The welfare state has its cultural contradictions, too. It rests on consensus, which is another way of saying a lack of cultural variety.
I always find it interesting to hear American perspectives on the welfare state. Canada's welfare state was nowhere near Sweden's, of course, but aspects of it even remain today, after about two decades of cuts necessitated by NAFTA and changing global circumstances; perhaps even the rise in diversity mentioned in the article.
It's always important to remember that no system is perfect. I remember when Bill Clinton had his heart surgery a few months back I read a gloating editorial in the Post (I know, I know, I'm a little ashamed of the fact that I read the Post, but it's 25 cents, the sports section is decent and the editorials make me laugh because they're written by retards) talking about how if the US had a national health care system like Canada, Clinton would have had to wait in line to have his operation, and probably wouldn't have been able to get into the operating room for 4-6 months at the least. This is, of course, true, as is the documented (in Canada, at least) lengths people will go to to avoid such lines, with people who can afford it making the trip to Buffalo or California or wherever to have MRIs, CAT scans and even full out operations. The rich, however (which Clinton is now, though he wasn't at the time that he was president), will almost always be able to find ways to circumvent the system.
I also think it's interesting how the article seems to imply that immigration and disintegration (not in the sense of being turned into little bits of nothing by a raygun but in the sense of not being integrated into a society)/socio-economic poorness go together. I mean, why is that? Is there any way to make immigrants associate more with their new country than their original ones, to avoid the dreaded hyphenated citizen?
Yesterday when I was coming home with a friend there was a pile of black kids on the train with us, your typical urban youths. And as we were walking on the street, she pointed out that those kids, probably 18-20, were each wearing outfits worth close to or in excess of $1,000 (shoes $300, jeans $200, shirt $40, cap $40, jacket $400). She mentioned how she loved New York because of the opportunity, the energy, and yet also hated it because of the way it eats people up and grinds them down, because of the cycle that it creates and that you could see in those young men; how they had bought into a specific lifestyle, and what were they going to do with the rest of their lives? Is it racist to assume those kids probably aren't going to be working on Wall Street? Or is it realistic? Because honestly, the paradigm of success in America (if not the world) is white male. It is. You can talk all you like about how it shouldn't be (and it shouldn't), but the reality is that it is, so while academics and politicians can spout rhetoric about changing it, the rest of us had better figure out how to live our lives while accounting for it.
But then, what's so white about speaking english properly? About saying ask instead of axe, or not saying nigga every other word? What's so white about wanting more out of your life than making some girl pregnant at 18 and working at CVS or McDonald's to pay the bills and buy your bling? People make it out. It can be done. Don't people want more for themselves than living and dying in the ghettos?
I know I do.
And yes, I'm sure they do and maybe they don't have the resources; maybe they don't go to school because their school sucks, but you can't solve problems like this just by throwing money at it because there are institutional obstacles, ingrained in the culture. That's what I love about The Boondocks; it's all about self-examination and questioning those assumptions made about what it means to be "black," a process that any minority should pay attention to and can learn from, obviously not for specific details, but in the bigger picture.
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