A recent statistic shows that 900,000 blacks are in prison as compared to 600,000 in college.
And 80% of the violent offenders were convicted of black-on-black attacks.
Black leaders should now be focusing on how they can improve their own peoples'problems of undereducation, out-of-wedlock births and continued crime.
As the wave of immigrants from every continent floods America, jobs are being sucked up by non-natives. The immigrants' children, in many cases are learning the language and melting in to the American culture faster and more smoothly than blacks that have been Americans for many generations.
I've always wondered why so many of the convenience stores and gas stations in my section of the country(Connecticut) are operated and owned by Indian or Pakistani immigrants.
Where are the black owners?
Why hasn't affirmative action worked?
I feel ya, but don't believe the "leader" hype. The conservative message doesn't work with a leader. It's an individual thang.
Blacks don't need leaders. Treat us like you would a white person.
Don't let them fool you - AA has worked; just not the way they would have you believe it should.
AA is not perfect - but it opened many doors that were shut previously. More recently, it has been corrupted - badly. Many of the so-called black leadership have misused it to make sure their buddies get what they want - witness Jesse Jackson and bullying Budweiser into giving his sons a distributorship under the guise of "affirmative action."
The system is broken and needs to be fixed. Leveling the table doesn't mean tilting it entirely in the opposite direction. I don't have all the answers - but I do know that by getting away from the traditional black liberal power structure that we are on the right path.
You're looking at it wrong, you need to imagine how it can be twisted: ie.The prison to college ratio is simply more evidence of how whites oppress and hold down black men. If these black men weren't locked up by purposefully racist criminal justice system then they would be in college.
See? It isn't that hard. And if you stop thinking at that point (so the illogic of the above doesn't settle in) you've satisfied yourself that the statistic is a point for your side.
"I've always wondered why so many of the convenience stores and gas stations in my section of the country(Connecticut) are operated and owned by Indian or Pakistani immigrants.
Where are the black owners?
Why hasn't affirmative action worked?"
Here in Georgia, convenience stores, gas stations, jewelry stores, mall kiosks, motels, and many food franchises, are operated and owned by middle eastern immigrants, and not just Indian or Pakistani. They work like dogs, entire extended families, and they must know how to save their money to invest in these businesses, so that they eventually own them. But it would be unfair not to mention the substantial number of highly educated, professional middle eastern immigrants. They're here too.
Also unfair not to mention the successes of affirmative action. Maybe it's time has passed, but certainly in medicine, law, business, academia, politics, the black population has swelled. Without that initial leg-up, it might not have happened. (I'm sure immigrants get "legs up" too, from those who have come before.)
The American Dream = Alive and Well
An old line - sad but true, is that if a Black and an Asian move into a new town, the first thing the Black looks for is the welfare office; the first thing the Asian looks for is a quickie mart to manage.
Where are the black owners?
Why hasn't affirmative action worked?
Because some people want an opportunity to work and earn a living and other people want to vote themselves money from the public till so they don't have to work.
Great question!!!! In a stab at an answer I have to go back 100 years to the great divide in the then Negro Community. Boker T Washington was willing to accpt unjust predjudice and discriminations and concentrate the Black effort at education and entrepreneurship. W.E.B. DuBois and the NAACP sought legal and political remedies to discrimination at the expense of agenuine effort to create a Black middle class. Indeed, the only immigrant group to succeed using DuBois' model were the Irish who gained power and acceptance through political means. All others used the economic model of unskilled labor, community oriented businesses, movement into education, and advancement into professions to acieve success.
It is quite possible that given the avowed racism 100 years ago Booker T Washington's method would not have achieved more equality, but there would have been in some areas an infrastructure of Black businesses and a cadre of blacks educated in thearts of business, finance, and economics.
If you think about India and Africa and European colonization. The Europeans, Britain and France, denied most of their subjects the right to be educated in agriculture, mechanics, mining. Those who received education were directed into Law where they learned of Magna Carta and The Rights of Man and came home preasching revolution. Which when finally achieved, foundered on the rocks of economic, agricultural, and financial incompetence.
Why hasn't affirmative action worked?
The dirty little secret of business ownership is that even in a very successful business the profit--the difference between income and expenses--is generally far smaller than the expenses, never mind the income. That means that a small improvement is income, and/or a small improvement is expenses, has a large effect on profit. In consequence the businessman has to sweat the details. No one who is unwilling to submit to that discipline--and to be derided as a Scrooge or a nerd for doing so--has much prospects as the operator of a small business.So affirmative action cannot make you an entrepreneur.
There is no conceivable way. And if you do have that discipline, affirmative action is probably not going to be the difference between success and failure.