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So, I know a couple that tried to do a good thing. They adopted a young ghetto boy as an infant, removed him from all the bad influences that afflicted his community, and raised him in a middle-upper class environment with the best private schools, institutions and cultural guidance western civilization could provide.
The boy has terrorized that poor family for over a decade now with no signs of relenting. If this were a nature versus nurture debate, nurture is in a fetal position, ribs kicked in, begging for death as nature relentless curb stomps her.
It's all well and good to want to plant seeds, and failing to plant your own, nurture what you can find. Just make sure you aren't nurturing some virulent invasive species that will leave the land barren.
The substance of your post is fine, as a counterpoint to the OP, though it is a bit low on effort.
I am generally pretty skeptical about "dog whistle" verbiage but presumably by "young ghetto boy" you don't mean to suggest that the infant was a Polish Jew. Yet even to this point you could at least plausibly insist that you are engaging in pure description, that the child's parents were indeed from a "ghetto," etc.
But, uh...
This tips the balance toward heat rather than light, with a side of failing to write like everyone is reading and you want to include them in the conversation. You might regard it as impossible to include such people in "the conversation," and even then you should write as though you want to include them in the conversation, because presumably you think the world would be a better place if it were possible.
This is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. That means shady thinking is allowed! But you need to keep the heat to a level proportionate with your effort, evidence, and empathy.
You know, I've been debating about this post of mine. Because everyone has reacted like I wrote the blacks should be exterminated. And I'm sitting here going "Adoption came up, I told a story about the sheer pants shitting horror I've seen a family go through, that was the metaphor in play". Because I really do know a family that adopted a young ghetto infant out of Washington DC. That's just the story I have on hand. And obviously everyone had a reaction to it.
At best, the disconnect as near as I can tell is that "the garden" in my metaphor is that guys family. Not the entirety of humanity. And the family in question, were it a garden, is absolutely being terrorized by a virulent invasive species that they've invited into their home. The husband is utterly checked out and retreated into his work, the wife is medicated (both rx and self) just to get through each day and each fresh hell their adoptive son puts them through. Their younger biological children are clearly neglected and struggling. For a year every day I pulled up beside their van, waiting to pick up my daughter who was in the same school as their biological daughter, I'd overhear the mom on the phone on the verge of a panic attack coping with the nightmare of their existence, or talking her husband down from the same.
I don't know strong enough words to translate that experience to this "garden" metaphor that was in play. A cuckoo bird leaving it's eggs in another birds nest, for them to starve that poor bird's actual children and push them out of the nest may have been a more direct metaphor for what I see happening, but a garden had already been brought up.
So I'm sitting here baffled that the post I felt was fairly neutral, and made no sweeping statements about any groups, but was a cautionary tale about who you choose to add to your family when it is a choice, caught so much flak.
But it goes back to... I mean... people know. I have made sweeping statements. At one point I might have fought the accusation that I'm racist, because I honestly didn't think I was. But those days are long over. Too much has happened.
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This sounds like a just-so story. Sorry it just rings false and fanciful without details, though you may be relating something true enough as you perceive it. What's a "ghetto boy?" What's the "best western civilization (whatever that is) can provide"? What's the definition of "terrorized" here?
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If he best schools and institutions can provide is something like this - which is the default setting in many elite institutions nowadays - then one shouldn't be surprised about the results of it. If you spent so much effort convincing people Western values are evil and Westen civilization needs to be torn down for its past sins - it wouldn't be too strange for people to internalize it and reject those values?
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From Slate Star Scratchpad:
One of the many things that young people should have screamed at them and be shamed for ignoring.
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I mean, yep to all that. It reminds me of the case I mentioned recently, where the girlfriend of the "head-to-toe tattooed drug addict samurai sword murderer with crazy eyes and a smirk on his face" guy gave a character reference to the court of how he was a loving and affectionate partner and father.
Yeah, despite all the evidence of reality, some people steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the truth.
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Small note on persuasion. You’ve presented a single anecdote in support of your point - actually fine, to be honest, concrete examples illustrate broader trends powerfully. But you didn’t deliver the goods! What was his life in that family like, at what ages? Ditto the schools? (I’m not sure what it’s like where you are, but where I am the private schools often are for the children of the wealthy who are FAILING in public schools, rather than being too good for them.) Did he have any connections back to the hood?
Then following up: how has he tormented his family? How did they react? How has this relationship developed over what I understand to be the decade of his childhood, and where is it going now?
The lack of detail means that other people paint their own stories on your blank canvas. People who agree with you will of course say: the parents did all they could, he was just a little hellion… but those who don’t will see a tribe of racist middle Americans trying to shoulder the White Man’s Burden and reacting with hostility when a traumatized and isolated little boy does not show proper servility in front of Massa. If you want to convince them (and this forum is about that, no?) you need to bring the goods, without prejudice (i.e. you should not bring your holistic judgment of the individual into your analysis of all isolated events, ESPECIALLY early ones), building up your case slowly and inexorably. Otherwise, the best you’re getting is scaring people off with your obvious if vague malice.
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Whelp that's enough of TheMotte for me today.
Anyway, my bigger concern in the US is actually having a healthcare crisis with my child and becoming destitute, especially since I've worked diligently to create a life of relative comfort compared to my very blue collar ancestors.
How do you envision that happening?
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Would you feel better to know that I know an affluent white couple having the exact same terrible experience with a white child adopted from methbilly parents? No racial angle at all (the adoptive father is even from a similar borderer-descended background as the child). Yet nurture is still failing horribly and it's a coin toss whether the kid ends up in prison by his late teens.
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Did you know that if you get a giant hospital bill you can just negotiate it down by refusing to pay? I have relatives that have successfully done this- while also being people who pay sticker price with contractors and car dealers, it’s that easy.
Don’t worry so much about it.
Should've framed it more as "chronic, debilitating and high maintenance medical condition" than a single "medical event". Complaints about medical bankruptcy in America aren't because of MRIs for broken arms.
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One can even negotiate down to $0 by the One Weird Trick of just not paying. Just like jiu-jistsu isn’t real, because you can just stand-up: hospital bills aren’t real, just don’t pay.
Although it’s likely one of those things that varies across states in the States, my recollection is that credit score treatment of delinquent medical bills tend to be more lenient, if medical bills make it in there in the first place (God forbid if you close a credit card, though).
It works even better if you’re a member of the underclass or an illegal immigrant, where your (or “your” for illegal immigrants) credit score likely doesn’t matter to you anyway. The costs of your hospital tabs will be passed on to those who pay their bills. Anarcho-tyranny, hospital bill edition.
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Does it hit your credit score, or can you usually negotiate it down before it goes to creditors?
From the little I've seen of stories like this, it seems to go: "hospital hits you with incredibly huge bill, you go "nope", the insurance company goes "nope" and you get on to the special department the hospital has to negotiate "okay let's pay something reasonable", and only the honest and bewildered try to pay the incredibly huge bill" as hospitals will try and charge you for everything with the expectation that "nobody will really pay this, it's haggling time".
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It does not hit your credit score.
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Do you have an actual argument against his position? Or did it just make you feel icky?
I disagree with a great many of @WhiningCoil’s takes, and with the often bilious way he expresses them, but in this case his metaphor strikes me as a fairly reasonable (and certainly within the bounds of discussion) extension of the metaphor you yourself supplied.
It's the emphasis on "invasive species" that's the icky bit; I had a similar gut reaction. Yes, yes, 13/52 and all, but that particular phrasing hits different.
I think you meant to respond to @Hoffmeister25 above.
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