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Ted sees a mouse, but misses the elephant in the room:

In the fifties, although blacks were still struggling for equal opportunities and were on the low end of the economic ladder, the black family was for the most part strong and stable. Two parent families were the rule, not the exception. They attended church together, had strong moral values, and did not comprise a majority of the prison population.

Compare that to the present state of the black community after 40 years of Liberal Socialism. Our prisons are disproportionately black, unwed mothers and single parent families are the rule, black youths without a strong male role model other than rap stars and basketball players, roam the streets and are drawn into a culture of drugs and crime.

The following statistics are provided by Star Parker's Coalition of Urban Renewal, (CURE).

*60 percent of black children grow up in fatherless homes.

*800,000 black men are in jail or prison.

*70 percent of black babies are born to unwed mothers.

*Over 300,000 black babies are aborted annually.

*50 percent of new AIDS cases are in the black community.

*Almost half of young black men in America's cities are neither working nor in school. What we have here is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

What was the message of the social programs that came out of LBJ's Great Society? One of the most devastating to the family was that if an unwed woman became pregnant, moved out of the home of her parents, did not name or know who the father was, then Big Daddy in Washington would provide for all her essential needs.

Ergo she no longer needed a husband or the support of her family. In fact, the more children she had out of wedlock, the more money she would receive from the government. This program was the death knell for many families, especially in the black community.

Unfortunately many black men saw this as the best of all possible worlds. They could father as many children as they wanted, from multiple women, without ever having to accept the responsibility of fatherhood. Many women rejected marriage in favor of a boyfriend who could slip in the back door and not jeopardize her government check.

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Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D),Interview: (worth reading)

QUESTION: So the high illegitimacy ratio that you saw in the black community in the early 1960s climbs enormously within the black community. But later it also climbs in the white community – to a point where it is higher than the so-called crisis that you originally pointed out. A few years go by, and it's not just out-of-wedlock births; it’s an increase in crime; it’s an increase in welfare. There's a lot of things going on. There's drug usage. And you write an essay called, “Defining Deviancy Down.”

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Yes.

QUESTION: It seems to me that there’s a linkage there as well. Could you describe to me what’s happening in the world, what’s happening in your mind as you see this evolution?

SEN. MOYNIHAN: [Let me] give you a little background. This is sort of academic, but it’s the real world too. In the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as it was going through a long process, a little clause was put in saying there should be a survey of equality of educational opportunity. We had to demonstrate how separate schools were inherently unequal. And that was before things progressed such that the law outlawed dual school systems. But the little provision was still in there.

And a friend of mine, James S. Coleman – a great sociologist – was asked to do this survey. And when he undertakes it, they said, “why are you doing this? Everybody knows these schools are unequal in their facilities and that’s why they're unequal in their outcomes.” He said, “Well, everybody knows it, but now we'll know it for once and all.”

And I'll tell you, early one evening, there's a reception at the Harvard Faculty Club, and Seymour Martin Lipset – the incomparable Marty Lipset – walks in, sees me, comes over and says, “You know what Coleman's finding, don't you?” And I said, “No.” He said, “It's all family.”

And, indeed what [Coleman] found [was that] the predictor of educational achievement was to be found in family setting, structure, and so forth.

QUESTION: Not in schools? Not principally?

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Not principally in schools. Now, and he was the sort of first major person in that difficult decade who found out things that he shouldn't have found out. Actually, there was an effort – not very serious, but an effort – to expel him from the American Sociological Association.

QUESTION: For telling the truth?

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Well, for finding out information that was unwelcome.

http://www.pbs.org/fmc/interviews/moynihan.htm

That analysis conforms with what I observed as well, but misses one point. During the same period, as school systems were forcibly integrated, the only discipline came from black teachers and administrators disciplining black students or white teachers and administrators disciplining white students.

To break it down, Black teachers often were reticent to discipline white students because of the potential for racial outcry. White teachers were in a similar bind with black students, in literal fear of the NAACP and ACLU and a career ending lawsuit.

Miscreants, regardless of race, quickly picked up the cry of "I have equal rights, too!" when they saw someone get away with something they couldn't. Many school systems were too slow to shift or hire the necessary personnel to combat the situation, and for some in that era (often those who needed the firm hand of a mentor they did not get at home--regardless of race) the only effective source of behavioural control was lost.

For many, this planted the seeds of contempt for authority which have contributed to the mess then and today.

The removal of prayer from public schools helped to eliminate the concept that a greater judge, a higher authority exists which all will ultimately answer to, and further undermined behavioural standards for developing children in the '60s and beyond.

But Ladybird got rid of billboards to "Make America Beautiful", the whole time our culture was covered with running open sores.