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As I will never get tired of explaining - the fact that something is racist doesn't make it wrong or false.
The implication that a "ghetto boy" is a member of a "virulent invasive species" is both literally false, and metaphorically wrong.
I shouldn't have to explain why it's literally false.
The metaphor is wrong because in the typical understanding, the actions we should take against "invasive species" should be extreme, up to and including eradicating them from the "invaded" area.
You can make a nature/nurture point just fine without bringing these kind of implications into it.
The metaphor is specifically telling you not to put yourself in a position where you would have to take extreme measures to remove the invasive species. Have you ever read an account of an adoption gone wrong? In the worst cases, it sounds like the stuff that makes family annihilations seem understandable. And just to get ahead of the obvious criticism, the worst such story I've ever come across involved adopting a pair of Eastern European girls, who proved to be violently uncontrollable wrecking balls on the lives of their adoptive parents.
The difference is with kids is that someone has to raise them. We don't eradicate them like we do knotweed or whatever. For the good of the kid and society efforts must be made to get them to adulthood. A group home is unlikely to do as good a job as a family with resources. It may well be horrible and difficult for that family, but it must be done by someone. Which is why we don't force people to adopt or foster generally. It's going to be tough in a lot of ways.
It's supererogatory work, so it's not very helpful to talk about these kids as invasive species. In addition the whole rant about nature vs nurture is flawed. by the time a kid is an infant in need of adoption from a poor area like a ghetto, almost always nature has been confounded by maternal alcohol or drug use, maternal or infant malnutrition, you have lead exposure in pipes, a high stress environment for the mother, quite probable early birth and low birth weight. Likely lack of doctor's care and feeding post-birth. Possible neglect and abuse post-birth. Because if they had those things or were looked after properly, they are unlikely to be put up for adoption in the first place. May not make their behavior as they age any better for the parents of course. But it isn't possible to declare it nature and therefore the behavior of an invasive species.
The Khmer Rogue disagree.
The Khmer Rogue can get back to disarming traps, we're paying him to get us into the Zhentarim vault, not for his opinions on child rearing.
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I feel so gross for asking but could you please share some especially-lurid ones?
There are sad cases of people adopting a kid as though selecting a pet from a dog shelter, then not being able (or willing) to cope with the work involved in "this kid is going to need a lot of help" and dumping the kid the same way they'd dump that dog out on the side of the road.
One lurid tale, from way back when during the Anglican Wars that probably didn't get traction outside of the religion news/religion discussion blogs, about a pair of nice liberal gay men (can't remember if they were married if gay marriage was legal then) in a particular Episcopalian church, members in good standing of said church, one at least of them very active in the work of the local church, who adopted a young black boy. Much praise from all around and a hell of a lot of back-patting in the community about how superior they all were with their liberal values as opposed to the nasty conservative church members fighting over LGBT rights and gay clergy and letting gay couples adopt and the rest of it. Then it turns out one of the nice gay dads, the active in the church one, was sexually abusing the kid (and probably had wanted to adopt a kid for that specific purpose).
There's horror stories whenever you turn over stones everywhere.
So to be entirely fair, while horrific, this isn’t the kid’s fault. I think what TitaniumButterfly is looking for are times when an adoption went wrong as a result of parents being unable to deal with the kid.
Although you alluded to this in the post, I think the specific examples would be more useful for what was requested.
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While unquestionably a horror story and about adoption, I don't think this is the kind of "adoption gone wrong" the thread is about, which focuses on cases where the adopted kid turned out to be 'bad seed' no matter how much nurture was applied, and consequently wrecked the innocent adoptive parents' lives - not the other way around.
Oh sure, but this was one case at least where "white couple adopt troubled black kid, it goes terribly wrong" wasn't about the black kid but the white couple (or one of them). A counterpoint to the "invasive species" bit. There's enough terrible things happening on both sides of adoption/fostering not to put all the blame on one set.
There's been an egregious case around fostering in Ireland recently, which finished up a decade-long investigation with what amounted to a shrug about "well we can't prove the charges of sexual abuse, so all good I guess?" even though the other details were of gross neglect and abuse. Seems like nobody did a damn thing over the years, and even when somebody wanted to, the management decided "well no we can't take the girl out of the placement because that would make us look bad". The country as a whole was seething over this, and rightly so.
The foster system is horrible everywhere. Broadly, the system doesn't care much to improve it and the public outcry is... limited.
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I'm not disagreeing that adoptions can go wrong, and horribly so.
I'm saying that the "ghetto boy" bit paired with the "invasive species" metaphor is implying that black people specifically are the problem.
I guess I just think you should really stay away from species-based talk when discussing human subgroups, it's too easyr to be dehumanizing.
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That seems like a bad way to judge a metaphor? If you say "wolf in sheep's clothing" or "fox guarding the henhouse" that has very little to do with the typical way farmers respond to animals threatening their own animals (shooting them).
For reference, the quote in question:
Whether accurate or not, I think the crux of the metaphor would be the idea of carelessly planting something that is destructive to the other plants/environment (particularly because they aren't well-adapted to dealing with it), not any particular response. The focus is on the planting/nurturing, on some poor gardener who thinks all seeds are the same (e.g. is a blank-slatist regarding nurture/nature) and then is left with the consequences, not on what he should do afterwards.
That's sort of the crux of it, I think. What the OP probably meant is that a the son of black ghetto-dwellers who put him up for adoption isn't a case of invasive species in the ghetto where his parents are from. But in an affluent middle-class suburb mostly populated by clueless, low-testosterone White liberal normies, he pretty much is.
And if the kid did turn out well, he'd still be an invasive species by that interpretation. Still not a good way to describe people. People of whatever colour or background can be trash, and I have no problem with calling trashy people trashy. But "invasive species" is "some alien foreign breed introduced here which outcompetes our native species" and the White liberals are just as much "invasive species" in the American context as the black ghetto-dwellers, they both came to America from other countries on boats and took over the land from the natives already there.
If you're going to talk about "invasive species" then you will have to do it in your land acknowledgement, friends.
I think it makes sense to say it is invasive in the context of a white suburban middle-class family. Are white people an invasive species from the perspective of indians? Absolutely, but I don't have to care about that.
And this is a fair way to say it.
If I am a Martian Elm on Neptune, I’m not concerned much about the plight of the Neptunian Elm. But I also don’t want the Venusian Elm to move in on my nice spot by the river, either, and start competing for water. Even if I am supremely confident I’ll win, there’s nothing I really gain out of the situation.
Besides not speciating into a Quokka Elm, I guess.
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Maybe a bit pedantic, but your examples are also common idioms. The "invasive species" thing isn't, so I wanted why I felt it had such a strong negative implication.
But also if the comment implied that every black person in group of whites is a "wolf in sheep's clothing" I'd have the same issue. Those are both also very negative idioms to apply to people.
I think the "ghetto boy, invasive species" bits change the message from "be careful with adoption because you might get a bad seed" (the individual you might adopt could be bad and there's nothing you can do) to "don't adopt a black kid, they're all bad, and they're ruining everything".
No, the actual claim is, “The specific black kids who are up for adoption/fostering in America are, to an extremely large extent, likely to be a huge problem.” They are not a randomly-selected cross-section of the overall black population. There is a reason why they are up for adoption, and it is nearly always a terrible reflection on the parents.
If you accept any sort of hereditarian explanation of human behavior, then it should matter to you that the kid you’re considering for adoption is very very very likely to be the child of A) a drug addict), B) an incarcerated person, or C) a teenage unwed mother. (Or the very common D) all of the above.) The same traits that led such a person to such a lowly state are likely to manifest at least to some extent in the child as well. Even if you don’t accept any hereditarian claims, you still have to worry about things like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, childhood malnutrition, and even neglect/abuse leading to stunted cognitive/physical development, etc. Again, these things are not guaranteed to make the child a ticking time bomb, but the likelihood is far from zero.
These things are at least partially true of non-black children up for adoption or in the foster system as well, but to a markedly lesser extent. The likelihood of these problems just is higher when it comes to adopting a black child. That could change at some point down the road, and certainly there are numerous exceptions and success stories even today, but that doesn’t mean it’s immoral or misguided to take these things into account.
Now I've got to go look up statistics about adoption/fostering, the racial identifies (God help me) of the kids involved, and how that relates to the demographic break-down of the population at large.
God have mercy on my soul!
The fostercare system is a lot blacker than the population as a whole, but I would push back against hoffmeister's assertion that black kids in the foster system are a particular problem- nearly everyone in the system has problems and teenagers in fostercare behave horribly. I'd disagree with the assertion that whites in the foster system are a touch better.
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This is true, but exactly why the claim that nature had stomped nurture was untrue in the original post. It's not an invasive species. It's a damaged plant. It's a small tomato plant that you got from your neighbor who alternately overwatered and underwatered it, the pot was too small and the dirt was mostly bark, and they gave it crazy amounts of plant food and also somehow meth.
You can't draw a conclusion that it's a virulent invasive species when it overgrows its pot and grows tomatoes with blossom end rot. It may not be able to give you tomatoes you can eat. It may simply grow and take up space your other plants might need, but it doesn't necessarily tell you a lot about nurture vs nature. And it's reasonable to expect people to know that. So if they do in fact treat it like it is an invasive species not a damaged one, it does still tell you something about them. Especially when:
Or to put it another way, I've worked in social care, many of the babies taken for adoption or fostering(and this was in the UK so they were mostly white), have huge problems, as you point out, fetal alcohol syndrome being a huge one. And my colleagues would spend extensive time warning prospective adoptive parents and foster parents and trying their best to prepare them for the idea this was going to be a long painful slog in many cases. We're not nurturing an invasive species, we're trying to rescue a damaged baby we have decided we ought not let die or be neglected. Even when we know that it is likely that baby will have many problems and may in fact cause problems and pain for their new parents.
It's horrible for the parents involved and many of them hand kids back when they can't cope with them, but that was the job they signed up for. To give a kid a shot. You are deliberately choosing to trade your time and effort and yes pain in exchange for possibly healing and raising a wounded child. It's not invasive, you deliberately brought it into your home. Yes absolutely do so with open eyes, about the issues they may well be facing, but it's not an invasive species, or even a cuckoo left in your nest against your will (as the most recent clarification by Coil) it's a burden that was chosen. Recognize that it is a burden yes, but you don't then get to pretend it was an invasive species.
The ghetto infant didn't just hop the wall one day and end up in your garden. He or she didn't have a choice where they ended up, you made that choice for them. If you as the adults didn't think carefully enough about what looking after them was going to entail, then that is on you, not the infant.
You understand metaphors, yes? That they aren't literal? Yes?
I don't literally think blacks are an invasive species, or that this congenital felon was literally snuck into their home.
But this poor family made a terrible decision because they've been lied to about reality their entire lives. They thought they could take the fruit of generations of convicted felons, and rescue him from his genetic destiny, because they didn't believe it was real. The moral imperative of blank slatism has robbed two promising young children of their parents time, affection, resources and an emotionally nourishing home. Yeah, it's not as direct as the Cuckoo just leaving it's eggs in an unattended nest. But they were tricked all the same. And they continue to be tricked with narratives like yours that make them feel like they just aren't good enough people if they give up.
Yeah, I know this doesn't only happen with black kids. Yes, I know it happens with flesh and blood too. Right now my mother in law refuses to live in her own home because my father in law refuses to stop harboring their criminally insane 40 year old son. She's damned near 80, the son is a violent psychopath, and the father is not doing his proper duty in actually physically protecting his wife, even if it's from his own kin. But that wasn't the topic of conversation when I made that post. Adoption was, and that's the adoption story I have.
They made a brave decision without realizing why it was brave, i.e. there's a lot of danger involved. That doesn't make it terrible. Had they walked into it with open eyes, it would have been admirable. Insofar as it's not their fault alone that they had a poor understanding of the odds they were facing, sure, they're entitled to some sympathy when things turn out poorly in a way they never anticipated; but not infinite sympathy.
Picture a guy who signed up to be a firefighter because he'd observed that everyone admires and compliments firefighters. One day, things get bad, and as he's being roasted alive in an out-of-control inferno he whines: "man, I thought this job was going to be all about rescuing cats from trees and collecting praise just for existing! I'd never have signed up if I knew it involved actual peril". If the fire dept's recruitment drive genuinely downplayed the hardships and hazards of the job, sure, he gets a degree of sympathy from me for the injuries he sustains. But once he starts saying "no one in their right mind should ever become a firefighter! it's a terrible idea! you could be horribly injured! stop praising firefighters and encouraging people to join up!", no, sorry, gotta stop you there. You have a right to be a coward, everyone does, I'm not a firefighter myself - but you can't start preaching cowardice as an ideal. That's wildly antisocial.
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Again though this isn't the point because 1) You can't tell as an infant what his genetic destiny was or is or how impacted it was by malnutrition, or fetal alcohol syndrome, or a drug addicted mother, or lead or what have you. And how much of that can be overcome. No-one can. Because there are plenty of adopted kids from "bad" parents who do in fact go on to live good if not great lives. No-one can tell in advance. Again someone has to raise them because we are not going to kill them. and 2) Were they lied too? Are you sure the social workers and so on involved with the adoption did not say "hey you know this is going to be difficult? You know adopting someone from this background, they may well have unknown issues? They're likely underweight malnourished that is going to have potentially long term consequences, to health and behavior? and so on and so forth.? Because in my experience the main issue is that prospective adoptive parents don't take warnings seriously, not that they are not given them. 3) You are robbing these adoptive parents of their agency. You claim that they were lied to, that they didn't understand, but they're adults. They made a choice, a good moral choice, that sounds like it hurt them long term, I am sympathetic to that. I spent enough time working in social care to really understand that. The moral imperative of blank slatism did not rob them of anything. They chose of their own free will to take on a moral burden. They sound like good people. But moral burdens have costs. If doing the moral thing was easy, everyone would do it. If they think it is too much for them, and have to hand the child back, then I won't judge them for that, because at least they tried. But the child did not choose to be brought into their home. They chose it. It is their responsibility until that point. He is not in any way invasive. He's damaged by the sound of it. That isn't the same thing. And he may well be so damaged that he needs 24 hour care in a professional setting. That happens. Again believe me, I've seen horrible things, done by parents and by children. I'm not advocating that they must keep the child regardless of the harm he is doing to them.
Blank slatism is nothing to do with this, because you have no way of knowing whether the nurture or nature part was the issue. And you don't know in advance how he will turn out, regardless of his lineage. That's the issue with your position. You build off your assumption that this was predictable. But most adopted kids, even black ones, even damaged ones, do in fact go on to lead reasonable lives. Yes with more difficulties and more criminality statistically. But unless you are literally going to kill them as children, they MUST be raised somehow. And adoptive families seem to give the best possible outcomes of the options we have.
This isn't a situation where we either nurture the invasive species or burn it, like if we were dealing with plants. We either nurture it and hope it grows up to have some quality of life for itself and others around it, or we don't nurture it and it will be even more likely to have lesser quality of life and to contribute negatively.
Or to put it another way, even if blank slatism is 100% false. What else can be done? The child must be raised. It's either going to be (in your scenario), be by the original mother (presumably neglectful or abusive, hence the adoption), the state in a facility, or an adopted family. Which of these is MOST likely to lead to some kind of positive outcome for child and society do you think? How can we tell for sure which is best for any given child as an infant? Our current system is to try and get as many adopted or fostered as possible, as this seems to give the kids the best possible chance, and then if we can't, or if they turn out to be too much for the foster/adoptive family we raise them in a group home or similar. And if they are too much for that, then..well there just aren't great options. Institutionalized and drugged or put in juvie or the equivalent really.
What should have been done with the infant in your scenario do you think? What percentage chance of turning out reasonably does he need to have before an adoptive family should be given the option to try?
I do have sympathy for your mother in law as well. Most of my time was in adult social care, so I am intimately familiar with violent adult children and the various broken cycles of attachment and how reluctant/fearful parents can be sometimes to admit that the behavior of their offspring goes beyond just acting out and is actually dangerous criminality. Getting them into care and treatment can be difficult. And of course many parents don't want to call the cops because they (often rightly) think mental illness is not coped well with by the justice system. It's a horrible situation I am sure, and I am sorry your family is experiencing it. If you were in the UK, I would probably have professional contacts who might be able to help. As it is, I'll simply hope that your mother and father in law do realize the extent of the issues before something worse happens.
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I'm going to go ahead and support the metaphor.
Consider ailanthus. Imported to New York when air pollution was so bad and green spaces so rare that almost nothing else would grow (c.f. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn). Now it's endemic throughout the country, integrated into a ton of rather harsh towns, cities, and as roadside hedges, and it's not going to be eradicated. Even if it could be, people would be upset about it, because it's providing privacy and shade.
Consider the Siberian elm. Planted during the Great Depression to provide shade when, outside the river valleys with high water tables, it was pretty much the only tree that would grow. And it's edible! Now there are canopies in the high desert with nicely kept, mature elm trees, but also weedy wild elms. They aren't going anywhere. People would be upset if all those old, shady elm trees disappeared, though the roadside volunteers aren't always welcome.
Now consider malaria and heatstroke in the old South...
New York is actually trying to eradicate ailanthus.
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I'm not going to disagree that black people as a group share common adaptations for warm climates, that's obviously true, and not the morally wrong part of the metaphor.
the fact that there are some nice invasive species doesn't change the fact that the typical attitude towards them in general is still very, very negative.
And finally any implication that subgroups of people are different species i.e. not human is also morally wrong, especially just dropped into an unrelated conversation (the original comment made no mention of race).
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Do me a favor and explain why it's literally false?
Or, you know, at least stop subsidizing them.
You realize that black people didn't hop on their ships, cross the Atlantic and invade America, right? Forcibly enslaving people, displacing them from their homes and bringing them to America is vastly different from an invasive species...invading and ruining an ecosystem?
Bailey: But Chris, that was hundreds of years ago! Whiningcoil wasn't talking about the slave trade or all black people, just modern 'ghetto culture.'
Okay...are you sure he wasn't? But whatever, you realize that the parents willingly adopted this child, right? That they consented to adopting and raising a black child? They didn't ask for a white baby and some dastardly HR Karen with a humanities degree shoved a black baby into their arms at the last minute. There's no great replacement theory here, there's no 'hostile invasive species' invading their home against their consent. Just another post from Whiningcoil meant to rattle cages, which for all we know, could be entirely fabricated.
That's literally how invasive species work. If rabbits had been able to swim to Australia unaided, they wouldn't be invasive, they would be part of the natural ecosystem. Like the French and Spanish in the Americas. Do people even bother calling rats invasive? I suppose the British are the rats in this analogy.
Yes. But they usually don't call such things as armadillos(who expand their native range all on their lonesome- despite their association with Texas they didn't get here until circa 1900) invasive.
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They do on islands where they are an invasive species destroying the local ecosystem, such as in New Zealand.
When I visited NZ, I was pretty surprised by the fact that they just aerially drop broad-spectrum mammal poison in large areas of the country. With (almost) no native mammals (a few bats), I guess it makes sense ecologically, but from my continental (from-a-continent-not-an-island) perspective it's a choice.
EDIT: This is intended as an interesting tangential anecdote, not an allegory.
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Ah, you're right, I forgot about that time the British slapped a bunch of African rabbits in chains and forced them to pick cotton for a century or two in the hot Australian sun.
Aren't feral horses, water buffalo, and camels all categorized as 'invasive' in Australia? I personally oppose the designation- I prefer a more southwestern-US view that increasing megafaunal variety is good even if some native species suffer, but Australians have the right to their own opinions on the relative value of kangaroos vs horses even if I would have a Texas-style pro-exotics policy where only animals causing damage to the things people want out of the ecosystem are considered invasive if I were Australian emperor- but that is what Australians call them.
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They brought rabbits over so they could chase and shoot them. They did bring over invasive work animals as well, however.
All the Australians who adopted rabbits and had their livelihoods destroyed must be livid.
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Black people are not a seperate species.
Sure make an argument about "we should stop subsidizing black people" (I especially agree with "don't subsidize people based on race specifically"). But don't do it in a dehumanizing way by calling them a seperate species.
They are at least as different as wolves, and coyotes, and dogs are from one another.
Wolves and dogs are literally not separate species and it's quite possible to argue that coyotes shouldn't be categorized separately either.
And yet I wouldn't want a wolf in my house, and I have no problem telling them apart.
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