Thread by @Cajsa

There have always been two competing explanations for inequality and the status of Black people in America. One argues that the laws, culture, economy, and society are organized to maintain white hegemony. The other argues that slavery damaged Black family, perhaps irrevocably

The latter is not just promoted by white people who have bought into Moynihan's long-ago report, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action," but even by Black leaders trapped in respectability politics accommodation of white racism.
theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

It does not surprise me that Pete Buttigieg repeated the idea that there is a cultural deficit in the Black community. This has been the mantra since Reconstruction and it's been repeated so often that Black people believe it, too.

How many people have talked about the lack of Black men and fathers in the lives of Black children? It's as ubiquitous as the AFLAC duck. It is also false. Nonresident white fathers spend less time with their kids than Black or Latino fathers.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Here is another study behind a paywall, though you can read six articles per month free.
jstor.org/stable/3001147…

I think the article in @TheRoot did plenty to disabuse people of the idea that Black people don't care about education. That is a pernicious idea that has far too universal.

theroot.com/pete-buttigieg…

@TheRoot Then there is the "cultural deprivation" idea. So, when I was in high school I attended Upward Bound, a program for culturally deprived high school students to foster pursuit of higher education. That was the language they used then, I am sure they would use disadvantaged now

@TheRoot I was culturally deprived in the eyes of the US gov't because I was poor and lived on a reservation. Anyway, it was helpful and I am glad I went. One of the eye-opening things, though, was when they gave us an IQ test. I had been tested a few times and my lowest result was 165...

but this IQ test modeled after the SAT, I got nearly every question wrong. I only remember one question, a multiple-choice definition of macaroni. Pasta was the wrong answer, the right answer was a clerk/bureaucrat. The test was centered on reservation culture, not white culture.

How many of us would flunk a test on cultural literacy that was Black-centered? The idea there is lack of culture in the Black community is certainly disproved by white appropriation of it

Or let's talk about pathology in the Black community. Is it really Black pathology or is it disparate freedom to be a screwup. If the police are called on a Black elementary school kid having a tantrum, is that the kid's fault or the school's?

If Black kids get jail and white kids get diversion for possession, is it Black pathology or white pathology? Isn't racism a pathology? I am thinking of @DrIbram in "How to Be An Anti-RAcist"

"One of racism’s harms is the way it falls on the unexceptional Black person who is asked to be extraordinary just to survive— and, even worse, the Black screwup who faces the abyss after one error , while the White screwup is handed second chances and empathy.

This shouldn’t be surprising: One of the fundamental values of racism to White people is that it makes success attainable for even unexceptional Whites, while success, even moderate success, is usually reserved for extraordinary Black people."

I like when he says "Every time someone racializes behavior— describes something as “Black behavior”— they are expressing a racist idea." and then later....

there is a thin line between an antiracist saying individual Blacks have suffered trauma and a racist saying Blacks are a traumatized people. There is similarly a thin line between an antiracist saying slavery was debilitating and a racist saying Blacks are a debilitated people.

Then there are "Black neighborhoods" where businesses don't invest, don't build supermarkets or factories, forcing Black people into long commutes for jobs, etc. Why? because people think Black neighborhoods are dangerous.

But are they? When I moved to Portland, I moved into a Black neighborhood, it's less so now thanks to gentrification but when I moved in, it was the cheapest neighborhood. I was never burglarized until I moved into a slightly whiter part of the neighborhood. lol

But that's anecdotal. For all its scary reputation thanks to the racist COPS show, my neighborhood had a lower violent crime rate than neighborhoods that were mostly white. So, why was it perceived as most dangerous when its violence was actually lower? Three guesses.

From @DrIbram again, "Estimated losses from white-collar crimes are believed to be between $ 300 and $ 600 billion per year, according to the FBI. By comparison, near the height of violent crime in 1995,...

the FBI reported the combined costs of burglary and robbery to be $ 4 billion...

Racist Americans stigmatize entire Black neighborhoods as places of homicide and mortal violence but don’t similarly connect White neighborhoods to the disproportionate number of White males who engage in mass shootings."

Kendi argues that the idea of the dangerous Black neighborhood is the most dangerous racist idea because it leads to disinvestment in the neighborhood. No money for parks, schools, etc. No factories, no Kinko's, No Safeway

He then asks, "How many times did I individualize the error in White spaces, blaming the individual and not the White space? How many times did I generalize the error in the Black space...and blame the Black space instead of the individual?"

And of course, people complain about Black people separating themselves in Black churches, organizations, schools, and neighborhoods, as though they should strive comfortably living among people who hate them

or they accuse them of being anti-white racists as though Black solidarity is anti-white rather than pro-Black.

Anyway, the point of this long rant is:
1) Read "How to Be An Anti-Racist"
2) Buttigieg's racist comment about Black students is widely believed thanks to decades of reinforcement
3) Most of what we are told about Black families and culture is rooted in racist pathology and myth

4) Pat Moynihan's report was well-intended but wrong and it has been used and abused for over 50 years now. White America & Respectability Politics Black people need to get over it.

5) I think you scratch any white candidate running for president and you will see the fruit of Moynihan's report. Seriously, read it and it will sound so familiar. Some Black leaders think that way, too. Even Obama bought some of its ideas.