2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: What does this mean? I am not feeling this at all! [View all]HassleCat
(6,409 posts)Young black men spend a lot of time hanging around on street corners. So do young white men, but young black men do it more because their other opportunities are more limited. We will have federal programs that take in many of these young men, of all colors, and including some young women, and we will encourage them to get a high school diploma or GED. And we will train them to write software, fix cars, build houses, etc. And most of them will complete the program and go back to hanging out on the street corner.
But there will be a few who catch fire, maybe five percent, and they will go to college, get a decent job, things like that. And they won't be hanging around on the street corner. And that's a good thing for them, and for all us, including those who are scared by young black men on street corners.
And the Republicans will say, "There are still black kids hanging out on street corners in DC, Detroit, and Compton so the Democrat giveaway program didn't work. It failed to clear our street corners of scary young black men with their hoodies pulled up. So let's pull all the funding and build some missiles instead."
And the cycle continues.
Sanders is proposing a bigger investment in something that works, but doesn't work well enough to make everybody happy. But it's a better use of tax dollars than bailing out banks, so he's on the right track here.