I question the “well meaning liberals” part. That might be what the rank and file might think, assuming that if a group fails miserably, it isn’t the the individual’s fault.

I believe it’s more insidious and based solely on getting votes.

The Affirmative Action program of the 60’s created a new plantation system where willing “slaves” were held in bondage by the big three - welfare, food stamps, and subsidized housing. And who would you vote for if someone was giving you everything you need in life? Not the person who expected you to work, that’s for damn sure. It has become over the past sixty years a cultural condition of low expectations and failure.

The largest twenty cities in the US? Democrat controlled.

The culture of failure is best illustrated by college entrance scores being lowered for blacks, forgetting that it isn’t the getting into college that is important, it’s graduating. As it stands a dismal 56% of black students don’t graduate.

Similarly played out in high school where only about 75% manage a passing grade.

Systemic racism? How about just fucking lazy?

@alysandir very well said. As for why Biles was crushed by the pressure this week? I think the woke media, in seeking to construct an ideal black, female, hero figure, built her image to levels impossible to achieve.

@GeeMac

As for why Biles was crushed by the pressure this week? I think the woke media, in seeking to construct an ideal black, female, hero figure, built her image to levels impossible to achieve.

That's entirely possible, but it's not the first time she's been put in this position, and she performed admirably then, so I'm hesitant to simply chalk it up to that. Who knows what's really going on with her, other than her? Maybe it's COVID stress. Maybe it's personal issues. Maybe it's the balls-hot Tokyo weather. Maybe she's nursing an injury that she's been hiding out of fear of being back-burnered. Again, who knows?

But it doesn't really matter. She couldn't do it and that is that. While I normally agree with a lot of what the Daily Wire has to say, I believe they're off-base here saying that she failed us all and should be ashamed. I mean, c'mon now; are we really saying that our collective self-esteem as Americans is dashed against the rocks because she didn't help Team USA win overall gold? That sounds like something the progressive media would say and it doesn't become them well.

@parsifal

I question the “well meaning liberals” part. That might be what the rank and file might think, assuming that if a group fails miserably, it isn’t the the individual’s fault.

I agree that this is what it's all about now, but I truly do think that its genesis is formed out of the mistakes made from desegregation.

You had all these social idealists envisioning a world of perfect integration and in trying to move it along, they largely destroyed the self-sufficiency of the black community. Prior to desegregation, you had black homeownership and true black communities with black businesses, black banks, black investment, and perhaps most importantly, black pride. Desegregation took these communities and forced them to compete against established businesses and banks and made previously black communities subject to gentrification by non-blacks.

So in an effort to try to rectify that, they tried to help those left behind, but all they ended up doing was creating a generational attitude of entitlement and self-resentment. And make no mistake, the impacts of that were HUGE. If you have grandmom, and mom, and Aunt Rita all saying things about how black people can't get ahead while little Sally is growing up, that's what she's going to believe. to the point where believing this self-victimization narrative is part and parcel of the black narrative.

That's why they call people like Thomas Sowell, or Larry Elder, or Candace Owens bootlickers: because they are all espousing the beliefs that lead to success and personal reliance, which is something that you have now had generations of black families not know of.

But I will agree with you on one other thing: it all falls to the individual to say, "enough." And I know from firsthand experience how hard it is, because my mother came from a poor white trash family with no pride and said "enough." And it was bad enough that like crabs in a pot, they tried to drag her back down with them, to the point where she had to leave the only home she knew and get to some place where people weren't poisoning her mind with defeatist ideas.

And why did she do this? For me. She wanted better...for me.

And so she instilled in me that sense of pride, that sense of, "you can be poor, but you can still be well-mannered, well-spoken, and act like a human being." She instilled in me the fear of failure. And I became only the second person in my family to get a Bachelor's degree (after her) and the first to earn a post-graduate degree.

My cousins? They look at me sideways and snigger at me because I don't self-abuse like they do. I'm Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes to them. What they lack, what they don't understand, is having pride and vision. How much money, I'd ask, did they waste on stupid shit like going to bars and paying bar prices, smoking weed, getting a new IPhone ever year or deluxe rims on their piece-of-shit sports car? But they don't see it because they CAN'T see it.

And that's what I think is happening with much of the black community: they CAN'T see what a mess they're in and that they - and only they - can fix it.

Attitude is everything. And woe be to the folks that have a terrible one.

@Alysandir Good for you, and good for your mom! A truly inspiring story...

@Alysandir Wrong button...jeez....

Anyway, yes, I agree the situation confronting the black community has been brewing for several generations - again, I peg it at mid-sixties. I cannot imagine where, as you described it, a kid is raised in an environment where there are few (if any) expectations of success. How tragic that there is a culture of failure that’s is so widespread and pervasive that it seems truly hopeless.