Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
And therefore, we should take away firearms from White people so they don’t kill themselves; and take away firearms from Black people so they don’t kill each other. Solving two problems with one solution – brilliant!
Joe Doakes
How much easier would life be if we just let government do our thinking for us?
I noticed the headline in the St Paul paper print edition. Notice how the emphasis is on the gun (a lifeless item) and the gun victim. “Blacks more likely to be killed by guns”. Not on the criminal. It should read “Blacks more likely to use guns to kill people”.
The solution isn’t to ban the item (treating the symptom), but to find out why there is more violence there.
I see a correlation here that involves the public schools.
White kids, as a group, are better students. They pay close attention to the leftist papspew the government schools spoon feed them. “You’re special” “There are no losers or winners” “You have a right to be offended, and others have an obligation not to offend you”.
Black kids, as a group, not only do not pay as much attention in school, the messages their one parent, welfare dependent households teach them is “Better get out there and hustle, kid”
When kids graduate, or quit, or are kicked out, life deals out its unfair reality. The white kids are disillusioned, bewildered at the complete lack of pampering and ego boosting. The black kids just want to know where the gold is.
The Charter Schools which have been successful in poor areas of the country (mostly inner cities) have taken children, dressed them, adjusted their manners, adjusted their appearance, adjusted their use of their free time, and instilled a variety of habits which are foreign to their homes. In short, they have taken poor kids and transformed them into middle class kids without money. The kids that result often do not relate well to their family and neighbors, for obvious reasons. They find fault with others who lack their newly formed work habits and self discipline. In Black neighborhoods, they are accused of acting ‘white’, but they aren’t so much white as middle class, acting as would be expected if their mother was a doctor rather than a cashier at Walmart.
This is what it takes to deliver equality of opportunity to poor kids. When this happens in a voluntary charter school, parents can choose to embrace the transformation of their children or reject it. But if you tried to transform the entire public school system to do the same, the community would quite likely rebel at such manipulative schooling. It doesn’t take money as much as it takes a willingness to change your kids for the better by teaching them to not be like you, which is hard to swallow. The only realistic path in a liberal democracy is to provide the option of a transformative education to every poor child, but many will not take it. The poor will always be with us, as some will not take the difficult path to improvement, and we can not and should not coerce them to do so. We owe it to the poor to make it possible, and to pay for it.