Southern people have always had a way of simply not talking about things.  We, as a group, all know the things exist but we don’t talk about them.  Kids learn at an early age  because their mothers have a way of grabbing them up under their arms and giving them this special squeeze….I used to call it the grocery store squeeze….not to ask questions about certain things.  Senator Jim Webb has grabbed the proverbial tiger by the tail in an op/ed piece in the Wall Street Journal as he comments on the myth of white privilege and how 95% of white southerns have perhaps been miscast. 

Senator Webb definitely has cojones for taking on this ‘unmentionable.’

Suggested by Poor Richard, from the Wall Street Journal:

By JAMES WEBB

The NAACP believes the tea party is racist. The tea party believes the NAACP is racist. And Pat Buchanan got into trouble recently by pointing out that if Elena Kagan is confirmed to the Supreme Court, there will not be a single Protestant Justice, although Protestants make up half the U.S. population and dominated the court for generations.

Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.

I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America’s economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship. Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.

In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived.

How so?

Lyndon Johnson’s initial program for affirmative action was based on the 13th Amendment and on the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which authorized the federal government to take actions in order to eliminate “the badges of slavery.” Affirmative action was designed to recognize the uniquely difficult journey of African-Americans. This policy was justifiable and understandable, even to those who came from white cultural groups that had also suffered in socio-economic terms from the Civil War and its aftermath.

The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed. But the extrapolation of this logic to all “people of color”—especially since 1965, when new immigration laws dramatically altered the demographic makeup of the U.S.—moved affirmative action away from remediation and toward discrimination, this time against whites. It has also lessened the focus on assisting African-Americans, who despite a veneer of successful people at the very top still experience high rates of poverty, drug abuse, incarceration and family breakup.

Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years.

Contrary to assumptions in the law, white America is hardly a monolith. And the journey of white American cultures is so diverse (yes) that one strains to find the logic that could lump them together for the purpose of public policy.

The clearest example of today’s misguided policies comes from examining the history of the American South.

The old South was a three-tiered society, with blacks and hard-put whites both dominated by white elites who manipulated racial tensions in order to retain power. At the height of slavery, in 1860, less than 5% of whites in the South owned slaves. The eminent black historian John Hope Franklin wrote that “fully three-fourths of the white people in the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery.”

The Civil War devastated the South, in human and economic terms. And from post-Civil War Reconstruction to the beginning of World War II, the region was a ravaged place, affecting black and white alike.

In 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt created a national commission to study what he termed “the long and ironic history of the despoiling of this truly American section.” At that time, most industries in the South were owned by companies outside the region. Of the South’s 1.8 million sharecroppers, 1.2 million were white (a mirror of the population, which was 71% white). The illiteracy rate was five times that of the North-Central states and more than twice that of New England and the Middle Atlantic (despite the waves of European immigrants then flowing to those regions). The total endowments of all the colleges and universities in the South were less than the endowments of Harvard and Yale alone. The average schoolchild in the South had $25 a year spent on his or her education, compared to $141 for children in New York.

Generations of such deficiencies do not disappear overnight, and they affect the momentum of a culture. In 1974, a National Opinion Research Center (NORC) study of white ethnic groups showed that white Baptists nationwide averaged only 10.7 years of education, a level almost identical to blacks’ average of 10.6 years, and well below that of most other white groups. A recent NORC Social Survey of white adults born after World War II showed that in the years 1980-2000, only 18.4% of white Baptists and 21.8% of Irish Protestants—the principal ethnic group that settled the South—had obtained college degrees, compared to a national average of 30.1%, a Jewish average of 73.3%, and an average among those of Chinese and Indian descent of 61.9%.

Policy makers ignored such disparities within America’s white cultures when, in advancing minority diversity programs, they treated whites as a fungible monolith. Also lost on these policy makers were the differences in economic and educational attainment among nonwhite cultures. Thus nonwhite groups received special consideration in a wide variety of areas including business startups, academic admissions, job promotions and lucrative government contracts.

 

Where should we go from here? Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end.

Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white. The need for inclusiveness in our society is undeniable and irreversible, both in our markets and in our communities. Our government should be in the business of enabling opportunity for all, not in picking winners. It can do so by ensuring that artificial distinctions such as race do not determine outcomes.

Memo to my fellow politicians: Drop the Procrustean policies and allow harmony to invade the public mindset. Fairness will happen, and bitterness will fade away.

Mr. Webb, a Democrat, is a U.S. senator from Virginia.

 

 

36 Thoughts to “Senator Jim Webb: Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege”

  1. I suspect we are all going where angels fear to tread with this thread. Perhaps racial tensions are too great for public discussion.

    So I will stick a toe in the water by explaining some examples of the grocery store grab from my own perspective. I remember some of these examples like they were yesterday and I know I was very, very young when I got ‘grabbed.’

    The first one I clearly remember is asking my mother, while on the city bus, why I couldn’t go sit in the back of the bus. The grab didn’t work and so I asked louder. Not the right thing to do. I got the bad squeeze and she hissed ‘shut up’ in my ear. The other clear memory comes from the grocery store for real. I asked why ‘the colored men’ were sleeping on the bags of dog food out front…in my best outdoor voice. GRAB. I also recall getting the grocery store squeeze for asking why little girls wore clothes pins in their hair.

    You didn’t ask and you didn’t talk about it if you were southern and lived where I lived. You certainly didn’t discuss things like this in public. I was told as a kid I might hurt someone’s feelings. You also never asked about people’s infirmities. Some kids had had polio and there were also veterans from both World Wars. You were to pretend that you didn’t notice.

  2. marinm

    Race card is and has been overplayed. I ignore it. I think the majority of people ignore it. It needs to be placed back in the deck.

  3. You know, I have read so much on affirmative action and heard so many perspectives that I don’t know what I believe about it. I DO know that Webb is right in asserting everyone deserves to be protected from discrimination. The problem is, what happens when justice is thwarted, as it still is, when it comes to people who hold certain traits?

    For example, gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgender folks are discriminated against all the time. Without laws in place that apply specifically to this group of people, the injustices will continue. Yet, is it right to have groups that are more protected than others?

    I once complained that I could not have a legal issue settled because I didn’t belong to a “protected group.” So I understand when people feel slighted. The irony is, too often people who are not protected end up resenting the very people who need protection, not more animosity directed towards them. So what is the answer?

    I can’t pretend to know.

    And MH, thank you so much for those stories of yours. Very telling.

  4. I actually learned a lot from Sen. Webb’s op/ed. As I said, I grew up in the south except for less than 2 years of my childhood. You didn’t ask. Those weren’t the only things you didn’t talk about but that was a starting point. Many things now make perfect sense to me…and move me past ‘JUST IS.’

  5. See, that’s the difference. I never got the “grab.” My mother answered my questions. Boldly and confidently. And my mother was definitely of the “older” generation, having been born in 1919. And she explained that color should mean nothing. And justice should be blind. And that there IS injustice. And that the only way to bring about what you want is to act the way it SHOULD be. And so, because I neither cater to race, nor hold my opinion, the irony is that I get called a racist.

    Oh. well.

    1. @Cargo, Mine was a little younger but I think it has to do with part of the south. My particular problem was WHERE I was asking the questions. I expect I would have gotten different answers had I not been right in front of the people. Of course, there are some things that don’t have answers.

      So let’s examine this getting called a racist…..who (not the name) but called you a racist by name and what were you doing?

  6. Well, I’ve been called a racist when I gave orders to a black sailor that she did not like. She expected me to get nervous. I didn’t cater to her whims and told her that if she felt that way, let’s go see the boss…..file charges…..etc. Needless to say, it did not go well for her.

    I’ve been called racist, many times, by leftists, because I was a counter-protester to ANSWER’s communist backed “anti-war” rallies. I’ve been called racist, because I told someone that I was Republican. I was walking through Berkely at the time….

    I’ve been called racist when I asked, joking, what part of Africa one of my shipmates was from, because he was getting annoying with the whole schtick. Its too long to get into. When he found out that I was listened to Rush , he told me, “oh, no wonder you don’t like black people.” The ironic part was that we had a white South African immigrant on our ship. He proudly called himself African-American, just to annoy the politically correct.

    And now, the NAACP has called many people like me, a racist. Their first criteria seems to be that we are conservative. I say this because black members of the Tea Party have been called ‘uncle toms” and that they are race traitors. I don’t think that they really care if the Tea Party is racist or not. In fact, they would be ecstatic if we were. We would be discredited very easily. Its all a political war between rival factions.

  7. I can relate to the first part…the job related situation. I, too, have been called a racist. Many many times. It was because I said criticized someone, they didn’t like it, and tried to deflect the problem. I considered the reaction just part of being immature. (different people). I actually don’t let any of that bother me. I have also been called an M-F a lot of times also.

    I don’t think everyone who isn’t a tea party members thinks that tea party people are all racists. Some are, some aren’t. I have known liberals who were racists. They didn'[t know they were or mean to be…JUST WAS. I don’t worry about names.

    I worry when charges like racism get thrown about when people’s jobs are in danger or for political purposes. Of course, there are lots of other things that can be said also that are just as damaging.

    Uncle Tom–I have never liked that expression.

  8. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, the entire city of Lynchburg, VA has on ongoing program of dialogues on race called Many Voices One Community. Wish we could get something like that going in the Prince William area. i think it’d be a healthy thing, bringing people together to talk openly about what seems to divide us.

    http://www.everyday-democracy.org/en/Article.1148.aspx

  9. Rick Bentley

    Wow, Webb’s balls finally dropped, maybe he found a purpose to being a Senator beyond party-line voting. I agree with what he wrote.

    1. I found a lot of the statistics from the south to be very interesting, Rick. Lots of stuff in there I did not know.

      It is no wonder things turned out as they did after Radical Reconstruction. I know I was fed the southern version but actually the northern version doesn’t differ that much as to basic conditions. The economy was destroyed, the currency was worth nothing and people were starving, often starving to death. No conquored nation has ever been treated that punitively.

  10. George S. Harris

    @marinm
    What rock do you live under–“… the majority of people ignore it.” If the majority of people ignore it whay do you think it is still and issue? Duh!!!

    @cargosquid
    I have found far more conservatives/Republicans to be racists than liberals/Democrats. Do you live close to marinm? And if you listen to Limbaugh, I would have to wonder.

    Skin color has nothing to do with being a racist–they come in all shades. I grew up in a Jim Crow town in Oklahoma and never met a black person until I joined the Navy at age 18. My only experience with a black person was at about age 4 when a black porter took hold of my hands and swung me down of a train. When he turned me loose, I rubbed my hands together as if I was rubbing some dirt off. The porter said, “Don’t worry boy, it won’t rub off.” Our “blacks” were Native Americans (then called Indians), but not all of them since some of those Native Americans were quite wealthly–having land that had oil under it. But even they were considered to be just a little less equal that whites. We also had many poor white folks–mostly miners who often couldn’t put two nickles together.

    My family would be what was called lower middle class or upper lower class I guess–never lived in a house with more than two bedrooms and one bath. One house had one bedroom–my brother and I shared a double bed and my folks turned the dining room into their bedroom. My folks managed to graduate from highschool, but my father was 21 at the time–had to drop out to work and clear land for a farm and build what we could call a share cropper house–no inside walls just newspaper between the studs, no running water, an outdoor privy. My mother’s parents live in a one bedroom, one bath Sears and Roebuck house.

    I met my first black person the day I was sworn into the Navy and had my first run-in with a white ticket seller at a theater who wouldn’t sell the guy a ticket to see a movie that a bunch of us went to see while we waited for the train out of Kansas City, Mo–we didn’t go. Whites still use the “N” word in my home town and you can count the number of black people on two hands.

    Now the funny part is the Native Americans are buying up huge sections of my home county and building casinos–and the casinos are full of white people giving their money to the Native Americans who are crying all the way to the bank.

    And yes, I’ve been called a racist for giving orders to a black person and court-martialing a black person and for kicking some disruptive black students out of school and sending them to sea. But I have never ignored racism and still don’t.

    Senator Webb is correct–it is time to get on down the road. And Shirley Sherrod has it right, except not only is it about rich vs. poor, it really is about the color of your skin. But if you are white middle class you wouldn’t have a clue–you’ve never been stopped for something like DWB.

  11. marinm

    Mr. Harris, because I believe that the majority of people are good, decent and could care less about a ‘hot button’ issue like racism. They just want to go about their lives, do the 9-5 thing, take the kids to swim class, and make sure they have a hot dinner on the table. People don’t lie awake at night thinking… I wish there could be something done about race relations in this country. They worry about a job that might go away, how do they pay for gas, is Bob going to to remember to take Alice to soccer practice, etc.

    The majority just doesn’t think it’s an issue.

    If you want to treat me fairly as a hispanic – let me get by in this world without focusing on my skin color or where my DNA was assembled. Let me get by with my words and actions. I want to be equal to you – not better or worse – and that means I should get things by merit and not because I fill the quota that’s needed at the time.

  12. @Moon-howler
    I once taught a class of almost entirely African Americans from “the bad side of town.” Never did they consider me racist, even if I had to fail them. I THINK it’s that I treated everyone the same and let them know I loved them no matter what. Perhaps that is what we all need-to know we are loved and accepted for who we are.

  13. @marinm
    “let me get by in this world without focusing on my skin color or where my DNA was assembled. Let me get by with my words and actions. I want to be equal to you”

    Same goes for Hispanic people who do not want to be racially profiled as possible “illegals.” They don’t want to be persecuted for their language or color. Treat everyone the same. That is why 287g is okay in my book.

  14. Need to Know

    I grew up in the South and lived there until I went to graduate school. My parents never did the grab but told us outright that mistreatment of blacks and saying things like n****r were wrong. That lesson was driven home well. My father was a moderate Republican and my mother (still living) grew up a Democrat but has voted mostly Republican since Ronald Reagan.

    My grandmother, a die-hard Democrat until she passed away, got chewed out sometimes for expressing George Wallace-type segregationist views around the kids. From outside the family we heard it all. Some of the other kids in school had blatantly racist views that they had learned at home. Hearing references to “n****r-town” about the low-income areas was common.

    One of my earliest memories was in the first grade (we’re talking 60s here) in a public school in the South. My class had a single black kid in it. One of our assignments was to ask our parents about where our ancestors came from. When we told each other, he said “Africa” but was seemingly embarrassed about saying that. At the time, I couldn’t understand why and felt sorry for him because of it. I came to understand later, of course, that African-Americans in the South had been forced to consider themselves inferior from the days the first slaves arrived.

    I grew up and went through public schools in the South during the 60s and 70s, and share formative experiences probably very similar to Senator Webb’s. I can identify very much with what he wrote. You can’t live through that sort of era and not feel some sense of responsibility to correct the lingering problems of the past.

    However, he is also absolutely correct that other groups that share none of the experiences of African-Americans – slavery, Jim Crow, etc. – have for decades ridden on the backs of the Civil Rights movement to the detriment of remedying the problems faced by blacks and disadvantaged whites.

    Senator Webb is further correct in pointing out that only a small fraction of whites ever owned slaves or benefited from the system. The South was ruled by a wealthy elite to the disadvantage of blacks and most whites. That elite stirred-up the white population with emotional pleas to patriotism and states’ rights and led the nation into a Civil War. After the war, much of that elite continued to dominate the economy.

    My ancestors on my father’s side came from Appalachia, although better educated than most people in that area. My grandmother on that side of the family was a public schoolteacher. However, where they lived you could easily buy moonshine whiskey or visit someone’s still. These people were staunch Republicans for generations and as were most mountain people. They were primarily low-income whites who suffered economically under the slave economy and did not support the Confederacy. Again, Senator Webb is absolutely correct that American whites are not a monolithic, privileged group.

    That’s enough of my rambling for now. In closing, even as a Republican I salute Senator Webb for being so honest and standing up to political correctness. I’m sorry the Republicans lost him. He was a senior member of the Reagan administration and I wish every day that the Republican Party would find its true soul again. If the best we can offer now are Sarah Palin and Corey Stewart we’re going to lose many more good people like Jim Webb.

  15. Also the Democrats and Republicans flip-flopped in the south, sometimes back in the 60’s. Goes back to Reconstruction.

    Thanks for sharing all that, NTK.

  16. Has anyone disagreed with what Senator Webb has said?

    I would imagine that white males would be cheering him on. I think he might have hit on a major artery regarding why white men seem so …well…frankly, political angry. Agree or disagree?

  17. Need to Know

    @Moon-howler #18

    The historical benchmarks in that flip were the Great Depression and the Civil Rights movement. The Republicans were essentially non-existent in the South, except for freed slaves and other African-Americans during and after the Civil War. Appalachia was one of the few exceptions where white Republicans could be found during Reconstruction and after. The Great Depression and the New Deal were turning points for Republicans in the South. With the massive suffering and FDR being seen as actually taking measures to remedy the depression, blacks in droves and whites in Appalachia to a lesser degree switched from Republican to Democrat. Many Republicans can still be found in Appalachia because of tradition going back to the Civil War rather than racism.

    The impact of the Civil Rights movement on party affiliation is more complex than most people realize. True, the Republicans’ “Southern Strategy” that began under Nixon was a blatant effort to grab support through racial appeals. It was, anyway, Nixon doing it. However, growing up in a Republican-leaning family and volunteering in Republican campaigns as early as when I was in junior high school, I did not detect a strong strain of racism. Most of the Republicans I knew were like my father – business-oriented and appalled by racism. Most of the racist and segregationist sentiment I recall came from George Wallace-style segregationist Democrats.

    The final shift of nearly all African-Americans to the Democratic Party was because of the efforts of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to pass Civil Rights legislation while Republicans were seen as asleep on that issue. The Nixonian “Southern Strategy” helped seal the deal between blacks and the Democratic Party in the 70s.

  18. Need to Know

    I’m going to have to block Moonhowlings because of the tempatation to come here 🙂 I came to the office this morning to catch up on some work and wound up writing posts. We have a family rule that we don’t spend our time at home separated by computers. So far so good with all the kids. Mrs. NTK and I are determined that they will not be rasied by the Internet and television. My work situation is such that I can do whatever I want at the office as long as the work gets done and deadlines are met.

  19. Need to Know

    Here’s another nutcase trying to kill off the Republicans’ great opportunity for a big win in November:

    http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/23/tennessee-republican-floats-secession/?fbid=nHsLNvvJJUJ#comments

    Rep. Wamp thinks the way to win the Republican nomination and the gubernatorial election in Tennessee is to propose that Tennessee succeed from the Union because of the Obama Healthcare program.

    I oppose much of President Obama’s Healthcare Plan, as do many others. It will be changed by electing new members of Congress in 2010 and 2012, and a new President in 2012; not by treasonous threats to break up the union. That is if these wing nuts don’t help elect more Democrats who will only expand the program.

    Reminds me of our local nutcase who proclaimed that Prince William County would not obey the law and had to back down when no one would follow him.

    We need another Ronald Reagan or Teddy Roosevelt desperately. Both of them would call Rep. Wamp the traitor he is and have nothing to do with him.

  20. @Moon-howler
    I don’t think anybody disagrees with Seantor Webb; however, to claim that race is not a problem is to live in a unreal world. Maybe it works for marinm, but to say that the majority of people don’t think it’s an issue–I must ask who this majority is? I would like for it to not be an issue, but that simply is not so.

  21. @Need to Know
    Once again, it was conservatives who demonized PPACA and are now reaping the whirlwind they sowed by absolute failure to do anything meaningful about healthcare reform except say No. I readily admit I don’t know all I should know about PPACA, and I wonder NTK how much you REALLY know. You presume the Congress is going to change enough to change PPACA and that President Obama won’t be reelected but I sure wouldn’t be all my eggs in one basket much less count them before the hatch. I’n not sure President Obama will be reelected, but it won’t be over PPACA. But I am relatively certain that any president will have difficult putting the genie back in the bottle.

    And if conservatives want to keep demonizing PPACA, I would say be careful of what you wish for.

  22. Need to Know

    @George S. Harris

    George – I’m not demonizing anything. Just saying I don’t support many parts of the health care plan and the way to change things is trough elections rather than threats to succeed from the Union. I actually do know quite a bit about the health care plan and support some parts of it.

    I don’t know what will happen in the 2010 and 2012 but will accept the results of a democratic election whether I like them or not.

  23. So what impact have civil rights issues had on white males over the past 40 years? Do white men feel unempowered? Disenfranchised? Did any of those feelings start in the south where people still hadn’t totally recuperated from the Civil War, if Webb is accurate?

  24. NTK is correct about the grand standing though. Changes in health care need to be made legislatively, not by threats from fools like the Tenn. guy or by Capt. Sound-byte.

    Not sure what needs to change at the moment. The jury is out on that one.

  25. Censored bybvbl

    So what impact have civil rights issues had on white males over the past 40 years? Do white men feel unempowered? Disenfranchised? Did any of those feelings start in the south where people still hadn’t totally recuperated from the Civil War, if Webb is accurate?

    I’d say the biggest impact is that they’ve had to share – that they haven’t automatically been given an edge as they had in the past. You know, the edge where women and African-Americans were banned from state schools, clubs, professions because of their race or gender but still had to pay taxes for the white guys’ privelege of attending those state schools. And, of course, along with degrees from those schools and the accompanying good-old-boy network, they flourished in most fields regardless of their mediocrity. Now there is more competition. They have to be equally good and not merely male.

    I think the feelings started in the south for several reasons. Politicians and wealthy families pitted poor whites against poor blacks. Being white was probably the only advantage poor whites had and it was a slim advantage at that. Politicians still employ this feeling of superiority during elections. I think that the south being largely rural and poorly educated also contributed to people being led as the gullible sheep that they often are. The plethora of fundamentalist churches also contributes to an unquestioning acceptance of what some charletons preach.

  26. Ah, Censored talks back. Definitely middle and upper class men have had the advantage. Society was structured that way.

    As for poor whites, in many respects their social structure really didn’t differ that much. their wedge of pie just wasn’t as large.

    What throws all of this discussion off is women’s civil rights coming along about the same time as black civil rights. Women didn’t have a guarantee to birth control until the late 60’s….about the same time those gol-durn activist judges allowed that, desegregated the schools and allowed blacks and whites to marry in all 50 states.

    Those things should not be a matter of states rights. Good for activist judges.

  27. Big Dog

    Chap Peterson, a Virginia State Senator from Fairfax, has some
    good observations on this topic posted on his blog Ox Road South.

  28. kelly3406

    I am not a big fan of Jim Webb, but I find that he and Chap Peterson are “on the money” in this case.

    In a broader context, the government has extrapolated its power in many areas. For example, the government has also extrapolated the commerce clause to mandate that all Americans purchase health insurance. Who would have imagined that the federal government has the power to require people to engage the services of a private industry?

  29. hmmm…speaking of extrapolation…turning Jim Webb into health care was a pretty big extrapolation.

    I think they might just be doing that because they are tired of picking up the tab on all the people who have no health insurance. I don’t see much difference in that and everyone having to pay into ss (or nearly everyone) or medicare.

  30. Big Dog

    Dateline had a segment on families going tough economic times
    that aired tonight. Ann Curry interviewed and followed the lives
    of a variety of folks in SE Ohio as they try to manage with lost jobs
    and little food or shelter. Many never had much to start with
    so the Great Recession has hit hard.
    – 22% of the children in the area now live in proverty
    – 60% of the families in proverty are headed by young single mothers
    – A large segment are white – poor comes in all colors
    – There is still a deep pride and desire to move forward using
    education and hard work. I was especially impressed by the lady,
    with modest resources , running a food pantry and a
    soup kitchen that feeds thousands of her neighbors. It is all
    on a slender shoe string but she does it.
    – Government help is keeping these people alive – barely, but what they
    really want and need are JOBS.

  31. Thanks Big Dog. Those are some sobering statistics.

    2 things come to mind as poverty makers. Teen parenthood and no education. However, not having an education can be compensated for by having skills.

  32. PWC Taxpayer

    @Big Dog

    It was a well done and sobering look at survival, government support and the need for more and more support as this thing goes on and on. There but for the grace of god….

    I did have a couple of questions that were not addresssed. First, there was an apparant unwillingness on the part of those highlighted to move to the jobs rather than expect the steal and automotive jobs to ever return to the rust belt. That said , I happen to know that a new auto plant is being built just outside of Dayton – just broke ground, but still. Second, I was interested that the show interviewed a number of former union members but never asked what they thought about the responsbility the unions had in the demise of those industries in Ohio. And finally, there was no mention of the job competition from illegals that might reduce some of the pain. I was surprised that these issues never came up in what was otherwise a heart wrenching set of stories. Editing?

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