Well, this is what we’re facing.
My question last week, after the August 19 shootings on
Genesee Street, was whether that horror would move this community, at last, to
do what we need to do. Whether now we would be able to summon the will – and
community leaders would help us summon the will – to get at the roots of our
violence problem.
As I said last week, dealing with the roots of violence won’t
be easy. And it sure won’t be politically popular, because many people in
Greater Rochester are still convinced that the poverty in the inner city is
solely self-inflicted.
I’m not surprised by the negative remarks the article drew.
But I’m disheartened. Here’s a sample:
“The problem isn’t the concentration of poverty in the inner
city, it’s the concentration of stupidity in the inner city…. dropping out of
school, getting pregnant before getting married, failing to hold down a job,
deciding to defy order and laws instead of obeying both.”
“Poverty isn’t the issue. We all know what the issue is, but
white people can’t say what the issue is, because we get labeled ‘racist’ when
we do.”
“I can’t believe I read this whole article just to read for
the umpteenth time that it is the suburbanites’ fault.”
“The only way out of poverty and all the problems that come
along with it is to take responsibility yourself.”
“The ‘bad’ neighborhoods were good before, but houses get
rented and most renters trash them. Outside they drop trash and don’t pick it
up, don’t mow lawns, don’t pull weeds, don’t plant flowers, don’t clip bushes,
fight in the streets, allow drugs to be dealt and don’t do anything about it,
and play music that glorifies violence, abuse, misogyny, drug dealing, and
more.”
“Poverty does not cause this or we never would have made it
out of the Great Depression.”
“It’s SIN, plain and simple.”
One reader quoted the Rev. Lewis Stewart, a longtime black
community activist, who since the shooting has said there’s “a morality problem
in our community among young blacks.”
Stewart is right, of course. So is the Genesee Street
neighborhood resident who interrupted a press conference by Mayor Lovely Warren
to say the same thing. I don’t know anybody who condones the violence, drug
sales, and destruction that plague inner-city neighborhoods. Certainly the many
non-violent, law-abiding residents of those neighborhoods – who do indeed mow
their lawns and plant flowers – don’t condone any of that.
And lord knows, nobody condones the
drive-by shooting on Genesee Street. Nobody I know thinks the person firing
that gun didn’t have other choices, or that he was helpless because he was
poor.
But at some point, we need to ask why so many people in a few
neighborhoods are involved in violence and other illegal activity. This, as
Harvard’s William Julius Wilson, Cornel West, and others have said, is a
problem of culture – of some poor
people. And generations of concentrated poverty bred the culture.
Among the most discouraging comments posted on our website
was one bemoaning articles of people like me “that mislead the public by their
clueless, myopic opinion that poverty or concentrated poverty is the cause of
all this violence. They can back it up with data and studies from ‘Ivory Tower’
professors who have not experienced what really goes on in the urban
environment.”
So I guess we should dismiss decades of research by prominent
scholars (who actually have deep experience in the urban environment), the same
way we dismiss studies pointing to climate change. And then what’s left? Shaking our fists at the behavior of “those people.” Doing
the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Or community leaders – white and non-white, government and
business, clergy and neighborhood – can read the research, come to grips with
the root of the problem, and lead us forward.
This article appears in Sep 2-8, 2015.
“Or community leaders – white and non-white, government and business, clergy and neighborhood – can read the research, come to grips with the root of the problem, and lead us forward.”
I disagree with the idea that our leaders are responsible. Leaders have to play politics. Leaders are often clueless about how to solve problems, but they have to appear like they know the answers.
My sense is that we all have to work together to solve the problems of poverty, violence and ignorance in Rochester. Leaders have to listen. We all have to listen to one another and work together to lift everyone up.
“We are part of the solution or part of the problem” (Eldridge Cleaver)
http://www.SavingSchools.org
” As I said last week, dealing with the roots of violence won’t be easy. And it sure won’t be politically popular, because many people in Greater Rochester are still convinced that the poverty in the inner city is solely self-inflicted.”
Mary Anna, you mince your words. If you’re talking about dealing with the roots of violence not being easy, you make it sound more convoluted because you jump, in the same paragraph, to say that the poverty in the inner city is solely self- inflicted. What?
You’re comparing apples to oranges; should’nt it be that the violence in the inner city is self inflicted? Violence is one issue and poverty is another but you like to connect them as being synonymous, and conveniently blame violence on poverty, or concentrated poverty.
The violence needs to be dealt with by getting a grip on the sub-culture of the inner city; that includes curbing the thug/gang mentality, taking personal responsibilty for teenage pregnancy, contributing support to your family or showing up for school, etc.
Poverty, or concentrated poverty is another issue and it’s so complex and political in its own right to be even addressed with the violence issue, yet you seem to simplify the answer to violence by grand standing; claiming poverty is the root of violence. So you cite research from professors who can support your case; but common sense tells us something different. I choose common sense over paid Ivory Tower professors who conduct fuzzy research for a hidden political agenda.
Notions of ‘poverty’ are elastic. There has been a five-fold increase in real income per capita since the year my father was born (1928). There has been some deterioration in income distribution in the last 40-odd years, but not nearly enough to cancel out the effects of general economic growth on the availability of purchasable goods and services to every stratum of society. The sticky point is that increased production incorporates quality improvements and the interaction of supply and effective demand will foreclose certain low-cost options. Somewhere in my possession is a rotary telephone I bought in 1983. I’m not sure it would work if I plugged it into the jack, of course. There is also the effect of the cost disease of personal services, which is salient for medical care among other things. So, people are better off, but in some realms, the choice is between deluxe and nothing. One way around this is through subsidized provision of problem services (medical care, long term care, and schooling). This has been done to some extent throughout the post-bellum period. Public schools have been common since about 1840 and institutional care for a selection of the addled and disabled since the late 19th century. Public agency is not the ideal conduit for provision, of course. Vouchers and insurance would be better.
You get out of these realms, though, and you discover material poverty as it would have been understood in 1928 is experienced only by vagrants and people one notch north of that. Well, the Urban Institute estimated in 1990 that the vagrant population accounted for 0.25% of the population of the whole. There are just not that many poor people if you are referring to subsistence. In fact, obesity is inversely correlated with income.
You do see social stratification and resentments borne of how positional goods are distributed. You’re never going to fix that. Any society larger than an agricultural village has strata. As for modes of distribution, the big idea the Bipartisan Elite Party trades in is ‘diversity’, which is code for selectively disposing of careers-open-to-talents (especially if manifested in standardized tests) in favor of patronage doled out to select mascot groups.
Now, down around Genesee Street or on Joseph Avenue, there’s quite a mess of insecurity and disorder. There are a great many impecunious people too. The thing is, all the chatter about poverty assiduously refuses to acknowledge either reverse causation or confounding variables. What people are telling the Metro-Act types like the McCoys or the Towlers is that impetuosity predisposes people to criminal acts, predisposes one to academic failure, and injures one’s earning power as well. The Democratic Party elite consists of people who figure this but cannot say this because liberal politics requires the most inane artifice and people who do will never acknowledge this under any circumstances (even to themselves).
And the ultimate source of the problem IS original sin. The partial solution is force: deterrence, punishment, and incapacitation. That applies on the streets and it applies in the schools as well. A lot of shizzy social work projects are no solution at all.
The editor writes:
“So I guess we should dismiss decades of research by prominent scholars (who actually have deep experience in the urban environment), t”
Sociology is an apologetical discipline. Individual sociologists can and do produce valid research. The trouble is, the staff ideology of sociology systematically inhibits them from asking the right questions or processing research and experience which is inconvenient to propagating the staff ideology.
James Q. Wilson and William Bratton have some scholarly cred and deep experience between them. They’ve also accomplished something, and many academics and professional rabble-rousers will never forgive them that. Is ANYONE in Rochester at all interested in this? Is the editor here?
Ms. Towler: Another story and still no mention of GANGS. The violence is being caused by GANGS. They need to address the problems of GANGS! Get it?
Ms. Towler,
I read your cri de coeur last week and was moved by it. I almost replied then. I have spent some time in the south; in part as a child and then as a young worker. back in the 50s and 60s. At the first job I had, the bathrooms were still segregated and I can remember my father and uncle laughing at racist jokes. I’ve seen what racism is and learned it almost by instinct in that environment. I’ve never been able to see much difference between the racism I absorbed then and the general tenor of contemporary comments in Rochester and the surrounding area today. It is as bone deep here as it was there.
We are witnessing the result of 50 years or more of discrimination, some of it overt and some not. Redlining and white flight were prevalent years ago and we are living with those results. These were all conscious decisions, some of them by the highest authorities in the land, This outcome was almost predictable. It would take a monumental effort at all levels of society to overcome the savage inertia that afflicts this area and frankly I don’t see it coming any time soon.
The War rages on against the poor…
I find it tiring to confront the dual headed monster of ignorance and racism expressed in these responses to Ms. Towler’s essay, but nonetheless some things need to be put in perspective.
First and foremost, there is a war not on poverty but a war going on to create more poverty. It is waged silently by the top .01% and their notable think tanks: Fox News, Bob Lonsberry, Rush, Trump, and whomever else is able to take tiny non-factual chunks of information and chew them up into even tinier pieces for their vomit appreciating audience, ex. Don Sherman et al.
It is the historic practice of the elite to roll out tales of parasitic, delinquent and undeserving poor to deflect public anger from themselves. Not that Don is by any means of the 1% I am guessing, but neither were the majority of confederate soldiers who were duped into defending the plantation class pre and post Civil War. Today’s modern day confederate capitalists who argue that their anecdotal and “common sense” perceptions somehow “trump” the reams of empirical evidence pointing to an opposite reality are simply stonewalling.
We should no longer give these idiots our time but instead, our fists!
-Rajesh Barnabas
Green Party Candidate for Monroe County Exec.
“We should no longer give these idiots our time but instead, our fists!” says Rajesh Barnabas the “Green Party Candidate for Monroe County Executive.” As a keen observer of the Rochester area political scene for over 30 years, this is the first time I can recall a candidate for political office publically advocating physical violence against those that disagree with their view.
It is stunning that a candidate for public office in Monroe County would actually advocate for physical violence against people that disagree with their point of view. This should disqualify one from running for public office. Mr. Barnabas, please withdraw from the county executive race. If this really does represent your view, you are not fit to hold public office. Maybe anger management classes would be a better and more productive use of your time.
Please reference Animute’s justification for the US using A-bombs and then get back to me about the topic of advocating violence. Posted by Animule on 08/07/2015 at 1:16 PM
Unfortunately, promoting violence does not disqualify one from holding office in the US. Case in point: all US presidents.
I was simply advocating self-defense.
Why do we talk about the people in these neighborhoods as if they are stupid and can not see how their lives are? We talk about how ‘we’ need to do something. “We” do studies and ‘we’ do programs and ‘we’ rant and rave about the poor unfortunate inner city black person like we are somehow better than they are. We act like their keepers. We tell them with our very desire to help them that they can not help themselves, that they are not equal, that they are not able. That they are in need of being taken care of. We give them money to stay right where they are. I love the man who shouted out to the Mayor about there needing to be outrage in the back community about black young men killing black young men because until that happens nothing will change. Until they hold their young men to the standards of a civilized society, until they say no more, until they change their culture from the inside and want better for their children, until they call for social change from their families, nothing will change. And ‘We’ should stop acting like their keepers who know what is best for them and holding them to a lower standard as if they are not able to keep up.
I read both of your articles on the topic and I was incredibly excited to see that somebody in the media did cover the reality of institutionalized racism because it is a huge problem but people from middle or upper class backgrounds don’t like to acknowledge it and act like it doesn’t exist most likely because they are racist or uneducated on the subject. But your article came at a great time because my brother and I have recently developed an interest in the subject of institutionalized racism, spurred by listening to hip hop artists such as Kendrick Lamar and Tupac Shakur. To those who think hip hop is this awful genre that promotes a “sinful” lifestyle you clearly don’t have enough background knowledge on hip hop. First of all not all hip hop promotes misogyny and gun violence, though admittingly so, much of it does (personally I don’t listen to these artists). however when hip hop artists either discuss or promote (notice the difference) these bad themes,it is merely a reflection of their lives and the disgusting conditions society has allowed people with different colored skin to fall in to. People do however have the choice to let this music affect them positively or negatively. if the music affects them negatively that can in part be attributed to the conditions they have become accustomed to in their own life. However there isn’t much you can hear in a hip hop song that you can’t already experience just by living there so once again it is the poor condtions that caused hip hop, not visa versa.