Cities 07

(This is a pre warning, I am going to be going off on a tangent about America and a lot of what it stands for. The so called “American Dream” happens only when you are sleeping.)
What is it about America that people think that you can start as a nobody and become someone famous, rich, and live an extravagant lifestyle? Is it the media, the government, or just our norms here in America? I am of the opinion that the dominated white media, government, and entertainment industry should foot the blame. Everyday we are bombarded with magazine, billboard, and TV images that create a false reality. We also have laws passed by severely over privileged white men that tell us how much we will have to pay on our income, or who can and cannot marry. It is the entertainment industry that progresses the want for beauty, fame, and money. Where else in the world do those who bring joy to others lives make more money than a significant number of its own population combined? This is the scary reality of America and it is not going to change anytime soon as we rear our children this way.
America is and will continue to be an individualistic society rather than a collective society as found in most Western European countries. It is constantly engrained in us as small children, be the best in your class, win the race, win the game, don’t let the bad kid bat in the bottom of the 9th when you are behind by one, and of course, when you do win do not be humble, gloat gloat gloat and make sure that everyone knows that you won. What about material things you might ask?
Buy more because credit is easy to come by in America. Buy as much as you would like, we will only charge you eight percent interest, that is until you miss a payment, then our friendly usury laws that were passed by our over privilidged white men will increase you interest to over twenty-eight percent. So go ahead, buy that new HD Flat Screen; in the end you might as well just buy four at once since you are going to buy that many anyways with your interest on your new credit card. We do not teach temperance in this society, so never become satisfied with what you have and always go looking for those new pair of shoes to fill the void in your life. And, those that do figure out the system?
Knowledge is power in America but what about wisdom? We do not value those who experience things first hand and know what a war can do; we must rely on our knowledge that invading a country will free people and bring about democracy. Ridicule people on national television, tell them how stupid they are, and move on. All of this is going on in a country that has not paid attention to its own problems.
William Julius Wilson was “critical of timid liberals who avoid confronting tough questions about race and poverty because they are afraid anything negative they say about blacks will appear racist. He argues that there is an urban underclass and that residents of poor Black ghettos today are socially isolated and caught in a tangle of pathology characterized by unemployment, crime, teenage pregnancy, out-of-wedlock births, welfare dependency, and drug use.”
The whole time I was reading this article I could not help but think of Hurricane Katrina when the colorblind Whites finally awoke and saw that there were still major racial disparities in our sweet old lady, the USA. Many of those whites thought, “how could this happen to those people?” Well, I will tell you. Demonize the Blacks on your local news as violent rapists and murderers, tell the media industry to keep on making shows that make the urban Black ghetto a fun and exciting place to live, and tell the government to stop giving money to these lazy people who don’t want a job anyway. One more thing, offer these children who come from the urban ghetto poor schooling, no after school programs, but make sure to teach them the word of God because s/he will save us all in the end.
In his reading we have the White flight phenomenon. In America, we like to be surrounded by people who look the same as us, talk the same, and drive the same cars as us. Wilson writes “in 1950, almost two-thirds of Woodlawn’s population was white; by 1960 the white population had declined to just ten percent.” Why is it that this white population was able to move so easily? Maybe there might have been something called redlining or simply the fact that America treated its urban underclass as subhuman, not granting them equal rights until 1963.
Here is to you William Julius Wilson! In all seriousness, we need to change the current state of the US. Everyone in this country should have access to healthcare, we need to value such things as temperance, wisdom, and the collective good. We should not just throw money at this issues, severe thought needs to go into the problems. The black urban dweller should not be swept under the rug. Provide jobs for him, do not make him compete for lower and lower wages, and please, offer his child a decent chance to get ahead through proper education.