Over at Blackprof, Dorothy Roberts is discussing drugs and the achievement gap between black and white kids:
Last night I heard a program on NPR’s All Things Considered, “Teen Abuse of Painkiller OxyContin on the Rise,” reporting a new survey showing that 1 in 20 high school seniors acknowledges taking the highly additive prescription painkiller OxyContin. The program featured interviews with a group of white, middle- and upper-class teenagers enrolled in a drug-treatment clinic at Children’s Hospital in Boston and their parents. The teens told about their addictions to OxyContin, which sometimes led to heroin, and the crime sprees they went on to support their habits. […]
What struck me most about the NPR program was its totally sympathetic stance toward the plight of these teens and their parents. The interviewer never asked the teens if they had a problem with acting “white” or their parents why they didn’t motivate and supervise their children like “Asian parents.” There was not even a hint of blame for anyone: as one mother said, these children just “got grabbed by something that was greater than [them].” Nor was there any indication that any of the teens had been in trouble with the law for their crimes or placed in foster care for their parents’ neglect. Most will probably complete the drug treatment program, graduate from their highly-ranked suburban high schools, and go on to college, their brush with drug addiction and crime a forgiven momentary lapse in their privileged path to success.
Can you imagine a similarly sympathetic discussion of addiction, drug dealing, and theft with a group of black teenagers and their parents?
One of the major ways that kids are treated differently in the US – by race and by class – is how many chances the kids get. A white, upper-class kid can mess up his life countless times and still pretty much count on being rescued and given another chance. If he does poorly in school, he gets specialized tutoring, rather than being written off and permanently slow-tracked. If she gets caught shoplifting or drugging or stealing, she’ll get a slap on the wrist or maybe some community service – if her case is ever brought to court at all. Rescue efforts are organized to get the kid back on the “right” track. Much of the time, well-off white kids simply aren’t allowed to fail.
How much does it take to get a kid written off as a hopeless case? Much, much less if the kid is poor, and less still if the kid is poor and Black. How much better would Black kids be if they were allowed to fail and be rescued as often as White kids are? I’d like to find out.
(By the way, the comments discussion at Blackprof is pretty interesting, too).
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I’d argue that the resources kids have to recover from big mistakes are determined upon economic rather than racial lines. I’d say a dirt-poor white kid is going to have just as hard a time as a dirt-poor black kid will have in a situation like that.
Well, I don’t know much about poor white kids, but I can tell you that the rich black kids in my community – of whom we have quite a number – get just as many strikes at the ball as the rich white kids. Le Driver is right. It’s economic.
But it intersects with race when economics intersects with race, which is a lot of the time.
We’re seeing something interesting just beginning to happen here (SF Bay area). I’m seeing it in my law practice. Real estate in this area, especially residential real estate, is priced now in the stratosphere, so that if you own your home, any sort of home at all, a shack falling down, you’ve got some money. Quite a bit of money if you bought it a while ago.
This means that my phone is ringing and people of color are showing up to plan their estates and shuffile their assets around, just like the other rich. Mama owned three apartment houses in the slum? Baby, you’re a rich man now. I’m hugely enjoying working for these people, who have backgrounds very different from my own. (Someone or other is putting my name out in that community and I’m getting a ton of referrals, but I haven’t figured out yet who it is. When I ask where they got my name they always say, “A friend” but won’t elaborate.)
These folks, of course, whatever our linguistic and historical differences, have values which track the values of my rich white clients precisely.
Follow the money, honey.
Can you imagine a similarly sympathetic discussion of addiction, drug dealing, and theft with a group of black teenagers and their parents?
On NPR, probably, in the mainstream media, not so much.
It’s good that you have these clients calling you, Susan. There are an awful lot of predators waiting to swoop up Mama’s apartment house because gee, it’s in the slum, so why don’t you take this pittance that looks like a lot of cash on hand and give me the title?
I agree that it’d be an interesting experiment, but a pretty unlikely one. The question that has me curious: would it be better to “level” society by ceasing to give anyone second chances, rich or poor. Given our stricter sentencing guidlines and eagerness for “law and order”, I suspect we’d get that experiment before we ever gave everyone more chances. Which is too bad.
>Can you imagine a similarly sympathetic discussion of addiction, drug >dealing, and theft with a group of black teenagers and their parents?
Well, I can’t really imagine it with white kids/parents either, but that’s just me (apparently).
I don’t think we’d be better off with less second chances. I’ve used quite a number of them myself. Getting arrested, but no jail time, getting let off by cops for other minor infractions, losing my full-tuition scholarship for drug use but getting it back within a year, & going bankrupt after a business failed are just a few of the more dramatic second chances I’ve gotten. I grew up lower-middle class (hence the scholarship) so I think race had more to do with some of my second chances than my class, though people tend to assume I came from a more affuent family than I did, so maybe not. I think people can improve and should be given the chance to do so even if many will fail again.
mythago,
Fortunately, many of these newly-rich “Mama’s” and their kids are a surprisingly sophisticated bunch, for all their lack of formal education. (At least those are the ones I see.) I’m imagining that living your whole life as these (mostly) women have doesn’t leave room for a lot of illusions.
I’m finding them a tough and sharp bunch, not knowledgeable, but wary. They ask a lot of questions, and they expect answers that make sense. Challenging clients. I’m glad I know what I’m talking about, because I’m thinking they’d figure out if I didn’t in roughly a heartbeat.
This, by the way, is one of the delights of practicing law: I get to meet and work for all sorts of interesting people. I’m liking this new bunch of clients very much.
__________
Scott, the rich will always get second chances. Somehow or other. I think our best bet is to provide that level of support more widely.
I grew up poor and white, as did my fiance. We are both the first in our families to go to college. While we have experienced classism, it is not anything like experiencing both classism and racism. I can’t imagine how much tougher it would be to rise above both. Keep in mind that I live in a state that is 94% white. Many people here openly admit to being bigots.
I don’t know what it’s like to be black. I don’t see why other whites here think they do. How can you say that poor whites and blacks are equally discriminated against? Do you really think racism does not exist?
I’m with drumgirl. Class matters, but race matters alot too. My example:
I have an adopted brother who is 11 years my jr and african american. I am white. While I cant control for all the factors there, i can say that we have had some of the same problems in school, but I got a lot more chances there than he does. Smart, bored kid talks to much? I was chatty, he’s disruptive. Willful confident kid doesnt listen to directions and does what s/he pleases instead? I was a leader, helpful or at worst, bossy. He has a problem with authority.
When my math scores dipped in 4th grade, there was obviously a “problem” and “something wrong” that requries fixing, because my verbal scores were in the 99th percentile. My brother does that well in math, but its just accepted by teachers when his writing skills drop off before middle school, because his good math scores are the anomoly.
We have the same rich white parents, who are actually richer these days. So I dont think class and/or economic issues are the only important ones.