Volume II, Issue V
Bribery Strikes Out
Bribery and empowerment are two different things. Heather MacDonald [click to read] in City Journal looks at a New York program that 'pays' urban poor to do the right thing. It is modeled [loosely] on a program in Central America that paid rural poor to keep their kids in school rather than pull them out to help with the harvest. As Ms.MacDonald points out, the situations are vastly different.
Poor farmers, who's survival depends on the harvest, are acting in their family's best interest at the moment when they focus on the harvest. America's urban poor, on the other hand, are not driven by such forces.
"The antisocial behaviors that contribute to multigenerational poverty also have nothing to do with suffocating economic pressures: very few inner-city students cut classes or drop out of school to help their parents work; they do so because their peer culture is toxic and because their parents exercise little control over their lives." --Heather MacDonald
Paying kids for good grades or paying mothers to stabilize their lifestyle and keep kids in school may indeed bring short term results but they fail to address the underlying dysfunction that perpetuates poverty in the first place.
A multigenerational underclass seems doomed to perpetually inhabit the deconstructing neighborhoods that once housed our immigrant fathers and mothers. The difference for our families was the strong influence of parents, church, the storekeeper on the corner who knew our parents and spoke to them at church... you get the picture.
Our forefathers worked to give their children a better life and drew us into their dream. They saw their children get more education than they did and build houses in the suburbs. For families who had never owned land in the old country, America offered incredible opportunity.
Sadly, incredible opportunity still exists in America but today's perpetual underclass denys itself the opportunities through peer pressure and disorganization. The success of programs like the DC Opportunity Scholarships should give us reason for hope. The true story of Baltimore Ravens player Michael Oher as portrayed in the movie 'The Blind Side' should suggest a way out of the cycle can be found.
'Organizing for America' and its community organizers will not address the problems. They will simply use people and their condition to usher in their Socialist agenda. Another generation will follow in their parents' footsteps, tied to government programs that purport to meet their needs while tying them to perpetual dependence...
We're America and we can do better.
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