What Whitey really "did" to the Black Community...

Much of the discussion about Katrina and the feds role or lack there of during the crisis has hinged around racism and the perceived neglect of the African American community.

Well, John McWhorter wrote an amazing piece over the weekend that really gets at the heart of the issue. The discussion has got to get beyond this idea that this event was just another illustration of how the white majority keeps down the black population or at the very least is indifferent and slow to care.

The reality is that our welfare system (as McWhorter points out) was created by do-gooder whiteys looking for votes and and a "gold star" back in the 60's. Their efforts changed welfare from something that was a true safety net of ultimate last resort to a system of empowerment for poor decision making and little motivation for improvement. If you think the federal government is going to save you (as many in poverty now cling to) you are doomed to a life of barely surviving and barely getting by. And pumping more money into the system won't fix it b/c it's the idea of pumping more money into the system that create the problem in the first place!

Some profound points by Mr. McWhorter:

In fact, white America does remain morally culpable — but because white leftists in the late 1960s, in the name of enlightenment and benevolence, encouraged the worst in human nature among blacks and even fostered it in legislation. The hordes of poor blacks stuck in the Superdome last week wound up there not because the White Man barred them from doing better, but because certain tragically influential White Men destroyed the fragile but lasting survival skills poor black communities had maintained since the end of slavery.

Few thinking people regret the flower children’s opposition to the Vietnam war, sexism and racial discrimination. But these advances also spelt the demise of old standards of responsibility. Taught that criminality and violence must be judged in proportion to the extent to which poverty and discrimination have coloured one’s existence, the enlightened white person saw black violence as “understandable”.

In 1966, however, a group of white academics in New York developed a plan to bring as many people onto the welfare rolls as possible. Across the country, poor blacks especially were taught to apply for living on the dole even when they had been working for a living, and by 1970 there were 169% more people on welfare nationwide than in 1960.

Only in 1996 was welfare limited to five years and focused on training for work. But by then generations of poor blacks had grown up in neighbourhoods where there was no requirement that fathers support their children. Few grew up watching their primary parent work for a living. Most people paid nominal subsidies as rent and were thus less inclined to treat their living spaces well.

What Katrina stripped bare, then, was not white supremacy, but that culture matters — even if what created the culture was misguided white benevolence. Social scientists neglect that before the 1960s poor blacks knew plenty of economic downturns and plenty more racism.