Is BLM a trojan horse?

If you say so. But are you talking semantics or culture. There are certainly kids born into families with no culture of regular employment. And teachers know from experience to look out for them. And yes mums in their teens are not uncommon. And very hard for them to then to catch up on education and find regular employment.

Will clarify Goosefoot.

Let’s say the research was published on three generational unemployment, and this teacher read it, and then told the poster about it.

It is realistic to say the research was conducted in 2015.

So that is school results of a cohort of 16 year olds in 2015.

If we are then saying this child’s parents has them at 16, the parents were born in 1983.

If the grandparents had the parents at 16, the grandparents were born in 1967.

If the great grandparents had the grandparents at 16, the great grandparents were born in 1951.

And that is the latest possible date if everyone in these three generations is an adult. Otherwise we are discussing school age children as the unemployed.

Counting a 33 year old, a teenager and a baby as three unemployed generations is just silly.

Probably more accurate to say three generations dependent on benefits eg. Grandparent in 50s on invalidity benefit, parent on jobseekers or lone parent working under 16 hours on working tax credits, school leaver NEET signing on. Wouldnt be unusual in the nearest town to me, the grandparents would be about my age and I left school in '86.
@NonnyMouse1337's video covers addresses socio economic factors, i enjoyed it, the participants were so relaxed and articulate, no telling anyone to shut up!

It is about the original statement that three generational employment is the cause of underachievement in school

it is about culture and practice.....and the lifestyle this leads to. Whether or not you have a P/T low paid job as a cleaner or selling stuff at your local street market, interspersed with periods of total unemployment and complete dependence on benefits is neither here nor there. Young single parenthood is also a big factor.

Yeah, let's go round and round on this one tiny point.

Multi-generational poverty exists, within that group exist families of colour and white families, what does this have to do with BLM? and whether or not the movement is inadvertently (or deliberately?) anti-woman?

It isn’t about teenagers think though, is it?

It is about the original statement that three generational employment is the cause of underachievement in school.

Any reasonable person must be talking about the unemployment of adults in that situation.

Nobody with a one year old or an eight year old says, oh we live in a one generational unemployment family because little Josh and Jane have never worked a day in their life.

A three generational unemployed family must refer to adult parents, grandparents and great grandparents, not children themselves.

This three generations of unemployment has been doing the rounds for twenty years and it has never been borne out by any research because such families haven’t been found

What is it that you actually struggling with here? Poverty and the cultures of poverty are inter-generational.

Culture is the most important factor, I think. I had my first child at 19, and was a single parent from almost the start; but what I did benefit from was a good education and the expectation and aspiration that brings with it.

I was politically active from age 16.....and left home in order to pursue that ( at 16)...abandoning formal education in order to do so...I then became involved in various 'movements' and scenes.....I had to go back and complete my previously abandoned formal education when my daughter was very young.

In my poor neighbourhood I would see women of my own age in a similar economic/practical situation, but they would make very different choices - which were cultural - and thus embedded, and largely unquestioned.

Or if the school system doesn't support you, but instead punishes you for your life circumstances. But that's so far off topic that I won't follow that line of thought.

In my bit of inner London unemployment is around the National average, but long term (ten years or more) is unusually high.

There are odd patterns. For example there is a community of West Africans with low literacy, and indeed with even lower female literacy and poor employment rates. At the same time middle class Nigerian kids do exceptionally well. Generally it is hard to inject aspiration into a community if it does not already exist. Or if the potential rewards, like good jobs, simply are not there.

I'm not understanding what you are talking about Stripesgalore what is the date you are trying to fit these generations into?

In my experience laws about school leaving ages don't necessarily reflect when teenagers feel they have finished their education. And they don't seem to affect fertility, either.

Okay, so a grandmother of 33, a mother of 14 and a child of 5. And the issue with that is that the 5 year old and 14 year old are unemployed?

I live in the U.K. and all children must remain in some form of education until 18. The law changed quite recently.

The sixteen year old mother should still be in education as they are still a child and so are also not unemployed

I'm not sure in which country you live, but in Britain 16 is the school leaving age, and some girls have children before even that..and their mother helps look after the child.

People can dip in and out of employment during that time. It's probably more accurate to talk about three generations of insecure, low paid and inconsistent employment, which absolutely exists.

Even if everyone in that family had kids at 16, the great grandparent turned 16 in 1965 for a 2015 school leaver.

A grandparent of 33 if both the grandparent and parent were pregnant at 16 has a grandchild of one year old.

One year olds do not attend school to underachieve and they are not unemployed. The sixteen year old mother should still be in education as they are still a child and so are also not unemployed.

This three generations of unemployment has been doing the rounds for twenty years and it has never been borne out by any research because such families haven’t been found.

Yes, that's what happens in the school I volunteer in.

Actually, it's a mix of tuition for the kids, and then working with families. It's great! I love literacy; it's such a wonderful tool for opportunity.

Media, a while back now but I was involved in setting up a scheme to provide literacy teaching to both children and parents. There were some major concerns, including newly arrived Romanians whose kids were struggling, and one or two other specific groups. It seemed to work better than working with the kids alone. The kids were motivated by their parents efforts, and the parents were more supportive once they better understood the school environment.

I used to be a teacher, and my last school was a very high achieving grammar school ( The Liverpool Bluecoat One year it was the highest achieving state school in Britain)

I left teaching 10 years ago, but even then the school had a high proportion of Arabic, Asian & Chinese pupils - relative to the population, but not many black pupils at all. Cultural issues and expectations are certainly at play.

I've been working in a school in an impoverished area, with a lot of black families that have been in this area for about 300 years, and also now quite a lot of newcomers from Syria. They are all bright little kids, but we ran a big literacy event in April, and it was chock full of the new families. They interacted with their kids in an interesting way too, quite differently than I would expect from a western family generally. They were all two parent families too, which was often not the case with the Canadian families of any race.

I had a really strong feeling that those families would not be living in that community in a generation, even though they had significant struggles with language and therefore employment.

I suppose also I'd say - and sorry to drop into the ongoing convo re poverty like I haven't read it - I am reading along! is that I don't support movements which require linguistic debasement of the person.

Because let's all be honest; it's not men who will be debasing themselves. They are not socialised to do so. And by debasement, I suppose I mean accepting that by virtue of race, one group of women falls into the category of repentant sinner, who must do penance. On your knees, ladies!

No, thank you, BLM. Black lives do matter, but I shall go about doing my best on that issue without conforming to current pressures to conform in text and spoken word to a female-directed debasement of the self.

I thought three generational unemployment was a myth

Chronic or insecure un/employment is not a myth. I live in Liverpool, and there are certainly communities in which generational state dependence is chronic and institutionalised, and in which low expectation, coupled with a materialist mind-set has resulted in many living on the fringes of the black economy, and areas in which feral kids ( lads, in the main) terrorise the streets - on their expensive dirt bikes and quad bikes - that parents buy for them - with no obvious legitimate means.

Well I have certainly known women who became grandmothers at 33, and round our way having your first child at 16 is far from unknown. (Though paradoxically middle class mothers round here tend to have their children unusually late.) And families come is different forms. One friend who taught Yr 2 claimed none of the children in her class lived with both natural parents.

Life chances are influenced by a multitude of things. Race may be one, though many kids are mixed race. But employment, literacy and other factors come into play. For a very long time, perhaps even today, our local secondary had 93% of pupils on free school meals.

There are some families that are like that, or where employment is sporadic for generations and I can well imagine they would often be families with serious problems that affected them. But it's not at all unheard of particularly in communities that are depressed - we see it in some First Nations communities, particularly ones that are in the North or very isolated. There just isn't a real economy to speak of, not one that can support many people, so the greatest part of the town may have been unemployed for generations. It gives rise to really horrific social problems.

But I'm not sure how much that would tell us about other instances. It's difficult to break out of poverty, and it takes time to accumulate enough to give the next generation the best start. The patter with a lot of immigrant families seems to be that the second generation is expected to enter the middle class.

I've been thinking some more about what bothers me, besides the anti-carceral stuff. I mean, I am for major prison reform, including not imprisoning women of any colour for minor crimes or crimes not against a person, but until someone shows me how lovely community 'restorative justice' becomes an option for women victims, I'm going to stay carceral. Doesn't mean I think rates of incarceration for black men and women are just.

But it's the religious fervour of the language, and I wonder if that's because the movement and rhetoric comes out of the US, a nation drenched in way more religion than my own.

'Examine yourself!' is an exhortation that comes directly from a priest to a parishioner, and it refers directly to sin.

BLM (the movement) adherent's rely on this religious language, in the same way genderists do. And even though I believe that black lives matter, and not not believe in gender, I do not align myself with pseudo-religious movements.

Someone here mentioned literacy as a driver of poverty, including amongst people of colour. Literacy is my jam; I volunteer one morning a week to support literacy in a school for indigenous children. That matters more, in material terms, than any failure to adopt the desired pseudo-religious language.

It was very hard to change the mindset and to create aspiration. In contrast many first and second generation immigrants, regardless of skin colour, were very ambitious and had a lot of family encouragement so tended to do well

I used to be a teacher, and my last school was a very high achieving grammar school ( The Liverpool Bluecoat One year it was the highest achieving state school in Britain)

I left teaching 10 years ago, but even then the school had a high proportion of Arabic, Asian & Chinese pupils - relative to the population, but not many black pupils at all. Cultural issues and expectations are certainly at play.