Posted on 08/01/2005 7:15:14 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
I first heard the numbers from sociologist Andrew Billingsley:
In 1890, 80 percent of black American households were headed by husbands and wives. That's just 25 years after the end of the Civil War.
In 1900, the percentage was mostly unchanged, and so it remained -- between the high 70s and the low 80s -- for 1910, 1920, 1930, for every decennial census report until 1970, when it was down to 64.
For the 2000 Census, the percentage of black families headed by married couples was 38. The only good news is that it was also 38 percent in 1990, suggesting that the trend may have stopped getting worse.
Now consider this: Fatherless families are America's single largest source of poverty. The Annie E. Casey Foundation's "Kids Count" once reported that Americans who failed to complete high school, to get married and to reach age 20 before having their first child were nearly 10 times as likely to live in poverty as those who did these three things.
Poverty, it goes without saying, is associated with poorer academic outcomes, which, in turn, are associated with poorer job prospects. That means, among other things, reduced ability to choose neighborhoods to bring children up in safety. Non-marriage has consequences.
Two things need to be said: The phenomenon obviously does not apply to all black families, nor is it restricted to black families. An impressive number of African Americans are succeeding beyond what earlier generations could even imagine (though I suspect that a disproportionate percentage of those outstanding successes are from two-parent families).
There's nothing inherently racial about the trend, of course. The 2000 Census showed that only 69 percent of all American children were born into two-parent households -- 65 percent for Hispanics and 77 percent for whites....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
</sarcasm>
"There's nothing inherently racial about the trend, of course. The 2000 Census showed that only 69 percent of all American children were born into two-parent households -- 65 percent for Hispanics and 77 percent for whites...."
77 percent for whites, 38 percent for blacks... "There's nothing inherently racial about the trend"... huh??? Sounds like more Orwellian leftist lies.
as usual...racial coincidence....I hate that.
is it ok to call it cultural?
When you cite Mary Francis Berry as a source...
"African proverbs don't raise children. People do."
LOL. Best line of the editorial. I'm glad he says flat out that fatherlessness IS the main problem here. I'm not sure why he says that if black women married men in their neighborhoods it would just raise the number of handicapped in each household. There's a lapse in logic there... did he mean to say that all urban blacks are handicapped? That's where he lost me.
The Gangsta Rap that serves as music for what remains of the Inner City culture constantly pounds (and I do mean pounds) the ears of the poor with information that is antithetical to the above.
I think he meant that if they married now it would be too late. The damage has already been done.
This pronouncement is similar to one I heard several years ago, when racism was blamed for poverty. I'm paraphrasing, but it stated that if you took every Black person who was on welfare and could magically turn them White, you would not do anything to solve their economic problems.
Carolyn
Great line. Take that Hillary!
;^)
It should come as no surprise that the problem intensified starting in the mid 1960s. Anyone familiar with any of the social engineering/social justice policies that came online in that time period?
I would definitely call it cultural. Based on low-class ethics and lack of personal responsibility.
Carolyn
I spent 16 years abroad....quite a bit in "black" countries.
Monogamy and nuclear families are not the norm so much except in formerly colonized areas where they picked up the habits of the colonizers and even that is pretty wobbly.
That is indeed cultural and is worldwide.
The Great Society simply turned back the clock on improvements made prior as Africans here picked up the western and to a degree Judeo-Christian tradition of the nuclear family.
Sadly....now the deterioration of two parent homes and legitimacy affects all but seems especially profound amongst the lowest incomes.
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