminal records. Then you can go on bemoaning the lack of black role models.

Or you can simply neglect to fight redlining, ensuring that it's impossible to get a house in the white neighborhoods.

Or you can institute a policy that schools whose students fail to get good test scores are penalized. I wonder what that'll do.

I could go on, but I think James Baldwin says it best: https://youtu.be/_fZQQ7o16yQ?t=150

To preemptively respond to the argument that these policies were long ago, I like that analogy Obama gave of an ocean liner:

> Sometimes the task of government is to make incremental improvements or try to steer the ocean liner two degrees north or south so that, ten years from now, suddenly we’re in a very different place than we were

Policy is about the next 50-100 years, not the next 10. If you put racist policies in to effect, people will see the effects for generations upon generations.

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#203

Post by ceejayoz »

zdragnar wrote: post #137
wayoutthere wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many, many reasons why this is the case; but they were almost all a product of racist social engineering in the 20th century. And when I say racist, I mean people whose main argument was the genetic inferiority of black people. Progressives consistently caved to their demands under threat of violence. Showing up is hard to do when housing policy explicitly forbids black people from living within a 2 hour co…

> Progressives consistently caved to their demands under threat of violence. Say what? The progressive movement was born of using science to build a better society, including eugenics, abortion and other means of slowing the growing population of blacks. Edit: this was not to say that conservatives were free from prejudice or fault for systemic injustices, only that there were no blameless hands, least of all those i…

Pretending the big-P Progressives of the 1890s-1920s are the same as today's progressives is as silly as claiming black people should love modern Republicans because of Lincoln.

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#204

Post by remarkEon »

Lest anyone be confused by what this is arguing, it seems to say that the kind of discipline offered by mentors is not the same as just "punishing" bad behavior - perhaps colloquially known as "discipline". Having greater discipline to express your feelings, especially negative ones, to a positive direction is good advice. And that is what the benefit of having good male role models for young men is all about.

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#205

Post by giardini »

wayoutthere wrote: post #161
whb07 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of course the engineering of the powerful Jews and Asians so that they now represent the upper tiers of the income distribution. /s Employment and family stats were vastly better pre 1960s government regulations. This isn’t some grand evil plan but the standard outcomes of a “we need more government help”, also known as “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.

I'm going to assume the /s is to be able to spout racist crap and still claim the veneer of irony. "It was just a joke!" is not a valid defense for saying racist things.

Its called "sarcasm".

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#206

Post by trentnix »

bsanr2 wrote: post #196
trentnix wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How do you figure? Is it easier or harder to fight discrimination in, say, employment when, "We don't hire negroes," is stated upfront, compared to when black applicants are denied for "cultural fit" reasons? Everywhere I've worked professionally I've had black coworkers. Everywhere I've hired considered and hired black applicants. I've had black supervisors. I've had black colleagues. I've had black reports. And th…

I don't think you fully answered either of my questions. I appreciate that your limited personal experience is closer to what we would like to see, at least in your telling of it. I still await your further thoughts.

It appears I can't answer your questions to your satisfaction. I live in the deep South. I provided my (not limited) experience and exposure to professional environments as evidence. And that experience, and the application of Occam's razor, tells me your claims that bias and racism is more effective now that it is comparatively invisible is absurd.

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#207

Post by jpster »

fersho311 wrote: post #106

About me: I'm asian, 32 years old. Throughout my childhood, I always thought Black people seemed so cool and funny. They exude confidence and it intimidated my to make friends with them. Now I teach people coding before and after my work as a full time software engineer. A few of my students are black. I had a hard time working with them. Later, as I became friends with them, I realized they are very self conscious a…

I think the previous commenter is on to something re icebreakers. Also, please check out Carol Dweck’s work on Growth Mindset. Her book shares examples of how researchers and teachers successfully primed underprivileged students to stop thinking of intelligence as a fixed trait. Some interesting mindset “hacks” that eventually helped them outperform students w/better resources.

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#208

Post by throwno »

jacquesm wrote: post #134
zchrykng wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The higher crime rates leading to higher incarceration rates is probably a bigger factor than "white racism". Edit: Making this edit to clarify what I'm trying to say, since several responses has tipped me off to how it could be read. Being black doesn't have anything to do with committing more crimes. Higher crime rates is much more a factor of economic and family status. Both of which are negatively impacted by hig…

A couple of notes: (1) even when adjusting for the 'crime rates' the sentencing lengths and the conviction rates for white vs black are way off and (2) the whole war-on-drugs things should be read as a 'war on people of color in all but name'.

If it's a war on people of color I guess it was an inside job:

https://www.wnyc.org/story/312823-black-leaders-once-champio...

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#209

Post by bsanr2 »

trentnix wrote: post #206
bsanr2 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you fully answered either of my questions. I appreciate that your limited personal experience is closer to what we would like to see, at least in your telling of it. I still await your further thoughts.

It appears I can't answer your questions to your satisfaction. I live in the deep South. I provided my (not limited) experience and exposure to professional environments as evidence. And that experience, and the application of Occam's razor, tells me your claims that bias and racism is more effective now that it is comparatively invisible is absurd.

You could answer this question:

>Is it easier or harder to fight discrimination in, say, employment when, "We don't hire negroes," is stated upfront, compared to when black applicants are denied for "cultural fit" reasons?

And expound upon this assertion:

>something else is clearly doing the lion's share of destruction.

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#210

Post by [deleted] »

erichocean wrote: post #139

Africa has "absentee fathers" in the Black community at the same rate as the US today, and likely for the same reason: that's just how children are raised by that culture. High rates of Black "fathers at home" during the Jim Crow era in the US was due to unethical cultural domination of Blacks by whites.

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