USA: Disasters: Getting past Katrina with Juan Williams is getting a realistic take on black poverty
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A stunning article, "Getting Past Katrina," appeared on New York Times's Op-Ed page (Sep1,2k6). The author: Juan Williams, a Black journalist, a Democrat, and nowadays book author headed toward the top of the best-sellers list. Here "journalist" means he's a news analyst and commentator 21 years at Washington Post, presently on National Public Radio, and a regular panel member on a h+ly charged news-debate program and other programs on Fox News Channel TV. Juan Williams is always worth hearing, viewing, and reading. Here "book author" refers to his just-out Enough, subtitled The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America — and What We Can Do About It.
In "Getting Past Katrina," Williams distilled the uniqueness of event which was focussed on the breaking of the levees, the flooding of the city of New Orleans, and the human, social, and cultural cost of the natural disaster.
The shock of Hurricane Katrina awoke many of us to the reality that poverty persists, especially among African-Americans. It persists even after the go-go 1990’s, the welfare-to-work reform of the Clinton years and the passage of earned-income tax credits to put more money in the pockets of the working poor.I must say that for me personally the "racial and political arguments" came into disgustingly pure expression when rapper Kanye West h+jacked some damn TV-star presentation to make Prez Bush out a racist. I retorted that West was a racist for that very abuse we viewers all witnessed.
In fact, poverty in the United States has been on the rise since the start of the new century. The number of Americans in poverty is now 12.6 percent overall, essentially holding steady after having risen for four years. The number of the nation’s children in poverty — also climbing until last year — is even more alarming, at close to 18 percent. But even before the great storm, New Orleans was a city of concentrated poverty: nearly a quarter of the population, about double the national average. And the poverty rate among New Orleans blacks (nearly 70 percent of the city’s population) was a sky-high 35 percent.
For a brief time our guilt and shame seemed to put America on the political edge of a new try at something like a 1960’s-era Great Society program. But that newfound energy was squandered amid racial and political arguments.
But Williams rises above that to make generalized arguments by the Leftists, many of them powerful in his own political party, who play the Blame Game so expertly. He shows how time and again their huff-and-puff series of arguments were dismantled as desperate overgeneralizations, and dismantled one by one. Poor whites as much as poor blacks were flood victims--dieing, losing homes, losing livelihoods or welfare-cheque addresses, made refugees. And the R+t?
The right, meanwhile, depicted the poor — that is to say the black poor, because TV cameras focused on the big city — as looters, rapists and criminals. But when those claims turned out not to be true, there was no return to the core issue of how to help the poor escape poverty.Nevertheless, says Williams with a great big "But" to what he's presented, "it’s clear that even with a strong racial consciousness, black people believe that the poor bear some responsibility for their troubles." Then he goes on in his own voice to summarize the common-knowledge antidote to poverty:
A year later, the best the national political class can do with American poverty is to renew stalemated conversations about increasing the minimum wage. The will to create innovative programs is missing because of a national consensus few people dare to say out loud: Americans believe that the poor can help themselves.
There is good reason for a majority of Americans to hold that belief. For anyone who wants to get out of poverty, the prescription is clear.Disasters > New Orleans
Finish high school, at least. Wait until your 20’s before marrying, and wait until you’re married before having children. Once you’re in the work force, stay in: take any job, because building on the experience will prepare you for a better job. Any American who follows that prescription will be at almost no risk of falling into extreme poverty. Statistics show it.Yes, there's almost a public-policy program here, or planks in a platform for any political party, movement, office-holder at the appropriate levels, voter, or political editorialist.
1.) Programs to keep kids in school (thru h+ school, but making sure h+er ed is accessible too). However, the danger here is that the politics of this plank in the platform will devolve into the seductions of educational institutions and teachers organizations to n-o-t give an education for future adult responsiblity in work, income-generation, householding, and family-raising--but only to keep bored and learning-hostile youth "in school." Sorry, this ain't that for what Williams is calling.
2.) Programs to help poor youth control their sexual appurtenances and cavities, and thus their procreative and reproductive results. No babies! Therefore, no or at least less sex until years later. Williams uses "marry" as a euphemism for this, but that will not do because if kids have babies, they indeed should marry and stay together as parents until each of their kids reach the age of 20. How this would be poitically-programmed I don't pretend to know, except that there's an obvious place for supporting the teaching of abstinence. But where? In school? In community-based initiatives, or alternatively in faith-based initiatives? In churches? Certainly not in Hollywood-driven moral climates!
3.) When your schooling and/or h+er ed is complete or paused, get a job. Stick with it unless you go back to school. School or work. Start at the h+est level you can worm your way into, but get into something until something better or h+er-paying is obtainable. What is politically-programmable here?
4.) There may be a fundamental fallacy in expecting that political programs can accomplish the basics in any of these three categories. The emphasis has to be on family, church, and school instilling these values into kids in the normal course of the general activities of these three spheres.
5.) These four considerations extrapolated from Williams require an honest fifth. Some kids, teens, young adults, adults are physically, medically, or severe-emotionally unable to address one or more of the earlier requirements. Being able-bodied, emotionally-able, and cognitively-endowed enuff to study or work is one thing; being disabled is another. There's a difference between welfare and disablity.
Addictions are something else again, because an addict (usually) makes oneself addicted--even tho the search for "escapes" from one's life is catered-to by advertizing, peer pressure, and all sorts of other pressures. Addictions become disablities in almost too many cases.
One thing about Katrina, New Orleans, and the city's poor of all races: there were a huge number of alcoholics and drug addicts in the city. The mystique of musicians in the city was part of a mystique of a drug-out culture that allegedly produced great musicians. While there was kernel of truth to the booze/sex/drug&music culture of New Orleans, it was ironically concatenated that a population with an unusually h+ distribution of such souls housed itself below sea level. It would be interesting to know what the comparative distribution of AIDS/HIV is in New Orleans for the general population parallel to that of other cities, for the black and creole populations, for the musician, entertainers, and bar-keepers, etc. Of course, Williams doesn't get into the nitty-gritties of the New Orleans situation and the asbsurdity of rebuliding the city with money that could go into a better plan than restocking poor peop;le below sea level in a hurricane-prone environment. But Williams does get the gist of what's special to both the black experience of poverty and the New Orleans urban uniqueness.
The crisis in New Orleans has now been reduced to a matter of government financing for rebuilding homes while reviving the business community. But the real rebuilding project on the Gulf Coast requires bringing new energy to confronting the poverty of spirit. Because that’s what was tearing down the city, long before Hurricane Katrina.Few in America have the fortitude to speak the truth to city of New Orleans and the masses of poor of all races spaced out below the airborne warnings of incoming rain and wind.
-- Politicarp
Juan Williams'NPR Katrina/NewOrleans coverage:
President Visits New Orleans for Katrina Anniversary (Aug28,2k6)
Update on Gulf Coast Rebuilding (Jun29,2k6)
Hurricane Katrina's Political Perfect Storm (Feb10,2k6)
New Orleans: Impressions of a Devastated City (Jan23,2k6)
Katrina Disaster Tour, Race for DeLay's Post (Jan13,2k6)
Bush vs. the Hurricanes (Sep23,2k5)
Black Caucus, Nagin's Leadership (Sep22,2k5)
Hurricane Katrina's Political Fallout (Sep20,2k5)
Examining Race, Class and Katrina (Sep16,2k5)
Bush's Katrina Speech (Sep16,2k5)
Roberts Nomination, Katrina Blame (Sep15,2k5)
Katrina's Perfect Storm (Sep9,2k5)
Katrina's Political Fallout (Sep8,2k5)
A Full List of Juan Williams' NPR Radio Journalism (439 articles)
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