It’s not the only factor, but economic conditions are clearly to blame for the instability of Black families.
A few generations ago, there were more living-wage jobs available to anyone able-bodied, with or without education. Changes in the economy have resulted in fewer entry-level jobs. The lost jobs were more likely to require some physical strength. A skilled, educated woman became more employable relative to a strong unskilled man.
While this has affected lower-income groups of all races, it’s been harder on Blacks because their poverty rate has been higher. At least some of which is due to government actions like redlining mortgages, and access to education.
Some years ago the British Conservative party came up with an electioneering slogan: “Tough on crime. Tough on the causes of crime.” As sloganeering it was pithy. As a practical matter they didn’t have a plan, just a slogan.
But if we pick it apart we see something real important as it applies to most social pathologies, not just crime.
Current human problems (whatever problems) have multiple overlapping deep-seated causes. The things you need to do to manage the current crop are very different from the things you need to do to prevent the next crop. Often one half of that response is retributive and coercive, whereas the other is distributive and compassionate.
Finding the society-level stomach and patience to be coercive and compassionate, to be retributive and distributive, is a tall order. Especially since the effort needs to be sustained for a couple generations before the dividends get large. And if you’re on the receiving end, accepting both kinds of change is also a tall order.
In the traditional left/right alignment of politics, the usual answer is each party offers one side of the necessary duality while paying lip service (at best) to the other.
Which is a large part of why we don’t make progress; even a full-court press by one side or the other is less than a half-measure. The generally cussed nature of humanity doesn’t help, but need not be an insurmountable obstacle to making progress. We may not be able to deliver a miracle, but so far we haven’t really even tried to deliver so much as a mouse.
Thanks for the correction. Whichever party, it was widely understood both by the authors and the audience as a right-leaning plan with a left-leaning sheep’s clothing wrapper.
Its also pretty telling the difference reaction in the US to drug problems and the resultant social and crime issues in poor Black communities in the 80s and 90s versus poor white communities in the last decade or two.
When opioid abuse exploded in poor white communities no one was say “Oh its a problem with Caucasian family structures and lack of white fathers”. It was universally blamed on widespread prescription of opioids combined with post-industrial economic deprivation, and treated as a health and social issue, not a criminal one on the whole.
It’s a major problem but it’s not a race problem; it’s a low income problem.
If Dad leaves any household the family loses an income and the kids end up with a single combined caregiver/breadwinner. How is this not going to be a bad situation? Of course their kids are going to have a hard start.
I wish everyone would stop trying to blame everything on race. I grew up in a low income family, drove a crap car, had the ‘wrong look,’ got hassled by police, couldn’t find work, etc. Some people have tougher starts than others and it sucks but it’s not all about skin color.
Low income minorities have a ton in common with low income white people. If both groups could realize how similar they are to each other they could work together to call for a solution to the actual problem: poverty and discrimination again the poor.
Like McCarthyism, trying to ‘root out all the racists’ just isn’t going to work; they are a small group with little influence and aren’t the actual problem.
If a black Dad leaves the household because he’s arrested and imprisoned for a crime for which a white Dad wouldn’t be arrested and imprisoned, then it may be a race problem.
You’re right, but I believe it’s poverty getting people arrested, not skin color.
Poverty leads to committing crime and/or living in crime-filled neighborhoods. It’s typical for all people living in high crime areas to fall under police suspicion more often than people living in low crime areas.
I think you’re right that poverty is the root of the problem, but skin colour is a lot more obvious than wealth or income level when the police are choosing who to stop and search, so it’s still gonna affect black people disproportionately.
I can think of a few people who tried to call attention to the problems of lower-class white culture, but they were generally shouted down by the same people who insist that there are no problems with black culture.
Very few people I’ve heard from think that “rooting out all the racists” is going to solve the problem (although you certainly want to get them off the police force, for example, where there are a shitload of them and they’re a real problem). Instead, folks want to change racist policies and institutions and find remedies for the harm they’ve caused in the past.
If you agree that disproportionate numbers of single-family households hurt kids, and you agree that the US has unjustly locked up disproportionate numbers of black men for decades, and you agree that folks with felony convictions have a harder time maintaining a stable marriage, then you’ve got a racist policy that’s caused harm. The question isn’t only how to end that racist policy–although that’s important. The question is how to remedy the harms that it’s caused.
Can you provide a cite for that from a major news source or publication? I’ve seen countless articles discussing the roots of the opioid crisis of the 2000s and 2010s and its effects. Every one assumed there was some external factor causing it, most commonly mentioned was the over-prescription of opioids, sometimes they would also mention the economic situation in the “rust belt” after the collapse of American manufacturing jobs. I don’t recall seeing a single article blaming the opioid crisis and its results on the family culture of the (largely white, working class) communities involved, even though it has involved plenty of fatherless children one way or another.
I’ve seen plenty (as the one in the OP does) blaming those same problems in the black community on its culture and family values.
There’s the whole controversy over Hillbilly Elegy (about to be re-ignited by the film adaptation). There was this article, which I remember igniting a huge firestorm at the time:
The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.
I’m not sure what to do about the disparity of black males in prison. What do you want to happen? let black men go even after they have committed crimes? Would you want someone who has robbed you, been caught, tried, and convicted, to be let go because of some racial quota?
I know during Obama they tried to address this in the schools because blacks were disproportionally being suspended and expelled compared to whites. They tried a racial quota system with alternative discipline methods but I dont think it worked out well.
How about decent funding for public defenders, since black defendants are much more likely to have poor representation? Fair sentencing, since black people currently get longer sentences for the same crimes? An end to private prisons, which are financially motivated to mistreat prisoners rather than rehabilitate them, both because it costs less and because they get more money if those prisoners are convicted of another crime after being released?
How about work on removing the racial disparity in crafting laws, enforcement, assigning mandatory minimum sentencing, prosecutions, plea bargains, and sentencing for a start.