This is going to touch a nerve but from my experience of nearly ten years as a teamsters steward at UPS warehouse there is a difference in entry level worker productivity that race is a powerful proxy for. It's essentially the macho "don't tell me what to do" attitude that is not caused by race but is powerfully correlated with it in young men, older workers tend not to have this attitude at all.
The amount of times I've had to intervene in an argument between workers and supervisors where the worker feels disrespected because the supervisor told them to get off their phone or to not walk in truck yard in which the worker was a young black man vs a young white man was absolutely observable. I even kept a private spreadsheet of firing for arguing or safety violations by race and age an. Both age and race were statically significant but young and black stood out head and shoulders above everything else.
Thomas Sewell also talked about this macho attitude and culture of not letting anyone disrespect you as to why rural whites and urban blacks look so similar.
I have a close friend who is a manager at a warehouse and his experiences are very similar to yours. It was undoubtedly the black youth and young adults who caused the most havoc. They wouldn't take commands well, were often tardy, and became confrontational when their role was justifiably terminated due to poor performance. It was rare that older blacks exhibited the same issues. Again, it's culture and not race that perpetuates these counterproductive attitudes and behavior.
I've always felt anyone who has talked politics or argued against the necessity have never known nor ever been in such a state where there was a need for welfare- but had "welfare" in the form of extended family money, or even state grants. Or even more cynically, DID get welfare, but felt in their case it was "deserved" and not for anyone else who was just "abusing it" unable to fathom that other people have hard times too.
Even my mom had a double take when we were talking about welfare and how she was against "welfare queens"...and then I just shut her up by asking if my sister, a single mom with two kids, could have been fine without food stamps? And got all quiet when I mentioned that she's imagining every worst stereotype guzzling up welfare, and not imagining every welfare recipient as her own daughter. Yes, my sister needed to find a better job to support herself and her kids...but when you have NOTHING, you can't get anything- and you're less capable of getting something- can't work if you can't eat, and being homeless costs more monthly than having a home. The hope of welfare is that with an easier first step, you can move upwards to a better paying job.
For everyone else- the injured, the elderly, the disabled, they still often work- they still engage with their communities- and even as per capitalism, they consume and put that money immediately back into the economy. Unlike rich people, who hoard and tax haven, all of that welfare money goes into a local community, it is returned to the US when taxed. Obviously, the real issue is that much of that welfare money is then hoovered up by the likes of Walmart who then go out of their way to deny Uncle Sam his tax dollars.
The denial of welfare assumes that just as all Americans are "temporarily embarrassed millionaires", the opposite can never be true: no one who "works hard" will ever fall down and be unable to live on their own means- no one can ever become a millionaire temporarily embarrassed. For the super rich- this is true, they have enough wealth and connections that pay like wealth to recover. Sometimes even the idea that they could be worth something again eventually is enough scrip to get someone to feed and clothe them. But for the average American, especially as most of us can barely hold up $300 in savings to deal with emergencies and are constantly being knocked down by medical emergencies, and the greatest amount of equity we keep is our cars (a depreciating value at that), we have to accept that one day, we will fall short, and there may be no one to help us, no matter how hard we work.
Family pockets and GoFund me are like an elective welfare- but an unnecessary one, and one fraught with abuse and misuse. Yes, someone could fake an injury and get a whopping $500 monthly so they don't have to work...but someone could also just choose not to work and do drugs and leech thousands of dollars a month from family members or outright defraud Gofundme-like ventures, as there's no limit nor any control on how they use the money they ask for.
For me, my biggest gripe is that the people who yell the loudest are those who imagine their precious and hated tax dollars (ones they, if they could, would not pay any at all) going towards someone they detest, despise, and are disgusted by, imagining the 1 or even 0.01 cent of their tax money going into one venue, and ignoring the more obvious boons of their tax dollars in the roads and bridges they drive upon, the public services they frequently take advantage of, and the numerous subsidies their businesses rely on to turn a profit.
Sowell and his ilk like similar Libertarian/Sov Citizen Rashad Jamal, are in a weird category of public speakers in that community who would actively try and create a following of thought that would actually make the average member of the black community's life harder, more painful, and less capable of dealing with the issues we face today, while framing it as "empowerment" or "taking control" away from a nebulous, evil government...while they themselves are immune (not so in the Rashad example fortunately) are immune to these hardships due to their own privilege, peerage, and high paid career. Men who live in an oasis telling people who live in the desert that they don't need to live under the tyranny of "water".
The is one basic question that I ask which is, if Black people were thriving prior to 1965, why on earth would LBJ need to declare the war on poverty? You can't make sense out of BS. Amazing article.
This is going to touch a nerve but from my experience of nearly ten years as a teamsters steward at UPS warehouse there is a difference in entry level worker productivity that race is a powerful proxy for. It's essentially the macho "don't tell me what to do" attitude that is not caused by race but is powerfully correlated with it in young men, older workers tend not to have this attitude at all.
The amount of times I've had to intervene in an argument between workers and supervisors where the worker feels disrespected because the supervisor told them to get off their phone or to not walk in truck yard in which the worker was a young black man vs a young white man was absolutely observable. I even kept a private spreadsheet of firing for arguing or safety violations by race and age an. Both age and race were statically significant but young and black stood out head and shoulders above everything else.
Thomas Sewell also talked about this macho attitude and culture of not letting anyone disrespect you as to why rural whites and urban blacks look so similar.
I have a close friend who is a manager at a warehouse and his experiences are very similar to yours. It was undoubtedly the black youth and young adults who caused the most havoc. They wouldn't take commands well, were often tardy, and became confrontational when their role was justifiably terminated due to poor performance. It was rare that older blacks exhibited the same issues. Again, it's culture and not race that perpetuates these counterproductive attitudes and behavior.
I've always felt anyone who has talked politics or argued against the necessity have never known nor ever been in such a state where there was a need for welfare- but had "welfare" in the form of extended family money, or even state grants. Or even more cynically, DID get welfare, but felt in their case it was "deserved" and not for anyone else who was just "abusing it" unable to fathom that other people have hard times too.
Even my mom had a double take when we were talking about welfare and how she was against "welfare queens"...and then I just shut her up by asking if my sister, a single mom with two kids, could have been fine without food stamps? And got all quiet when I mentioned that she's imagining every worst stereotype guzzling up welfare, and not imagining every welfare recipient as her own daughter. Yes, my sister needed to find a better job to support herself and her kids...but when you have NOTHING, you can't get anything- and you're less capable of getting something- can't work if you can't eat, and being homeless costs more monthly than having a home. The hope of welfare is that with an easier first step, you can move upwards to a better paying job.
For everyone else- the injured, the elderly, the disabled, they still often work- they still engage with their communities- and even as per capitalism, they consume and put that money immediately back into the economy. Unlike rich people, who hoard and tax haven, all of that welfare money goes into a local community, it is returned to the US when taxed. Obviously, the real issue is that much of that welfare money is then hoovered up by the likes of Walmart who then go out of their way to deny Uncle Sam his tax dollars.
The denial of welfare assumes that just as all Americans are "temporarily embarrassed millionaires", the opposite can never be true: no one who "works hard" will ever fall down and be unable to live on their own means- no one can ever become a millionaire temporarily embarrassed. For the super rich- this is true, they have enough wealth and connections that pay like wealth to recover. Sometimes even the idea that they could be worth something again eventually is enough scrip to get someone to feed and clothe them. But for the average American, especially as most of us can barely hold up $300 in savings to deal with emergencies and are constantly being knocked down by medical emergencies, and the greatest amount of equity we keep is our cars (a depreciating value at that), we have to accept that one day, we will fall short, and there may be no one to help us, no matter how hard we work.
Family pockets and GoFund me are like an elective welfare- but an unnecessary one, and one fraught with abuse and misuse. Yes, someone could fake an injury and get a whopping $500 monthly so they don't have to work...but someone could also just choose not to work and do drugs and leech thousands of dollars a month from family members or outright defraud Gofundme-like ventures, as there's no limit nor any control on how they use the money they ask for.
For me, my biggest gripe is that the people who yell the loudest are those who imagine their precious and hated tax dollars (ones they, if they could, would not pay any at all) going towards someone they detest, despise, and are disgusted by, imagining the 1 or even 0.01 cent of their tax money going into one venue, and ignoring the more obvious boons of their tax dollars in the roads and bridges they drive upon, the public services they frequently take advantage of, and the numerous subsidies their businesses rely on to turn a profit.
Sowell and his ilk like similar Libertarian/Sov Citizen Rashad Jamal, are in a weird category of public speakers in that community who would actively try and create a following of thought that would actually make the average member of the black community's life harder, more painful, and less capable of dealing with the issues we face today, while framing it as "empowerment" or "taking control" away from a nebulous, evil government...while they themselves are immune (not so in the Rashad example fortunately) are immune to these hardships due to their own privilege, peerage, and high paid career. Men who live in an oasis telling people who live in the desert that they don't need to live under the tyranny of "water".
Great writing, great research, just a fun and informative read. Well done!
The is one basic question that I ask which is, if Black people were thriving prior to 1965, why on earth would LBJ need to declare the war on poverty? You can't make sense out of BS. Amazing article.