Good morning,
I wrote a while back about the need to combine both collective actions and to require individual agency in combatting the challenges faced by underserved communities. Ed Casal, a friend of Cuban heritage, agrees that both the community and affected individuals should be responsible for lifting up those who are in need. He provides some explanation for disparate outcomes in different communities:
“I grew up in Miami and saw waves of immigrants flow in over my lifetime, primarily from Latin America but now increasingly Europe and Russia. They mixed with those that came in prior waves, from the Carolinas and Georgia, New York, and [the descendants of slaves]…
What’s interesting to me is your point on agency. The Cubans largely lifted themselves off the ground in a short number of years. They went to school, assimilated, moved on. While they are mostly anti -communist, not all are rabidly so. America was very good to the Cuban exile community, so we have to be thankful.
The other national immigrant waves didn’t have the same structural advantages the Cubans received (mostly automatic residency), but they figured it out and became part of the society. In time each moved up from doormen and gardeners to electricians and plumbers to doctors, lawyers and CEOs.
A key failure though was to help the local black community, largely descendants of slaves, move up. Even the black Haitian immigrants looked down on them...
If we are looking for solutions rather than arguments I’ve turned to early education as a key component - teach a man to fish. Breakthrough Miami has a great program, which has expanded nationally, as does Beacon College Prep.”
Ed’s views are consistent with my own, to wit:
· While many immigrant communities were able to lift themselves up, they did so through support structures. But these support structures—familial and societal—were denied those who were enslaved and separated from family. How can we compare immigrant success to those who were abducted and brought here?
· It does, indeed, take a village and time for people to move upward. For us to provide opportunity to others requires support infrastructures—both from within the community and from government and charitable institutions.
· The key is early education and the support for that education coming from the community and parents.
Mark Farrell similarly focuses on early childhood, their education, stimulation, and need for nutrition and support:
“Studies have shown how much a child's mental, intellectual, emotional, and physical advancement comes from early nurturing and stimulation. In disenfranchised communities, much of this stimulation is missing for a variety of reasons. Many people live in food deserts and don't receive proper nutrition, which is necessary for proper development. Parents are absent in many instances, and/or have addictions that prevent proper nurturing — which they were most likely subjected to as children as well.”
Mark concludes:
“I've been told that 80% of our personalities and emotional response patterns is formed by the time we're eight-years-old. When contrasting a middle to upper-middle class eight-year-old's experience to one of the ghetto, the stark differences in parenting, nutrition, education, and most of all, proper mental and physical stimulation as infants and toddlers leads to very different results in adulthood.
Personally, I believe that this is at the root of many of our problems as a society. Some people are able to ascend from the mire, but most cannot. It's a never-ending chain that results in poverty, crime, and incarceration. The idea that, ‘If I can do it, you can do it too,’ just isn't realistic. I have a saying: ‘Judging people by your reality isn't really judging at all... It's prejudice.’”
Both Ed and Mark are on to something. Education—and the earlier the better—has a great deal of effect on young people, their development and success.
Have a great day,
Glenn
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What an excellent musing! Thank you -