Racial Inequality?

[Hatz]

"see full article CNN's Don Lemon says more than 72 percent of African-American births are out of wedlock | PolitiFact"

 

I reiterate, the black community has bigger problems than racism. Hebrews, Asians and Hispanics all suffer from discrimination as well, yet , are relatively successful. In fact, the first 2 are more successful than whites. Should whites go out and protest that they are not as successful as these two minority groups?

 

In this country Hebrews, Asians and Hispanics; while having faced discrimination, do not share the heritage of systemic slavery and segregation. That would be a cultural distinction between the groups you mentioned.

[Pioneer.Pride]

In this country Hebrews, Asians and Hispanics; while having faced discrimination, do not share the heritage of systemic slavery and segregation. That would be a cultural distinction between the groups you mentioned.

 

History is irrelevant to personal decision making and values.

[Hatz]

History is irrelevant to personal decision making and values.

 

I'm not sure I used the word History.

 

I used the words "heritage" and "culture."

 

Those items are shapers of decision making and values. They shaped yours long before you were born. They shape me as well.

[TAC]

I'm curious in the data. Where are bi-racial children listed? Are they under the African-American stats or White. I ask because if all bi-racial children born out of wedlock are listed under African-American (a leftover from Jim Crow days and very possible I suppose) then that may skew the data some in one category that ought to be reflected in both.

 

Not that it matters because the point is well taken. Just curious about the numbers.

 

Obama was our first African American president. Does that answer your question?

[Hatz]

Obama was our first African American president. Does that answer your question?

 

I suppose. :idunno:

[oldgrappler]

I'm curious in the data. Where are bi-racial children listed? Are they under the African-American stats or White. I ask because if all bi-racial children born out of wedlock are listed under African-American (a leftover from Jim Crow days and very possible I suppose) then that may skew the data some in one category that ought to be reflected in both.

 

Not that it matters because the point is well taken. Just curious about the numbers.

 

Je ne sais pas.

 

As complex as the issues are, a great place to start would be to restore healthy, intact family life as the norm. It may not solve everything, but I can see how that would positively effect every other issue. Until now, policy has tried to address symptoms, such as poverty, crime, drug enforcement, education, and ???. This has not led to much success. Restoring the family will touch on poverty, education, gang affiliation, crime, violent crime, addiction and so much more.

 

I think the good news in this is that it can be done within the local community, without outside help being necessary (though it may be welcomed). In other words, individuals and their communities hold their destiny in their own hands. No other person has to change their attitude or outlook in order to decide "no single-parent home for me."

 

Government can have a role to play just as long it isn't a detrimental role. We all can agree on what that will look like, right?

[Hatz]

Je ne sais pas.

 

As complex as the issues are, a great place to start would be to restore healthy, intact family life as the norm. It may not solve everything, but I can see how that would positively effect every other issue. Until now, policy has tried to address symptoms, such as poverty, crime, drug enforcement, education, and ???. This has not led to much success. Restoring the family will touch on poverty, education, gang affiliation, crime, violent crime, addiction and so much more.

 

I think the good news in this is that it can be done within the local community, without outside help being necessary (though it may be welcomed). In other words, individuals and their communities hold their destiny in their own hands. No other person has to change their attitude or outlook in order to decide "no single-parent home for me."

 

Government can have a role to play just as long it isn't a detrimental role. We all can agree on what that will look like, right?

 

I concur.

 

I am curious if there is non-intrusive way to promote family stability by the government helping families.

 

This is just out of left field but: What if the Tax Code was changed to provide significant tax benefits to married individuals and families beyond what is already there in the form of child credits? Would that not be a way to promote family stability in our society and perhaps make the responsibility of marriage choices be beneficial in some way?

[oldgrappler]

Yes. But, will the child credit help the middle-class tax payer more than the low income family? If a person/family pays little to no income tax, a tax credit won't help them, will it?

 

I also think our past actions will need to be examined with an eye to asking the question, "How did government policy contribute to the disintegration of the family, especially in the African-American community?" The correlation between the war on poverty and the decline of families among low income persons has to be examined.

We need to ask whether systemic racism contributed to the problem and if so, how? And lots of other questions that I don't even know to ask.

 

I appreciate the effort to think of solutions. We desperately need to be solution-oriented. How can we empower individuals to make healthy life choices? Ultimately, the individual is responsible for his or her own choices. But given the place we find ourselves, I'm all for finding ways to make that easier.

[Jim Schue]

Yes. But, will the child credit help the middle-class tax payer more than the low income family? If a person/family pays little to no income tax, a tax credit won't help them, will it?

 

I also think our past actions will need to be examined with an eye to asking the question, "How did government policy contribute to the disintegration of the family, especially in the African-American community?" The correlation between the war on poverty and the decline of families among low income persons has to be examined.

We need to ask whether systemic racism contributed to the problem and if so, how? And lots of other questions that I don't even know to ask.

 

I appreciate the effort to think of solutions. We desperately need to be solution-oriented. How can we empower individuals to make healthy life choices? Ultimately, the individual is responsible for his or her own choices. But given the place we find ourselves, I'm all for finding ways to make that easier.

 

I think it would be totally fair to look back further in history than 1964. There could be some answers there, but nobody wants to actually face up to that part.

[oldgrappler]

I think it would be totally fair to look back further in history than 1964. There could be some answers there, but nobody wants to actually face up to that part.

 

I agree and said so in a previous post. I have no problem looking for the TRUTH.

We should look into the role that slavery and segregation played. However, many studies have been done and we ignore their conclusions at the risk of the next generation of black children. When will we get honest enough and brave enough to name the problem and find solutions no matter whose ideology is challenged?!

 

The fact remains that during those periods you allude to, post-Civil War and Jim Crow segregation, the black family was intact. In the 1940's, an era with markedly greater racism, both individual and systemic, the black family was characterized by two-parent families, children who graduated from high school, and labor participation rates higher among African-Americans than whites. Teen pregnancies steadily declined leading up to 1960. In 1965, 76% of black children were born to married women. In other words, the African-American family was largely healthy during the periods of the worst systemic racism. It wasn't until 100 years after the Civil War that those indicators of healthy families among African-American communities fell off the cliff. Something happened to the African-American family but the indications are that it happened during the mid-1960's, not the mid 1860's. This is the truth that people are afraid to face up to!

 

Read African-Americans scholars like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams for their take on this. They examine what really happened and aren't afraid to name it. An article by Dean Kalahar in "The American Thinker" analyzes what happened to the black family in the 1960's after the social indicators prior to that time indicated a great deal of health in the black family. He writes:

 

By the 1960s, American society was riddled with generations of “white guilt.” In reaction and repentance sparked by Dr. King’s nonviolent civil disobedience and the systemic introspection of social norms by whites, Americans overcompensated with sweeping entitlement programs under President Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” and by turning a blind eye to accountability on longstanding values and principled behavior within the African American community. While affirmative action and desegregation jump-started social change, the unintended consequences of shifting the cultural incentives upside down were ignored.

 

This caused what Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan called “defining deviancy downward.” And with Civil Rights Act of 1964 giving legal credence to making any sort of behavioral judgment toxic, the cultural glue that held together the African-American family was fundamentally changed.

 

This destabilization has created turbulent neighborhoods that have devastating costs to children ranging from poverty, educational deficiencies, violence, crime, drugs, and a culture of victimization and entitlement.

 

Basic developmental psychology tells us that boys and girls growing up without fathers and stable homes are overwhelmingly more likely to lack self-discipline and personal responsibility than children growing up with married parents. The economic, emotional, and spiritual guidance that two parent families provide are the cornerstones of effective family institutions. Without that stability, institutional collapse is eminent.

 

Read more: Articles: The Decline of the African-American family

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Read the statistics of what happened in the African-American community after the 1960's. The trajectory of the black family and black community changed drastically at that time. From the same article...

 

The statistics since 1960 support this analysis.

 

• Between 1960 and 1964, blacks were rising into professional and other high-level positions at a rate greater than the five years following passage of the Civil Rights Act.

 

• The 1960 census showed the first signs of a decline in black marriages, with acceleration in later years.

 

• Since the 1960s the black labor force participation rates have been lower than whites and unemployment rates for black 16 and 17 year olds has never dropped below 20 percent.

 

• In 1980, 31 percent of all black first-born children were born to teenage mothers.

 

• By 1992, 54 percent-of all black children were living only with their mothers.

 

• From 1990 to 1994, 77 percent of first births to black women were premarital.

 

• In the 1980s and 90s, an absolute majority of those black families with no husband present lived in poverty.

 

• By the 2000s, 75% of blacks with a high-school degree or some college were not married.

 

• In 2005, Black people accounted for 13% of the total U.S. population yet they were the victims of 49% of all the nation's murders; and 93% of black murder victims were killed by other black people.

 

• Less than half of black students graduated from high school in 2005.

 

• In 2009, 73% of black children were born to unmarried mothers.

 

• In 2012, blacks in New York constituted 78% of shooting suspects and 74% of all shooting victims even though they are less than 23% of the city’s population. Young black men in New York are 36 times more likely to be murdered than young white men.

 

• Today, black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic males of the same age combined.

 

• In many urban areas, the black illegitimacy rate is well over 80 percent.

 

• The national unemployment rate for blacks is over 13%, nearly five points above the average for all Americans. And black teen unemployment is over 40 %.

 

It's not rocket science to see that what has decimated the African-American family and community occurred during the 1960's, not the 1860's. We have to stop repeating the same tired stereotypical mantras that slavery and racism are the cause of the demise of the black family. As horrible as slavery and the Jim Crow era was, and they were unimaginably horrible, the black family came out of it remarkably healthy. It wasn't until the huge government interventions of the 1960's with its unintended consequences that the African-American family began to crumble. As it did, the suffering in black communities increased despite the dropping level of racism and prejudice to the point that we elected an African-American President for two terms. It's time to admit that policies enacted then have had unintended consequences that have been very destructive to African-Americans. Lets keep the trajectory of addressing racial inequalities going and reverse the trajectory of harm that we are doing to the family. That means we have to modify those policies that have had detrimental effect on the family. The good news is, that the history of African-American family is one of stability and health. Let's return to it.

[StrongSide]

This thread has way too many long posts for me to be engaged. I guess I am lazy.

[oldgrappler]

Well, look at it this way. Somebody posts three or four times and addresses different things. Some of us post once and address them all in that one post. :lol2:

 

IMO, a long post that raises issues and then addresses them with fact and analysis is better than just dropping an assumption without proof and thinking you were very persuasive.

 

If my previous post is weighing you down, I suggest you just go to the link provided in the middle of it and click that. It will take you to an article that is way more worth your read than my post.

[TAC]

This thread has way too many long posts for me to be engaged. I guess I am lazy.

 

agreed. I just try to sneak into BGP every once in while during work for a quick break.

[woodsrider]

agreed. I just try to sneak into BGP every once in while during work for a quick break.

You type more than 10 sentences there's a 99% chance woodsrider ain't reading it. I'm not sure I've ever read a B-Ball post.

[UKMustangFan]

You type more than 10 sentences there's a 99% chance woodsrider ain't reading it. I'm not sure I've ever read a B-Ball post.

 

Pretty much. :lol2:

 

If it takes me more than a quick glance to read it, I'm just skipping over it.