So, you and your family are involved in a horrible disaster and lose your home and all of your possessions. You're a single parent with multiple children and life is looking pretty bleak.
I invite you and your children to come stay with me while you put your life together. Turns out, your life isn't exactly squeaky clean. You hang out with a rough crowd, you're involved with narctoics and parenting your children doesn't seem to be your top priority.
You and I clash about how to raise your children. You decided to leave the kids with me while you find a way to get back to your hometown. When you return to pick up your children, I let you know that you are no longer welcome in their lives. Of course you protest, you even call the police.
I just take your kids and run.
Did I mention that you're black and I'm white?...
(Side note: I really, REALLY want to write so much more on this topic but I'm refraining from giving any opinions because it's an issue that is in the news here in my hometown. Because of my job, I do not feel comfortable giving my opinion on local issues since I may have to cover those issues at some point in the future. But, I wanted y'all to know that I had a lot more than this to say. Use your imaginations.)
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16 comments:
Meh...
I don't like it seeing as how the white woman comes off looking like a martyr--no I don't, not at all. I'm quite clear in that feeling, however, what is best for the kids?
CLEARLY, mom has some issues.
However, I would much rather them do a search for other family members. I'm quite sure there's other family members back in NOLA or somewhere between NOLA and Houston that these kids could go stay with.
Now, I will cry foul if this white woman ends up with all five of these kids. I'll be the first on the picket line.
JLL
What difference does it make what race the principals are here? Why does everything always have to be about race?
Anon
This site talks about race all the time. That's what I do. If you would like a break from race talk there are millions, no, billions of other websites you can vist to do that.
We talk about race around here though.
i voted for u will u vote for me one day, if im worthy
and chk this too
http://www.blacktvonline.com/best-business-and-political-blog/
Yes Big Man, and I enjoy reading this blog because it does offer some interesting insight into issues. Though usually, these insights are based on actual evidence of something that makes it worthy of distinguishing the race of the principals of the story. Here you are just intimating that something will come out without a shred of evidence that it's going to go there.
If you do that, you might as well write things like "Hrm, it rained today, I bet it wouldn't have rained if I was white."
LORD! I am not even going to get into what you and Anon got going on other than every day someone/something FORCES me to think about my race or gender in some way and usually its not inuenedo. That doesn't mean it stops me from living but my race and gender are a part of me they help define my experiences in life.
MOVING ON!
I don't want to talk about it because I have some real issus with some of the NOLA transplants and have seen some stufff first hand and I can not at all be objective as I really need to be on the matter.
-OG
Big Man,
Speaking of news stories: I don't have your personal e-mail address, so I'm posting this here (sorry).
The impact of racial inequality in imprisonment on other stuff (e.g. single-parent households)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/jerrylarge/2008090072_jdl04.html
--GG
Gye
Man, thanks for sending me that link. This stat was incredible:
In an earlier study, Pettit found that "60 percent of black men without a high-school diploma can expect to spend time in a state or federal prison."
Considering the fact that well over half of black males do not finish high school, that's a troubling statistic. It gives "stay in school" a whole ne outlook.
Thanks again.
What the hell is a po woman doing having 5 kids? And where all those baby daddies at?
Seriously, how do you have 5 kids and 0 fathers?
Lawdee
Poor people typically have more children.
What does how many children she has have to do with them getting kidnapped?
Same thing with the abscence of their father or fathers.
"What does how many children she has have to do with them getting kidnapped?"
White folk running to raise kids.
Black men running from raising their kids.
If those kids were being raised by their daddies to begin with, this kidnapping wouldn't have even happened. These kids were abandoned before they were kidnapped.
The White woman is only the last link in a chain of failures. Mommy chooses to get knocked up by deadbeats, deadbeats don't raise kids, now someone else has taken them. Don't just blame the last link though.
Uh, I didn't know we were having a discussion on the state of the black family.
You should have let me know.
I thought I read a story about a white woman who stole several black children because she didn't want to give them back to their mother. That's what I intended to post on my blog at least.
Now, if you think that a story about a white woman stealing somebody else's children is a natural segue into a conversation about the failings of black parents good for you. I just don't see it.
Prisons are built based upon the illiteracy rates of 3rd graders.
If you cannot read, then you will definitely be incarcerated. This
is truly dismal
Big Man, you seem to be a bit hostile with your responses.
But um, yes, this is a race issue, flat out. And for those that fail to see that the perspective that it IS a race issue I think is being a bit myopic.
Not trying to hostile, just trying to be honest.
I'm noticing more and more that folks take a convo about one thing, and turn it into a discussion of something else. Sometimes I'm ok with that, other times I'd prefer to discuss what I was discussing.
If I'm talking about a kidnapping case it seems a little weird to start a discussion about how black families are failing. Seems like a definite attempt to change the course of the conversation, and then I wonder about why somebody would do that. But, I think I'll post on that in a longer blog just to give my viewpoint.
Damn. I don't know how anyone can dispute that if a black woman in the United States decided to kidnap the children left in her charge, no matter what the situation of the parents, she would be behind bars for a capital offense. She would not be allowed to talk things over with her lawyer *before* she was arrested, nor would she be allowed the dignity of turning herself in. And if she claimed that god willed the whole event, as the woman in question has, she'd probably do some time in a psychiatric facility, as well. The comments after the article you link to here demonstrate some insidious patterns: copious assumptions about the parents' lifestyle, based only on the comments of the *kidnapper*, outright denial that kidnapping has even occurred, suggestions that the kidnapper is engaging in some righteous act of civil disobedience, etc. I can't imagine how one could draw an analogy between saying "People seem to be blaming a parent whose child has been kidnapped" and saying "I bet it wouldn't have rained today if I were white." Say that the mother is criminally neglectful or abusive, though that is not demonstrated by the article, wouldn't the only sane solution be to contact authorities and volunteer oneself as a foster parent? Sorry to be so longwinded. It freaks me out that people want to blame the mother and get behind the kidnapper.
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