Posted on 06/16/2026 1:42:52 PM PDT by grundle
The statistics about what happened over the past FIVE decades to the once stalwart and steadfast American black family, the backbone of the black community, are shocking and distressing. In an unflinching account that tries to understand why this disintegration started and why it continues, CBS News gives life to the statistics through intimate portraits of young black adults facing the emotional and financial difficulties of single parenthood. With its candor and openness, "The Vanishing Family" may very well be the most important documentary in recent memory.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
They are reverting to their African ways.
I don’t even think they do this in Africa, this is a degeneration.
Somewhere there needs to be a better culture that encourages family values.
Sounds interesting will check it out later.
But I’m surprised they would make a documentary on this subject. How often are we told that family doesn’t matter, single motherhood is OK, black people are disproportionately grappling with poverty, but that poverty has nothing to do with family structures.
I see this was made in 1986. No way would the media cover such a subject today.
Wouldn’t absence of family have a lot to do with poverty?
In sub Saharan Africa they had and had family ties
This article is about 50 to 60 years too late.
Thanks to democrats and spineless republicans the traditional family is a rarity among blacks - especially urban blacks.
Government policies incentivize having more and more fatherless kids.
Have more fatherless kids - get more government money, handouts and freebies.
Thanks to LBJ's Great Society Programs for removing the father in Black families. The government gives $$$$ to single mothers so this is the result.
LBJ’s Great Society destroyed the black family unit.
It rewarded broken homes, and irresponsible behavior.
This is almost certainly not reversible.
And so very bad times are ahead.
Yes, since the LBJ days the presence of a man in the house meant a cutdown or even cutoff of the government money. Big incentive to kick the man out and keep him out.
Like the low paid jobs making less than the welfare and other benefits lost for working at the job.
On one 1970s 60 Minutes a young kid in an inner city house was asked “Do you have goals in life?” He said: “Yes. My goal is to reach the birthday where the government says I can sign up for my own separate welfare account and not be stuck in my mother’s place with her.”
Lofty. /s
In much of tribal Africa the family situation has been and is very complex—it was/is more like Hillary’s notorious “it takes a village”.
However the fix is clear.
If there are strong government economic benefits to marriage with children—and equally strong economic pain to women who have children without husbands—the culture could and would change in a generation or so.
That would require a major “mind set” change that flushed “compassion” as government policy and accepted cold hearted long term solutions—punishing some people in the present to make a better future.
Politicians traditionally hate those kind of tradeoffs and will avoid them at all costs.
Stop paying them to have kids and stop penalizing them to have a father in the house.
Yes absence of family has a lot to do with poverty. But we aren’t supposed to talk about that. Liberals take offense if we mention such subjects. Remember how Dan Quayle was attacked for talking about a TV show with a single mother?
You are not allowed to talk about the Black Family. Please report directly to Merrick Garland. Oh I forgot he’s gone.
We llived in an extremely nice Chicago suburb. My dad’s business was downtown. There was a very nice Black guy who did some menial job there, and he came out to our house most Saturdays to mow the lawn, and do other jobs. If he stayed late and missed the train, Dad drove him home.
Some spoiledl ittle rich kids and I had our own cars at 16, and one night we drove him home. Black section of South Chicago was not bad. Clean streets, families chatting on the steps in hot weather, decent little stores.
Very sad that we’d be murdered it we did that today. Someone please clean up those Black communities. Guess they have to do it themselves. Sounds like a problem withut a solution.
Were LBJ and the civil rights act mentioned anywhere?
“The statistics about what happened over the past FIVE decades to the once stalwart and steadfast American black family, the backbone of the black community, are shocking and distressing.” The Great Society.
I’d love to see where these babies are today...its been 40 years. I wonder how many are incarcerated?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.