Posted on 05/07/2008 6:25:22 AM PDT by Clive
"We are living in a new time, where people are behaving in abnormal ways and calling it normal…No longer is a person embarrassed because they're pregnant without a husband. No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child"
-- Bill Cosby, speaking to African-Americans at St. Paul Church of God in Christ, Detroit, July, 2007.
As Mother's Day approaches, it seems a fitting moment to point out the truth of Bill Cosby's observation. Left unsaid but well understood by him: This "new time" and these "abnormal ways" have produced uneven social results, to put it mildly.
Over the past few years we've seen a stream of movies -- occasionally poignant, but essentially light-hearted -- about accidental or unwanted pregnancies, such as Waitress, Knocked Up, Juno, Baby Mama and the upcoming Then She Found Me, in which a happy ending involves a mother and baby, but not necessarily a father.
In each case, the film presents no downside to single motherhood. If the extremely flawed bio or adoptive father -- who range from dim-witted and infantile to downright abusive -- shapes up to meet the mother's criteria, she'll tolerate his continued presence. If not, that's OK too. Fathers are dispensable in Hollywood's glowy view of mum and child as a viable family.
Of course all these spunky single moms are mature, white and middle-class. Their money, education, marketable skills, social networks and readily available admirable male role models, it is implicitly understood, will ensure an outcome indistinguishable from those produced by traditional households.
None of these movies would be quite so entertaining if the ending leaped 13 years, and the credits rolled over adolescents in drug gangs rather than cooing babies: that's to say, if the films' protagonists represented a far more numerous and problematic group of single mums in the U. S. -- black teenagers with no money, skills, education, social networks or decent male role models, let alone committed fathers.
Fatherlessness, not white racism, is arguably the single greatest influence in preventing blacks' rise to social and cultural parity with whites. Teen births amongst U. S. blacks are 63 per 1,000, more than double the rate for whites. The social pathology these figures represent cries out for reform through moral leadership. Where is Barack Obama on this critical issue? Voting "absent."
Having embraced the theoretically "healing" strategy of post-racialism, Obama studiously avoids addressing specifically black cultural concerns in any prescriptive way. When he does address a black issue, he toes the same party line as white politicians.
In a debate on Martin Luther King Day, for example, Obama and Hillary both trotted out the politically correct myth that police racism is the cause of black men's disproportionately high incarceration figures. It isn't. Blacks do commit a disproportionate number of crimes. One can see why Hillary pandered -- black crime is a third rail for white politicians -- but Obama had a choice, and he chose not to choose. That's unfortunate, because admitting the truth on black crime is a necessary prelude to addressing the social scourge producing it.
Pandemic black fatherlessness and its consequences is an issue only authoritative black leaders can address with credibility. Obama should take a lesson from Cosby's motivational, self-help tours of black American communities.
For Bill Cosby has been finding success amongst black audiences, even though he refuses to blame whitey for their problems. "Men? Men? Men!Where are you, men?" he rails. Cosby drives home the message that fatherlessness, hip hop and crime add up to cultural suicide. It's tough love, but the full houses that greet him indicate it's a message blacks are ready to hear. The "Afristocrat in winter" has tapped into a significant, hopefully more representative, vein of black realism than Jeremiah Wright's conspiracy theories and blame-shifting.
Both Cosby and Obama were abandoned by their fathers and raised by mothers. Both know there is nothing cute or charming or easy about mothers raising children alone, and both know the potential consequences from the emotional vacuum fatherlessness creates.
In a November Pew survey, 85% of all African-Americans considered Cosby a "good influence." Obama? He is considered a good influence by only 76% of American blacks. There's a message here. Mainstream blacks will respond positively to liberating truths when they trust the truth-teller.
If Obama really wants to "heal" America, he could find no better place to start than by exercising the unique power that is, amongst the candidates, in his gift alone: to encourage the restoration of social and cultural health to black families.
bkay@vidotron.ca
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As long as white people are seen as the problem, the solution will remain out of reach.
But then he wouldn't have willing slaves.
Not to worry. Soon the teen birth rates among the offspring of illegal Hispanics will surpass that of blacks.
The cultural healing of the black community is anathema to the democrat party. They must be kept on the Dem plantation at all costs. The Dems fear nothing more than free-thinking blacks.
There are natural consequences to the behaviors that were mentioned in this article.
Those natural consequences used to reduce the behavior choices that led to those consequences.
The left, in an attempt to make themselves feel better, removed those natural an societal (shame) restraints,
and look what we have now.
There is no problem extant today that isn’t a result of a liberal policy.
The more I hear of this idiot the more I dispise him. I hope this sorry POS rots in hell.
A “person” doesn’t get pregnant. A woman or a girl gets pregnant. There is no need to refer to this woman as “they” (there is only one of her), since as yet there is no doubt that the third person singular feminine case is appropriate.
And I will believe we are serious about ending unwed pregnancy when the ads for Cialis and Viagra disappear. As long as men focus obsessively on their wee-wees, the problem will continue.
"Pandemic black fatherlessness and its consequences..."
| A “person” doesn’t get pregnant. A woman or a girl gets pregnant... I will believe we are serious about ending unwed pregnancy when the ads for Cialis and Viagra disappear
|
bttt
The problems in the black community will begin to be solved when the black community blames blacks for the problems in the black community. Cosby is ahead of the curve.
As long as white people are seen as the problem, the solution will remain out of reach.
It takes two to tango dear, and we women happen to have sex drives too...some very strong ones. I'm amazed you joined Free Republic just to spout idiocy.
It's men, and in particular men over 50 with erectile dysfunction problems, who cause unwed pregnancies. Who knew?
Let me close the sarcasm tag</sarcasm> and I agree - but not with the notion that the ads are seen only by senior men.
Those ads aren't the only ones that coarsen the culture.
But they certainly aren't at the bottom of the list, either.
jeez.
anyhoos, i’ll give appleby the benefit of the doubt and assume the wee-wee reference was pointed at our culture as a whole, and there certainly is an overwhelming obsession to ensure we can all get our satisfaction, ‘right now’ (or at least within the next 36 hours). Maybe for up to 4 hours.
A perverse cultural artifact reinforced by a burgeoning pharmaceutical industry. and given that its thrown in our face on every tv, every magazine, 40x60 billboards and 5 out of every 7 spam emails without discretion, shame or a hint of the moral side of the issue, the upcoming generations see it all as ‘normal’. I cannot imagine sitting in the living room as a kid, watching ‘rifleman’ with mom and dad and watching cialis commercials.
our culture is sinking into a cesspool that will eventually be one of the reasons for the destruction of our country if it continues.
then the ‘rise and fall of the roman empire’ will have another sequel.....
All of THAT I agree with. But then again, your post was comprehensible, whereas if appleby made an attempt at a wordbyte that was supposed to sum up that sentiment, it failed.
Watch the commercials. They are all just about to jump their second wives when the telephone rings or their kid comes home from college or the sink blows up. Fortunately the Magic Pill makes it possible for them to attend to other business before attending to their wives/girl friends/significant others, whatever.
| Watch the commercials. They are all just about to jump their second wives...
|
Thanks for the ping.
Nice post - thanks.
BINGO
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I am glad to see we have an expert in the house. It's women who get pregnant, but women are not responsible for their actions. It's men, and in particular men over 50 with erectile dysfunction problems, who cause unwed pregnancies. Who knew?