So, you do not think an unborn babies father going to jail would be a causative factor in that unborn baby being born into poverty? Or are you arguing the unborn baby being born in poverty is a result of indirect racism that cause the father's father to be born into poverty is what causes the unborn baby to being born in poverty?

It occurs to me you seem to ignore the causative behavior (such as committing crime, or having unprotected sex as a teenager) as a causative factor in perpetual poverty. Are you calling those behaviors results?

MI6 made The Cure sing sad songs to keep down the working class spirits!

Nobody has ever wanted to listen to music about "positive messages", whatever the **** that means. That treacly **** is for children.

White people want to listen to songs about breakups, drug addiction, and sometimes weird concept albums about orcs and goblins.

I love how you think the music industry is as pure as an atlantic narrative. It's cute.

OK yeah that's definitely it, you nailed it.

Again, I strongly urge you to at least walk down the magazine aisle at your local supermarket so you can learn the name of a single other publication besides The Atlantic.

Give me one goddamn citation for the ****ing CIA involvement

You seem to be under the impression that this causality only goes in one direction but the causes/effects of poverty are largely circular. Poverty causes more broken households, which causes poverty, which causes more crimes, which causes poverty, which causes....

You yourself have said that the reason for black families being disproportionally poor in the past is racism. Given that perpetual poverty is largely a truism regardless of race, what amends do you believe has been made that the current state of disproportionate poverty is not directly related to that racism?

Can you address these questions first without quoting a Tupac song?

Minorities were put at a disadvantage from the start. Those disadvantages have been mostly erased, but it does not erase the issues that impoverished communities face, which is distinctly different than racism. It's simply untrue to say that the current population of blacks folks in poverty is directly related to racism.

In other words, a bunch of people made other people poor. The people stopped doing those things that made those people poor, but those people are still poor, and resort to doing what poor people do, which leads them procreating more people into a poor and unwinnable environment. Poverty is self-fulfilling. Racism is simply not what keeps black people poor. It should be noted, white poverty rates have not changed much either.

Again, if racism was a significant contributing factor, you'd see a shrinking black middle class relative to other demographics, over the past forty years.

You are essentially arguing the big bang created the personal computer. While you could argue that, but we'd both agree that several other factors were significantly more important in it's creation.

I don't know if I'll be able to find anything that satisfies you although I do think this can be reasoned out. Here is an article I only skimmed so I'll just have to hope it isn't full of antisemitism like Fly suggests it might. And there is apparently even a book.
The FBI-CIA war on Tupac and Socially-conscious Music

The third sentence doesn't just not logically follow from the first two, it directly contradicts them. The disproportionate poverty rate of minorities is directly due to historic racism. The US system is such that escaping poverty is incredibly difficult. Ergo the fact that a disproportionate number of minorities are in poverty today is directly due to the historic racism.

You can say that there is far less racism involved in keeping black people in poverty than there was in putting them into poverty in the first place and that's pretty much accurate. The simple facts are that black people are disproportionately in poverty due to historic racism and the lack of any action to rectify past racism is the reason that the disproportionate ratio exists to this day. Hell your argument that white poverty levels haven't changed much is just further evidence of the fact that historic racism is the primary cause of the disparity.

You keep saying the plot to promote gangsta rap is racist, but then you accuse someone of race-baiting?

I can't quite figure this out, but I think it means that in whatever is going on in your brain about conspiracies to promote gansta rap, racism is not your concern and not what you think is motivating the conspirators.

The race baiting referred to Fly suggesting that these ideas are anti-semitic.
I don't really understand your train of thought even with your apparent misunderstanding.
But I do think actual racism is part of the motivation.

Because you cant get past the fact that black folks are not monolithic entities. Poor black people today are not the same ones who were poor decades ago.

Do you believe the CIA killed tupac?

No they're not (well some of them are, as was pointed out we're only talking a timescale of two to three generations here) but they are largely from the same families and same communities. As you have said, getting out of poverty is hard and the system is such that intergenerational poverty is almost guaranteed. That makes the argument that because these aren't the same exact people it's therefore unrelated to racism faced by the previous generations ludicrous.

I posted that article because Wookie asked me for something, but I'm not familiar with any of the theories regarding what happened or even his music, really. I was never a fan.

Before I respond, your argument is racism put them in poverty, and keeps them in poverty?

My argument is that racism is the reason they are in poverty in the first place, and that because nothing has been done to make amends for the historic injustice, the main cause of the disproportionate number of black families in poverty is racism.

I've said this a lot of times in the past and tried to provide a lot of links, which I don't have time to go back and rehash all of right now, but my view is roughly that concentrated poverty is both self-reinforcing and also reinforced by continuing issues involving racism in various forms.

As an example, much of the research I've seen focuses on the effects of concentrated poverty, and the concentration of poverty is in large part a consequence of segregation. Originally de jure, but now mostly just de facto. But I don't think there can be much doubt that racial biases help perpetuate the segregation that reinforces poverty. There's also ongoing discrimination in employment (name-based resume audit studies), relatively recent issues with predatory lending, and plenty of racial issues in the criminal justice system (not mainly involving police shootings, but sentencing, voir dire, jury selection, and so on).

Of course, a lot of those issues with discrimination are also exacerbated by poverty, so it's fairly valid to also view them as class issues, and not just race issues. The two are pretty intertwined. I also think there is room in explanations of racial inequality for concern about cultural factors (and various academics have tried to address some of those questions, e.g. some work by Elijah Anderson), but it's useful to ask the question "what contributes to cultural problems?" The answer will also lead back to some issues involving racism.

My perception, having had these arguments many times, is that it gets to a point where people are arguing past each other, where on one hand some people interpret arguments in favor of explanations grounded in racism to be removing all agency from black people (ignoring issues involving single parents, or cultural factors) in favor of structural explanations, where on the other hand those advancing structural explanations interpret the other side as insisting on explanations grounded in agency that seem like various forms of cultural racism, i.e. because they treat culture too essentialistically and ignore the structural causes of cultural issues. I feel like the issues are complex enough for there to be some room for both structure and agency to matter. But I also think it's just wrong to assert that racism has nothing to do with the status quo.

We are back to the monolithic entities part. A black baby born today to a father in prison, and a teen mother has nothing to do with the racial injustices black people faced/faces. It has to do with unprotected sex, and criminal activity. I find it bizarre that you would think that black baby was likely born into poverty becasue of racism, and that black baby has a higher likely hood of growing up and going to prison, and/or having a kid when they are a teenager, not because of racism, but becasue of human behavior(s).

This is absolutely amazing

A little self awareness please

The tyrant getting cranky

That five percenters are working for the cia is about as ludicrous as it gets. And if you don't know the difference between the five percent and the ten percent don't act like you know the first thing about rap.

Git up git out cut that bull**** out, don't spend all your time gettin high.

The extent is the question. As evidence of the discourse in this thread, any explanation other than racism is met with disbelief and strenuous objection. Its not that one side can't acknowledge that racism played/plays a role, its that the other refuse to acknowledge, or down plays any other causative factors to the disproportion. You, yourself have played into this by suggesting one side is saying "racism has nothing to do with the status quo", which is not what is being argued.

It's the same trope that goes on in all these type of discussions. Someone says, "hey racism is not really as prevalent as you are making it out to be", and the person rebuts by saying, "oh, so racism does not exist".

You're clearly dodging the question here. Did you think we wouldn't notice?