Why Teach if no one Wants to Learn?

Hot Air linked to this Time Magazine article from 20+ years ago discussing black poverty in America. There's a lot more to it, but I'm fast-forwarding to the solutions part. In essence, the theme is that blacks in the ghetto lack positive role models because everyone with gumption has fled.

In a recent paper, Anderson laments the growing cleavage between what he calls "old heads and young boys." Old heads were the traditional neighborhood mentors of ghetto youth. Their message, Anderson writes, "was about manners and the value of hard work, involving how to get a job, how to keep a job, how to dress for a job interview, how to deal with a prospective employer." But with work scarce and cocaine permeating the ghetto, young blacks now tend to dismiss old heads as old fogies preaching a message as irrelevant as antidrug lectures ...

Twenty years of failed programs, from community development to public housing, point to a depressing conclusion: little will be done to make the ghetto an acceptable place to live and raise children. This by no means suggests abandoning those trapped in the inner city. Rather, the emphasis of both government and private philanthropy must be on helping the black underclass escape the social isolation of these inner-city wastelands.

Emphasis mine. My recent mockeries of people crying "racism" at every turn is based on this: you can't teach someone who resists learning. So long as you focus on racism, you create that resistance by setting up a ready-made excuse for failure and a suspicion of success.

For an individual, the content of the accusations is meaningless. Success is based on hard work, a willingness to learn and a pleasant demeanor. It doesn't matter if you're an oppressed minority or a member of the capitalist oppressors. The keys to success are universal. Marinating in accusations of racism undermines the motivations for the first two and obliterates the third. The endless focus on racism is dooming whole generations to poverty and failure.

The solution in the Time magazine article linked above missed one, crucial part to helping out the underclass, be they black, white, brown or whatever. Their solution doesn't require the underclass to have a passion to escape their poverty. Without that, without the willingness to learn from others who have escaped, they're screwed.