Posted on 10/05/2015 8:32:32 AM PDT by TroutStalker
With the publication of “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration” Ta-Nehisi Coates has added an elegant and forceful voice to the growing frustration with the inefficacy and injustice of America’s criminal-justice system. Mandatory-sentencing laws, the War on Drugs, juvenile-justice sentences that seem to do more to create than deter criminals, racial arrest and sentencing disparities: All are ready for a tough national cross-examination.
But even in the unlikely event that Washington and state legislatures successfully adapt the nation’s crime policies to a safer, more racially sensitive era, the nation will still look around to find more black men in prison than it might expect or want. There’s a simple reason for that, one that Coates himself notes: Relative to other groups, blacks commit more crimes. To understand why is to tackle some very hard-to-talk-about realities of black family life. And on that issue—and despite his announced interest in the topic—Coates has been the opposite of lucid.
Coates puts forward two interconnected, but flawed, theories about mass incarceration. First, he argues that there is no relationship between crime and incarceration rates, pointing his readers to a chart showing two apparently disparate trend lines. The first line shows crime levels rising dramatically after 1960; the second shows the rise in incarceration rates coming some 15 years later. Because of the 15-year gap, Coates concludes something other than a crime wave must have led Americans to lock up so many black men after 1975. “Imprisonment rates actually fell from the 1960s through the early ’70s,” he writes “even as violent crime increased … The incarceration rate rose independent of crime—but not of criminal-justice policy.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
You're kidding!!!!
So the author is blaming an unfair criminal justice system for the lack of black fathers in the home?
Seriously?
I guess they’ll see anything except for the truth - that the policies that make them feel good about themselves are responsible for the destruction of the black family.
I’d hope that this was kidding... but the heartlessness can be so great.
Johnson.
Part of the problem is they get rewarded for indulging in “gansta” culture (if only that abominable thing called rap and hip hop — not critiquing a style here, but the content that goes along with 99% of it). HELLO, HOLLYWOOD?!?!?!
Talk about soft bigotry of low expectations. More like throwing them onto a rotten marshmallow.
Maybe. I’ve heard it both ways then.
It was LBJ
Can someone come up with a reference to clarify it? I wouldn’t put an attitude like that beyond either one, but I am glad I am not going on Jeopardy ready to vouch that it was Kennedy....
Take a large dose of ant-acid tablets and then sit down & watch The Maury Show for a week.
It will make you sick if you don’t use the ant-acids first.
Why not look it up yourself?
The federal government is the provider for these fatherless children.
THey are raised on welfare and ADC.
Don’t forget about the free (taxpayer paid) meals in schools.
At some schools over 80% of the students qualify for free meals.
Some schools provide not only lunches but breakfast and a snack or take-home supper.
Some provide meals on weekends.
Some provide meals on holidays and over summer vacation.
Is it any surprise that as they age (age, not necessarily grow up) they look to the federal government to provide for them and whatever babies they might produce?
Incarceration takes away serial boyfriends, not husbands and fathers which are rare birds in the ghetto, anyway.
All that is a deliberate calculated result of the War on Poverty. LBJ knew what he was bringing on.
Endemic poverty in a modern industrial economy is caused primarily by broken families and substance abuse.
Street crime is similarly marked by broken families and substance abuse.
And broken families and substance abuse tend to go together.
If you are looking for the roots of the destruction of the black family, its the same as the destruction of American families in general only worse. Having babies when you aren’t married is a key first step off the cliff. Getting mixed up with drugs seals the deal.
Not JFK, LBJ.
*LBJ: “I’ll Have Them Niggers Voting Democrat for the next TWO HUNDRED YEARS!” While speaking to two Governors aboard Air Force One, the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, Lyndon Baines Johnson, uttered those twelve hateful words.
This is all you need to know about Democrat’s attitude towards minorities.*
*Copied/pasted from WebBlog USA.
“.. but reality being what it is... often the ‘father’ lost interest by the time the child was born. “
The truth is that the “father lost interest” about five minutes after completing the sex act that created the child. Or worst case, upon hearing that the woman involved was pregnant with his child.
It’s us white devils fault,
Always doing our best to keep the black man down.
Before Johnson’s ‘great society’ - blacks and white had similar marriage rates... It was incentives that came with welfare that destroyed the black family.
I was in a drug store, the other day, waiting on pictures. I noticed a black FAMILY...yes, family...one with a father, mother and three children...waiting, as well.
Once I heard them speaking, I could here a foreign dialect. Not sure where from, but not from the US. I wondered, how long before these black fathers are replaced by govt assistance, too.
“Great Society” incentives are destroying white families too...
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.