# The state of Marriage and fathers in urban poor Black America **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 26, 2006, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301 "2006-05-26T12:18:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2006, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/41 "2006-06-01T21:44:13Z")
> [@even sven](#): > > You can’t change people’s beliefs and behavoirs. Or, more accurately, when you attempt to change people’s beliefs and behavoirs, the outcome is so unpredictable and unlikely to turn out well that it’s not a worthwhile activity. The very situation Black Americans are in now is in part from a time when White America decided to screw with the Black family “for their own good”- which at the time was dissolving their familial ties and severing their relationship with African culture. Oh, bullshit. Read the article linked by astro, paying attention to the facts and figures it contains. Look what’s happened in the last 40 years. Then take your white guilt and…dispose of it. African Americans have been seperated from “African culture” for almost 200 years now. It’s time to put that boogieman to bed permanently. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2006, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/42 "2006-06-01T21:46:21Z")
> [@even sven](#): > > Dude, he called them _animals_ and _retards_. Not cool. I guess you’ve never seen COPS. > [@even sven](#): > > Everyone else here is being reasonable, but you can nearly hear the loathing dripping in **msmith** ’s voice. Time and time again he has posited that poverty is a personality flaw or pathology. It makes honest debate difficult. Poverty isn’t a personality flaw but a person’s decisions can exacerbate their poverty. You can’t control if you get sick or injured or if your company closes up shop. You can control getting pregnant or deciding to smoke crack. And yes, I do harbor a particular loathing for people who make selfish choices in their life and then expect others to pick up the tab. I would rather see money go to helping the disadvantaged get an education or work training so they can help theselves. I would rather see programs like Habitat for Humanity that provide opportunities for the poor to buy into their own homes than to warehouse them in government housing (even if that housing is in a swanky suburb). I don’t hate the poor but I don’t think there is anything particularly noble about them either. They are people like anyone else and have to take responsibility for their lives to whatever extent they can. Just like the rest of us. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > It works both ways. But plant just a few poor people in a good neighborhood and it will have a good effect on them, while any bad effect they have on the neighborhood will be negigible. People’s actions and behavior effects their neighborhood, not their socioeconomic status. You’re still segregating the poor as if they are a permenant underclass. You aren’t addressing the problems that make them poor in the first place. Poverty is not just lacking money. It’s lacking access to the opportunity to even have choices. Typical example - if I own an appartment in some poor area, I see a financial benefit from the gentrification of the neighborhood while the renter who can’t afford to own simply gets pushed out when the rents increase. You can put a housing project in Greenwich, CT but they will still be 50 poor people completely disconnected from the local community of BMW driving bankers and lawyers. They will still never have the opportunities of their wealthy neighbors. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2006, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/43 "2006-06-01T23:13:38Z")
> [@Weirddave](#): > > Oh, bullshit. Read the article linked by astro, paying attention to the facts and figures it contains. Look what’s happened in the last 40 years. Then take your white guilt and…dispose of it. African Americans have been seperated from “African culture” for almost 200 years now. It’s time to put that boogieman to bed permanently. Oh yeah, that’s me. Miss White Guilt. Except that I was born in the ghetto to a 19 year old waitress and a small-time car radio thief. First off, I don’t consider single parenthood that bad, so “guilt” doesn’t apply. I choosing who to raise your kids with based on who you want to screw is a bad way to do things. I am all for evolving out of old social conventions that suited us well in medieval times when marriage was a property transfer. As for African culture- you are absolutely right- it’s influence ended 200 years ago. And what came out of that? African-American culture. Which you are bitching about. Tell me, is American culture still influenced by the puritans? Is American culture still ifnluenced by the settling of the West? We are influenced by things we’ve almost completely forgotten. We still call the 5th day of the week “Thor’s day”. We still stick trees in our living in December, for reason’s few people can say much about. Have you ever noticed that Southern food is almost exactly like West African food? Stuff doesn’t just go away. It changes. It evolves. But it’s still there. > [@](#): > > You can put a housing project in Greenwich, CT but they will still be 50 poor people completely disconnected from the local community of BMW driving bankers and lawyers. They will still never have the opportunities of their wealthy neighbors. Not true. Their schools will be better, and have more parental involvment- which helps them even if it’s not specifically their parents. They will have less stressed social services and a better chance of getting health care, etc. They will have access to jobs with upward mobility. Their kids will have friends with parents that can hook them up with internships, etc. So often it’s not what you know, but who you know,and when you are in the ghetto all you know is ghetto pepple and that’s only going to get you so far. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2006, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/44 "2006-06-01T23:14:10Z")
> [@msmith](#): > > You’re still segregating the poor as if they are a permenant underclass. Huh? How is mixing a few units of “scattered-site” subsidized housing in with market-rate housing “segregating the poor”? Seems to me you’re doing the exact **opposite** of segregating them: you’re **integrating** them into a more successful community instead of leaving them in a dysfunctional ghetto. Just repeating that scattered-site housing is “warehousing the poor” and “segregating the poor” doesn’t make it true. You have to produce arguments that will convincingly support those claims. > [@msmith](#): > > You can put a housing project in Greenwich, CT but they will still be 50 poor people completely disconnected from the local community of BMW driving bankers and lawyers. They will still never have the opportunities of their wealthy neighbors. For one thing, I doubt that any subsidized scattered-site housing is going into any really wealthy communities where the income disparities would be that huge. For another, you seem to be arguing that expecting people to get along with neighbors of different income levels is “segregating” them, and that it’s somehow unfair for people to share a neighborhood with others who have more opportunities than they have. That sounds ridiculous to me. Don’t you have neighbors who are richer than you are and who drive better cars? Do you feel you’re “disconnected” from them and that you’ll never have their opportunities? Conversely, do you feel segregated from the neighbors who are poorer than you? That sounds awfully snobby and class-obsessed for what is supposed to be a democratic American society, where people’s worth as citizens doesn’t depend on how much money they have or whether they drive BMWs. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2006, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/45 "2006-06-01T23:23:05Z")
Come on now, which is it? BMWs or Audis? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2006, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/46 "2006-06-02T00:13:27Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > You can put a housing project in Greenwich, CT but they will still be 50 poor people completely disconnected from the local community of BMW driving bankers and lawyers. They will still never have the opportunities of their wealthy neighbors. How about in [Highland Park, IL?](http://www.lib.niu.edu/ipo/1994/ii940713.html) ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2006, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/47 "2006-06-02T02:52:45Z")
> [@even sven](#): > > Come on now, which is it? BMWs or Audis? Sorry. I didn’t grow up in the ghetto so I don’t know which “ride” conveys the most “bling”. > [@DSeid](#): > > How about in Highland Park, IL? > [@](#): > > In the process. Highland Park proved something to itself and other communities: with careful planning, sound management, **diligent screening** and caring support, low-income people can be successfully integrated into even the wealthiest of communities. It’s enough to make even the most unwelcoming of neighborhoods more neighborly. It’s easy when you only have 23 units and can hand pick the families you want to put in them. What happens if its 5%, 10% or 30% of the population? I think Habitat for Humanity ([http://www.habitat.org/](http://www.habitat.org/)) better program. My fraternity used to volunteer with building houses with them when we weren’t gang-raping coeds and hazing freshmen to death. It’s nice because instead of letting a bunch of rich douches reduce their white guilt but highlighting the %0.0001 of the town who lives in low income rental housing, it allows families to work towards OWNING their own property. > [@Kimstu](#): > > That sounds ridiculous to me. Don’t you have neighbors who are richer than you are and who drive better cars? Do you feel you’re “disconnected” from them and that you’ll never have their opportunities? Conversely, do you feel segregated from the neighbors who are poorer than you? I work in Manhattan so yeah. There are certainly folks who have much greater wealth than I can ever achieve. While I am disconnected from the world of multi-millionares, it’s not that big a deal since I still make a decent living and can live a fullfilling life. That class separation is a matter of ego, not of survival like it is with the poor. And my point is that just because you put low income housing doesn’t necessarily create opportunities for the poor. It doesn’t matter how good the high schools are if you can’t afford to go to college. And DSeid’s link even described some of the issues of having to integrate with a neighborhood that’s visibly more affluent. > [@even sven](#): > > Their schools will be better, and have more parental involvment- which helps them even if it’s not specifically their parents. They will have less stressed social services and a better chance of getting health care, etc. They will have access to jobs with upward mobility. Their kids will have friends with parents that can hook them up with internships, etc. So often it’s not what you know, but who you know,and when you are in the ghetto all you know is ghetto pepple and that’s only going to get you so far. Or maybe they will just cut their lawns and wait their tables. I think you have the right idea but I don’t think it’s as simple as mixing up the local zoning. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2006, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/48 "2006-06-02T04:59:34Z")
Well, **msmith** , your challenge was for only 50 poor people. Highland Park has done more, and while the results are not perfect, they are far better than the previous status quo. Heck, even your achetypal Greenwich has a [Housing Authority!](http://www.greenwichct.org/HousingAuthority/HousingAuthority.asp) committed to > [@](#): > > being an effective and successful producer, owner and manager of affordable housing options for seniors, families and individuals from various racial, ethnic and economic backgrounds. … > Greenwich Housing controls nearly 1,000 units in 15 properties, including home-ownership condominiums, scattered-site housing, various developments and Parsonage Cottage. How well do they integrate? I can’t say. But so what if the jobs the parents have are cutting the lawns, or waiting the tables? They are jobs and now they are jobs that do not require a two hour plus bus commute and with housing that allows their kids to go to schools funded by a Greenwich property tax base. Notably Greenwich seems to embrace a multiple modality model and some is indeed that home-ownership option. College? Scholarships and loans exist and the poor can usually get help that my kids will not, as it should be. I’m paying 40K a year for my eldest’s college; some of his classmates are paying hardly anything at all. And I am not complaining. Have them prepared to do well is certainly not all of the challenge, but boy it gets you a large part of the way there. I will maintain my original position. Society at large needs to change those aspects of our systems that have racist effects even though it is only part of the solution. Concentrating the poor in small areas, away from jobs and with schools that are not up to the task that is thrust upon them, are some major aspects of our systems that have racist effects. These aspects of our systems must change. What happens if it is 30%? Don’t need to go there. 12-13% is the poverty rate in this country. What happens there? I don’t know. While I am sure it would be challenging, I doubt that it brings a community to its knees. And the drugs and gangs find there way to where the money is already: it doesn’t come with the poor; it travels to where people are who can buy the products. No wall is big enough. I don’t know the poverty rate in my little town but we are notably economically and racially diverse. Great High School. Wonderful elementary schools. (I’m not thrilled with our Middle School but that’s another subject). Property values have done well. Do the poor in our town do as well as the wealthy kids? Of course not. Schools and housing doesn’t change everything. But do they do better than they would elsewhere? Yes. Do the wealthy do less well because of the poor? Nope. I’d match up our test score socioeconomic group to socioeconomic group and we hold up against any High School anywhere. Again, it doesn’t solve every problem. The poorer kids, often Black, often hang together and are overrepresented in the office of the Dean of Discipline. There is an achievement gap. Middle class and Upper class Black kids are sometimes torn up about where they fit in. But it is progress nevertheless. And keeping this focused on racial issues, [this article](http://www.consortium-chicago.org/mediacontacts/citations/070405_chicagotribune.html) may be of interest: > [@](#): > > More than any other group, middle-class black students show the greatest academic improvement when they aren’t trapped in high- poverty schools, according to a Tribune analysis of Illinois test scores. > > In elementary schools where fewer than half the students are low- income, nearly 62 percent of middle-class black students passed last year’s state reading test. That’s nearly 12 percentage points higher than how they fared in predominantly poor schools. No other group of students – whites, Hispanics or low-income blacks – posted as great an improvement, the analysis showed. > > But few black children have the option of attending a low- poverty school. In Illinois, three out of every four black students are enrolled in schools where most children are poor. > > Educators say the high concentration of black students in poor schools is one of the biggest barriers to closing the stubborn gap in test scores between white and African-American students, an issue at the forefront of national education reforms. > > Achieving that goal could require changing rigidly segregated housing patterns or school-district boundaries that isolate black students in poor schools, where they often are taught by less- experienced teachers, encounter lower expectations and watch many peers drop out. > > … > > There are few middle-class black neighborhoods large enough to support an entire school, leaving most black families in the state, regardless of income, in schools with high percentages of low- income students. About 73 percent of the state’s black students last year attended predominantly low-income schools, compared with 10 percent of white students. Nope, not a simple solution, but a needed part of a complex solution nevertheless. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2006, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/49 "2006-06-02T05:22:54Z")
Ah, I found our town’s figures: we are 7.9 to 10.8% poverty. Not quite the 12 to 13% but close. And housing values have appreciated here faster than the national average. And people move here for the schools. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301.md?page=2)