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I've frequently heard that a big problem, and part of why so many young black kids look up to rappers and athletes as role models, is that there just aren't many good role models for them to look up to. And that was a point I'd previously conceded. But when you think about it, that doesn't actually make sense. It's true that black people should have more equitable representation in positions of power, but there are some that exist in positions of power and they don't seem to be regarded as role models within the black community - at least not to the extent that the issue actually seems to be a lack of black role models to choose from. Like there should be more black CEOs and scientists, but there are enough out there to serve as role models, but they simply don't seem to be regarded in that way. There has obviously been a black president and there are many black members of congress. It's not like there is such a paucity of them that the only possible person a young black kid could look up to is someone like Future. It's true that only 6% of CEOs in the US are black, but I'd bet good money that the average black person can't name a single one (and for the record neither can I), and the same is true for the six black CEOs that head fortune 500 companies. If there is such a demand for positive black role models, why are none of those six executives widely regarded as such?
I guess my question is to those who say that the only role models available to young black kids are entertainers, what do you mean? Why do the above examples not suffice to the point that there are just no role models for young black kids to look up to?
1: I am extremely skeptical of the "role model" thing as relating to celebrities or strangers. Actual role models are people in other people's lives, and no amount of group X in job Y is going to increase that.
2: The problem is that what really does affect the life choices of underclass kids of all races is their role models in the neighborhood, school, and social circle. Who is cool, who gets dates, who is feared, who is funny etc.
For the overwhelming majority of underclass kids, they aren't one black lead actor away from a successful career in law. Their realistic options are welfare poverty, crime, or low-paid, low-status work permanently. Is it such a shock that for many, welfare and crime seem like lesser evils? It's more of a shock to me that so few take that path. The majority still take the low-paid low-status work, in most places.
If you want to create role models for poor kids with low prospects, you need jobs that bring either reasonably good wages or social status, that can be done by people in the bottom quarter of IQ, self control and time horizon distributions. And you need social change among the underclass community to value that sort of effort, rather than viewing it as an attack on their culture and dignity. White people can really only influence one of these things in the black underclass.
Or, you know, solid father figures. Even if he's a janitor making minimum wage, a man who comes back to the home with his kids every day, teaches them, and shares meaningful experiences with them will be a powerful positive influence on their lives, particularly if they're boys.
This applies regardless of race or class.
Absolutely, the father is the ultimate role model. I think any serious discussion of the solutions to generational poverty has to start with reforming the family court system, and how we reward certain familial arrangements more than others, sometimes to the detriment of all involved. Ultimately though, this is the province of the community itself, whatever the group. Trailer parks aren't known for familial stability either, or military bases.
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That does appear to be the strongest argument I’ve seen on this thread. That what really matters is local role models. But the corollary from there is that this is not an issue that is specific to the black community, but rather to those who didn’t grow up in wealthy families/communities.
However, the only thing that argument doesn’t address is that it’s black entertainers who fill that role for these kids, which are obviously not people they know from their communities. Which would suggest that they aren’t just selecting from local role models.
I think to some extent it’s simply that entertainers represent an avenue towards quick money. And athletics and rap are to some extent fundamentally of the black culture (rap in particular), so they receive a degree of elevation in the black community that enhances the degree of appeal.
There's plenty of local role models in working class white communities. I suspect that lower-middle class blacks have them available as well, and I suspect white trailer parks don't have positive role models available either.
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So I've lived in a variety of cities around the US and it strikes me that for all the stereotypes of "Racist Rednecks" my experience of the south has been that racial tensions are in fact much less pronounced than they are in say Massachusetts or California. Sure you might hear the N-word more in the south but it also feels far more "integrated". IE you go into a bar, a church, or a doctor's office in a city like Atlanta or Gulfport you'll find a fairly representative sample of whites and blacks amongst both the patrons and staff. Sure the ultra-wealthy "Old Money" types might all be white landowners who's families have been there since the 1800s but in terms of people John Q Public is going to be interacting with on a regular basis no-one is going to raise an eyebrow at a black doctor or white homeless guy.
Meanwhile a cities like LA or Boston where the only black people one is likely to meet are either criminals or working menial/low-status jobs is also where the worst stereotypes seem to be the most pronounced, and are the places that inevitably get trotted out by race-essentialists as examples of why integration can't work.
A thought that occurs to me is that segregation might have ironically helped on this front by both inoculating everyone against progressive nonsense like "safe spaces". "Safe? This space is not safe this space is a gym". and by ensuring that these cities had an existing tradition of black-owned businesses and kids having those sorts of local role-models that @JTarrou describes.
Edit: Paragraphs reordered
I've noted before the perverse character of segregation, that the same system that so badly disenfranchised black americans also kept their "role model" types in the community.
After official segregation ended, unofficial segregation was left, and the people who escaped it were mostly the middle- and upper-class blacks. While some discrimination lingered to this day, it wasn't enough to stop the talented and motivated members of the black community from moving up in the world. For very understandable reasons, these upwardly mobile, assimilationist black people moved out of the poorer neighborhoods. This lead to an "evaporative cooling" of areas, especially in the north where large numbers of blacks had migrated for factory work. It left them stranded in very white states (Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, etc.) with all the black doctors and lawyers moved out to the suburbs. Combined with the collapse of the manufacturing sector, the jobs that had provided the structure for their community went back down south. This leaves islands of heavily black towns in burnt-out industrial areas in the midwest with high crime, high poverty, low educational attainment and a host of metastasized underclass problems.
I do agree that the south seems to have better race relations than the north, and it's probably to do with this more stark difference, plus a lack of historical structure to race relations.
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