Re: Comment- Baby P

On Nov 17, 4:54 pm, "The Todal" <deadmail...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
lisabar...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Nov 17, 4:04 pm, "The Todal" <deadmail...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
lisabar...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

I am certain there is no such thing as an underclass gene, and if Mr
Murray disagrees then I am very glad to have arrived at the truth
without ploughing through Mr Murray's learned works.

Undoubtedly, however, children who are taken into care from a violent
household are often difficult and demanding and require a lot of
patience from their foster parents.

The British used to call it the 'feckless working class'.

Ah yes. They don't give a feck.

There is
absolutely no way I would have rejected that child...broken back and
all (if that was the case) I would have worked my ass off to give
him the best home possible with the most opportunities possible.

I think we all would have done. I think he would have been very easy
to place for adoption.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

He is best known for his controversial book The Bell Curve, co-
authored with the late Richard Herrnstein in 1994, which discusses the
role of IQ in American society.[

So I don't know where you got Melanie Phillips from...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/1903386101/sr=8-1/qid=12269....



He first became well-known for his Losing Ground: American Social
Policy 1950 1980 in 1984, which discussed the American welfare system.

Also, the book argued that those with high intelligence (the
"cognitive elite") are becoming separated from the general population
of those with average and below-average intelligence, and that this
was a dangerous social trend.

(note:dangerous)

You Brits want to claim every theory is imported from the USA......

http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/cw33.pdf

Interestingly, that document contains a commentary by Melanie Phillips that
has a few grains of sense in it.

There seems to be a huge amount of snobbery in these "underclass" theories.
Does it really matter if fewer people get married?  Those who raise children
out of wedlock - are they to be regarded as inferior people?

Here's Murray's analysis:

It is not a new concept. I grew up knowing what the underclass was; we just
didn t call it that in those days. In the small Iowa town where I lived, I
was taught by my middle-class parents that there were two kinds of poor
people. One class of poor people was never even called poor . I came to
understand that they simply lived with low incomes, as my own parents had
done when they were young.
Then there was another set of poor people, just a handful of them. These
poor people didn t lack just money. They were defined by their behaviour.
Their homes were littered and unkempt. The men in the family were unable to
hold a job for more than a few weeks at a time.
Drunkenness was common. The children grew up ill-schooled and illbehaved and
contributed a disproportionate share of the local juvenile delinquents.
British observers of the nineteenth century knew these people. To Henry
Mayhew, whose articles in the Morning Chronicle in 1850 drew the Victorians
attention to poverty, they were the dishonest poor , a member of which was:
'distinguished from the civilised man by his repugnance to regular and
continuous labour by his want of providence in laying up a store for the
future by his inability to perceive consequences ever so slightly removed
from immediate apprehensions by his passion for stupefying herbs and roots
and, when possible, for intoxicating fermented liquors...'
Other popular labels were undeserving , unrespectable , depraved ,
debased , disreputable or feckless poor."

And what rubbish the above is.  The good poor versus the lazy feckless poor.
This is a man who judges people on appearances, who doesn't know or care
what chronic depression can do to a person or a family, who sees drunkenness
as a vice rather than a symptom of a problem.  Maybe he's got a touch of
autism or Aspergers.  He doesn't really know what makes people tick. He can
only see them as one of us or one of the vicious Untermenschen whom you
don't want to encounter on a street on a dark night.

Students are not know for being hardworking and industrious, and often have
a passion for stupefying herbs and roots and fermented liquors. What does
that tell us - that they in peril of being sucked into the quicksands of the
underclass and must be rescued from it before it is too late?

If you motivate people and give them supportive communities, then much of
the antisocial behaviour will disappear.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

aaaahhhh now I see... you are one of 'those'. This quote:
Then there was another set of poor people, just a handful of them.
These
poor people didn t lack just money. They were defined by their behaviour.
Their homes were littered and unkempt. The men in the family were unable to
hold a job for more than a few weeks at a time.
Drunkenness was common. The children grew up ill-schooled and illbehaved and
contributed a disproportionate share of the local juvenile delinquents.


Well, I personally believe that is accurate. There will always be
people like that in society... 'socialist' programmes are not going to
change that.

You state:If you motivate people and give them supportive communities,
then much of
the antisocial behaviour will disappear.-

Gee, years of the British Nanny State and the American Welfare system
really have proved that worked....I think not. Motivation does not
come from the outside after a certain age..it comes from the inside.
The key is to have a culture of motivation with the individuals with
the highest impact on children.

My grandparents were definitely the working poor. My grandfather
became almost blind at the age of 6. (When he got sick, he was put in
Bellevue- my great grandmother only spoke Hungarian and didn't
understand what they were doing with her child) My grandmother was
from a big Jewish family. My grandmother worked full time as an
accountant (on one third of the pay the men got). My grandfather
became the senior manager of janitor services for CitiBank (or the
Bank of New York as it was then)after being there 30 years. (upon
which he died of cancer 2 years later) He worked 'split shift' as he
was the primary carer of my father and uncle because my grandmother
was the primary breadwinner. They lived in two rooms with only cold
water. But my father and my uncle were taught about motivation.
Using every skill you have (both were avid readers by age 5) They
both grew up to have multiple degrees and very high ranking positions
in their chosen field.

Now why say all that? Because there were other 'arms' of the family
that didn't have that motivation and sunk and still, my generation
(and the next- their children) live in squallor within my own family.
And those of us with motivation and drive, no matter how hard we try-
they can't be pulled out of it.

Yes people can fall into drunkness and addiction due to depression.
And once they do so, society removes support...it becomes borderline a
circular argument.
TC
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Comment- Baby P
    ... One class of poor people was never even called poor. ... Drunkenness was common. ... Bellevue- my great grandmother only spoke Hungarian and didn't ...  But my father and my uncle were taught about motivation. ...
    (uk.legal)
  • Re: Can a Limited Utopia Exist?
    ... Ignoring the fact that they do in fact have a strong motivation to make that choice -- i.e., that to them it IS strongly forced. ... store, buy sandwich ingredients, bring them home, and "assemble them" is a major undertaking and a hardship for poor people, I guess reality is just crumbling around you. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.science)
  • OT: Houston Bus Explosion--Grandma Update
    ... I have good news about my grandmother. ... Dallas skilled care nursing home--currently the ... Those poor people. ...
    (rec.equestrian)
  • Re: OT: Houston Bus Explosion--Grandma Update
    ... I have good news about my grandmother. ... Those poor people. ... > Eileen Morgan, ...
    (rec.equestrian)
  • Re: Eng V SA 18th Nov
    ... My poor ... grandmother who was in an English concentration camp will be turning in ...
    (rec.sport.rugby.union)