You too? Where did I say their lives were great? I have suggested that there are levels of poverty that go much, much further down the scale than what we experience in the US . . . please don't add another false dichotomy argument to this mess, eh?

. . . your highlighted part makes little sense to me - want to restate it?

 

To clarify, society provides a "safety net" in the form of welfare, food stamps, section eight housing etc. to prevent the mass arrests that would result if these things were not available in this country. In addition it is the responsability of the poor to avail themselves of these handouts in order to stay out of jail and keep custody of their children. Without those safety nets and people putting effort into getting those handouts, there would be a great many more children in foster care and a great many more people in prison.

In other places, the level of poverty that we would consider a crime is in their case considered normal.

 

Ah, gotcha - OK. I'm not sure any human would consider what's going on in those countries "normal" - but the residents of those places do manage to blunt their psyches against the onslaught somehow. The safety net in place here makes the experience of poverty in the US less psychologically and physiologically distressing than poverty in much poorer nations - wouldn't you agree? I think if we compared rates for theft, rape, murder, infant mortality and life expectancy, the answer would be clear . . . but I don't think you'd be able to convince stumbler or baller16 that there is a clear and distinct difference - and that difference matters irregardless of our desire to separate ourselves and measure only against the 1%ers in the US.

 

The problems with those ghetto neighborhoods that baller16 thinks are so great go a lot further than just a lack of money.

Many of the problems have to do with the shitheads who live there. The filth, the violence, the racism, the gangs, the drug and alcohol addiction. These are not financial problems, they're behavior problems. The shitheads who live there could bate many of these problems by behaving in a civilized manner...and they don't need a government grant to do it either. They could start by picking up the trash in their front yard but they won't. It's easier to complain about the filth they live in than clean it up.

They'll walk around with a chip on their shoulder ready to fight anyone who looks at them wrong, then complain about what a violent, hard neighborhood they live in. (Baller brags about it, but most residents complain about it.)

Most of their problems are created by themselves and blamed on everyone else. Nothing anyone has tried to do for these nieghborhoods has ever worked except locking lots of people up.

The simplest solution is to move to a neighborhood where people treat each other with decency. The kind of place Baller calls fake and soft.

 

You're a clueless idiot.

Get a clue, seriously. Stop speaking out of your ass, seriously.

And no, you've never actually been poor. You don't have neighborhoods like that out there. We both know it.

Keep your mouth shut about shit you know nothing about. Those places are what they are because YOU TOOK THEIR FUCKING JOBS. Not only that, people like you use those places for your own vices, to get your drugs, to buy a hooker, or whatever the fuck else. You don't know shit about the people living there or the lives they live. You think because you fucking listen to music or watch TV or watch movies that you know. You don't know a damn thing. The good people in those neighborhoods are better than you could ever be, and you and everybody like you would crumble and fall apart in their situations and certainly wouldn't be the honest people that many of them are.

I don't brag about shit, you fake ass fuck.

You know why we call your suburbs fake and soft? Because you aren't "decent". You're polite to people and that's it. That's a completely different thing. You isolate yourselves in your little ivory towers, in your pathetic lives of nothing that you need to fill with so many things just to not get incredibly depressed, and if anybody ever needed any real help, you wouldn't do a fucking thing. Your suburbs exist solely to give kids a better chance at life, though these days they're used moreso to give "parents" the dream lives they want and think they deserve, so they don't have to raise their kids.

How dare you judge them, you sheltered little fuck. You ain't a dick, by the way. You just wish you were, just like every other suburban douche.

 

I think the attitude that you're talking about may be a defense mechanism for some from growing up in such a neighborhood, but I agree that if they want change their lives within the community is the best place to start making that change. Certainly growing up in such a neighborhood means being underprivileged. If you can't change the neighborhood that does mean moving somewhere else- even if it means being poor somewhere else, I imagine they'd be better off.

 

You too need to stop talking like you know something. I don't care what kind of "poverty" you've experienced. You know nothing about living in neighborhoods like those.

 

I'm perfectly at right to have my own opinion. Attacking me or others for having one, ignorantly placed or not (and that is not me agreeing with you), is childish and not how a 'journalist' is trained.

There are different perspectives on all topics. This is mine, there was McDicks, and if it is frustrating for you it's all right, you don't need to comment. I promise it won't change anything.

 

Im not sure if its less distressing or not. In some respects it is, since the odds of mortality tend to be somewhat lower in the U.S. versus many other places, but the level of degredation and humiliation that people in this country are subjected to is pretty severe. On the up side, we spend less time here dodging AK-47 fire and trying to avoid land mines left over from wars past. Some countries however, while having a degree of poverty that would curl the toes of many American poor, have managed to normalize that level of poverty and have simply come to expect it. I have friends in Tanzania who used to be shocked at the level of poverty that they were seeing but over the years have discovered that in spite of not having running water or electricity, and having to walk everywhere, sometimes for many miles a day people tend to be relatively happy. While they dont enjoy many of the perks that we do like TV, bus systems, food banks, free clinics and so forth, they are still quite content with their relatively modest living conditions and somehow manage to squeak out a fairly decent existance.

There are struggles to be sure, but the expectations that come with their lives are considerably lower than what we have here. They have never seen things like king size beds, built in lighting, indoor plumbing, automatic garage doors, supermarkets full of food or lines of expensive cars waiting at a traffic intersection. They sleep on mats in huts made of discarded plywood and tin and cook over open fires. The clothes they wear were donated from the throwaways from the U.S. and Europe and they have never worn shoes. But in their eyes, life isnt bad and they actualy have a pretty positive outlook on things as a whole. Part of that being that they never have to worry about being thrown out on the streets for failing to pay their rent, or losing custody of their children for lack of proper sanitation or housing. They also dont know anything else. Having never had a rich person to compair their lives too they dont have any practical idea that there is anything else in the world. They have heard of places where the houses are huge and everybody has a car, but having never seen it, they dont realy have the realization in their minds.

Here on the other hand, a poor person is confronted daily with everything they dont have and will probably never achieve. They see the $125k Ferarri drive past on the freeway while they ride the bus to the food bank and its a constant slap in the face. They have seen the TV shows where people travel and have huge homes and expensive clothes and that creates a culture of envy and bitterness and the results speak for themselves.

 

baller is the only person who knows real poverty you shit heads. Leave him alone. If it weren't for his parents he would be out living on the streets with no computer or internet.

 

You think I give a fuck what you have to say?

It's not about your damn perspective. You don't have a right to one. You may not like that but I personally don't care. You don't live it. You never have. You can't imagine it, at all. Don't try to talk about any "causes" or "solutions" because the causes and solutions have been obvious ever since the problems started.

Why is it that so many people are unable to respect boundaries these days? Is it because you grew up in a way that allowed you not to have to? Seriously, once upon a time people who were from better opportunities isolated themselves from this shit because they knew they weren't a part of it and didn't want to be or to think about it. Instead, their kids/grandkids want to talk like they know about it when they've never even seen it.

Truth.

Plus, the fact is that people living in nature don't need running water. They just need clean water. They can hunt for their own food. They don't need many of the things people in concrete ghettos do.

They're in awful situations, yes, but they're not physically boxed in except by armed forces. It's different in places like South America and even other African places, where all of the stuff in US ghettos exists and on top of that they have to deal with things on a whole other level that we don't. Also, again, I'd like to point out that the reason these places exist in the way that they do is because of privileged white people, so privileged white people should either fix things or shut the fuck up about them.

Either way, neither of those harder experiences makes living in a true US ghetto any small thing compared to anything. Those who know nothing about it, like Old Tool, are always the first to bring up the third world because they can't admit that it's got nothing to do with race or skin color and everything to do with what opportunities you come from and how they were gotten.

 

Actually, unlike you fake fucks, I've never claimed to know real poverty.

That's the difference between us. I respect boundaries.

Also, who are you to say anything, you sheltered, spoiled ass suburbanite fuck?

 

I never claimed to know what its like to be poor. I have repeatedly said my upbringing was privileged, and that I am proud of it. I don't know how many other ways I could put it to you.

 

Well please forgive me. I did not mean too come off as hash to the others, and you. I take back what I said.

 

You obviously do care what I say or you wouldn't respond, or tell me to stop talking.

I'm not of the belief that ignoring the way people are living is at all right. I'm not of the belief of pretending it doesn't exist so I can live my life through rose colored glasses. I don't see that as 'respecting boundaries', I see that as heartlessly ignoring the underprivileged and treating them as unworthy to join human society. I have quite a bit more respect for individuals than that.

 

Yet you continue to not respect boundaries.

You continue to act like you're rich because you're "stronger" than those "damn poor people".

You continue to try to talk shit about me, when your privileged ass doesn't know a fucking thing about anything. Who the fuck are you to say anything about me? You fucking hypocrite.

 

No, I care about the fact that you think you have a right to comment on it in the first place.

I'm not of the belief that speaking your fucking opinions about those things instead of actually seeking to understand them is at all right.

What have you done for the underprivileged, Mother Theresa? You think because you make comments that that means something? Because you maybe volunteer at a soup kitchen?

Do you have any idea how easily those problems could be dealt with and lessened? Yet when it comes time to actually do something, everybody stops talking all of the sudden, because all they ever want to do is talk.

If you have respect for them, then respect the fact that you don't know, and either seek to understand it or stop talking.

 

You started with

How is that respecting boundaries? Here you are talking shit about suburban areas, casting a big wide brush over everyone who lives in them, insulting people you have never met.

You are the one who makes out that it is impossible to know anything without living it yourself. Therefore it is impossible for you to know anything about these people, and these areas. So why don't you take a page out of your own book, and stop talking shit about something you know nothing about.

 

As a black woman that comes from a very comfortable background in my opinion, you really probably don't want to hear my opinion. I But I will say this: White Privilege don't have necessarily mean coming from a certain type of financial background, it could mean other things as well. The way society looks at you, how they judge you from first glance, how most white people tend to get away with things in society, or in public while others can't, how others don't stereotype most white people.

Go to thisiswhiteprivilege.tumblr.com to see what I am talking about.

 

How is it painting a broad brush? It's the fucking truth! Not my fault you're so damn generic and alike. You know how I know it? Because I live with you, in your world. I'm not an outsider to it.

Nope, I make it out that it's impossible to know anything when you're an outsider to it and have no way to be reminded of it every day. That's not the case with me, nor has it ever been. That's the difference. You all come from places nowhere near any of this, know nobody from any of it, have no reminders of it whatsoever, yet you talk about it like you know!