Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
It'd be hard for me to imagine what I'd do if were a talented black man, but if I try and imagine myself having two options - go to Goldman for a job (that I suspect may not be entirely due to my talents, but offers good pay and an opportunity to advance if I work really hard) or try to make a local business in the community, while dealing with local drug lords, crime, poor population, and just in general possibility of being a victim of random drive-by shooting - I must say I'd be severely tempted to go to Goldman. It's probably not good "for the community", but I have only one life, and I do not plan to be a martyr. Would it be fair and realistic to expect significant number of actual talented black men to be martyrs "for the community"? I mean, if they do, all power to them, but can we expect that, or complain fairly if that doesn't happen?
Jews living in those communities had a very rich and colorful culture, but usually were dirt poor and didn't have any prospect of better lives, and felt pretty bad and also pretty hopeless about it (notice any similarities here?). What changed though was the parallel movements of Haskalah and Zionism. Basically no Jews now live that way anymore. Some went on to become secular Jews and assimilate, to certain measure (much less easy of an option for a black person, for obvious reasons), some went away to found Israel, some went to America. I'm not sure which lessons that teaches us with regard to black people - their situation is different in many aspects.
I think the complaint, such as it is, isn't directed primarily at Black men who take advantage of AA, it is at white institutions for instituting AA. The soft version is sociological, oh well this is gonna happen what can you expect with these incentives. The hard version is conspiratorial: The Man saw Martin and Malcolm and the Panthers and got scared of a Black state like Hoffneister dreams of; and their solution for preventing it was affirmative action.
And no Jews live like that primarily because most of them were murdered, and the rest left. I agree that the ghetto was a site of hopelessness, but constraint creates conditions for community. I'm not arguing in favor of discrimination substantively, I'm offering a unique argument for why the Black community suffers these kinds of problems. And one reason is that the permeable barrier of discrimination draws off its leaders, undermines its families, accentuates dysfunction and steals off its best.
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I saw the burnout rate in those really idealistic black guys who did Teach For America after college rather than jump straight into a good paying gig. That program ate those guys up and spat them out: just threw these upper-middle class black guys into the worst ghetto schools imaginable because they can handle it, right? Don't think any of them had even dealt with being called oreos before.
I would 100% take the "as a queer black man, I bestow the title of Anti-Racist on this company" sinecure.
I've read about half-dozen of articles to the tune of "I was a starry-eyed young teacher bubbling with enthusiasm to help under-privileged children and fix the system, now I am a burned-out cynic with depression and I didn't fix anything and don't think it's possible". They certainly feel like there's a pattern.
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