Posted on 06/16/2020 9:02:12 AM PDT by Kaslin
BLM seeks to dismantle the very institution that research consistently shows is most likely to aid and empower black Americans: the natural family.
Black Lives Matter — the organization, not the irrefutably true statement — has taken center stage in the necessary debate on race today, overshadowing others like the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
All know that BLM’s leadership is strongly calling for the defunding and possible abolishment of local police departments. This proposal has been resisted or dodged by leading Democrats for various reasons. But what about BLM’s view of the family as a resource for black empowerment? Do they even have a position on the family?
They do and they should because of the centrality strong families play in empowering a people, their life prospects, and strengthening their neighborhoods. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. noted, “The group consisting of mother, father and child is the main educational agency of mankind.” King was speaking of the nuclear family.
BLM’s antagonism to the family is glaring. On the organization’s website, Black Lives Matter proclaims, “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”
Beyond the mistaken assumption that the “nuclear family” is unique to the Western world, their position is profoundly concerning. BLM, as an organization, seeks to dismantle the very institution that mountains of published academic research has consistently demonstrated as most likely to strengthen and empower Black Americans and their children: the traditional, nuclear family.
But they don’t stop there. Black Lives Matter also advocates other family redefinitions long at odds with most African Americans’ views, stating, “We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual.”
Seriously, is “freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking” really on the minds of most African Americans when they wake in the morning? Well, it apparently weighs heavy on the minds of BLM — enough to list in their relatively short, official statement “What We Believe.”
The statement continues, “We make space for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead. We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift black trans folk…” I humbly ask, how many African Americans truly see “heteronormativity” and the “objective reality of gender” as major hurdles to their dreams for justice, respect, economic and social empowerment, or a better life?
Over and against what Black Lives Matter officially holds on the family, what do mainstream family scholars say on the matter? Earlier this week, Shelby Steele, a leading black intellectual said in a television interview:
I will take those things seriously when I also hear …[from] … Sharpton and others the argument that we need within the black community to work on the institution of marriage. Our families have fallen to pieces. 75 percent of all black children are born out of wedlock, without a father. … I don’t care how many social programs you have. You’re not going to overcome that. [Programs are] not going to read a story to a child that night before he goes to sleep so he’s developing his mind…
Of course, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said the same thing back in 1965, backed up with solid data. In what became known as The Moynihan Report, he warned that the hoped-for gains from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would largely be for naught if black Americans did not address the crisis taking place within their families. Moynihan stated:
Those seeking real and lasting solutions to this injustice cannot ignore this other fact, the fundamental problem, in which this is most clearly the case, is that of family structure. The evidence — not final, but powerfully persuasive — is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling. … So long as this situation persists, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself.
Sadly, this prediction has largely come to pass. Scholarship on the relationship between race and social well-being over the last 20-plus years has found that marital status has joined employment and education as the dividing line between the “haves” and the “have-nots” of society. This is even more powerfully true for black Americans.
Only 4 percent of all homes with a married mother and father are on food stamps at any given time. The undeniable advantages of growing up in a married, intact family apply as much to blacks and Hispanics as they do to Caucasians. All other things being equal, married black men enjoy a marriage premium of at least $12,500 in their individual annual income compared to their single peers.
Bill Galston, who served as President Clinton’s domestic policy advisor and is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, explains in crisp language, “It is no exaggeration to say that a stable, two-parent family is an American child’s best protection against poverty.” He explains that to avoid living in poverty in the United States, one has to meet just three primary requirements:
Only 8 percent of people who fulfill these three criteria are poor, while 79 percent of those who fail to do so will be impoverished, regardless of their race. Isabel Sawhill, Galston’s celebrated colleague at Brookings and a tireless advocate for the well-being of inner-city children, makes this bold statement: “The proliferation of single-parent households accounts for virtually all of the increase in child poverty since the early 1970s.”
Black lives do matter, without exception. And they matter as black lives. Indeed, our racial distinctions and heritages matter as well, making the world a more interesting place. But just because an organization chooses an irrefutably true name does not make its agenda irrefutably true or noble.
If BLM’s leaders don’t want to believe the latest empirical studies, if they want to blatantly ignore science, they should simply go to any of the communities they say they represent and ask, “Do you think your neighborhood would benefit from more married mothers and fathers regularly sitting out every evening on stoops watching their children play, or less?” It doesn’t take a social scientist to know what BLM leaders would hear.
I always wonder if Black Americans realize how much BLM HURTS the image and concern in the minds of other Americans? It is not helping in MANY minds.
Black Lives Matter is just a communist front.
“How Black Lives Matter’s Antagonism To Marriage And Family Hurts Black Americans”
Clue me in. The rate of black kids being born into single family dwellings just dropped to 65%. The percentage of total abortions for black babies is around 35%. The only thing left to destroy is blacks that are trying to give their kids a good home. Why?
This is the organization run by white communists, yes?
It has to be.
Incredibly small potatoes compared to their pro-communism (all the way down to land redistribution), cop eliminating, pro-American government takedown positions.
John Steigerwald, a local talk-show host, had an excellent guest on the other day talking about this and the other wignut stuff BLM actually believes.
It needs to be widely circulated. People are agreeing with the general statement that black lives matter while being blissfully unaware of what the organization really supports.
Only 8 percent of people who fulfill these three criteria are poor, while 79 percent of those who fail to do so will be impoverished, regardless of their race. Isabel Sawhill, Galston’s celebrated colleague at Brookings and a tireless advocate for the well-being of inner-city children, makes this bold statement: “The proliferation of single-parent households accounts for virtually all of the increase in child poverty since the early 1970s.”
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Listen up, millennials. There’s sequence to success.
Washington Post ^ | 07/05/2017 | George Will
Posted on 7/6/2017 12:31:48 PM by Responsibility2nd
During the days of slavery it was difficult for blacks to have a nuclear family since family members could be sold off to other plantations at any time.
Then blacks were freed and given civil rights and created normal nuclear American families which were thriving in the 50s and early 60s.
Then LBJ created the Great Society which began dismantling the black families. BLM now seeks to destroy the black families even further. They need to get the blacks split up, chaotic, with no strong nuclear family.
BLM wants to return the blacks to the slavery days.
Incredibly small potatoes compared to their pro-communism (all the way down to land redistribution), cop eliminating, pro-American government takedown positions
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You literally could not be more wrong. Marriage and good parenting is the bedrock of family and society. Without it government and gangs become the family. That’s what you’re seeing and that’s why this country is devolving into a complete garbage heap.
BLM has little to do with the fact “the black ‘community’” has an 85% out of wedlock birthrate. Essentially their entire ‘community’ has given up on marriage and the traditional nuclear family. The stats back it up.
The black community refuses to address their own self-inflicted problems and instead doubles down on blaming everyone and everything else for their troubles.
Their culture doesn’t value studying and learning to get ahead, it’s called ‘acting white’
Their culture doesn’t value family when 85% of kids are not born to a married couple, and they wonder how their kids turn out so poorly
Their culture doesn’t value personal responsibility, perpetually blaming others and nebulous things like ‘society’ and ‘the man’ for why they can’t get ahead
Their culture doesn’t value black lives, when 93% of black homicides are killed by other blacks, and there is no outrage at blacks themselves for it
well all socialists and communists want to dissolve the family
but they also want to destroy all religions as well
they only want the state to remain, the sole source of authority and right and wrong
They are fighting to take away our country, literally aiming for a communist overthrow, right now.
That far and away trumps (and Trumps) any ideas of how families should be defined in free republics.
Go look at history, bramps—once a population goes under totalitarian rule it is very, very hard to break free.
In the mid 60s when I was seven and eight years old I went to day camp in the Portland, Oregon ghetto. I am white but three-quarters of my fellow camp mates were black.
At that time all the young black people were well-groomed and well-behaved. They had wonderful families who brought delicious food for family days.
Everyone got along and the biggest disturbance in two summers was when a young black girl, about nine, got a crush on a white boy of about 12. He was paying her no attention so she pushed him in the large fountain.
That was the only racial strife - if it can even be called that - among 200 kids in a ghetto area. Those children, who would be 70 or over now, I'm sure all became productive citizens and not the barbarians that we see among so many children who are now raised in broken homes.
Democrats want their slaves back. They have wanted them back since 1863.
Black lives don’t matter to #BlackLivesMatter.
Bingo! He win the prize
The top three tenants of communism are
Destroy the family
Take over the education system in indoctrinate the children
Create strife and angst among the people
Great approach — hit the issues and the consequences, not the symbols. We need more of this.
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