One of our allies in the blogosphere–Captain Capitalism–has this take on a sector of society that has been overrun by feminism.
While I don’t completely agree with him on this–I’d suggest that the situation in the black community is a confluence of factors that created the perfect storm, and feminism is one of those factors–I’d say he is spot on as to the effect feminism (with government complicity) has had on the black men.
I’ll elaborate more later, but Captain Capitalism’s take is a must-read.
I’m dubious about your and C.C.’s argument. When you write your extended thoughts, you might want to think about the late Senator Moynihan’s famous report on black illegitimacy, written right when the Great Society had just started. In other words, the problem of black illegitimacy was already there before all those social benefits, although I will admit that welfare arguably exasperated the problem (I think the black illegitimacy was 30% or so when Moynihan wrote the report in the mid-60s; now of course it is something like seventy-something percent).
When Moynihan wrote The Negro Family: The Case for National Action., black illegitimacy was 22%. In 1940, it was 19%. Those numbers aren’t good, but they’re still a far cry from the current rate of 72% (that it is as of 2010).
I would suggest that the problem began as an economic one. Thomas Sowell has made a strong case that the raising of the minimum wage is what stoked the problem of black unemployment. In turn, that marginally impacted illegitimacy rates.
Government intervention–for all its good intentions–had two immediate unintended consequences:
(1) Black women who were recipients of that aid figured out that they could gain more money by having more children. They began to put out more.
(2) The black men swallowed that red pill.
Then there were long-term unintended consequences:
(1) That government aid became a disincentive for black women–and men–to become educated, and work, and achieve.
(2) That motivated government to provide even more monies to combat this new problem.
(3) Black children in those situations, as they grew up, had very scant economic prospects. And without a father in the home, they had little guidance.
(4) Those children would grow up to repeat the cycle.
If it ended there, it would be bad enough. Except that…
(1) Those families receiving that aid have become a large voting block over the decades.
(2) Religious leaders in the black community–whose salaries are often dependent on the tithes and offerings of people who are dependent on that government aid–have become political whores who lack the balls to confront the immorality in their midst.
(3) The education system–which has waged an all-out war against masculinity–has done next to nothing to help black men confront a world that is already tough.
(4) With no father in the home, black children are growing up with little understanding of how to be a man; the women are not learning how to respect a husband, or even to expect to be married.
The men have become marginalized in that sector of society. Whether that was the intent or not isn’t the issue.
The bottom line is that the black community has become matriarchal. And the results have been disastrous.
Oh, and those religious leaders–who are complicit in this problem–spent the decades kowtowing to the women in their congregations, whose government checks paid their salaries.
Rather than call them out for their immorality–and, in turn, challenge the men to man up and support the children they sired–they took the easy way out. They gave the women a pass, coddled the children instead of mentor them, failed to address the men, and now, here we are.
have a friend who’s a nurse in a doc’s office in east texas. they get lots of illegals from mexico who keep having children so they don’t have to work, too. BIG problem.
when my ex-in-laws lived in another country for 30 years, there was a looong line every month for people getting social security checks from the USA.
Thanks for your thoughtful responses. Of course you’re right about the 22% from the Moynihan Report – thanks for correcting me on that. I should have looked up the report rather than just quoting statistics from what I thought I had read from a secondary source about the report (and from memory – another dumb action on my part). I wish I had time to respond to what you wrote, but I guess I’ll just look forward to reading your subsequent essay and comment then.