Quote:
Originally Posted by redwitch
Reality is that Hispanics really don't feel they are xx-American anything -- it was never their intention to stay in the United States. The goal was always to support their families here and back home and then ultimately go back home. This makes them far different from most immigrants here and creates many, many problems. Worse yet, many do not go back home -- they end up marrying, having kids and staying here, yet they perpetuate the myth that they will go back home and carry it through to their children and grandchildren.
As to African-Americans, they use the excuse of never having volunteered to come here -- their ancestors were slaves and they were forced to come here. Once freed, the next round of excuses occurred -- they were free but not considered equal nor given the same chances their white peers were given. Sadly, both issues are true. However, that does not negate the fact that many have chosen to take the easy route and stay in their ghettos and live without hope.
I truly don't understand the willingness to not pull yourself up, to not get out and do. My family traveled all over the world. My father absolutely demanded that we not only accept the culture of the nation we were in, but to embrace it, to learn the language the best we could, to live within the rules and guidelines of that nation even though we knew we would be leaving within months or a year at the most.
Those who insist on living only in their past culture or past history cheat not only the citizens of their present nation, but themselves. America is a beautiful country with truly wonderful people. Given the chance, you can succeed quite well here but you have to be willing to work hard, learn much and have a bit of luck. To be willing to live in a ghetto or a barrio, to never try to learn proper American, to force your children to live this life forces all to fail and to let the drug dealers, the slackers win and we all lose.
Personally, I'd rather see the U.S. give billions to third world countries to help bring the standard of living to something that doesn't force people to leave than to pay people here into a lifestyle guaranteed to instill a sense of failure.
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Very good post, Redwitch. I just retired this past June as a special ed teacher and spent the second half of my career working in a poor inner city school. I had many preconceived ideas about the lives these people led and their motivations or lack thereof before I started. To say that I was disappointed with the parents and/or culture that continued to keep them shortsighted and living in poverty, would be an understatement. The culture of poverty will win out most of the time, in my experience. I, too, was an enabler, buying coats, shoes and feeding the children in my charge and not making the parents responsible for their own children. They had money for important things-Disney trips, jewelry, cigarettes, new phones, big screen TVs and electronics but could not see that homework and getting an education was a way out. What I thought was a stereotype of poverty was, more often than not, a reality. It is very painful for me to say this because I abhor stereotypes and the unfair burden they attach to people, but I saw what I saw and I hurt for the children I came to love. Without education, there is no long term, healthy way out of poverty.