Newsgroups: alt.politics.correct
Subject: Re: The PC Issue
From: mzener@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Date: 30 Jul 92 15:16:23 EDT
Organization: Wesleyan University

hasn@midway.uchicago.edu (Sheheryar Hasnain) writes:

> I reply:
> Actually I do pretty well after having gotten my graduate and undergrad 
> education without paying a penny.  You may attribute it to this "great"
> nation (great for whom?) but the fact that I came from an extremely well to
> do family (and so had the benefits of a really recognized high school
> education _ have you heard of Karachi Grammar School?)  was key.

   Wealthy parents, the best education money can buy, and a feeling of
slef-importance for getting scholarshipped.  This'll be relevant later on...

>  In any case
> the "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps (a la Clarence Thomas)" 
> argument is totally crap.

   "Difficult" is not the same thing as "impossible."  The important question
is this:  Why is making it big on your own merits so difficult when you are a
poor black?  Some important considerations to this arguement must be why rich
and middle-class blacks seem to get along just fine and why immigrants are able
to carve out a living arriving with only themselves and a few dollars.

>  Go into some ghettos (you'll probably stick out
> as an elite and probably get mugged!) and think how much of this misery was
> brought upon by these wretched and how much the system is responsible
> for.  Sincerely.

   Very well.  Let's consider the responsibility of "The System" in producing
these ghettos.  First of all, what is meant by "the System?"  In most people's
minds, I have found, "the System" is a nefarious collaboration of big
businesses, the federal government, the media, and rich white patriarchs.  To
suppose that somehow these entities are able to collaborate together to keep
young balcks down is a little simplistic.  Once people realize this they create
the demon of "institutionalized racism," which is advanced as having the same
effects as a conspiracy without needing a conspiracy.  It claims that everyone
was racist for so long that we've been trained to view the world in racist
terms and act accordingly;  it doesn't matter how many affirmative action laws
we pass or how many minorities acheive positions of power, racsim is ingrained
in some ancestral memory inside the heads of rich white men.
   I shall, for entertainment's sake, agree with the supposition that big
business, the federal Government, the media, and rich white patriarchs are
keeping young black men down.  The business in question is the drug trade.  The
Federal construction is the current welfare system;  the media _does_ play a
role, it encourages confrontationalism instead of reasoning;  and the white
patriarchs in question are the Ted Kennedys, the people who have been always
wealthy, and therefore are totally ignorant of the way most people behave,
totally ignorant of their wants and needs.
   Drugs:  They provide glamour, instant money, big thrills, and promises of
power.  Instead it spawns crippling addiction and street warfare, hindering
people who would have succeeded on their own by killing them, seducing them, or
making their life so hazardous that their energies are not focused on bettering
their circumstance but simply staying alive.
   The current welfare system:  The simplistic arguement works best.  If you
provide an economic incentive to be unemployed, there will be more unemployed. 
If you create a fund that will provide a can of seeds per week to every bord
that asks, no matter what, you breed more birds;  if you automatically provide
money and food stamps for every child bornout of wedlock but into poverty, you
get more poor single-parented children.  This seems cruel but it is true.  A
welfare reform is needed that provides incentives to learn skills and find
jobs, that will support someone's first Big Mistake (the aforementioned child),
but requires that they learn from that mistake by _not_ supporting their
second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth pregnacies (yes, of course we should pay
for children that already were born under the old system, just not _new_ second
children).  There won't be babies thrown out of windows or tossed into the
garbage -- or should I say" no _more_," as it happens now in hardly
insignificant numbers.  There will be fewer poor children BORN, which will
enable those families to better provide for themselves and their offspring.
   Media:  There is no question that they encourage confrontationalism.  Angry
shouts attract viewers, quiet, long, thoughtful debate drives them away.  Brief
flashes of half a story are more frequent than that story's entirety.
   Rich patriarchs:  Marxists such as Mr. Hasnain are found in two places: the
homes of the extremely poor and the homes of the extremely rich.  The
destitute have nothing to lose, and the priveledged are totally removed from
the concept of losing.  There is no middle-class family I know of that both
wants the government to levy more taxes and is living from paycheck to
paycheck.  The rich man doesn't have to woory about starving if he loses his
job because he is well-educated enough and has saved enough to get by for a
while before getting another job.  He enjoys the benefits of living in a
non-Marxist society and is thus free to feel the guilt that drives him to
embrace the Marxist philosophies.  He has the power to get a few of his guilt-
driven laws through -- like the current welfare system -- not realizing the
harm these things actually do.
 
> The US may be good to me and you but we have already gotten
> the initial push.  We need to strive so that others get that first push.

   We got that push becuase when our ancestors came over from another country,
they had to either work very hard or starve.  They worked, and instilled in
their children the value of work.  With that work ethic and with the bettered
circumstance, the children too could succeed, and thus was the cycle started. 
We _can't_ give the push to someone else, they must make it on their own or it
is not lasting.  We must _let_ them make that push by not giving them a way
out;  our policy must be to help those who try to help themsleves.

Max Zener