Sowell: Welfare More Destructive To Blacks Than Slavery

[Ellis Bell]

Originally Posted by green_mariner

Brazil has an ever weaker (almost to be non-existent) welfare system. At one time, it was "you don't work, you don't eat". Brazil is home to some of the most dangerous cities in the Western Hemisphere. Alot of prostitution going around. And the police won't think twice about killing. This is why I can't blame the presence of welfare.

Those places you mention with robust welfare states, they rank lower in crime than the USA. In Scandinavian countries, most of the crimes are committed by immigrants, particularly from places such as Iraq, Albania, Somalia, and Turkey. In America, we don't have as robust of a welfare state. And when you look at the states where the majority of Black Americans lives (most of them are southern states), those places historically have high violent crime rates.

Senator Moynihan wrote the Moynihan Report. He mentioned the rising rate of broken homes within the Black population in New York City. With all of this talk about welfare, there is something else that get ignored. Rapid urbanization. I notice no one even bothers to talk about that. My own father, who is a product of the Great Migration (he was born and raised in Milwaukee to parents who fled Mississippi), mentioned something about this. Alot of people from the cotton fields and tobacco fields of the Deep South were fleeing the oppressive environment, the degradation, the poverty, the lack of opportunities. Many Blacks went to the northern industrial cities, seeking out greener pastures elsewhere. With the good came the bad. Alot of hardworking Blacks went north (and west) to find their fortune. While many managed to live normal, if not particularly prosperous lives, there were those who got involved in crime. There were those who found that the north wasn't the place paved with gold that they hoped and believed it would be. Many ended up in the worst parts of the cities.

The South had a very blunt, in-your-face form of discrimination and segregation. Jim Crow was the law of the land. Separate schools. Separate facilities. Separate everything. You got sent to the back of the bus (if you lived in the cities that had public transportation available). You had to deal with a very cruel "paternalism". Getting high-paying, lucrative jobs was difficult if you were Black.

In the northern cities, Jim Crow was not the law on paper. By law, schools couldn't be segregated by race. However, there was another form of discrimination. Alot of schools were segregated simply because of housing patterns. In many neighborhoods, Blacks were simply refused housing or loans for a house. In some towns, Blacks weren't allowed to live there. And in some cases, you could be allowed to live there and buy a house, but get chased out because the local population didn't want you there. It was dejure segregation vs defacto segregation.

I think one thing that happened with the segregation and rapid urbanization was alot of chaos. When it comes to rapid urbanization, there is a chaos that starts. If happens everywhere. When cities like Rio and Sao Paolo rapidly urbanized, this involved alot of poor people from the countryside coming in, trying to find housing wherever they could. What happened? Alot of slums cropped up. Along with it, homelessness went up, crime went up big time. I see similar (albeit different) things going on during the 1950s and 1960s in America. While there was certainly a Black middle class (and the Black middle class certainly had intact families), the Black underclass was getting worse and worse in terms of broken families, crime, death, substance abuse, and general hopelessness.

Things were getting bad for the Black underclass. Moynihan even mentioned that the Black population was going into two different directions.

R or D ... politically the two directions one can take. u.s. offers more parties, but they can't seem to make a dent.

Originally Posted by green_mariner

Senator Moynihan wrote the Moynihan Report. He mentioned the rising rate of broken homes within the Black population in New York City. With all of this talk about welfare, there is something else that get ignored. Rapid urbanization. I notice no one even bothers to talk about that. My own father, who is a product of the Great Migration (he was born and raised in Milwaukee to parents who fled Mississippi), mentioned something about this. Alot of people from the cotton fields and tobacco fields of the Deep South were fleeing the oppressive environment, the degradation, the poverty, the lack of opportunities. Many Blacks went to the northern industrial cities, seeking out greener pastures elsewhere. With the good came the bad. Alot of hardworking Blacks went north (and west) to find their fortune. While many managed to live normal, if not particularly prosperous lives, there were those who got involved in crime. There were those who found that the north wasn't the place paved with gold that they hoped and believed it would be. Many ended up in the worst parts of the cities.

True and here is the politics to that situation:
The Northern Civil Rights Movement

"It was once well understood that the modern civil rights movement began in the 1940s and that it took shape in the cities of the North. “When, in 1990 perhaps or the year 2000, men come to search for the truly decisive epoch in American race relations,” Lerone Bennett, Jr. wrote in his 1965 book Confrontation: Black and White “it seems likely that they will seize on the decade of the forties.” The Mississippi-born, Chicago-based contributing editor of Ebony magazine understood that the great events that had unfolded after 1954—the federal court decisions that had opened up the battle for school desegregation, the electrifying confrontations in the South and the mediagenic movement that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led, the congressional alliance that had, months before his book appeared, passed the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act –that all that rested upon a foundation that had been built in the Black Metropolises in the 1940s.

Bennett, however, was wrong about the historiography of 1990. By that year the story of the 1940s Civil Rights movement had almost been lost as historians focused on the South and ignored what preceded it.... "

You say the South has an in your face --- the South has no reason to hide. Beyond politics are ordinary people living ordinary lives ... my father told me once and I believe what he said to be true for anyone, 'you can do anything you want to do as long as you apply yourself appropriately'. imo, the key to success (and that can be defined many ways) as opposed to failure, is how well one applies themselves. And just because a person has wealth doesn't mean they are successful.

Sowell has his (welfare) stats and that's great and all of that, however, the 60s has been described as an era with the most cultural changes as can be seen in a 10 year span in one country. The country went from conformity (examples can be seen within colleges) to chaos --- not because (even though there were several) of any political movement, but because young adults woke up to the fact they had been lied to by their parents, their teachers and their clergymen as to what America stood for. What they saw with their eyes and what they had been told, where two totally different things. They were no longer content, to conform to how society would have them be and they forged their own paths.

It wasn't the revolution they dreamed it would be, but it was an evolution to the culture values of the American society.

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by Ellis Bell

R or D ... politically the two directions one can take. u.s. offers more parties, but they can't seem to make a dent.

Maybe. Perhaps if more people did their research, a 3rd party could make a dent.

True and here is the politics to that situation:
The Northern Civil Rights Movement

"It was once well understood that the modern civil rights movement began in the 1940s and that it took shape in the cities of the North. “When, in 1990 perhaps or the year 2000, men come to search for the truly decisive epoch in American race relations,” Lerone Bennett, Jr. wrote in his 1965 book Confrontation: Black and White “it seems likely that they will seize on the decade of the forties.” The Mississippi-born, Chicago-based contributing editor of Ebony magazine understood that the great events that had unfolded after 1954—the federal court decisions that had opened up the battle for school desegregation, the electrifying confrontations in the South and the mediagenic movement that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led, the congressional alliance that had, months before his book appeared, passed the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act –that all that rested upon a foundation that had been built in the Black Metropolises in the 1940s.
Bennett, however, was wrong about the historiography of 1990. By that year the story of the 1940s Civil Rights movement had almost been lost as historians focused on the South and ignored what preceded it.... "

Brown v Board of Education took place in Topeka, KS. That is where the fight against segregated schools started. Not in Chicago, not in New York, but Kansas. Officially, the civil rights movement started in 1954. Now, CORE was started in Chicago in the 1940s. Most of the movement was taking place in the South.

You say the South has an in your face --- the South has no reason to hide. Beyond politics are ordinary people living ordinary lives ... my father told me once and I believe what he said to be true for anyone, 'you can do anything you want to do as long as you apply yourself appropriately'. imo, the key to success (and that can be defined many ways) as opposed to failure, is how well one applies themselves. And just because a person has wealth doesn't mean they are successful.

This is the thing. The South was literally putting its Black population under the Jim Crow dictatorship. When your race literally determines you not getting equal protection under the law, that is a problem. When Jim Crow is the reason one is shoehorned into inferior schools, and limited in terms of what services one gets, that is a problem. There is a reason so many Blacks left the South between 1910 and 1970. Poor economic prospects, the Jim Crow governments, and the general oppressive society up to the 1960s. Your father told you one thing, but for many Blacks, success often meant leaving the South. But even in the North there were problems.

Sowell has his (welfare) stats and that's great and all of that, however, the 60s has been described as an era with the most cultural changes as can be seen in a 10 year span in one country. The country went from conformity (examples can be seen within colleges) to chaos --- not because (even though there were several) of any political movement, but because young adults woke up to the fact they had been lied to by their parents, their teachers and their clergymen as to what America stood for. What they saw with their eyes and what they had been told, where two totally different things. They were no longer content, to conform to how society would have them be and they forged their own paths.

It wasn't the revolution they dreamed it would be, but it was an evolution to the culture values of the American society.

There is a reason those societal changes were taking place. The seeds of change were sown in the 1950s. People who were tired of the way things were, they started rising up. Those who could no longer stay in the South went to Northern cities. Those who chose to stay in the South decided to fight back against the Jim Crow way of life. I mentioned that the South was very much up front and in-your-face with its discrimination. It codified it in its laws at the state level. The North, there were other ways of getting around it. The North wasn't know by state-level Jim Crow laws. Rather, it was known by what it failed to do. Housing discrimination was very rampant. Redlining, sundown laws (which varied by town), deeds and rental policies which excluded Blacks. This is why the fight in the South was different than in the North.

[green_mariner]

One reason I am slow to blame welfare is due to the works I've read. The Moynihan Report borrowed a bit from a dissertation written by Dr. E. Franklin Frazier. Black sociologists were doing research on the Black underclass as far back as the early 20th century. Dr. Frazier talked about the relatively high out of wedlock birth rates and single motherhood rates, in 1939. Senator Moynihan made his observations during the 50s and early 1960s.

The seeds of the 1960s were sown in the 1950s and before. One thing that needs to be analyzed is the Great Migration. The Second Great Migration was quite large. It started with WWII. It didn't end until 1970. During this time, over 5 million Blacks left the Deep South. They went cities like Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, etc. They also went to other cities like Milwaukee, Oakland, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle, Denver, Los Angeles, etc. Jobs were a big factor. The desire to get away from the South's Jim Crow discrimination was another.

With the good, came the bad. One thing Moynihan noticed was that the rates of single motherhood and fatherless homes, as well as divorce, were rising within the Black population, specifically in urban areas. The question is this. Why was fatherlessness and single motherhood on the rise among Blacks living in urban areas during the last 1950s/early 1960s, specifically among the underclass? Why was it coinciding with a rapid urbanization of Black Americans during the 1950s?

Before delving into that question, there is something below that show be viewed.

Black Homicide rates, 1949-1951, the top 10 states.
Texas: 42.4 per 100,000
Florida: 39.8 per 100,000
Missouri: 38.9 per 100,000
Delaware: 38 per 100,000
West Virginia: 37.9 per 100,000
Georgia: 37.7 per 100,000
Kentucky: 37.1 per 100,000
Alabama: 36.5 per 100,000
Tennessee: 35.6 per 100,000
Ohio(tie): 33.7 per 100,000
Indiana(tie): 33.7 per 100,000

Black murder rates by state, 1959-1961.
Florida: 43.4 per 100,000
Nebraska: 42.2 per 100,000
Nevada: 40.5 per 100,000
Texas: 34.5 per 100,000
Kentucky: 34.7 per 100,000
Georgia: 33.9 per 100,000
Colorado: 33 per 100,000
Missouri: 32.8 per 100,000
North Carolina: 31.5 per 100,000
Arizona: 31 per 100,000
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series...r20_006acc.pdf

Looking at the first list, the majority of the states listed are the former Confederate states (with Texas leading the pack. BTW, George Foreman was born in Houston in 1949. His neighborhood, the 5th Ward, was known as the "Bloody 5th" during his youth). Towards the late 1950s/early 1960s, there were more states outside of the South represented. (note, Mexicans were not counted as non-White for the purpose of homicide rates. Blacks made up 90% of the non-White population back then. I mention this because Colorado and Arizona appeared in the top 10 during the 1959-1961 time period).

Black Homicide rates by state, 2020.
Missouri, 50.98 per 100,000
Wisconsin, 45.72 per 100,000
Indiana, 42.91 per 100,000
Tennessee, 40,11 per 100,000
Illinois, 40.05 per 100,000
Arkansas, 38.33 per 100,000
Michigan, 36.73 per 100,000
Louisiana, 36.45 per 100,000
Kentucky, 35.75 per 100,000
Iowa, 33.84 per 100,000
Source: https://vpc.org/black-homicide-victi...es-appendix-2/

Notice a trend? In the late 1940s/early 1950s, former Confederate states/southern states dominated the pack in terms of Black homicide rates. Fast forward to now. Midwestern states are highly represented. And they all border one another, from Michigan to Missouri. (Ohio ranks 11th, with 30.81 per 100,000. Oklahoma ranks 12th, with 24.89 per 100,000).

Wisconsin's Black murder rate in the late 1940s/early 1950s isn't available. However, for the late 1950s/early 1960s, it was at 15.6 murders per 100,000. While not great, it wasn't in the top 10. Over the last decade, Wisconsin has frequently ranked in the top 10 for Black homicide rates. Missouri has always been a state with a high Black homicide rate. Nothing new. However, Wisconsin sticks out like a sore thumb. Even now, Blacks are about 6.3% of Wisconsin's population (Hispanics are now the largest minority in Wisconsin). And the majority live in Milwaukee.

Moynihan noticed a trend going into the 1960s. As more Blacks were moving into urban areas, the divorce rates were going up. Single motherhood was on the rise. Fatherlessness was on the rise too. And it was particularly bad among the underclass. The question is WHY? This is something that needs to be examined. Putting all of this on welfare, and welfare alone isn't good enough.

As for Thomas Sowell, this is what needs to be examined. He grew up in 1940s Harlem. Harlem was a different place from many other Black neighborhoods during the time. Moynihan was making his observations about New York during the late 1950s/early 1960s. There are more things that need to be considered. Those who were rioting in Newark, Detroit, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland (yes, Portland was one of the cities where Blacks rioted in the 1960s), Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Cleveland, etc, they were perpetrated by teenagers/young adults. Persons who were born in those cities to parents who migrated from the South, or persons who were born in the South and migrated later. Alot of those rioting were likely born between 1940-1947. I mention that timeline because the "welfare state" didn't official take effect until 1965. Those who were rioting didn't grow up under the "welfare state".

[Ellis Bell]

Originally Posted by green_mariner

Maybe. Perhaps if more people did their research, a 3rd party could make a dent.



Brown v Board of Education took place in Topeka, KS. That is where the fight against segregated schools started. Not in Chicago, not in New York, but Kansas. Officially, the civil rights movement started in 1954. Now, CORE was started in Chicago in the 1940s. Most of the movement was taking place in the South.




This is the thing. The South was literally putting its Black population under the Jim Crow dictatorship. When your race literally determines you not getting equal protection under the law, that is a problem. When Jim Crow is the reason one is shoehorned into inferior schools, and limited in terms of what services one gets, that is a problem. There is a reason so many Blacks left the South between 1910 and 1970. Poor economic prospects, the Jim Crow governments, and the general oppressive society up to the 1960s. Your father told you one thing, but for many Blacks, success often meant leaving the South. But even in the North there were problems.



There is a reason those societal changes were taking place. The seeds of change were sown in the 1950s. People who were tired of the way things were, they started rising up. Those who could no longer stay in the South went to Northern cities. Those who chose to stay in the South decided to fight back against the Jim Crow way of life. I mentioned that the South was very much up front and in-your-face with its discrimination. It codified it in its laws at the state level. The North, there were other ways of getting around it. The North wasn't know by state-level Jim Crow laws. Rather, it was known by what it failed to do. Housing discrimination was very rampant. Redlining, sundown laws (which varied by town), deeds and rental policies which excluded Blacks. This is why the fight in the South was different than in the North.

Originally Posted by green_mariner

Maybe. Perhaps if more people did their research, a 3rd party could make a dent.

If they could've they would've by now.

Originally Posted by green_mariner

Brown v Board of Education took place in Topeka, KS. That is where the fight against segregated schools started. Not in Chicago, not in New York, but Kansas. Officially, the civil rights movement started in 1954. Now, CORE was started in Chicago in the 1940s. Most of the movement was taking place in the South.

Topeka KS may be where the first of where segregation issues began, but the first protest on the issue of 'civil rights movement' began in the 40s through CORE initiation of sit-ins at restaurants and businesses in Chicago. (I also want to say there was a sit-in at one of the colleges up North, the first of the first, but I didn't make a note of it in my blog and I can't find my notes)

Copy paste from my blog on this:
The movement for the modern civil rights era began in the North in the 1940s. By 1961 though, CORE had broadened its reach from the North on into the Southern parts of America.

After WWII, African American soldiers who had defended their country with honor returned home to the same social barriers that had been there before the war, and a great push to end segregation began ---

I have found a teacher in North Carolina before the civil war that was fined and jailed for teaching black children to read and write. And there was a teacher up North, I want to say in Chicago, that lost her job, because she invited a black child to attend an all white school. btw: there was no law that said she couldn't.

Originally Posted by green_mariner

This is the thing. The South was literally putting its Black population under the Jim Crow dictatorship. When your race literally determines you not getting equal protection under the law, that is a problem. When Jim Crow is the reason one is shoehorned into inferior schools, and limited in terms of what services one gets, that is a problem. There is a reason so many Blacks left the South between 1910 and 1970. Poor economic prospects, the Jim Crow governments, and the general oppressive society up to the 1960s. Your father told you one thing, but for many Blacks, success often meant leaving the South. But even in the North there were problems.

You recognize there still were problems but I don't think you're seeing it. Because everything was painted to the South and the South has/had nothing to hide. The Black population may have had equal protection under the law in the Northern States, but they ignored it. (i have experience with this today; no body cares; it's a fact of life; we push on) Which is worse, knowing where one stands or the not knowing? The thinking one can get somewhere, when all reality, no one is going to give a crap?

Originally Posted by green_mariner

There is a reason those societal changes were taking place. The seeds of change were sown in the 1950s. People who were tired of the way things were, they started rising up. Those who could no longer stay in the South went to Northern cities. Those who chose to stay in the South decided to fight back against the Jim Crow way of life. I mentioned that the South was very much up front and in-your-face with its discrimination. It codified it in its laws at the state level. The North, there were other ways of getting around it. The North wasn't know by state-level Jim Crow laws. Rather, it was known by what it failed to do. Housing discrimination was very rampant. Redlining, sundown laws (which varied by town), deeds and rental policies which excluded Blacks. This is why the fight in the South was different than in the North.

Civil Rights Movement was the same in both the North and the South. "The North wasn't know by State-Level Jim Crow laws" you say --- they had other ways to run the Black folks out of town, they didn't need laws.

The reason for social changes was because at the end of WWII the Black veterans who had served this nation, the same as they had done since before the u.s. became a country, they had the same social barriers they had had before the war. Almost 20 years of protest (before the 60s South) that sparked the Civil Rights Movement in the North and no one knows hardly anything of it. That's political --- The reason Black folks stay in the South and don't move up North, is because we are people, not politics.

Just because there is a law about (social culture) something doesn't mean people are going to abide by that law. And just because there is a law about (social culture) something doesn't mean people are going to honor it either.
ps: if a person is always looking at what the State and Federal government does concerning laws they enact and make judgement based on that --- then a person will never see the people, the culture, and how they live and grow one to another within a community.