Urban Poverty

I found Rick Esenberg's series on the Urban Right (it starts here) fascinating. Here is a response to a number of issues he raises in his first six parts:

• I agree that the liberal response to urban poverty with welfare in the 1960's was a mistake. We cannot transition families off welfare, until it is replaced with the appropriate job readiness, health, and employment programs.
• In future posts I hope we can discuss The Truly Disadvantaged by William Julius Wilson. Rick's thinking is very much attuned to this liberal black sociologist who is often confused by both the Left and Right as a conservative.
• Snitching: it is dishonorable to snitch for the purpose of wrongfully incriminating others and to protect one's own ass. It is dishonorable to withhold information that would lead to the arrest and incarceration of criminals who take the lives of innocents and/or pose an on-going threat to the community. To withhold information under those circumstances is cowardice, not honorable.
• Rick is so very correct on sentencing. It must be examined from a number of perspectives which includes the economic impact and the effect on the family and community of keeping potentially productive individuals incarcerated for too long a time. In post #2:
  • We need to reexamine, as many conservatives have begun to do, sentencing practices in drug crimes. In forging ties to African-American pastors who are fighting a lonely battle against family breakdown and the erosion of civility, we must not only share and support their promotion of traditional morality, but listen to their concerns regarding the need for expanded economic opportunity. Our proposals to address the latter certainly need not resemble traditional welfare, but we may need to accept that they will cost money.
• In his Urban Right, part 3, Rick asks:
  • Here are my questions. They aren't rhetorical. I really want to know.
    
    If you are on the left, do you really think that people who believe that taxes are too high (or need not be raised) or who think that organic market solutions are often preferable to government mandates, are being inappropriately divisive? Do you believe that people who, on balance, regard law enforcement as a good thing and not a threat or who see street violence as largely the product of cultural factors and a matter of individual responsibility as opposed to a mechanistic response to economic forces, are "hateful?" Are those who have come to believe that racial preferences perpetuate, rather than ameliorate, racial division excessively inflammatory?
  • Here are my answers. No, people concerned about high taxes are not inappropriately divisive if they share other societal values and they are not selfish. When the mantra is 'lower taxes' without regard for the larger society, the social compact, and the quality of a myriad of services from fire protection to public education or investment in public infrastructure to protection of public health all suffer, then we have a problem. Lower taxes, like all community values, must have a reference point and there must be a balance of competing interests.
  • On the issue of crime, I am in complete agreement with you. I also think that there is a responsibility by all citizens to repeatedly state that violence is unacceptable and that it is a moral obligation to speak out against it.
  • Speaking of racial preferences is not inflammatory. That said, Affirmative Action (AA),  can function without quotas or preferences. The essence of AA is to encourage people to apply and make it clear that whether it is for education or employment, the application is welcome and will be treated fairly. It means that jobs will be posted and advertised widely so that all have knowledge. And it means that job requirements and qualifications that are not relevant to the position will be removed.
• I believe that urban violence is driven by poverty and a culture of despair. Eliminating poverty will go along way to change that culture, which will in turn, motivates others to move beyond poverty.
• In Part 4, Esenberg writes:
  • Gurda (echoing a common refrain of the Journal Sentinel editorial board) refers to the drop in "good" (commonly meant to refer to manufacturing) jobs. I think that the degree to which people were paid large amounts of money for low-skill labor in the past has been overstated but, in any event, the decline in manufacturing employment has been going on for 30 years.
    
    There is not, as Gurda writes, a shortage of good jobs. There is a shortage of good jobs that require little education and nominal work skills. The problem for the "the able-bodied young men gathered on the street at midday" is not that they are ready for opportunities that society has failed to provide for them, but that the cultural milieu in which they have been raised has left them unprepared for the opportunities that exist.

                              Rick:  we must really look at The Truly Disadvantaged, especially the sections where Wilson argues precisely that point. There is the challenge: we must either raise the level of education and/or raise the level of all the qualities that fall under the category of 'job readiness.'

Comments

[Rich]

Eisenberg is decontextualizing and doesn't seem to have a strong background in urban regeneration. He refers to jobs lost 30 years ago--but fails to account for industrial Milwuakee's de facto "last hired, first fired" personnel policies toward African-Americans. It's also still one of the most hypersegregated cities in the country.

His note that "civil rights" somehow ironically caused inner-city poverty lays the blame/responsibility at the feet of the wrong movement/institution. In Atlanta too, black business districts faltered once the right to shop at any store was won.

But it's not the lack of black role-models that created a culture of poverty. It's the lack of any role model. The hypersegregation and disinvestment continued --and that goes to how well our governing institutions and economic decision-makers addressed the problems still in place. The civil rights movement meant that AMERICA won.

But the dynamic Eisenberg identifies indicates that America's economic and governing institutions still failed to address those PLACES that required greater integration, investment, and exposure to wider set of cultural norms. The lack of exposure to knowledge networks and study skills of the classmates in the next row over was especially lacking

Eisenberg's analysis often seems to lack a full-on, in-depth recognition of the dynamic at work and the rich body of scholarship that bears on these issues. He finds a problem (McGee) or a dynamic (black homeowners buying--as any human will--in a good neighborhood) and--full-stop. Self-examination is not his fort-hey. Not a great attribute in a law professor.