How to Rear Children
| AR Articles on Miscellaneous |
|---|
| More news stories on Miscellaneous |
Kay Hymowitz, Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age, Ivan R. Dee, 2006, 179 pp., $22.50.
Every society in human history has had a ceremony to mark the union of a man and woman and recognize their children. Marriage, which Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute calls “the core cultural institution,” is universal—at least it was until the late 1960s, when it became fashionable in the West to view it as just another “lifestyle.”
This excellent little book explains why marriage is important, and describes what we get when some mothers think they can do without it: “A self-perpetuating single-mother proletariat on the one hand, and a self-perpetuating, comfortable middle class on the other.” Nor does Mrs. Hymowitz ignore race. She recognizes that the “single-mother proletariat” is mostly back and increasingly Hispanic, and even has a go at trying to explain why.
‘Separate and Unequal Families’
Mrs. Hymowitz starts with a history lesson on marriage. She points out that up until the 1960s, it was essentially unheard of for Americans to have children without ever bothering to marry. There have always been class and race differences in this respect, but even among high school dropouts, barely one percent of American women had children without a husband. Divorce was rare: Ninety-five percent of marriages were permanent.
The big change came with the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Feminists said marriage was sexist, hippies said it was unnecessary, and even the middle class decided it could be casually junked if Mom and Dad stopped getting along. Marriage became purely a matter of adult romance, and certainly not something to be held together for the sake of children. Broken homes and single mothers were “alternative families,” just as good as the real thing. Sex became pure recreation, with procreation as an afterthought.
All social classes, therefore, embarked together on what Mrs. Hymowitz calls “unmarriage,” but rich and poor soon parted ways. By the 1980s, the divorce rate among college-educated women stopped rising, and it started to decline in the 1990s. Among the poor, the divorce rate stopped climbing in the 1990s, but only because poor people were not marrying, so there were fewer marriages that could fall apart. As illegitimacy rates climbed to 70 percent for blacks and 45 percent for Hispanics, they peaked at just four percent for college-educated women and then headed down.
Mrs. Hymowitz’s point is that although close to 35 percent of American children are illegitimate and 40 to 50 percent of marriages are likely to fail, the norm for middle-class white women is once again children within marriage and “‘til death do us part.” Hollywood stars and sports celebrities still shuck spouses, and the media still treat this as liberated daring, but suburban couples who want their children to get into good schools stay together. Mrs. Hymowitz says informal polls show that about 90 percent of students in elite universities come from intact households.
The damage done by single motherhood and divorce are now well known. Thirty-six percent of female-headed families are poor, while only six percent of married-couple families are poor. Divorce clearly hurts children: Those from broken homes are significantly more likely to drop out of school, get pregnant, or go to jail. In this respect, remarriage or long-term cohabitation are not substitutes for the real thing: “As society’s bulwark social institution, traditional marriage—that is, childbearing within marriage—orders social life in ways that we only dimly understand,” writes Mrs. Hymowitz.
College educated women understand this instinctively. They know that a permanent father is the best guarantee that children will stay in school, go to college, keep out of jail, and climb into the security of the middle class. It’s a bonus if marriage is a life-long love affair, but it has a more important role: “In middle-class families the child’s development—emotional, social, and (these days above all) cognitive—takes center stage. It is the family’s raison d’être, its state religion.” Mrs. Hymowitz continues: “The bourgeois nuclear family is by its very definition a factory for producing competent, self-reliant, and (at its most successful) upwardly mobile children.” Marriage may not guarantee successful children, but for the middle class, it is an absolute precondition for having them.
Mrs. Hymowitz writes that the mentality that leads to marriage means a woman must follow a particular “life script,” and that this mentality is what makes the middle class different from the underclass:
“A marriage orientation … requires a young woman to consider the question of what man will become her husband and the father of her children as a major, if not the major, decision of her life. In other words, a marriage orientation demands that a woman keep her eye on the future, that she go through life with deliberation, and that she use self-discipline—especially when it comes to sex: bourgeois women still consider premature pregnancy a disaster. In short, a marriage orientation—not just marriage itself—is part and parcel of her bourgeois ambition.”
The Underclass
It is one of Mrs. Hymowitz’s key insights that underclass women are not simply middle-class women who happen to be poor or happen not to know how to use contraceptives. They have a different “life script” or, perhaps more accurately, they do not have one at all. Policy makers keep making the mistake of assuming underclass women have all the same motives and aspirations of the middle class but just don’t have the means. They think that a little more money and a course in “life skills” will end reckless procreation and put poor women on the road to the suburbs. Mrs. Hymowitz bravely explains that this isn’t so, and that for many blacks it is emphatically not so.
It has been taboo to discuss the mating habits of blacks ever since Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed out that a black illegitimacy rate of (just) 25 percent portended disaster. When he wrote in 1965 that “a national effort towards the problems of Negro Americans must be directed towards the question of family structure,” he was hooted down for “blaming the victim.” Liberals insisted that the problem was “racism,” not illegitimacy, and that it was “sexist” to think black women needed husbands. The black “family” was touted as a resilient, multi-generational network of extended kin that could give children a better start than the isolated, white two-parent family. Liberals were convinced the government would abolish poverty, and that a new era of happy, well-adjusted “alternative families” was around the corner. Of course, Moynihan was right, and we are now stuck with an entrenched black underclass and a growing Hispanic underclass.
How did it happen? Mrs. Hymowitz tries to answer that question by explaining how the underclass really thinks. She says that what most strikes whites is the passivity of ghetto mothers. For them “sex simply happens. Then babies happen. In fact, life happens.” Mothers then expect babies that “happened” to grow up more or less on their own, while middle-class mothers “are strategizing their children’s growth the way the generals planned D-day.”
Underclass mothers do not plan. The future “happens” like everything else. And yet, as many have noted, 15-year-old black mothers talk casually about becoming doctors or lawyers, as if that too will just “happen.” They have no idea of the effort and dedication it takes to get into the middle class.
That marriage and a husband are an important part of that process is beyond their grasp. In ghetto housing where no one even knows anyone who is married, fathers are “the extra parent,” occasionally useful as a source of cash. “Why do I need to worry about a father?” asks a newly pregnant 15-year-old. “My mother raised me and my sister just fine without one.” She adds: “All my friends have babies. I was beginning to wonder what was wrong with me.”
Mrs. Hymowitz points out that for underclass teen-agers, a baby is definitely not an unwelcome interruption to their studies. They want babies. They will probably not see any of the other rites of passage to adulthood—high school graduation, college, first real job, marriage, down payment on a house—so babies are the only thing that distinguishes them from children. There is never a shortage of boys who will knock them up. Mrs. Hymowitz writes of underclass men who tattoo themselves with the names of their illegitimate children the way pilots painted kills on their fighters. She says some may deliberately puncture condoms so they can add to the list.
Nine months later, neighborhood women fawn over the new mother and her baby, who gets paraded around in cute clothes. The parade lasts until about age two, when children begin to talk back and become trouble. Then, says Mrs. Hymowitz , mothers lose interest and dress them like bums.
Many people have noted how different ghetto black mothers are from middle-class whites. In the suburbs, mothers talk constantly to children, encourage them to learn, praise their accomplishments, shower them with affection and attention. Underclass mothers not only talk much less; their speech is harsh, and centered on the word “no.”
By the time black children are in kindergarten, they are “much less likely to show persistence in school tasks, to pay attention in class, or to seem eager to learn new things” compared to whites. Hispanics are somewhere in between. Underclass mothers leave education entirely to the schools.
Sociologists have noticed that children do better if they have parents who talk to them, read to them, and check their homework. Some liberals have been so stupid as to set up programs to pay ghetto mothers to do these things in the hope it will make a difference. As Mrs. Hymowitz points out, middle-class parents are not following a “parenting skills” checklist. Their child-rearing mission comes from the heart, and paying someone to go through the motions is futile.
Head Start was touted in its early years as the way to close the black/white gap, but Mrs. Hymowitz points out that even the most intensive “early intervention” efforts like the Perry Preschool and the Abecedarian Project got poor results. She notes there is still Head Start here and there, but says it is just a fancy pre-school. No one thinks it is going to change a child’s life.
Mrs. Hymowitz claims that some of the “accidental fathers” in the underclass have a vague sense of responsibility to their children. She says they realize it was a disadvantage to grow up without a father, and want to do better. To the extent this is true, these young men face terrible obstacles. They have never known a man who was part of a long-term child-rearing team, and have no idea how to be fathers. At the same time, they may have children by several women who, in turn, have children by several men. With the best will in the world, this kind of tangle leads, in Mrs. Hymowitz ‘s words, to “confusion, jealousy rage, abandonment, and violence.”
Underclass fathers reportedly pay more attention to sons than to daughters. Mrs. Hymowitz says this is because the only people they could ever count on were “homies.” Women are good for sex but are not friends or allies. A daughter will just be another fickle female but a son might grow up to be a pal.
Backlash
Mrs. Hymowitz writes that the current generation of middle-class young people—the Generation Xers—are more conservative about marriage than their baby-boomer parents. She says many suffered through their parents’ divorces, and have vowed to spare their own children. According to pollsters, they are considerably more likely than their parents to say that traditional families are best.
Mrs. Hymowitz says Gen X is more conservative across the board: far more likely than the ‘60s generation to agree that making money is important; less inclined to drink, take drugs, or have sex for sport. They are also finished with feminism. Many think Mom should stay home with the kids. They saw their own mothers drag themselves off to work and come home beat, counting the days until the next vacation. They don’t believe bra-burner propaganda about how careers liberate women. Gen X wives may want their husbands to help around the house, but they want to be “nester-in-chief”—as Mrs. Hymowitz says “they like being boss at home.” She says taking the husband’s name is back in vogue, and cites the occasional female MBA who ditched a high-powered career to stay home and breastfeed.
The new generation of the middle-class-to-be, argues Mrs. Hymowitz , has suffered the consequences of treating marriage lightly and will not repeat their parents’ folly. “The question that confronts us now,” she adds, “is whether the poor and near-poor can do the same.” The short answer to that question is “no,” and the reason is that a whole class of Americans has drifted into a dysgenic dead end.
Genes or Harp Lessons?
As Mrs. Hymowitz herself recognizes, there is a real question here as to what causes what. If, by some miracle, the same teenagers who are having children by accident were to wait five years, get married, and then have children, how much difference would it make? Mrs. Hymowitz toys with the idea that people who cannot graduate from high school or keep a job may simply be defective. Their children will be defective too, because they inherit their parents’ defects, not because Daddy didn’t read them Winnie the Pooh. Mrs. Hymowitz quickly drops this idea, however, no doubt because it leads in disagreeable directions.
Environment surely makes a difference, but genes are a big part of the problem. If the average black IQ is 85, the average IQ in the projects is surely no more than 75. People with IQs of 75 can hold jobs, and sometimes even marry and rear children, but only if they are surrounded by smarter people who set an example and help them lead orderly lives.
Whole neighborhoods are now full of people with 75 IQs, where not a single person lives responsibly, and from which not even a child with an IQ of 100 could probably escape. As Mrs. Hymowitz points out, these people are not like white Gen Xers. They have learned no lessons from the folly of their parents. They drop out of high school to have babies and still think they are going to become lawyers. Each new crop of babies is a generation of double victims—dealt a sorry genetic hand and born into the worst environments in the developed world. Mrs. Hymowitz is right to say “programs” will do nothing unless there is a revolution in the way the underclass thinks, but shows us no signs of revolution.
Economically, the underclass could not have come at a worse time. Even if its members had the gumption to show up on time for blue-collar jobs, those jobs no longer support a family. Not even a college degree guarantees a middle-class salary these days, and many blacks and Hispanics are lucky to get a GED.
Mrs. Hymowitz applauds the 1996 welfare reform that cut off automatic raises for every new welfare baby, and limited the number of years a woman could stay on the dole. Liberals screamed that blacks would be starving in the streets. Instead, the number of black children living with two parents had inched up—to 39 percent. Isn’t the lesson that there should be no welfare at all? If 15-year-olds knew that they would be entirely on their own with that baby—or that they were going to have to go begging to friends and family—there would be a lot fewer underclass babies. The hard truth is that some people should not have children, period.
This is farther than Mrs. Hymowitz cares to go. Publishers like books with happy endings, or at least hold out prospects for one. But Mrs. Hymowitz has gone a great deal farther than most, and hers is one of the most readable, persuasive defenses of marriage in a long time. She even blasts homosexual marriage as another attack on an institution that is supposed to bring forth new citizens, not consecrate copulation.
America got its first underclass because it had a population of blacks that could not hold out against the message of “do it if it feels good” and a welfare system that took the pain out of shiftless baby-making. It is getting a second underclass because Mexican immigrants are pouring into the groove well worn by blacks. Mrs. Hymowitz tells us whites are pulling out of the moral nose-dive of the 1960s; sadly, there are no signs that blacks or Hispanics will do the same.
(Posted on June 13, 2008)
Comments
“Feminists said marriage was sexist, hippies said it was unnecessary”
What they said was that anyone who didn’t believe the way they did (that white men are bad and everyone else good) was evil. Then they went about enforcing this viewpoint with the considerable power they’ve held.
Posted by Siesta Time at 5:38 PM on June 13
I think it is true that today’s generation is more cautious & more conservative about marriage because they are determined not to put potential children through the hell of divorce that they knew in their own childhoods. However, even women who are enthusiastic about marriage have realistic choices for husbands in today’s culture. Hymowitz, the author of the book reviewed, delves into the phenomenon of 20-something idiot boy-men in this article:
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_single_young_men.html
Posted by at 8:58 PM on June 13
The last time I saw my best friend from high school, she was heavily pregnant with her boyfriend’s baby. Fast forward nine years, and she and I gazed enviously across the country at one another’s lives: she envies my freedom and educational opportunities, I envy her four children and husband-the very same boyfriend she had in high school. Her husband never went on to college and neither could my friend, as they were parents by the age of 19. They both still work for barely enough to get by, and as they are still in northeast Ohio, I fear that at any time they could lose their jobs due to Ohio’s anemic economy.
A guy I knew in high school taunted and teased me for all our time in the same school. Fast forward to 2005 and he contacts me through My Space and tells me how much he actually was attracted to me, but was too intimidated by my intelligence to say anything - so bullying was the next best excuse to talk to me. Unfortunately he too married young, and his marriage had hit the skids; I could tell he was looking to bail, and I sure wasn’t going to let my name get dragged into that. As certain as the sun rises, once he knew I wasn’t biting, he moved on to the next girl, and the next after that, ect. Now he says that he’s in love again, and has given this girl a promise ring. I see no happy ending for that marriage either.
Two different people living in no more than 20 miles from one another, yet completely different outcomes (at present). I don’t know if I have the strength to go through their trials, be it young motherhood and a perpetually impoverished household, or marriage for the sake of getting married, and then realizing what a mistake that was. I thought I wanted a spouse and children, but not like my friends did it. I suppose I’m trying to learn from their mistakes, but I can do little else so long as the white dating pool is sorely wanting for a little more depth.
Posted by Anglokraut at 9:20 PM on June 13
Excellent article. We all instinctively know ‘they’ are different from us. But due to liberal jackboots we have to pretend otherwise and waste a lot of time and money trying to uplift these lower class, low iq, low self control, and less able creatures. No more social programs that take money out of decent people to fund and fuel these retro humans. I think Africa should be reengineered for people like these so they can go back in live in bucolic harmony in tribal societies. Yeah, that’s about right. I wouldn’t mind paying taxes for such a social engineering project. Many people around the world will thank us for being smart and proactive.
Posted by realist at 9:27 PM on June 13
Good example of Rushton’s K vs. r strategy.
Posted by at 9:55 PM on June 13
but how many people stayed married pre 1960s because of the fear of being looked down upon if divorced and the lack of opportunity available to women (unlike todays career choices)?and what about abuse? not all was well in the ‘old days’..I see ‘the middle class’ in America becoming more isolated as economic difficulty causes many to give up and settle for underclass status..
Posted by toonces at 10:32 PM on June 13
This article sounds like wishful thinking. From what I see young Whites have long lost their moral compass along with Blacks and Latinos.
Posted by Richard at 11:57 PM on June 13
We Whites do it right more often than the dark races. I say do it right because marrage then children is the traditional right way. It is the big problem we face that they breed so many children reguardless of income or other factors that influence white reproduction. We become a minority for doing the right things. Whites lose power for doing what is right. This is one reason I am a White Nationalist.
Posted by Mike t. at 7:13 AM on June 14
Hymowitz’s book appears to underscore the fact that the black family has effectively been destroyed by the welfare system and, with it, any hope that blacks as a group will ever comprise anything but a permanent, destructive, and dangerous underclass.
As long as the present welfare system is in place whatever potential the black race has for joining the middle class will remain forever purely speculative. This is a tragedy for blacks and whites alike, for entry to the middle class economically is not only through the managerial and executive doorways, which require at least average or above average intellect. There are plenty of opportunities for skilled tradesmen, equipment operators, builders and maintenance people of all types that can provide good middle class incomes, but only if the people wanting to fill these positions have the motivation to learn the requisite skills, motivation that’s effectively destroyed by the welfare system.
Posted by john at 8:07 AM on June 14
Motherhood is the most difficult and challenging job a woman will ever attempt. It should not be entered into as lightly as it is by many women. Many women should not attempt it at all. First of all, if you can not find a man that is willing to commit to you, why would you have his children. I could never understand women who think they can commit themselves to a 40 plus hour a week job and come home and be a successful wife and mother. I tried it, and while at work, I worried about my children and husband, while at home I worried about my work. Raising successful children is a woman’s most important job, period. Do without all the “things” that today’s society think it needs to survive and stay home and raise your children. Children need love and security, they do not need MP3 players and cell phones. Do it right, and your children will thank you. Mine did, and when a teenager thanks you for being a good mother, there is nothing better.
Posted by Kellie at 9:05 AM on June 14
There really was a certain “old-fashioned” culture among the middle to upper-middle class. (Whether it is or isn’t a “white thing”, it is definitely traditionally AMERICAN.)
I was fortunate to grow up in this culture:
1. Parents intended to stay married and provide a decent, stable home for their children. Both were committed to raising children.
2. Parents sacrificed A LOT for the sake of giving their children the best opportunities for a better life.
3. Women who were educated, intelligent, well-spoken, and good managers and financial planners were respected and desired. Women were also expected to work damn hard around the home from sun-up to sun-up (yes, I mean 24/7). Meals were planned and cooked; homes were clean; clothes were suitable (not flashy), mended, and clean; children were nursed through illnesses; read to; homework help was provided, etc. This was hard, difficult work. It was called being a HOMEMAKER.
4. Fathers DID work around the home as well as work hard outside the home, and also took care of their children. FAMILY outings were important. Raising decent children was important. They were engaged in and committed to family matters. Fathers who behaved like pubescent boys were considered derelict, negligent, shameful and NOT REAL MEN. It was shameful to cheat on your spouse. Daddies held their children as tenderly as Mommies and sang lullabies, too. They played family board games, encouraged hobbies, taught skills, and tried to provide a decent, RESPECTABLE adult role model for their sons.
5. Education, respect, and honor were central family values. Education did not mean college for everyone. It meant insuring that your children could become upstanding, independent adults who could contribute to a functional society. Having more children than you could afford to provide for was frowned upon. It was considered SHAMEFUL to have to depend too much on someone else, and particularly to have to depend on the government.
6. There have been women in the professions and industry throughout our history. It was a saner, more balanced era, however. Not the frenzied, image-driven sick culture of today. Nowadays women apparently have to be successful bread-winners; perfect wives, mothers, and homemakers; “hot” in the bedroom — and look like svelte goddesses while doing it all. It’s not natural!
7. People had not yet been totally brainwashed by and addicted to the lemming-like consumer lifestyle, and thus both parents were not forced to work 40+ hours a week just to pay for the McMansion and the needless STUFF. Mommy didn’t need expensive designer junk. Ostentatious display of wealth was actually looked down upon, and Daddy didn’t need every new expensive toy that came down the pike. Children were certainly not given every gewgaw and flashy thing they mewled for. And they weren’t given control of the household, either.
Was everything perfect? NO. Were Mommies and Daddies perfect? NO. But that was the cultural norm to aspire to in those days. If some people want to label that as a “white thing”, whatever. We need more of it today. Having huge litters of kids we can’t provide for and raise properly is not our traditional Northern European American culture. Nor is having huge litters of kids with scads of different women or by numerous men. Investing in the family, fostering and developing higher IQs for success, self-sufficiency, and achievement among our males AND females was a priority. That’s why we attained a higher standard of living than most of the world.
Noticed I used the word SHAME a lot. Are people ashamed of ANYTHING, anymore?
Posted by at 10:35 AM on June 14
Excuse me for double-posting, but I forgot to write something: that archaic family-centered, self-sufficient, middle class culture I described in the long post above was called the WASP culture.
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant for those of you too young to remember.
Most non-WASP Americans aspired to it, once upon a time.
Posted by at 11:07 AM on June 14
Hymowitz seems concerned only about the female half of the species and their choices or “life-script”. Where’s the beef (the male)?
The men need to have a marriage/children life-script, too. Why does she ignore the male role? Does she think they’re merely sperm-donors? Just the tuxedoed plastic figure on a wedding cake? Animals that need to be roped-in by properly life-scripted women? Stepford Husbands?
What a strange perspective. Kind of scary.
Men, fathers, and fathering are CRUCIAL. Years ago, everyone understood that.
Posted by at 11:32 AM on June 14
“Are people ashamed of ANYTHING, anymore?”
People are ashamed… whites are ashamed… of being ‘racist’.
‘Racist’, being whatever the non-white special interest groups, their liberal supporters, and the coerced and fooled majority, say it is.
Posted by at 4:57 PM on June 14
”The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families… . How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?”
John Adams (Diary, 2 June 1778)
Posted by at 5:15 PM on June 14
It is time to admit that liberalism is the modern face of evil in the western world. The sexual revolution and the drug culture are as much a part of liberalism as the civil rights movement and feminism-all are interconnected and equally pernicious! Where did all of these movements come from? Was any the brainchild of the John Birch Society?-No, they were the brainchildren of leftists, who have wrecked our public schools, our family structure,our cites, our economy, our military and our society in general. We can no longer educate children in our public schools, manitain a civilized level of law and order in our cities, successfully wage war, or provide gas and oil to our citizenry at a reasonable price. As the Bible says, “Be ye not decieved-ye shall know them by their fruits. Can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit? Can a good tree bring forth corrupt fruit? Therefore, by their fruits ye shall know them.” Since the fruits of liberalism are so obviously corrupt, the inescapable conclusion is that liberalism is corrupt. Everything that the left recommends is bad for you and society in general.
Posted by Boethius at 5:53 PM on June 14
Divorce rates shot up when divorce laws were “liberalized.” It used to be next to impossible to obtain a divorce. But when no-fault divorce arrived on the scene in the 1960s, it was absurdly easy to obtain a divorce.
And marriage hasn’t been the same since.
Posted by at 6:21 PM on June 14
When black’s ancestors were in Africa, they were not this way. In Central America hispanics are not this way. A hundred years ago minorities in the US were not this way. There is something about poor minority culture in the modern United States which creates and maintains these tendancies. I strongly believe it is the welfare system which contributes to this trend. When you pay people to behave badly, no matter what race, they will behave badly. If you look at white families on welfare, they are no better.
Mothers get more benefits if the father is not around-that has to change. They get more benefits if they have more children-that has to change. Children at 13 are encouraged to keep and raise babies-that has to change. We need to hand the distribution of money back to the churches and make the taxes voluntary. Right now welfare recipients get an anonymous check from the “government” to which they are entitled. When they must go to a person and ask for money given freely from nieghbors,every week,only then will it start being uncomfortable. We have to make it uncomfortable for it to change. People do not have a right to feel comfortable all the time-there is a good reason for the feeling ‘shame’.
I disagree that this is genetic in any more than a small way. Until we can do studies of children adopted out of this gene pool and show they revert back to the same behaviors no matter what the upbringing, we have a responsibility to see it as environmental. Blaming it on genetics without scientific proof is a cop out.
Liberals need to stop pretending that throwing money at the situation will fix it. Tough love is needed. Treat people like you believe they can rise above these things and they will. Treat them like children and they will behave like children. The welfare system has been a great way to keep the black people down were they ‘belong’, all the while keeping their support for the left. It is the biggest scam of the century. I, for one, know that there is nothing genetically inferior about blacks or hispanics. When expected to fend for themselves, they will, just like anyone else.
Posted by The Biscuit Queen at 9:06 AM on June 15
Marxism seeks to destroy marriage. It is doing so among the people that it has marginalized and branded as the “downtrodden”. The end of marriage will trod them down even more.
Posted by at 11:04 AM on June 15
When i was growing up in the 50’s there was a definite stigma attached to divorce with an underlying sense of shame.
This is an excellent article, well written and courageously to the point.
What I find fascinating is that if one looks at the last 100 years, there was a time before the 60’s when there did not exist what has come to be the permanent black underclass. Obviously there were blacks, but there was no identifiable black underclass. If you take a look at a host of indices of social function(graduation from HS, likelihood of being arrested and/or going to prison, out of wedlock births, etc)among American blacks in the 40’s and 50’s, you will find them to be generally very positive. In fact what one finds is how blacks behaved prior to the introduction of welfare and the anti-morality of the 60’s. Blacks were not very wealthy but they tended to hold jobs and have intact families. In a very real sense they had appropriated the values of the surrounding white middle class society and with the aid of religion they tended to do well given their cognitive limitations. The current black and hispanic underclasses are the direct product of three factors: the massive state intervention which created a permissive welfare and racial spoils system, the cultural revolution of the 60’s among whites which directly attacked every major principle of middle class life and filtered down to blacks, and the combination of these two factors with a primarily genetically determined low IQ. Take away any one of these causes, and the result is not the same. The black underclass was the product of perverse governmental incentives, acting on a population of relatively low IQ which was told that self restraint was foolish.
The solution of simply removing all of the perverse incentives is one that, of all those tried, has the greatest chance of success. The current underclass lives in a false reality created by liberal whites and their social programs. It is subsidized immorality and it is time to end it now.
Posted by at 11:31 AM on June 15
“I, for one, know that there is nothing genetically inferior about blacks or hispanics.”
Well, we are now in a state of ruination. All these years of effort, down the drain. We are wiped out by the new epistemology of AA- Arbitrary Assertion. Gawd, the truth hurts.
Posters! Learn Biscuit right!!!
Posted by uncle cremus at 12:14 PM on June 15
Not only Whites mate and breed properly, most Asians do as well.
The real culprit to the breakdown of normal order is feminism. These crazy lesbians have tainted our value systems beyond repair.
As far as blacks, I suppose you can’t blame them for their genes. They mate like crazy and the men habitually try to impregnate their females then leave to repeat the process with the most easily accessible mammy. Whites tried to civilize them and get them to adopt nuclear families. It worked for a while, but the “civil rights” movement let them slip back into their primitive way. Sad and a toll on normal society.
George Manuelian
Atherton, CA
Posted by george Manuelian at 5:30 PM on June 15
“When black’s ancestors were in Africa, they were not this way.”
Completely untrue. The African proverb—stupidly adopted by people like Hillary Clinton—“it takes a village to raise a child” is a testament to African attitudes about paternity, which are demonstrably more lax than in white or Asian societies. The “village” raises them because Babydaddy generally doesn’t. There is quite an extensive sociological literature on this question which you’d do well to consult.
“There is something about poor minority culture in the modern United States which creates and maintains these tendancies [sic]. I strongly believe it is the welfare system which contributes to this trend. When you pay people to behave badly, no matter what race, they will behave badly. If you look at white families on welfare, they are no better.”
This “culture” is merely the aggregate behaviors, beliefs and expectations of blacks. Blaming “culture” is putting the cart before the horse, as “culture” is merely a creation of those whose culture it is. You’re simply wrong about whites. They have never responded to the incentives of the welfare state in the manner blacks have. Of course there are feckless, criminal, welfare-dependant whites; it is a question of percentages and proportion. Only about 30% of welfare cases (TANF) are white, while blacks, a much smaller population, comprise over 40%. It is not a coincidence that virtually all black political figures and “leaders” consider welfare reform to be a brand of “racism.” Why is that so, if welfare is not a largely “black thing?”
Posted by at 1:53 PM on June 16
The fact that blacks comprise a greater precentage of welfare does not prove genetics is causitive. Vastly more men than women are in prison, but that does not prove that men genetically are inferior to women. Social pressures exist which need to be addressed, and not just the liberal cry of predudice.
Part of the twisted hold liberals have on minorities is that when a minority addresses their own race’s bad behavior, as Bill Cosby has, they are immediately blasted and discredited. The leaders of black culture, with help from white liberals, have decided that down is a good place for their race to be. These leaders are justifying their position [as leaders] by continuing the victimization, much like feminism.
As for African culture, please show me proof that African men prior to European colonization were destroying the family unit. African people, just like any other people, as a race would not have lasted more than a few generations without a family unit. Again, what you say is not backed scientifically.
Today we have the technology and infrastructure to replace the family unit, but certainly not to do so well. In fact we are seeing the effects in all races, not just blacks. More whites are divorcing, having children out of wedlock with multiple partners, and being irresponsible-they just don’t happen to also be dirt poor in most cases. When they are dirt poor, they do the same things poor blacks do while welfare funded. Go to any trailer park in Appalachia and you will see these same behaviors in white rather than black. Stupidity and irresponsibility are not color related.
Posted by The Biscuit Queen at 10:07 AM on June 18
“Only about 30% of welfare cases (TANF) are white, while blacks, a much smaller population, comprise over 40%”
The stat should be- what percentage of each group is on welfare. Then divide the smaller number into the larger. This produces a ratio, and thus a rational statistic.
btw Many government workers and all AA hires should be added to the “on welfare” numbers.
Keynes is behind a lot of this. No longer is a job to produce wealth- now, jobs exists to get that purchasing power out there. THEREFORE IT DOESN’T MATTER IF “WORKERS” DO ANYTHING ACTUALLY PRODUCTIVE.
Posted by belle kerve at 3:08 PM on June 18
“The fact that blacks comprise a greater precentage of welfare does not prove genetics is causitive.”
Welfare dependance is only one of many indices of black pathology; if crime, illegitimacy, drug use, general sloth and truculence, and various manifestations of low intelligence such as criminality and poor school performance are not largely genetic, what are they, exactly? Blacks simply do not respond to the incentives of the welfare state in the same way that whites do, just as they do not adapt to modern society in the same manner as whites. Blacks themselves have created this culture; it did not fall on them out of the sky. Blaming “black leaders” is just silly; if what these “leaders” preached were not amenable to most blacks to begin with they’d have no following to begin with. Why don’t more blacks listen to Cosby or Jesse Peterson than to Sharpton? Does Sharpton have some kind of mass mind-control technology?
“Vastly more men than women are in prison, but that does not prove that men genetically are inferior to women.”
A very poor argument. For one thing, “inferiority” is not at issue here; this is always a term liberals slip into a discussion in order to lend moral authority to racial egalitarianism. In any case, more men than women are in prison because men are more violent. Do you actually believe that women are by nature just as prone to violence as men are? Really?
“As for African culture, please show me proof that African men prior to European colonization were destroying the family unit. African people, just like any other people, as a race would not have lasted more than a few generations without a family unit.”
You don’t read very closely. No one said that Africans had no family unit of any kind or that black men were “destroying” that unit. The fact is that African society generally has a very different notion of what constitutes a family unit, and paternity and monogamy are not exactly the keystones of African social life. These differences may or may not be the result of milennia of micro-evolution (though most forms of social behavior are under far greater genetic control than “social scientists” generally concede), but that the differences exist is simply a matter of fact. What we see in black ghettos is simply the replication of primitive, African social structures in Western societies. Even before the welfare state came along, black illegitimacy, to take an obvious example, was many times higher than the white rate. Unfortunately the white rate has gone up as well, but it’s still well below the current black rate of 70%.
Those who attribute the racial differences in question solely to culture or environment are fighting a battle that was actually lost some time ago. Nor is it merely a matter of advances in the understanding of the genetic basis of much human behavior. The egalitarian theory simply fails basic logical criteria of verifiability. No thesis about black behavior has been tested more thoroughly than yours, and by any scientific measure it has failed. Why has every environmentally-grounded attempt to change black behavior of some kind—Head Start, the Milwaukee Project, the trillion-dollar social engineering schemes of the past five-plus decades—been an utter failure? The welfare state you decry is in fact founded upon *your* theory of black failure, that it is a matter of environment or culture and can therefore be remedied by manipulating that culture. If your position were the correct one, we’d have far more intelligent and law-abiding blacks than we in fact have.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 1:38 PM on June 19