[BucketSort]

> Yet I know that even if you aren't suffering grinding poverty being RELATIVELY poor on a local basis is really hurtful and isolating. It destroys you socially. You can't do what your peers can do and have to stay home. It makes you less attractive to the opposite sex. It hurts your quality of life. It limits your ability to change this. It makes it so merit becomes less and less connected to success.

I understand and this is a good point.

I have further anecdotes from being friends with an African American kid who lived in the government housing area in my town -- which I visited on occasion. Even though these people lived in decent houses, with all their basic needs being met by the state, there was a dramatic feeling of depression and anger there. What did their future look like? They didn't feel like they had any way to work within the system, so they turned to degenerate preoccupations. When you feel like the system "isn't fair," you are inclined to say fuck the system. This impacts African American's the most because not only do they see the system "isn't fair" today, but that it was really not fair in the past. The fact that it has improved dramatically isn't a saving grace for many.

I understand some of the problems of inequality, but I can't imagine it ever being different. Equality is in line with my morality, but I'm not a dreamer. Humans aren't angels. I do believe we could win the fight for securing the basic necessities of life as a right, but equality is a utopian fantasy. There is a certain level of suffering we must accept as being an unavoidable consequence of our nature.

[meko]

Indeed. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy when the most disadvantaged members of society have no other means to advance other than illicit activities and then those statistics are turned around and continued to be used against them. It's depressing that plenty of people fall for it, citing "the numbers" as evidence for thier hateful claims.