It also tore cities asunder, but that wasn't intentional.
Before the civil rights revolution of the Sixties, black neighborhoods in American cities had black doctors, lawyers, morticians and other successful businessmen. These people functioned as role models for black children.
When laws outlawing job discrimination were passed, urban blacks joined the middle class and moved to the suburbs. (Added to this, the term "urban renewal" was simply a code word for "Negro removal".) Those who stayed behind in the cities formed an underclass with its own set of values built around victimization, dependency and Afrocentrism. The only role models available were drug dealers and pimps.
Before the Great Society programs, 90% of blacks lived below the poverty line. Afterward, only one-third lived below the poverty line, but they concentrated in the cities, changing them for the worse.
It's the law of unintended consequences.
My home confuser has expired ..I was chomping at the bit to get back to work so I could catch up at least reading this thread.
You touched on a subject that has been on my mind recently.
Johnson's Great Society may have done some good but the harm it did and is doing has reverberated down to our current difficulties.
Fatherless families and multigenerational welfare recipients meant younger and younger girls were having kids due to the check that was coming.
Kids were never intended to have kids..It takes a mature adult to be a parent...You give to your children from your wisdom and your fullness. Kids having kids have nothing to give them..they have no wisdom, no experience, no values..They use babies to fill up their internal emptiness.
With the loss of fathers came the loss of shame..It used to be kids were very concerned about bringing shame on their fathers name...Bringing shame on the family..It was part of the family values. With a single mother and each kid having a different biologic father...there is no name to be proud of.
This need for pride got shifted into pride in the gangs...With nothing legitimate to be proud of they went feral.
Lack of fathers also eliminated role models for teens...Their role models became the biggest drug dealer or the sports figure. If there is no man to teach a boy how to become a man...they will become a predator.
Concurrently with this came the black pride movement...Being smart and accomplished in anything other than sports was acting white..Kids beat up other kids for being bookish..
Add in the victim mentality that is indoctrinated into them in school and you have the prescription for the perfect disaster.
The recent riots in Ca after a sports team win has become normative.
You bring up the point that black neighborhoods had doctors and lawyers and businessmen...Think back to 1968 in LA...
Riots burned their own areas of town..Nobody is going back in to be burned out again...That would be insanity.
Poverty does not breed crime....Crime breeds poverty.
Sorry to be late to the party.