Honestly, this is worse than an anti-vaxx thread. It is based on so many fucking assumptions it is insane. Playing amateur (racist) criminologist must be fun, but fuck, this thread is draining.
I'm amazed that we are going in circles with this culture of poverty bullshit (which somehow isn't actually framed as cultural because culture is malleable/constantly changing, but the culture discussed seems to presented as natural extension of blacks inferiority) and simple blame on the social structure.
It is much more likely--as pretty much any decent social-psychologist/criminologist would frame it--that a shitty position in the social structure creates opportunities to develop a shitty culture that allows one to develop a positive sense of self, recognition, etc. that can't be obtained otherwise. However, the problem is that this doesn't actual solve someone's socio-structural problem and recreates a shitty position in society. Not to mention, minority/poor people are punished more severely than the wealthy/white kids, and youth deviance for poor kids has a greater affect on their trajectories than their wealthy counterparts (see
http://people.morrisville.edu/~reymers/readings/soci101/saints_and_the_roughnecks-chambliss.pdf ) .
This has been shown over and over again. No social science can ever create a law, but there is a great deal of evidence to support this hypothesis. Paul Willis (
https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Labor-Working-Class-Kids/dp/0231053576) found this when studying poor white boys in England. Elijah Anderson found this when he studied poor black people in the ghetto (see
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/05/the-code-of-the-streets/306601/ ), Philippe Bourgeois found the same fucking thing look at poor Puerto Rican men in the Bronx (see
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=170651 ).
How do we solve this problem? Maybe, someone who actually studies this shit for a living might be a good person to listen to (see
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/11/rethinking-americas-dark-ghettos/508400/ ) instead of some silly talking head on TV (the radio or Facebook) who gets paid to create controversy.
Honestly, it bums me out that some skaters love to stigmatize others and seem to struggle with the notion not everyone has equal life opportunities, considering it kind of relates (relates doesn't mean the same thing) to most of our lives. We rejected or were rejected by the dominant traditional sport/school culture (which teaches "important" values like obedience, loyalty, deferences to the church, team work, and all the other attributes "good" kids must have) to engage in an alternative culture, which is deemed deviant.
I remember being stigmatized for being a lower/middle-class skater and being accused of stealing when I hadn't done anything wrong and it fucking sucked. It didn't make me want to obey the rules when everyone assumed I was shit to begin with. Also, while skateboarding has helped me in many ways, it certainly didn't help me obtain a career. Jumping down stairs instead of going to class is a pretty good path to nowhere for most people. Skateboarding was an escape from the middle/upper class high school I went to where everyone "knew" they were better than me and my friends.
Finally, the application of the law is unequal. I don't think anyone, with a straight face, can argue race and money have nothing to do with justice. The best example to support this is that blacks make up the majority of drug arrests, even though whites and blacks do illegal drugs are relatively equal rates (50%ish). This is amazing, because it means 6% of the population makes up the majority of drug arrests while 30% of the population seems to be overlooked and dramatically under represented in drug arrests. Not to mention, the prison system was primarily white until the early 80s.
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