I have an associate…friend of a friend…who feels the "nuclear family" is a short-term glitch in the history of humanity. He feels kinship has always been tribe-wide and three generations deep. This is a restatement of the famous "It takes a village to raise a child" proverb, a sentiment that gets but limited support from the mainstream. Black folks love the concept, especially since it often boils down to free emergency babysitting.
It is literally true, though. No one has the personal resources to raise a sane human being from childhood without assistance. Never mind sane, just keeping a child alive is beyond the individual ability of most. Burroughsian fantasies aside, neither you nor the child would be very pleased to see the way the wolves you thought would raise you stare at your soft underbelly after a hard day of not catching rabbits. In our civilized times, it's even worse. We are so interdependent we're almost a single entity.
The runs directly against American mythology. America is the land of opportunity, where a man can go as far as his with, skill and maybe a little luck will take him. The land where personal responsibility is the watchword.
Ha.
Your average American doesn't realize he was raised by a village, that his wealth and education was sponsored. And they forget why:
The GI Bill: The Post-War Boom in Housing & College EnrollmentProduced by Scott Williams
Bill Tuttle: The history of the GI Bill in some ways begins with the WWI veterans, who were promised a bonus in 1919 payable in 25 years, 1944, but in 1932 there was a great depression and they were broke. They wanted the bonus immediately. So they marched to Washington. And the bonus marchers were met with military force, led by General Douglas MacAuthur, and major Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Major George S. Patton, the bonus marchers were routed from Washington, it was a terrible, terrible thing. Men who had fought for their country in W.W.I who were being tear gassed and beaten with billyclubs by the military and by the police in Washington in 1932. There was a lot of concern with veterans, because veterans are viewed potentially unstable elements, potentially dangerous people. Because veterans come back to the country. They know how to use arms. They know how to kill people. They are angry. A lot of them feel they have given the best years of their lives to their country, they are not getting much back.
Narrator: To avoid problems again after W.W.II, the American Legion pushed for new veterans benefits, which resulted in Roosevelt signing the GI Bill in 1944.
Bill: A lot of politicians didn't want it. They thought that service people didn't deserve it. And there were a lot of very conservative politicians who thought it would be terrible for the country to send these service people, these veterans, to colleges and universities to be taught by left wing professors.
Bill: It's interesting, it addressed four issues. And one was called readjustment allowances. So when the GIs came back, a lot of them couldn't find work immediately. So one part of the GI Bill was 52 weeks of a readjustment allowance of $20 a week to help them live until they could find work. Another part of the GI bill addressed the concerns and needs of the disabled veterans. Special training programs for them. And then of course there was education and there was housing.
Narrator: College and Universities were flooded with scholars eager to use the GI Bill for their education.
Bill: The educational benefit was up to 48 months, four years of college or vocational education for the veterans. And what it meant was a lot of veterans who would never have thought about going to college did, because they had an opportunity to do it. And the tuition and fees were paid up to $500 a year, well $500 would pay your tuition at Harvard in 1946, so with the GI Bill you could actually afford to go to best college or university in the country.
Posted by P6 at June 21, 2004 09:26 PM
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Comments
Well..I'm not sure if the GI Bill was a total Village freebie...four years at Harvard or the University of Chicago is a fine thing but it looks small next to what the recipient may have gone through on Okinawa or Normandy. Or Iwo Jima. Or Kasserine Pass or a thousand other places.
The vets more than earned it.
Posted by mark safranski at June 22, 2004 01:26 AMEven the vets that weren't in those thousand other places?
How about the Black vets?
On the one hand, I won't hesistate to be honestly contrarian. On the other, I'm not lightly, reflexively contrarian.
Posted by P6 at June 22, 2004 07:41 AM"Even the vets that weren't in those thousand other places?
How about the Black vets?"
Everyone. Years of a man's life at a minimum with the risk of dying in a horrible, nasty way to boot.
Being in a " non-combat " support role in WWII didn't mean a lot if your position was overrun. Or bombed. Or shelled. If you served, you ran the risk.
Lots of Seabeas, for example, built bridges and runways while returning fire. I know one very old guy who had been exempt from the draft as a " critical war worker "( foreman in a coal mine) but after D-Day he was drafted anyway and due to his age was made a cook. At the battle of the Bulge he was given a rifle and was sent straight in to the thick of the German advance. He stayed in combat all the way to Germany's surrender, where he took part in looting Goering's palatial estate ( he still has the Reichsmarshal's monogrammed Nazi silverware and a box full of ancient Lugers)
Posted by mark safranski at June 22, 2004 10:38 AMMany Blacks could not fully take advantage of the GI Bill.
The education portion was not fully available because of segregation in higher education. There simply was not enough schools that accepted Blacks on to their campuses at the time, and HBCUs were stretched thin.
The housing portion went to Whites 98% of the time. Applications to buy housing in Black neighborhoods were often denied, being deemed "high risk," a practice called "red-lining."
There are also many cases of Blacks being given dishonorable discharges in WW2 unfairly, causing them to be ineligible for the GI Bill benefits.
The GI Bill gave quite a foundation for the creation of the incredible wealth gap between Blacks and Whites in this country today. It was a wonderful benefit, but Blacks were denied access to the benefit in a systematic way.
Posted by Chrissy at June 22, 2004 04:47 PM