Get Out of the Central City?

Blogger James T. Harris lives in the central city of Milwaukee, and thus has a first hand view of realities that both suburban conservatives and East Side liberals pretty much see only through the lens of ideology.

That’s why his blog is such compelling reading.

In his most recent entry, he mulls over the question, does a black family that wants a decent environment for its kids need to simply move out.

Milwaukee is getting scary. That’s the word among friends. Yesterday, I had a conversation with a couple that is considering moving “further out.” Their neighborhood changed overnight because of one rental property.

I told them that for the first time in a long time I was feeling nervous. My son is entering high school. It’s a private school, and because of that he will stand out like a sore thumb in my neighborhood. He doesn’t have to wear a uniform, per se, but his attire is nothing close to “urban wear.” My friend sat in his chair and stared at me.

It’s the culture, stupid.

Further:

Adding fuel to the fire, the boy who was assaulted on the bus the other day is speaking out. He gave the reason for the beat down. The thugs didn’t like the clothes he was wearing. He wasn’t dressed like a gang banger, he wasn’t dressed like a rapper, so the gang bang rap wanna be thugs kicked his ass.

Obviously, we have here a self-reinforcing cycle: as people like Harris move out, the neighborhood declines, prompting others to leave.

But doing something about it requires things like tough law enforcement, school choice, and reducing welfare dependency. In other words, things liberals don’t want to do.

James Harris Takes Obama to Task for Stupid Statement

From the National Conversation:

Here we go again.

On Tuesday, Barack Obama said that the Bush administration is at fault for doing nothing to defuse a quiet riot brewing among blacks.

The problem? Black people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. He went so far as to compare the resentment and frustration of the federal government’s response to Katrina, to the Rodney King riots of 1992.

(Remember those gems of black frustration? Los Angeles erupted after a jury acquitted four police officers of assault charges in the 1991 beat down of Rodney King. Several days of rioting ensued where black people really proved a point by burning down their own damn neighborhoods.)

Wow.

You know a presidential candidate is out to lunch when he starts speaking in oxymorons.

Dealing With Being Black?

White folks, unfortunately, have gotten in the habit of watching what they say about black folks.

It’s so easy to get called a racist after all.

But James Harris of The National Conversation is black, and he’s not intimidated by the notion that he has to toe some party line.

So what happens when the local stuck-in-the-60s leftist tabloid runs a story about the trials of a black woman titled “I Deal With Being Black Every Day.” Poor woman. Has to deal with white racism.

Except Harris notices that the things she actually has to “deal with” are of her own doing.

Teresa Rae Butler of Milwaukee has a problem. She has four kids, “no man in her life,” $32,000 in college debt, a worthless degree, no job and she lives in the ‘hood.’ Now that’s rough. No one would dispute the difficulty of someone in her circumstances. But when the Shepherd-Express interviewed her about her struggles, Teresa, in a moment of pure insanity, did not contemplate the stupidity of her asinine life choices. That would be too obvious. Oh, no! Teresa Rae Butler blamed her race! Her skin color!

“I deal with being black every day.”

Sweet God in Heaven. This poor soul has acquitted herself from the immorality of her own stupidity! (Four kids with no man in her life is most likely code for four kids by four different men.) A single mother with four kids is THE recipe for poverty. Going to college is nice but that in and of itself doesn’t guarantee success; Her degree is in human services. Social work? You went 30 G’s into debt for a dead-end, low-paying (albeit altruistic) job? Ouch.

“Milwaukee doesn’t do anything to promote racism; it just sort of turns its back to you and lets you die in the gutter.”

Here’s what she’s really saying: My life is not my responsibility. My circumstances are not a result of my decisions. God can’t help me and I can’t help myself because, I am black.

As we have already observed, anybody who has seen Bill Cosby give his talk before a black audience knows that he (and Harris) speak for a very large minority -- and sometimes a clear majority -- of black people.

We are talking about black folks who have clear ideas about what upward mobility requires.

We are talking about black folks many of whom are Christians and who have Christian ideas about how people should behave.

We are talking about people who worked hard to make it. In a goodly number of cases they had to work harder than whites to make it. That wasn’t fair, but failing to make it would have been way worse.

We are talking about people some of whom actually marched with Martin Luther King. And many more marched elsewhere and worked for and identified with the Civil Rights Movement. And they don’t much like the hard won political gains being thrown away via irresponsible personal behavior.

[Extra:] An earlier post of Harris’ made the “Best of the Wisconsin Blogs” section of the Journal-Sentinel website.

New Blog Roll Entry: The National Conversation

Just added to our blog roll, The National Conversation, by blogger James Harris.

Readers who listen to Charlie Sykes will know about “James from Sherman Park.” Yep. This is indeed James from Sherman Park.

Since Harris is black and conservative, a certain number of politically correct whites and race baiting blacks are going to consider him a traitor to his race.

We, however, think that it’s inherently demeaning to think that black people aren’t allowed to have different political opinions.

After all, we expect whites to disagree among themselves.

Of course, if varies by issue. It will be a cold day in hell when any significant number of black people decide that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a bad idea.

And blacks clearly lean in a liberal direction on economic regulation and social welfare spending. Here, however, there are a fair number of blacks who own businesses, or work for corporations that are the targets of liberal politicians (energy, pharmaceuticals, health care).

But on a variety of social issues rank and file black folks are not particularly liberal at all. Blacks are split down the middle on the death penalty. And there is an often hidden but intense condemnation in the black community of behaviors that make upward mobility for youth impossible: drug use, promiscuous sex, contempt for academic achievement and hostility toward authority.

Just listen to Bill Cosby give his talk in front of a black audience.

So blacks who are in the business of telling white liberals and leftists what they want to hear aren’t the only “authentic” voices of the community.