Sunday, March 15, 2009

"The next time you hear someone sounding off about how hopeless the situation for uneducated black people is in this country..."

"...if they make no mention of prisoner re-entry programs like this one and you can't find a reference to same in the index of their books, then you know you have encountered someone who is more interested in the catharsis of complaining than in the work of solutions."

That's John McWhorter in this excellent blog post on the success of programs that help people released from prison to rebuild their lives. He has touching anecdotes and hard data to back this up.

Now, surely everyone will be thrilled to hear about these success stories, right? Surely no one would actually get more pleasure out of believing that the criminal justice system is destroying blacks' lives, would they?

2 comments:

Beth said...

Useful link. I was just looking for some sources to bring to my freshman comp class as counterweight to two essays on the role of Liberal Arts education (Mark Edmundson and Earl Shorris, from an old issue of Harpers). This will provoke some debate. Thanks.

John Althouse Cohen said...

Glad to hear this was useful! Good luck with your class.