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This is interesting. I've recently spent several months in Memphis TN, and am now spending time in El Segundo CA. It has allowed me to make some pretty interesting (to me anyway) observations about lower income workers (busboys, gas station attendents, hotel clerks etc). The blacks in Memphis were for the most part, surly to outright hostile, lazy, and generally incompetent. They just didn't care about anything. The Hispanics in El Segundo are polite, effective and do their jobs well. And, for the most part they speak better English and are easier to understand. If I were seeking a team of workers to help reconstruct the disaster area around New Orleans, I know who I would turn to.

And before I get blasted for being a racist, let me point out quite clearly that I do not believe this is a racial issue. It clearly is not. It is a cultural issue. The culture in Memphis is a welfare culture where things are handed to you without regard to what you contribute in return. The culture in El Segundo is one in which people have taken the initiative to leave something bad, for something better. And the migrant workers here seem grateful for the opportunity. But race has nothing to do with it. Put a bunch of white, Connecticut snobs into a welfare environment, and within a generation or two, I am certain you would see the same laziness, poorly directed anger and incompetence.

The blacks in Memphis were for the most part, surly to outright hostile, lazy, and generally incompetent. They just didn't care about anything.

Jeez fellas, that just ain't the point. The lower-end African-Americans are this country's greatest failure. They could be a tremendous asset. It's our job as a nation to figure out some way to make the incentives for working and playing it straight pay off for them.

The Latinos already outnumber African-Americans. As a nation, there's no way we can pay for the services working illegals are soaking up, and welfare to African-Americans, too.

In re the reconstruction of New Orleans: I say put it under military jurisdiction and draft (or "impress" might be a better word) welfare loafers right off the strreets and of the couches of their subsidized housing, and the jails and put them to work.

I made an observation here a few months ago that said some pretty nice things about some crews I had seen every day in my neighborhood laying optic fiber cable for the local phone company. The responses were predictable. I expect you will get quite a few of them yourself.

I tried to engage some of the more flaming responders in a discussion of the economics of paying what most home-boys want for a wage and providing the benefits they expect and the effect it would have on what the customer would have to pay for the finished product. I don't think I made much headway. They seem to be able to look at it only from an ethnocentric view. They have never had to make a payroll, deal with Worker's Comp or the unemployment people or work with payroll to handle withholding for income tax and social security. Or figure out how to complete a crew when two of the workers can't get to work on Monday because they are too hungover. Or worry about the amount of liability coverage they need to handle it when one of their crews backs their trench machine into someone's parked car.

I don't know of a single business owner who would not gladly pay what the home-boys expect if it meant getting honest workers who would show up for work and take some pride in their work.

Meanwhile, for the MOST part (not all of it, MOST of it) the surest way to get these attributes in a workforce is to use works who know firsthand what a great deal a job in America is.

I hope I can get asbestos suit on before the flaming starts!

I agree,its not racial,its cultural.
I must comment that I knew a lot of well to do white kids growing up in California who had the same welfare state mentality as any ghetto project dweller.But instead of the government being their sugar titty it was daddy and mommy who never expected their little darlings to do a lick of REAL work and gave them nearly every damn thing they wanted,including trips to Europe and new cars for high school graduation.