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[arkabee]

the equation ya'll are trying to define has more than one variable.

and it seems several of the constants that are being assumed have different values for different people.

[side_show]

I can attribute most of the crime in the UK, Australia and Canada to "hooliganism," but Denmark? I thought that country was just one big Eero Saarinen building.

Wha?  I know you're just being silly, but seriously man...

Although it's not really touched upon in the States, Canada has serious, serious racial issues between Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal people.  Aboriginal crime and dependancy on welfare is a wide speard and undenyable problem.  In my own city, where the racial balance is just slightly more Non-Aboriginal people to Aboriginals, there is an obvious ghetto - the North End - filled almost entirely with Aboriginal people and immigrants.  When a murder happens in Winnipeg - or any other news making crime - it is almost always in the North End, and usually both the suspect and the vicitm are Aboriginal.   Because I am Metis (aka half-Aboriginal & half-white - aka the Canadian equivelent of Mulatto) I am super-aware of the racial divide in my country.  Even when I look at just the demographic of my Aboriginal friends vs my white friends it is the Aboriginal friends that have the mental health issues, the drug problems, the lack of proper education, a history of abuse, the criminal records, etc.  As far as the root cause, it's fairly clearly boiled down the the Canadian Government's attempt to totally anihilate my Grandparents' generation of Aboriginal people.  When it comes the the solution?  Fucked if I know!  Since I've been working a lot with Aboriginal Youth lately, I do know some of what works though.  When it comes to my grandparent's generation, due to what was inflicted upon them - specifically the residential school system (which was a government run system of required attendance boarding schools for all Aboriginal children age 5 - 18 from the late 1940's through to 1960's, executed as an all out attempt to "anihilate Indian-ness" as noted in one of the policies of the time, and which was a system rampant with physical and sexual abuse on a grand scale with thousands of documented cases) by in large, my Grandparent's generation either abandoned their children (my parent's generation) or abused the hell out of them.  So the kids of my generation were raised by extremely fucked up parents to be fucked up individuals.  And now my generation is having it's own children, and of the Aboriginal peers I know - and I definitly include myself in this pool - are so messed up that we are not psycologically fit to have children.  

I do recognize that it is my responsibility to heal and my responsiblity to move out of the cycles previous generations have followed, but for most of the youth I have worked with through the program I helped run, this was a shocking and new concept.   Self-empowerment is not something even on the radar for our parents geneartion of self hating or deeply emotionally scarred people.  Central to this, I think the welfare state, at least in my country, is not helping anyone - the paternalistic attitude perpetuated by the government and accepted by the people who use it is, the core problem - it's the machine that perpetuates the cycle of abuse.  As a non-white person, I can not deny that there is both a failure of many Aboriginal people to take personal responsibility for their lives, and a failure of government bodies to find other, viable solutions that do not perpetuate dependancy.  I have a sneaking suspicion that this is at the core of the problem in the U.S. too.  There needs to be a taking of responsibility on both sides of the equation, and until that happens, until it stops being about laying blame, there is no chance of any real change.

[Choop]

I think the welfare state, at least in my country, is not helping anyone - the paternalistic attitude perpetuated by the government and accepted by the people who use it is, the core problem - it's the machine that perpetuates the cycle of abuse.  As a non-white person, I can not deny that there is both a failure of many Aboriginal people to take personal responsibility for their lives, and a failure of government bodies to find other, viable solutions that do not perpetuate dependancy.  I have a sneaking suspicion that this is at the core of the problem in the U.S. too.  There needs to be a taking of responsibility on both sides of the equation, and until that happens, until it stops being about laying blame, there is no chance of any real change.

I agree in total, and I live in a poor black neighborhood in Atlanta, GA, US. The hard part of solving the problem comes not in providing the services which eliminate dependency, but in encouraging their use. Americorps was a good idea partially serving that purpose, and it rang completely hollow. Not its fault: if you compare the bill that was passed to create it with its form at its beginning, you too would be dismayed at our solution-preventing system. To contrast, punitive agencies (frex, in GA we have DFACS, the Dept. of Family and Child Svcs.) can only go so far to intervene, and even if they do there's no guarantee of recidivism, and even less a guarantee that the same paternalist views might cease.

This is the realm in which socialism and capitalism collide. Neither has a solution, and any combination of approaches seems just as fruitless. Compared to peak oil, outsourcing, and gay rights, the issue of improving the lot of the less fortunate is the most urgent with the widest effects in the country. It's a shame that our representative republic is engineered against this very issue's resolution.

[AugustWest]

Wouldn't it be nice if we were all judged by the contents of our own individual soul?

[jough]

Smells: You're a Metis?  But you write so well!

August: I think we are here.  For instance, no one knows I'm a half-Mexican half-Inuit woman (except Wombat, whom I've met IRL).  In print race, appearence, height, disability, etc. are meaningless.   Everyone is equally an asshole on this forum.

Choop:  I know what you mean.  Some of my best friends are either gay or black!*






* It always cracks me up when I hear white people brag about having friends of some minority or another.  I tell people I have some white friends but they never seem to get that I am mocking them - mocking them right in the face.

[Imperator Severn]

Alright, we'll give some land to the niggers and the chinks, but we DON'T WANT THE IRISH!

[Limmo]

Hey!

[Doc]

/disclaimer = written by a well of white boy sitting in a cushie university in the state capital.

I was just about to pop in the Australian version of all this but what Side_show described is basically it, with the variation that because our cities tend to be smaller than you folks' instead of ghettos we tend to have small rural towns where people are just poor as shit and basically sniff paint and get pregnant because there is nothing else to do. This seems to go no matter what colour your skin is. Again I should mention I could be totally wrong here, this is just what I've seen from a few good docos and friends who have lived out in these areas.
So I guess as far as that goes we don't have as many people who are desperately poor in the inner cities as I get the impression some american cities do. The one exception to this I can think of off the top of my head is Sydney, our biggest city, which has some ghettoesque areas (redfern springs to mind, but I've never lived there so I can't say for sure).

As for the whole race related to crime thing I don't notice a particularly higher number of aboriginals involved in violent crime on the news etc. this is probably at least partly because a good proportion of the Aboriginal community lives in the aforementioned towns and communities instead of the cities, and like I said above it is generally accepted that substance abuse and violent crime is generally higher (and more importantly unreported) in these areas to the point that more than one community has self imposed no alcohol rules (though I'm sure this is not unique).

So if I think criminal (in the property theft sense let's leave the white collar crime out of it for a moment) I'm more likely to think poor but not Aboriginal. I am however likely to assume poor (or at least poorer than me) when I think Aboriginal. Not saying I'm right mind, just giving you what my brain coughs up.

Well that was a lot of talking with no useful conclusions.
Except that I should trademark 'Ghettoesque'.
Oh and to any grammar Nazi's (i.e. all of you)  I'm pretty sure Aboriginal isn't meant to be a noun but over here it's turned into one since Aborigine has kind of taken on negative connotations as far as I can tell (basically because of a century and a bit of casual racism).

[Imperator Severn]

I would submit that people living in the "ghettoes" of the US are not desperately poor.  Certainly, there are indigent people who eat out of dumpsters, but most urban poor have somewhere to live, enough to eat, running water, and adequate sanitation.  What they don't have is luxury items, which the prevailing culture tells them are not only important, but necessary.

[Doc]

Desperately poor was probably the wrong phrase to use, but like I say I have no idea what your country is like.

Also I was getting kicked out of the library so I didn't get a chance to add that the main reason we have an increase in property crime here in australia is that we are all damn dirty convicts. It's in the Blood damnit!

Seriously, our successful businessmen are really good at getting sent to jail, the only exception I can think of is Rupert Murdock and what does that tell you?

Apologies for my crappy train of consciousness writing tonight, my head before was full of Auranofin digestion and now it's 1am and not full of anything much.

[Imperator Severn]

Seriously, our successful businessmen are really good at getting sent to jail, the only exception I can think of is Rupert Murdock and what does that tell you?

Oh, our businessmen are no better.  Honestly, I have infinitely more sympathy for the punk kid who robs a convenience store than the scumbag CEO who bilks his employees out of the pensions they were guaranteed.

[side_show]

I would submit that people living in the "ghettoes" of the US are not desperately poor.

Whaa?  How do you define "desparately poor?" Cause for me, higher suicide rates = desparate, and being statisticaly below the poverty line = poor.

You have to look at the actual quality of life.  Having been desparately poor, I can tell you a roof over your head doesn't mean shit if it's winter and the landlord doesn't care that the furnace is broken so your toothpaste is frozen, and the people who live below you are having another coke-binge party on a Wednesday night at 5 am that escalates into threats of murder, and lying there in your bed, hearing the screaming and the music so loud it sounds like it's right in your bedroom, thinking you know that you have to be on your way to work in three hours and some how appear sane and articulate.  So you get up, and it's so fuck*ng cold out from under your blankets that it hurts to walk across the floor.  And you call the cops, and they never bother to show up.  So you start to cry.  You lie there for a few more hours, the screaming dies down, but the same damn CCR CD keeps playing over and over on repeat at full volume.  Then you go to work, and you come home and the heat still isn't on so you keep your winter parka on while you try to study for your exam, but you nod off because you're so tired.  Then you wake up and boil water for Mr. Noodles, and it's always Mr. Noodles, or actually the no-name equivelent of Mr. Noodles if you want to pay for your textbooks to get out of this place some day.  Then the neigbours start their next coke party, and you call the police and tell them that this time it really sounds like they're going to kill each other, so they show up siren's blaring.  It gets quiet for a while, you try to study, then the neighbour gets it in his head that you are the cause of the latest bust up and comes pounding and kicking on your door.  

This is a snapshot of exactly what happened to me on one night in the hood I lived in while putting myself through university.  It is not even an unusual snapshot of a night in that place.  Unusual was when the eleven year old told me he wanted to murder me, then threw a butter knife at me.  Come on kid, your mom probably needs that to cook hash on!  Yes I had a roof over my head, food and water, but the quality of living was extremely low.  It was a desparate situation.  I suppose I could've gone to a food bank, but guess what?  I was too embarassed.  I did take to the library for naps and heat for a while.

Yes, if you take a country-wide famine or constant bombing as acomparison, the two are not comperable, but it's still doesn't make the North American situation excuseable.  The fact that I had no where better to go - that the next apartment I moved to the guy upstairs beat his girlfriend so bad I thought he'd kill her, that the girl next door had sex so loud I thought she was in my room, that the hallway always smell of dope, the fact that one of my buddies got beaten within an inch of his life a block away, the fact that I got the blood of a girl in my building who killed herself on my shoes on the way out the building as I saw her bloody body get carried out on a stretcher, the fact that another friend had a huge, dripping, breathing hole in her ceiling that her landlord couldn't care fix - all these things - they are not okay.  I'm sorry but they're just not.  I was in the middle of all this trying to get out, and you know what?  Yeah, I got my degree, but with the situation I was in, I saw exactly how the odds were stacked against me.  It would have been so easy to just not go into work because I could sleep during the day when my neighbour's passed out, or miss class because I could take an extra shift to replace my ripped up winter coat.  I had lots of friend just as smart as me, who couldn't go to school 'cause they were too busy taking care of mom because dad drank too much, too busy working to pay off their sister's drug debt, etc. etc.  I was the only Aboriginal student in my department in fact, and even worse than the whole situation with housing was the way I got paraded around in the department itself.  It was deeply, deeply insulting to be the "example."  The glad handing that went on, like I was a stupid monkey who didn't know it was happening, was absolutely horrific.  

The attitude that "it's not that bad" is so very, very ignorant - it smacks of a total blindness to reality.  I already acknowledged in my other post that there is a lack of accountability amoung the North American poor, yes, only the individual can rise above a situation, but don't even try to say that your country's poor aren't desparate.  That it's not that bad.  It's not about not having Nikes and an iPod, bub.

[AlohaDawg]

That's a long and articulate post. I doubt I can do it justice - I'll try.

In absolute terms living in an innercity 'ghetto' or 'slum' or 'tenement' doesn't seem to be 'desparately poor' but the issue can't be taken in a global way. The issues that drive depression and all of it's happy children, like dug use, alcoholism, gambling, domestic violence, etc. are not really related to what we have or don't have. The problem is the PERCEIVED difference between what some people have and what others believe that they want because having those things is obviously why that person is perceived to have a better life.

I've met so many poor people who have put together good homes and taken care of their families with so little that I can't subscribe to the poverty argument as the root cause of many social problems. I think there is an absence of a sense of community, a sense of community values, and a long history of benign neglect and payoffs from the government that have left some poor people in a state of dependency.

Personal responsibility and an understanding of personal worth, the worth of others, and having something to contribute to the world are really important - having your knowledge, skills, abilities, and talents recognized, utilized, appreciated and rewarded are powerful ways to work on individuals to build stronger, healthier communities. (this is illustrated by the common holding that professional sports are the "only way out of the ghetto") Programs that bring worth to individuals could be powerful.

[side_show]

AD - I do agree with you that poverty isn't an indicator of personal happiness, and in fact, in spite of the hellish housing issues, I remember those days as deeply happy and wonderful times.  But personal happiness isn't the only indicator of quality of life - just a central is a feeling of security, and this is something poorly lacking in poverty sticken neighbourhoods, and the central worry in my life.  I would often wonder as I walked down my street if today would be the day where my door would be kicked in, my meager possesions stolen or urniated on, or the day I would be stabbed, raped, mugged.  I know that this is a worry for anybody, anywhere, but when it happens right next door, almost everyday, and to people you are in direct contact with, instead of some unknown person in a newspaper, these fears come more often, and are that much more legitimate.  

I suppose my point is that, living in poor neighbourhoods, the situation is desparate: even though I was not a participant in the downward spiral-type behaviour, its effects spilled over in to my life regularly.  Sometimes the things I directly witnessed would haunt me for days and effect my functioning quite drastically.  And I know that of all the people I talk to who grew up in suburbia, that the sort of situations I described were not part of their reality in any regular or consistant way.  They describe a warm lull of going to school, coming home for dinner, spending time with family.  Yes, their lives were occasionally peppered with the "bad things" too, but when it came to desparate situations, it was a once-every-few-months-type thing, not a daily-thing like it is in hoods all over North America.  I can only speak from my own personal experience, of course, but to me it seemed that if you're living in the hood you're dealing with violence and crime everyday, either as a witness or as a participant, that your life is hindered more drastically than someone effected by it once in a while.  The housing issue is the one I'm most concerned with here.  I got angry at the implication that if someone has a roof over their head they have nothing to complain about - that they are not legitimatly suffering.  Unlike you AD, many people haven't seen the reality of an impoverished home.  People who have not actually spent time in a hood or ghetto often don't realize that even if you keep to yourself and aren't a direct participant in the violence or crime, as I and many more people do in these shitty places, that the illegal, violent, annoying & whatever acts are taking place right next door, literally and figuratively.  If you've only got a layer of drywall or a thin door between you and a crack head, it will effect your life, no matter what you do on your side of the wall.  

Before the coke-head neighbours, I lived above an AIDS activist who was slowly dying of the disease, and whose eight year old son I met twice before the boy died of the disease.  This neighbour was a quite, kind soul.  When I was moving in, I had no idea he was sick, though he was so skinny I could have guessed something was wrong - his arms were like ropey sticks.  As my dad and I moved my furniture up the narrow spiral staircase to the second floor we struggled to get my very old couch up the stairs.  It was one of those old-school covertable sofa-beds with metal frame, and ugly wood embelishments.  It probably weighed over 100 pounds.  We gave up right at a bend in the stairs.  Along came my skinny neighbour with an offer to help.  My dad and I looked at the little guy and made the somewhat fair assumption that he probably wouldn't do any better, but it was worth a try.  My neighbour climbed over the couch, my dad on the lower stairs, and in this totally shocking moment he lifted the entire weight of it himself, with my father's hands only lightly guiding it - not bearing any of the wieght - and carried it the entire way up the stairs effortlessly.  I remember asking him if he worked for a moving company, and he just smiled shyly and queitly left.  This neighbour has always been a metaphor of the inner-city to me.  I think of him often, and though we only shared the polite and perfunctory relationship of neighbours who occasionally crossed paths, when a large obituary article of his life's work appeared in the paper, I shed some tears.  

I don't deny that there is the potential for goodness, happiness and a full-life if one lives in an impoverished area, but I disagree with anyone who claims someone isn't legitimate in their suffering just because things aren't "as bad" as they are somewhere else.  The quality of life is lower in North America impoverished areas in clear, tangible ways, with definite room for improvement.