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by throwmylifawy 2069 days ago
I appreciate you for being open, vulnerable and expressing your ideas. However I am black and what you are saying does not sound correct to me. I know a lot of black people (including my family) who listen to Dave Ramsey and watch Fox News. Black people are in general pretty religiously conservative in the US. Personally I used to watch financial TV channels growing up like CNBC and listen to Clark Howard and Susie Orman.

I can see the appeal of a straight talker and pull up by your boot straps personality such as Ramsey. He has helped a lot of people. His style does not work for me personally.

I personally think the financial problems (in general) with black people (aside from racism) in the US stems from two related things: the lack of a coherent family structure and lack of intergenerational wealth transfer. The single-mother family poverty angle is pretty clear: Single mothers have low availability and are poor, and poor people tend to make poor financial decisions due to exploitation and desperation. The intergenerational wealth transfer angle is if you have something of value you are going to transfer to the next generation, you are going to spend time teaching them how to care for it. Think transferring a business, property, and other assets. Legacy is a real important thing for most people. This is something rare for black Americans. Unfortunately in a lot of cases the thing that is transferred between generations are debt obligations.

3 comments

Fox News black viewership population through 2018 was fully 1% https://www.newsweek.com/fox-news-white-audience-immigration...

I’m not discounting your life experience but statistically speaking most black households do not experience Fox News. And if you lived in an environment where most black households did experience Fox News, then that might point to an even more skewed environment, statistically speaking.

That's my big problem with Dave Ramsey. He's a rent-seekers financial advisor. There are lots of people who should cut their losses and let a bill get written off, but he brings his "ethical" view and counsels them to spend afew years feeding their kids garbage so the company can get paid.
> I personally think the financial problems (in general) with black people (aside from racism) in the US stems from two related things: the lack of a coherent family structure and lack of intergenerational wealth transfer.

You say “aside from racism” and then point to two things directly attributable to racist policies.

Agreed.