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Old Posted Jan 8, 2017, 5:13 AM
emathias emathias is offline
Adoptive Chicagoan
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: River North, Chicago, Illinois
Posts: 5,157
Quote:
Originally Posted by chicubs111 View Post
Yes it does comes down the individuals!...what the hell you talking about... last i checked the president of the United states is a black man from the south side of Chicago...how did he make it then?...would it possibly be he made individual choices that would affect his future?...there are many other successful African Americans from the south side too..how did they make it?... your response is a good way to point the finger away from the individual and to play the blame game that has been going on forever...well what you see now is the result
With all due respect, sir, a single exceptional example does not break a rule.

And your first "example" isn't even applicable. Obama was not born in Chicago, he did not grow up in Chicago, he did not, for the most part, grow up around poverty. He even spent a significant part of his childhood outside of the United States. He is not the example you seem to think he is. The vast majority of Obama's childhood was made up of choices he did not make. His (white) mother made them. His (white) Kansas grandparents made them. He did not.

The fact that you see a black man and hear he's from Chicago and automatically assume he shares all the same factors as other black men in Chicago is a direct example of your prejudice. Note, I am not calling you a racist, but you do have prejudices (as do many, probably most people). It's not a moral failing to have prejudices. But it does create a responsibility that you acknowledge them and work to correct them. Knowing you have prejudices and doing nothing to understand and correct them, that would make you a racist.

Yes, individuals need to make good choices. But you know what? Your choices are limited by what you know. You can't make certain choices if you don't even know they exist. If you go to a school that doesn't teach you that there are geologists, and you have to work to help your mother after school and don't have a lot of time for personal self-discovery, you may not even know that being a geologist is a career, let alone a career you might want to have.

If a high school student isn't taught that there are ways to pay for college other than just paying cash, they may not even know that going to college is an option for nearly anyone who would like to do so and who studies hard.

If you are a 2-year-old, you don't choose to live in an old house that still has lead paint and lead pipes because the adults in your city and state and country made the choice to not require those known problems to be fixed. That choice was not available to be made by that 2-year-old. If that lead causes brain damage, that's not the fault of bad choices by the 2-year-old. It may not even be the fault of bad choices by the parents of that 2-year-old depending on the circumstances, it very well may be the fault of the politicians.

Pointing out that there are many, many external factors that affect every single one of us is not making excuses for bad choices. But it is admiting that *luck* (as defined as mathematical probabilities, not a mystic force) plays a role in how well any of us ends up doing in life. Trying to mitigate the worst aspects of people that experience "bad luck" isn't excusing bad behavior.

If anything, identifying external factors that contribute to "bad luck" and working to mitigate them *reinforces* the concept of personal accountability because it lowers the impact of "bad luck" hurting people and increases the role of personal choice.

So if you advocate personal choice, then logically you also need to fully back the identification and mitigation of external factors that undo even the best choices people might make.
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