Quote:
Originally Posted by ila
That?s all a socialist claptrap theory that absolves people of taking responsibility for their own actions. Poverty is no excuse for what happened during the riots.
The media has now started interviewing people that the media calls ?experts? on this. However unless one has experienced poverty then one can hardly be called an expert in how poor people will act. These ?experts? see things only through their own eyes and then imagine how they would act if they were in that situation and then extrapolate that to the poor.
I was born into poverty. I had an alcoholic father who used most of his money to feed his addiction. We were in dire straits before, but when my father died we were even worse off. Later when my mother remarried my step father wanted nothing to do with me and I was treated with indifference at best and open hostility at worst.
We were nowhere near to being considered middle class. We often didn?t have much to eat so to supplement our meals I went hunting and fishing every chance that I had which would be most weekend mornings and sometimes all day Saturday or Sunday. I would do this throughout the year. Depending on the season I would also go fishing or hunting in the evening. I certainly contributed a substantial amount to what we had to eat.
I started working at age thirteen and by the time I was sixteen I was working three part-time jobs as well as going to school.
All this wasn?t all that strange to me as most of my friends were also considered poor. There were distinctions made between my friends and me and the others we knew who would be considered middle class to affluent. Those from the affluent families would have nothing to do with us.
It has been suggested that the young people rioting and committing criminal acts see no hope of improving their lives because they can?t afford to go to university. However, none of my friends nor I ever went to university although many of us certainly wanted to go. University was very expensive and we simply could not afford it. There were very few scholarships available then and those always went to the ones that didn?t need them anyway. Instead my friends and I furthered our education by other means.
According to the ?experts? my friends and I should have been bitter at society and taken our revenge by robbing, looting, burning, destroying, etc. None of us went our rioting. We didn?t blame anyone else for the position that we were in or things that we couldn?t have. We didn?t go out looting, pillaging, burning, or destroying others property. We didn?t maim or kill people. Instead all of us worked hard and pulled ourselves out of poverty. Every one of my friends, from when I was young, and I are now considered middle class and most of us are quite well off. It was hard work and ethics that got us this far in life.
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ila, this is not the first time that you have responded in this way to one of my posts. I will only say that what I wrote (what you call "socialist claptrap theory that absolves people of taking responsibility for their own actions") is not an excuse for the riots -- as I make clear. Rather, it is an explanation that one must guage without emotion. You are absolutely correct that "poverty is no excuse for what happened during the riots," but in many instances poverty -- especially URBAN poverty -- breeds alienation from society. This is a simple fact; whether it is your less urban experience is immaterial. Your very tough life growing up yielded a different outcome and a different person. The tough life growing up yields different results for different people.
By the way, when a country has a social contract with its citizenry that includes certain social safety net features and that contract is broken, it is not unexpected that some of the more desperate and alienated in society may respond violently. IT IS NO EXCUSE, just an explanation. You don't have to like it to recognize that it happens. And it is especially prevalent among youth who see the older generations as responsible for the breaking of the contract, or who see people with wealth and power at a level those youth cannot even imagine attaining as responsible.
Again, no excuses ... just analysis. When we analyze society and seek to find solutions to urgent problems, our own experiences should inform our analysis but our emotions must be checked at the door.