But she makes a very interesting distinction between Alabama in the South, where she was from, and Chicago where she ultimately landed that I think really amplifies the fact that it has more to do with culture than income.
She says here, "In Alabama, the poor blacks used to wash down every inch of their unpaved wooden shacks with Octagon Laundry soap. They swept under their porches even if they didn't have store-bought brooms. The cut down branches from trees and tied them together with the rags or string to make brush brooms. People in Alabama would shake their heads with disgust if they saw a dirty mop hanging out to dry on someone's porch railing, or graying sheets dangling from a clothesline. My mother used to say, "You can just look outside a person's house and tell what he is." The one thing everyone had in Alabama was pride. That pride was a consistent part of a Southern upbringing. The poor children came to school with neatly sown patches on their clothes. Their clothes may have been old, but they were clean. If your children were dirty, you didn't belong anywhere in the social order of the town. If you had a dirty water bucket, you were a disgrace. And if you drank from a dipper instead of a glass, you were considered a heathen. If you didn't mow your lawn or clip your hedges, you were ostracized. When your neighbor next door saw you mowing your lawn, he would mow his.
Neighborhoods like Garfield Park are made up mostly of people from the South, like myself. I do not understand why my Southern pride stuck, while theirs didn't. They had been led to believe that someone else's going to do things for them. Too many black people have fallen into the pattern of listening to the self-proclaimed leaders who find it in their own best interests to make people feel there are free rides in this world
So while Killer Mike might be well-intended in his saying that, "Look, if we pass more programs, if we pass more policies, this will in a sense help uplift those who are in poverty." The fact is, to Marva Collins's point, there is no policy or program that can instill the values that people actually need in order to have thriving and safe communities. So no, poverty does not equal crime. Bad culture equals crime, and we have to be unapologetic and unafraid to admit that point because that's the only way that we can turn this thing around. Personally, my hope is that men will come to know Christ that they will repent of their sins, and that they will begin to take responsibility and accountability for themselves. That's the only solution in all of this.
Though he doesn't give the title, I believe that Jackson quotes from Marva Collins book, Values: Lighting the Candle of Excellence, A Practical Guide for the Family, Marva Collins, 1995.
