Comment Archives: stories: News & Opinion: Urban Journal
Re: “Blacks, poverty, and the future of Rochester”
A mixture of racism and good ideas in these comments so far. I consider the issue one of economics as much as race. Someone like Obama or Janet Lomax or Bill Johnson or Wade Norwood or Adam McFadden are all college-educated, upper middle-class and upper-class professionals. With higher education comes access to professional jobs, which provide a higher level of income. A white student in a poor school district (Gates, Chili, Albion) without college-educated parents is more likely to work in a low-wage, low-skilled job than an African-American who goes to SOTA who's parents are a lawyer and a college professor. Why? Because the SOTA student has been raised in a culture of education and affluency, with clear role models to emulate. Institutional racism plays a role but not as much as certain activists and nay-sayers would like. Until we create easy access, high-paying jobs and give kids (white and black) good role models, this cycle will continue unabated and everyone will continue complaining unabated.
Re: “Blacks, poverty, and the future of Rochester”
@Justice: LOL. Far from "ignoring the problem," we've dumped trillions upon trillions of taxpayer dollars into all kinds of schemes we were promised would eradicate the problem. We spend more now than in the Golden Age of the so-called War on Poverty. So enough already about taxpayer money. And nobody's placing "all the blame" on illegitimate parents. But moral revival is a necessary, even if not sufficient, part of the solution, and one that the original article ignored.
@MJN: You're darn right, we object to government schools — the same ones that produce the abysmal results this article describes — diverting scarce time and resources to ideological campaigns promoting sexual filth and immorality. But that's neither here nor there. Places where such policies have been in place for years have essentially the same or higher rates of illegitimacy.
Re: “Blacks, poverty, and the future of Rochester”
The findings in this article are nothing new. However, I want to express an opinion about the continuous misinterpretation of statistical data as representing the cause of the problem at hand - poverty. I quote the superintendant of the city school district that states:
"African American students are not meeting any of the state standards in the areas of English, math, science or social studies." Neither, in fact, are Hispanic children. Only white children are.
this gap in academic achievement is strongly associated with race, ethnicity, social-economic background, and family and neighborhood stability," which are having a major, negative effect on children's achievement in school.
In statistical analysis - correlation of variables does not prove causation. In other words, just because there are a number of factors that are all associated with a certain outcome - poverty or poor academic performance, does not imply that the outcome is caused by all of those factors. So, for those that look at the implications that this is a racial or ethnicity driven problem, may be wrong. All of the factors indicated - "race, ethnicity, social-economic background, and family and neighborhood stability" are (I suspect) correlated with each other. They don't all help explain the cause.
Re: “Blacks, poverty, and the future of Rochester”
Why do I suspect that those who are crying the loudest about the problem of out-of-wedlock children and the number of young parents who are unable to support children of their own are also the ones who were first in line to whine that the city schools’ plan to address the problem in part by handing out condoms was immoral and would only promote sexual congress and excess?
Re: “Blacks, poverty, and the future of Rochester”
Putting all the blame on blacks and Hispanics for immorality and the continuing cycle of poverty rather than on our society for ignoring the problem while wasting our money to address theproblem on corporate welfare, senseless wars of choice, and tax breaks for the wealthy is both racist and classist.
Re: “City should turn down University Ave. project”
Serious? Another "NO" vote for a project which can help this area and the city of Rochester in one fell swoop? This has GOT to be the most calcified mentality toward development that I've ever seen in the many cities in which I've lived. I live in NOTA. I own rental property in NOTA. And I welcome this development! I live here because I like urban density. I like people on the street. I like businesses nearby that will only come and thrive if there are people there to purchase their goods. As for my rentals, the more peope who want to live in this area the easier it is for me to rent mine. How any business in the area (see Craft Company No6 opposition) can possibly argue against this is beyond me.
And, if you've not noticed, the City of Rochester is cash starved. How can turning a parcel from a tax exempt one to one paying taxes be anything but a good thing? I support Eastman House, but stop your whiny baby tactics and claims as to "your viewshed". It is NOT your viewshed, and if you had wanted to preserve or develop it differently you've had a number of years in which to do so. You negotiated in bad form, and now you've lost it. That's the private marketplace. Deal.
Re: “Blacks, poverty, and the future of Rochester”
BTW, just what does Prof. Obama's election have to do with the price of tea? Does anybody actually think he has something in common with the population that is the subject of this report? For all intents he is as much the beneficiary of white privilege as anyone else. On the other hand, many of the report's findings could apply to similarly situated people of other hues.
Re: “Blacks, poverty, and the future of Rochester”
I 4th these notions!! How come nobody EVER brings up the biggest issue - having kids before you're ready. Stopping that would fix many of the other problems that come up. And it's not like getting pregnant is some disease you catch, there are easy and well-documented ways to prevent it. Of course, if your parent(s) didn't choose to use these methods, it might not be immediately obvious to you. It all starts with the PARENTS!!!
Re: “Blacks, poverty, and the future of Rochester”
The transition from poverty to working class is the easiest of the upward transitions to be made and people born into a disadvantaged set of circumstances are in the prime position to enjoy some upward mobility, regardless of race or neighborhood. Being self-made has some unique benefits that being born with a silver spoon does not convey. Hard work builds character and a key motivating factor is to provide better opportunities for your kids than you had.
My inclination is that the failure to thrive discussed here is not due to people being black, or people being in the city, but it's primarily a lifestyle choice of the people described, e.g. a conscious decision to indulge in unproductive behaviors while gaming the social safety net instead of undertaking the hard work of self improvement, or perhaps just not realizing that there's another way to live due to lack of role models.
Re: “Blacks, poverty, and the future of Rochester”
Echoing the other comments, the elephant in the room, to judge from this summary, is the self-perpetuating cycle of casual immorality and bastardy. Nothing will change absent an overwhelming moral and spiritual awakening.
Re: “Blacks, poverty, and the future of Rochester”
It's like Katy said you will have more children in poverty when Mom & Dad are 15 years old. They aren't going to be the CEO of some company. It's time for those in poverty to take responsability to teach thier young to STAY in school, work hard & wait to have kids. I wasn't handed everything, I had to claw my way to were I'm at. My grandparents learned english when they moved here with nothing, both parents were poor growing up & made it to the middle class. Each generation we try to improve our kids education. You got to suck it up & roll up your sleeves.
Re: “Blacks, poverty, and the future of Rochester”
The economic realities will remain bleak until the concepts of birth control and family planning are understood. It is pretty hard to 'raise' six children, with six different exCon/BabyDaddies with no money and no education. And that is the problem: they are not 'raised' they are released to the streets and the 'village' or 'aunts' , 'cousins' or 'grandparents.' If you look at successful black and Hispanic people, what they have in common is THEY WAITED TO HAVE CHILDREN UNTIL THEY COULD SUPPORT THEM. (Emotionally and financially)
Re: “City should turn down University Ave. project”
J.A.M., you raise important points. Regarding our contribution to the Eastman House: we make contributions to numerous area arts organizations and other non-profits, as do many local media. That support is clearly stated on the organizations’ promotional material. We’ve written articles praising those organizations, and we’ve written articles criticizing them.
On the issue of the apartment ownership: It’s a two-flat, 100-plus-year-old house next door to our home – meager competition for a 102-unit, spanking new building. I suppose you could say any new apartments are competition for our units. But I’ve cheered on other new apartment developments, when they were in locations I thought were appropriate. And you might make the argument that the density in the neighborhood, and the resulting popularity of the area, makes our apartments more desirable. Our property value has certainly increased. So perhaps we have a vested interest in more apartments. And any development that adds to the city’s tax rolls helps every other city taxpayer, including me.
But overall, I think you’re right: On the apartments issue, I should have indicated that my husband and I own a rental property in the neighborhood, letting readers decide whether that had any bearing on the subject.
Re: “Violence on the mind”
I'm not really sure how this report goes from the Boston Marathon bombings to corruption in state government; Is there supposed to be a link between the two? I don't think there is and I'm not sure what the closing argument is supposed to be: What ever will we do about corruption in Albany? And what will we do about the Boston bombings? Not exactly a coherent argument.
Re: “City should turn down University Ave. project”
The publisher has now acknowledged not one but two significant conflicts of interest that the original print article did NOT disclose: One, her company is a "substantial" (her word) donor to one of the parties to the controversy. Two, as a competing provider of rental housing in the same market, she has a financial stake in the outcome.
To what extent either of these circumstances influenced the article is an interesting question, but not the main point. Any credible code of ethics mandates avoiding even the APPEARANCE of a conflict of interest. Accordingly, at an absolute minimum these conflicts should have been disclosed early and often.
Re: “City should turn down University Ave. project”
Douglas Fisher - As to "debasing" the Eastman House, one might argue that tacking on the museum wing has already accomplished that debasement. And since the Eastman House management themselves are the folks who threw away their best chance to preserve the, "original creative vision" of the site (assuming that the original early 1900s vision contemplated adding the aforementioned museum wing in the 1980s) perhaps you should be chastising them.
Re: “City should turn down University Ave. project”
Henry Hope Reed, who died on Wednesday at 97, pioneered the concept of urban walking tours, such that the New York Times once covered his doing this. His lessons are relevant for Rochester.
Whereas the walking tour that I gave in Victor village on Saturday focused on historical aspects of the locale's 19th-century buildings and their occupants -- such as my identifying the long-ago business in one building and the long-ago businessman's home in his nearby house -- Henry Hope Reed's walking tours were a mobile critique of his subject locale in terms of his own architectural lens.
Reed was an unabashed classicist, and rebelled against what he considered to be an unthinking contemporary treatment in adaptive reuses of historic buildings. For a half century, contemporary "updating" via adaptive reuse has been the favored philosophy in utilizing buildings of our historic architectural heritage, following the precepts of Frederick Rath, promulgated nationwide during his tenure at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Back in the day, I took one of Henry Hope Reed's Manhattan walking tours, this one wending through Greenwich Village. I recall particularly his insights into the alternate preservation philosophy embodied in the Jefferson Market Courthouse, repurposed as a branch of the New York Public Library.
While praising the conservation of the Ruskinian Gothic detailing of the 1870s structure, he railed against the blanket insertions of large single-pane window glass replacing the multi-paned window treatment originally used. He felt that it changed the entire massing of the building to have such a series of large blank spaces spread across the walls.
Henry Hope Reed's classical orientation seems to be a lonely voice today. Many in the general population have no compunction about clamoring to debase -- or even destroy -- significant architectural landmarks as they see fit, giving minimal respect to the carefully thought-through architectural vision which created the structure at issue.
Thus, a nationally-significant 1889 brewery castle was destroyed in Rochester last year for a parking lot, with the complicity of City Hall.
Many others have no problem with debasing an important National Historical Landmark locally in favor of inserting next door a 102-unit four-story apartment house looming over the carefully restored and tended historic lawn and gardens. They even support having a swimming pool abutting these historic gardens, while the brick and glass reflect the shouts of swimming children into the intended contemplative repose of the historic gardens.
Oh, sure, the apartment house supporters have their arguments, some of which may sound compelling in the abstract, but they all gloss over their implicit disrespect for the original creative vision of the landmark site which some are seeking to preserve for the benefit of posterity.
Re: “City should turn down University Ave. project”
RE: Christopher--Great reasoned OPPOSITION! Ms. Towler's statement "adding density to an area of the city that doesn't need more" is ambiguous since "area" could refer to NOTA or the whole Park/East Ave area. But. . .
it's really not unfounded for either considering their one-lane roads can't accommodate current traffic that backs up from Portsmouth to Culver when the Gleason Works lets out or such shortage of parking that one of the businesses on University is considering relocating because clients can't find a place to park. The same is true for traffic now backing up from East Ave all the way to the 490 entrance to get out of the Park Ave area and sometimes over 30 cars waiting in line on the 490 exit to get on Culver at rush hour; of course, finding parking spots for tenants or business customers in the Park Ave. area has always been a major problem. I agree with everything Christopher says: perceptive, important, and balanced.
The city really does need to reassess its values, goals, and planning (as Ken discusses). During the last year the City approved demolition of the Cataract Building (now a parking lot built by NYC developers who never actually came here) after it spent millions to create the faltering High Falls area across the bridge. The 19th century stores there, across from the original Kodak building which could become MCC, have just been restored. Why the demolition? the complete lack of vision?
The City also approved the demolition of the last remaining historic buildings from "Old Brighton" on East Ave. so Wegmans could build its unnecessarily HUGE store which tries unsuccessfully to imitate old buildings now lost forever. So how much more of our city history will be demolished? Will 933 University be next? It certainly is change, but is it worth this ongoing destruction of Rochester's historical "fabric" (borrowing Ms. Towler's word). She's dead-on right in observing this 933 University Ave. proposal of demolition and over-development is a potentially dangerous precedent and potentially (more) bad City planning.
Re: “City should turn down University Ave. project”
To Rochester Resident: I do indeed live near the East Avenue Preservation District. I hope that proximity hasn't influenced my decision, but it's hard for any journalist to be certain that we're completely objective about the things we cover. I do think my long-time residence there informs my writing. And I'm not at all against apartments; we lived in one, two doors from our current home, when we moved to Rochester. And we own a rental double next door. We like living in a neighborhood that includes a variety of ages and uses. That's why we settled there. That's why we have stayed.
Several readers have noted that I didn't oppose the demolition of the Cataract Building. That was a hard decision for me, personally, because I agree that the building was an important one, and we've lost far, far too many important buildings in this city. This newspaper has campaigned to save many of them. And we fought hard for one of the city's most controversial preservation districts, Corn Hill. But in each case, we've tried to consider the feasibility of the project. Others disagree, but in our opinion, no firm, feasible alternatives had been presented.
Re: “Blacks, poverty, and the future of Rochester”
I think steve has had the most accurate and nuanced view of this issue, so far.
Some of the earlier commenters who have decried teenage parenting also have some reasonable points, even if the hyperbole is occasionally masking their points.
The problem we're looking at here is a cyclical, self-perpetuating one that isn't "caused" by race, but has a strong racial component due to historical factors.
Poor, impoverished, barely literate high-school dropouts are more likely to raise the same, no matter what color their skin is. When people of this type are concentrated due to housing costs and/or inability to take advantage of opportunities due to ignorance or ignorance-based fear, they become a visible class, and if there's some way to distinguish them physically, that "reason" will be blamed as the cause.
It is absolutely true that people throughout history have raised themselves up by their bootstraps. It is equally true that those people are exceptional, and not the rule. (i.e. it's possible, but not probable.) Education is the most democratic method of helping the lower class rise from poverty, but education also requires certain skills and habits that may not be well-supported at home.
But... at the root of the issue is that even when someone gets an education, they need a job to be able to take advantage of that education. There is a decided lack of jobs available in the Rochester area for people who have graduated high school, but not been able to go to college. To wit: there is no reason for many young people to put forth the effort to get a diploma, when there's nothing to do with that diploma. Many of the service industry jobs they can get, they can get with a GED or less.
Rochester needs more lower-tech industrial-level jobs where people with only a high school diploma can make a living wage. As much as I, as an educator, want everyone to get the best and most education possible, I recognize that not everyone is college material. Those people deserve to be able to make a living as well. It should not require stitching together 3 jobs' worth of income to be able to make ends meet.
How do we get those lower tech, higher paying jobs (higher than Wegmans or Wal-mart, anyway) here? That's an answer I don't have.