Let Them Do It Themselves

A detailed Summary of Let Them Do It Themselves

Many people throughout the world live in some of the harshest, most despicable living conditions on the earth. Whole countries may have less than a few thousand people that actually live in real houses and eat real amounts of food. Countries like Somalia depend a large amount on whether or not people find it in their heart to donate food, money and clothes to them. There are places like that within our own country, which are the focus of The Promised Land, by Nicholas Lemann. These places are called ghettos. These two scenarios are completely different, despite the fact that Lemann seems to classify them as being the same. Although he doesn't outright say this, he writes as if we as Americans should feel the same way about ghettos as we would about any other poor living conditions. This is shown when he states, "The black poor that live in ghettos are among the most poor in the world and ghettos are among the worst places in the world to live." (p 353). I have a problem with this.

Though some may disagree, I feel as though Lemann actually puts people living in ghettos in the same category as those in poverty stricken countries. People who live in poverty-stricken countries live in that condition because for them ther

Lemann's theories of how we can get people out of the ghettos thoroughly disgust me. He believes that the government should be at the forefront of getting these people of this poverty, which is shown when he states "Welfare could become a temporary program leading to a job... We could try to improve the chances that every ghetto child is born healthy... gets trained for the job market as it now exists... and has a job waiting at the end of the process. The government could provide the job itself... the government should be trying to break the hold on individuals that work against upward mobility..."(pp 350-351). The government should be doing this? The government should provide jobs for poor people, deliver babies, train ghetto citizens for jobs, and put down anyone who defies the upward mobility of the ghettos? That strikes me as a surprise because I always thought those things were responsibilities of individuals and of communities. Others would argue that the government should assume some responsibility but I believe that our government was designed to protect freedom, not live people's lives for them. What Lemann suggests is that the government should become a full time babysitter for people who live in ghettos. This might actually be a good idea, but only if the money our government would allot for these projects had nothing to do with my parent's or my own money. It does though; it has much to do with our money. We do not pay taxes expecting the money to go things that have nothing to do with us. Our hard earned money should not be supporting people who are too lazy to go make hard earned money themselves, to discipline themselves enough to learn a trade, or to squash out the bad elements of their community. Supporting lazy people is not exactly what I believe my tax dollars should be spent on.

Where I differ from Lemann on this idea is that I do not believe race is the main factor of black people living in ghettos. Lemann says "The ghettos bear the accumulated weight of all the bad in our country's racial history..." (p 353). Does he think only black people live in ghettos? Has he never seen a trailer park in redneck town in the south? Poverty is not a race issue in this country, poverty is a will issue. It is about who has the will to do whatever it takes to get out of pove

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Approximate Word count = 1561
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Politics