When you get old enough, you start to see trends that young people just do not pick upon. In the past 50 or so years, the population of the USA has more than doubled. Most of you know this, but did you also notice that the rural population has gone down at the same time? If the population doubled and the rural population went down, where did all these new people end up? They ended up in our larger cities. The first time that I ever went to San Jose, Ca, I think the population was under 50,000. Now San Jose is one of the 10 largest cities in the USA. That all happened in my life time and this USA is older than many life times and I hope that it will go on for many more. I am getting to my point.
I know that you could divide the people of the USA into many groups, but I am going to divide them into just four. (1) Asians, (2) Jewish, (3) Black and (4) All others. The first 3 groups are significantly different from "All others" and here is how. These first three groups are much more urbanized than the "all other" group. Most Asians live in large urban areas, as do both Jews and Blacks. If you think about this, I don't think that this is a big surprise to anyone, but there is more.
Next, how are urban and rural places different? They are different in many ways, but for my point, I feel that this is the most significant way that they are different. To succeed in an urban area, the person needs to have some special skill or intellect. This could be education, social responsibility, hard working. Things like strength, a strong back or keen eye sight would not count for much in an urban environment. As the urban areas get larger, these characteristics become more important.
Now, contrast this to rural areas. To succeed in a rural area, you need to be able to do more physical work and thus strength and a strong back would be key assets. I am thinking about milking cows or hauling hay, logging or mining. It could be picking farm crops, driving heavy equipment or trucks. I grant you that the rural area of work has become more efficient faster than most urban office or professional jobs and accounts for much of the decline in rural population.
The point that I am building up to is that the skill demands for urban and rural are very different and that has an affect on different segments of our population. Take Asians first. As a group, they are the best educated and the hardest working and most socially disciplined. Most live in urban areas and their set of skills serve them well. They earn the most per person of all the groups and do it in an urban environment. Next, the Jewish community. Like Asians they mostly live and work in urban areas and succeed just like the Asians. Next, the Black group. Of all the groups, they are the least skilled, socially responsible and educated, yet they are mostly in urban areas. They have not done well and will not do well because their skill set does not match the requirements of an urban environment. Their skills would be a lot better match for the requirements of a rural area. Do you see where I am going with this?
The trend in urban areas that demand higher and higher skills to succeed is not going to change. It is going to get even worse. It will be like rowing a boat up stream. If the Black community does not improve their skill set faster than the current in the stream, they will go backwards in terms of quality of life. They have to row faster to just stand still. It is not a simple case of being better educated than your parents, you have to be a lot better educated and work a lot harder. I know this is a hard pill to swallow, but I think these are the facts. To repeat, "there is no free lunch in the world". There is no easy way to dig ones self out of a deep hole. I think that know what you are up against is critical if there is any hope of digging out. Sugar coating the truth does no one service.
I think that one only needs to look at Detroit and see how difficult survival is in an urban area if you do not have the special skills needed. We are talking about a lot more than just education too. The Black community in Detroit is going to continue to go down hill until the high school graduation rate there is at least 95%. Now is is less than 33% so you can see how far they have to go to stop going down. When they stop going down, "then" they can think about going "up".
PS---Isn't it interesting that our Black President has said or done little to point out the path that his Black community needs to follow to improve their status. As a community organizer, you would think that he understood the problem of cities like Detroit and the Black community.
