I don't want to digress here, but $345 million dollars has been spent in the last 5-7 years to promote growth in our region. However, entities like 43 North (our regions YC of sorts) has failed to retain / keep new businesses that they recruit for their yearly $1million VC contest. I think all but one company has stayed here since its inception. Secondly, the dollars here have all been spent on revitalization of Main St - which if you walk the 1 block to 800 block (basically Canal Side to Theater district) - one can make the argument of gentrification (controversial on its best day).
The money / jobs / growing enthusiasm isn't reflected in a minority middle class. Bottom line, that's what I personally call success of any city trying to regain momentum. By all accounts, I am an educated, white, privileged, and successful conservative living in the suburbs.
However, I take the post-Civil War northern Republican view of reconstruction by giving the vision of today should be the vision of 1865 .. and that's equality of all minorities with their white counterparts. The death of Abe Lincoln put us back 50 - 70 years in that movement, and as Andrew Johnson favored the status quote of Southern Democrats / Aristocratic colonialism ... it bleeds into the inequities that minorities today.
I know that's long winded, but the historical throw-back .. plays out today, in cities like Buffalo .. where all I want is my black / latino / muslim communities of Buffalo to have the same equity that I have and live as well as I do. Unfortunately ... it's just not happening, despite the welfare dollar being so dominant here in New York (which I do not detest - I just want it used more strategically in regions of poverty).
> I know that's long winded, but the historical throw-back .. plays out today, in cities like Buffalo .. where all I want is my black / latino / muslim communities of Buffalo to have the same equity that I have and live as well as I do. Unfortunately ... it's just not happening, despite the welfare dollar being so dominant here in New York (which I do not detest - I just want it used more strategically in regions of poverty).
I grew up in Buffalo (on the west side) among the minorities you mentioned - nothing stopped my peers (white, black, hispanic, etc) in school from succeeding except their own choices. It helps to have supportive parents, but it doesn't guarantee anything (my brother never got into any trouble but he's also never been motivated/driven either.) A friend who wound up being class valedictorian had two siblings that were both dropouts.
Poverty is like starting a race in last place. There's only one person who's responsible for making sure you don't finish last. No amount of welfare, coddling, etc is going to make up for lack of motivation and drive. My parents weren't poor, we were middle-class - but they lived paycheck to paycheck and that scared the daylights out of me as I got older. That's what motivated me to succeed IMO - and I'm obviously fortunate to have picked software dev as a profession.
My grandparents were poor (my grandfather never learned to read - he went to work in the fields in Sicily at age 8) - that didn't stop him from working hard all of his life, buying a house, raising a family.
The money / jobs / growing enthusiasm isn't reflected in a minority middle class. Bottom line, that's what I personally call success of any city trying to regain momentum. By all accounts, I am an educated, white, privileged, and successful conservative living in the suburbs.
However, I take the post-Civil War northern Republican view of reconstruction by giving the vision of today should be the vision of 1865 .. and that's equality of all minorities with their white counterparts. The death of Abe Lincoln put us back 50 - 70 years in that movement, and as Andrew Johnson favored the status quote of Southern Democrats / Aristocratic colonialism ... it bleeds into the inequities that minorities today.
I know that's long winded, but the historical throw-back .. plays out today, in cities like Buffalo .. where all I want is my black / latino / muslim communities of Buffalo to have the same equity that I have and live as well as I do. Unfortunately ... it's just not happening, despite the welfare dollar being so dominant here in New York (which I do not detest - I just want it used more strategically in regions of poverty).
Anyway .. off my soap-box.