Posted by
The Proud Liberal on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 10:08:01 AM
Let's dispense immediately with the idea that black Africans were responsible for being taken into slavery because of their poor values. I don't think slavers would take the time to sort potential slaves based on their values.
And let's fast forward a bit. It seems reasonable to assume that blacks were not personally responsible for the slave system in the United States, nor for Jim Crow and the discrimination in the U.S. right up on through the 1960s, when there were laws passed in education, voting and civil rights.
The two questions are: when did blacks become responsible for their poverty because of their poor values, typically unmarried teen age girls having babies; and did that happen overnight? Dennis Prager inexhaustively identifies black poverty with those particular values, or lack thereof.
What one must do with any conservative assertion is to ask: What is your base year? The usual conservative attitude is that at some point, let's say 1998 during the Clinton presidency,
obstacles to blacks disappeared and any black had as much opportunity as any white to be successful. Thus, black poverty was not the result, in that base year and continuing through to day, of social structure barriers but could be confidently attributed to the culture of values possessed by poor blacks.
Other questions are tempting, such as: were blacks always personally irresponsible but was this overshadowed by social barriers and when the barriers were lifted the personal irresponsibility remained and became visible for all to see?