Blacks struggle with 72 percent unwed mothers rate

ap.org ^ | November 6, 2010 | Jesse Washington

[Niuhuru]

I;m actually on SSD and stamps right now and building my own business. I had a total meltdown some time ago. I didn’t choose to have a meltdown and I’m not screwing around and popping out illegitimate kids.

[hosepipe]

[ elaborate...what do you think these comparative stats are hiding? ]

Treason, the dictatorship of the proletariat, "1984", conspiracy........

Not massive single conspiracy, but a plethora of little conspiracy's..
<<- Cloward-Piven, Saul Alinsky tactics with Rules for Radicals,
hidden also are covert PROGRESSIVE REPUBLICANS or Big government republicans,

Many things are hidden most of which is not really known but suspected..
Because Obama is a Post Turtle..

[wardaddy]

That was my point....black illegitimacy rate was already very high....8 times that of whites ...on record by Dept of Labor stats in 1963....before the Great Society and welfare as we know it

my question and guesses...were as to why?

and btw...having lived in black culture from Mississippi to Haiti to Sierra Leone to Jamaica and other “black” nations...it's an issue worldwide

folks here ascribe welfare to remove blame

when conservatives do that we are no different than the left are we

but still...why does the nuclear family not take hold the same?

i think the reasons are old and inherent from many many years of cultural isolation from before coming here

[Wuli]

“i think the reasons are old and inherent from many many years of cultural isolation from before coming here”

Yes - the big migration of blacks from the south to the mid-west and northeast after WWII WAS (statistically in the majority) from the most culturally isolated segments of southern blacks; those already least assimilated into even the successful segments of their own demographic in the south.

CULTURE. I believe, IS the biggest factor - not genetics.

Yes, in many parts of the world culture is as “inherited” as is the physical genetics, but I believe culture is even stronger than genetics.

Why? Because I have known TOO many individuals in too many segments of the American “black” population, both “African-American” and immigrants, and children of immigrants from Africa WHERE the cultural influences that contribute to large scale single-parent households were rejected. They rejected them because their inherited culture, from their families, strongly rejected them. I can’t believe that they have vastly different “genes”, physically, than their fellow blacks.

Even in this vast country, there may be a very generalized national culture, but the most influential cultural influences are those closest to us, those that most dominate our family, friends and peers. Those influences, for good or ill, can, in the extreme “isolate” us in the sense that they may not match some dominate norm.

And, yes, particularly in the case of an island nation, an isolated and dominate “bad” culture can become a self-perpetuating nightmare. What I have found, in my New York experience, is that the best Haitians have always left if they can (which, necessary for their own salvation or not, left fewer influences for change “back home”).

[aruanan]

“i think the reasons are old and inherent from many many years of cultural isolation from before coming here”

The reasons are no older than LBJ's War on Poverty. Before that, the rate of out-of-wedlock births among the black middle class population was just about the same as that of the white middle class population. As a group, blacks were improving more rapidly educationally and economically up until LBJ's assault than any other "minority" ethnic/racial group in U.S. history. Whereas plantation owners strongly encouraged marriage and monogamy amongst slaves because it lessened troubles and brought social stability, the new plantation owner LBJ gave financial incentives to discourage it. That and the destruction of many urban neighborhoods through the Urban Renewal program brought us to where we are today.

[Wuli]

“Whereas plantation owners strongly encouraged marriage and monogamy amongst slaves because it lessened troubles and brought social stability”

Historical nonsense.

Plantation owners did as you say only so as far as it served their interest and just as often broke families up because it, financially, served their interest - selling husbands, wives and children with equal regularity, if and when doing so served their - the plantation owners - needs.

You can’t make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

Also, correlation is not causation. LBJ and his welfare programs did not, on their own, create the rise in unwed mothers among blacks. It was already beginning to do that before his programs. The problem with his programs were they did not help, they made things worse; the incentivized single-parent female headed households and failed to do the opposite. They subsidized a bad situation, which propagated the culture of it to the next, and the next, and the next generation. We tried to start to correct it in the 1990s with welfare reform, but culture is stronger even than economics and the bad attitudes continue to prevail among too many.

This is a job for the churches more so than the economists and politicians.

[aruanan]

Historical nonsense.

Plantation owners did as you say only so as far as it served their interest and just as often broke families up because it, financially, served their interest - selling husbands, wives and children with equal regularity, if and when doing so served their - the plantation owners - needs.

Looks like you're dealing with outmoded "research" done prior to the 1930s. Not only that, you're arguing a priori and from faulty premises. That's a bad thing to do when referencing history. Try Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery By Robert Fogel for something more up-to-date. I'll bet you didn't know either that the lifetime expropriation of a slave's production was around %10 or that a higher percentage of free Southern blacks owned black slaves than did Southern whites.

[wardaddy]

the illegitimacy rates between whites and blacks prior to the Great Society were nowhere near the same...there was a huge disparity

in 1963 per US Dept of Labor...PRIOR to the welfare programs we now know

http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/moynchapter2.htm

white rate was 3 percent and the black rate was 23 percent

that means the black rate prior to welfare was already EIGHT TIMES that of whites

Welfare made it worse for both but the black rate since then has merely tripled while the white rate has gone up 9 fold

I will never understand why so many conservatives always look for someone to blame for black woes besides blacks themselves...we sure don’t do that for whites.

Do we blame the 9 fold increase in illegitimacy for whites since Great Society on welfare or have whites done it to themselves?

[aruanan]

that means the black rate prior to welfare was already EIGHT TIMES that of whites

How did the rates between black and white middle class compare?

[wardaddy]

genes and culture present the chicken egg argument

hell if I know

I also think Christianity and Judaism fostered nuclear family concept...but not exclusively

I’m not sure what other cultures reject nuclear families historically but I’m sure Sub Saharan tribal types are not the only ones

[wardaddy]

who knows...as I recall from being there...there was not the black middle class then as now

that is one improvement race wise since then...not that they vote very well even if richer

that was another myth from then now being played out as a latino myth too

“they get richer, they will get more conservative”

not really looking back over 45 years now

[Osage Orange]

I personally know of a few young women....a couple white...that have 2-4 kids from different fathers...and a brown girl that has 3 kids from 2 fathers...and none of them are married.

It's an epidemic in all colors.....but of course more so in the black community.

[Wuli]

Believe me, I’ve read “Time On The Cross”; I’ve also read it’s major critics and many others historians.

It’s primarily an economic treatise and its social analysis of how slave families were actually impacted, is given too much small anecdotal evidence, too little hard data and both used only (no matter how weak that social data was) to support the economic treatise (keeping slave families together was better economically). It’s a rational economic theory, but like the best critics of Time On The Cross and other historians who have written on the subject, it (how slave families were actually impacted) (and how that is depicted in Time On The Cross) is more theory than evidence.

[aruanan]

It’s primarily an economic treatise and its social analysis of how slave families were actually impacted, is given too much small anecdotal evidence, too little hard data and both used only (no matter how weak that social data was) to support the economic treatise (keeping slave families together was better economically).

Actually, it's one of the first economic analyses of slavery that was able to use very large amounts of data that had never before been available or used in such a fashion. Before that, much of what passed for an analysis of slavery focussed on anecdotes and personal narratives, especially very biased and polemically-driven anecdotes (even inventions) by abolitionists who, because their cause was just, felt they were able to say whatever they needed to regardless of its veracity because the cause required it.

[Wuli]

“Actually, it’s one of the first economic analyses of slavery that was able to use very large amounts of data that had never before been available or used in such a fashion.”

Yes, it includes more economic data and economic analysis than previous researchers had done. Everyone accepts that.

But its social data IS much more anecdotal, and not very robust statistically. The amount of social data they do present is in fact NOT sufficient to make that claim - social conditions (the slaves family life) - on its own.

Which suggests that what social data that is presented, while insufficient as a social study, is there simply to buttress the authors claims as to the economics they present as fostering the social conditions THEY SAY predominated.

While many researches appreciate the economic argument and the data used for it (whether or not they agree on the final analysis), most do not accept the authors opinions on the social conditions - the slaves family life - do not accept that the authors research supported THOSE types of claims.

[aruanan]

But its social data IS much more anecdotal, and not very robust statistically. The amount of social data they do present is in fact NOT sufficient to make that claim - social conditions (the slaves family life) - on its own.

They were relying on a whole lot more than "social data" to make the economic analysis. As Fogel pointed out, such an analysis prior to the latter half of the 20th century was impossible because of the lack of sufficient computing power as well as the fact that certain sources of data had not yet been fully accessed.

[aruanan]

But its social data IS much more anecdotal, and not very robust statistically. The amount of social data they do present is in fact NOT sufficient to make that claim - social conditions (the slaves family life) - on its own.

Also, a strong support of the view of slave family life in the United States South is found in the comparison of slave imports to the U.S. versus to the Caribbean and to South America. There was relatively little reproduction going on in the Caribbean and South America due to a number of conditions including deliberately trying to disrupt the formation of families and much harsher conditions leading to a decrease in pregnancy (or the desire to carry the baby to term) and, thus, a need to continually import slaves to replace those that died. In the United States, though, most of the growth in the number of slaves was due not to continued importing of slaves but to those born to slave families. This was due to the fostering of monogamous, stable families. There were, of course, the lurid tales spread by abolitionists of slave breeding farms for which there is, outside of their tracts, no evidence.

[Wuli]

"In the United States, though, most of the growth in the number of slaves was due not to continued importing of slaves but to those born to slave families. This was due to the fostering of monogamous, stable families."

Your claim is (1) very relative to different periods of time before slavery was totally outlawed and (2) as far as the birth rates are known, the factual data can only be for certain shown to be "those born to" female slaves, which does not certify that it was, by any data-certain percent, to "slave families". Your "monogamous, stable families" claim is more conjecture than data-supported.

[Wuli]

“They were relying on a whole lot more than “social data” to make the economic analysis.”

EXACTLY, and therefor their economic analysis, while substantial in economic terms, does not stand as proof of any claims they made about “stable monogamous slave families”. That claim is more their own projection of a social result they BELIEVE occurred due the economics as they saw it, but it is not founded, in research data, on social data that backs it up, with sufficient credibility. Its a claim based on economics and how they BELIEVE economics shaped such institutions as the slave family. They should have stuck to the economics alone and not ventured outside of areas where they had sufficient and credible supporting data.