Posted on 04/12/2005 4:52:46 PM PDT by paltz
I think we have to approach it another way. We have to work on reducing the socialist aspect of our government. Once we do that, everything else will work itself out.
While blacks are hurt worse than any other group by welfare, that argument just doesn't hit home with them.
As far as rap lyrics, I personally think that is a losing battle. First of all, it makes us look like old fogies. Its common practice for the older generation to hate the younger generation's music - Elvis and the Beatles come to mind. Remember how everyone thought that the Beatles and KISS were satanic and that Elvis was too sexual? Tim McGraw's song "Things Change" does a pretty good job on this topic.
Secondly, conservatives really don't have a good relationship with blacks at the present time. We need to better that relationship first before we start talking about their music.
This also sounds a lot like "morality police" to a lot of people and it turns them off. This alienates blacks and younger voters that see conservatives as busy bodies worrying about trivial lyrics rather than focusing on big issues. I doubt that most think that rap music lyrics is a driving force in behavior among blacks.
There just doesn't seem to be a lot of bang for the buck when it comes to trying to address the black urban social environment. Blacks just don't trust us enough to do it and the conservatives that do want to do it come across as a bull in a china shop.
If we could just reform the welfare system without even mentioning race, fatherless households or black on black crime, everything would pretty much take care of itself.
100% agree. I really wasn't going for the hypocrite angle as the parent's really don't know what their children are doing.
Daughters really have a way of fleecing their church going parents - especially the father. Its kind of ironic that the fathers that are the most strict on their daughter are the ones that are totally whipped and just don't know it.
One dad I knew was super strict and closely monitored what his teenage daughter wore when she went out. She would just change clothes after she got out of the house and them change back into them when she got home.
Parent's also seem totally oblivious to what happens on church singles retreats.
I couldn't agree more with your thoughts. I've been writing to my local paper over the last couple of years regarding our local obsession with hate crimes. I think most on this board would agree that the race of the perpetrator should play no role in the consequences of the actions. So why would we make it an issue ourselves?
>>If we could just reform the welfare system without even mentioning race, fatherless households or black on black crime, everything would pretty much take care of itself.<<
Hmmm. I don't know...
Black illegitimacy was lowest when societal/white racism and Jim Crow was at its WORST. It's almost as if the black family unit held together as a defense-mechanism, and NOT as a social/cultural norm. Black illegitimacy and black crime are astronomical across the entire globe, not just in the US. I don't know that welfare reform alone can communicate THE MESSAGE that mysteriously goes unspoken in the black community, "Illegitimacy IS irresponsible, immoral, self-destructive behavior that ensures the perpetuation of high crime, high poverty, and more illegitimacy".
I agree that debating rap lyrics is a waste of time, I did not mean to suggest otherwise, I was only asserting that boys without fatherly discipline look to rappers and rap lyrics as their behavioral model.
,,, this one's too sick for me to comment on.
>>I couldn't agree more with your thoughts. I've been writing to my local paper over the last couple of years regarding our local obsession with hate crimes. I think most on this board would agree that the race of the perpetrator should play no role in the consequences of the actions. So why would we make it an issue ourselves?<<
But the BEHAVIOR that produces these sociopathic predators in such abundance is out-of-wedlock birth/fatherlessness/illegitimacy.
How can you address illegitimacy without mentioning race and without being called a racist?
Get a rope...
"But the BEHAVIOR that produces these sociopathic predators in such abundance is out-of-wedlock birth/fatherlessness/illegitimacy."
While you're right about the consequences of illegitimacy, you have no actual knowledge about any of these offenders. Your assumptions give rise to the kind of stereotyping that plagues Republican efforts to cement their majority.
I'm sure that with very little effort you could find many examples of white kids from privileged backgrounds doing reprehensible sexual things in groups during the past decade or two. Probably Latino kids too and maybe some Asians as well. I would probably speculate that it is the culture that has changed and that has a bigger impact than the impact of fatherlessness.
That's the problem - conservatives are instantly called racists if they try to fight race related issues.
I think that the welfare state and over zealous child support laws have caused much of this. Why should a woman bother staying with her baby's daddy if she can do just as well financially (or even better) without him?
Since the child support laws are so draconian, why should a young black man making $20,000 a year even bother keeping a job if its all going to be siphoned off by a woman that isn't spending the money on the child and is sleeping with everyone but him. He is better off just going on welfare.
Reforming welfare and the child support laws is going to be terribly difficult though since they both will generate a lot of ignorant, emotional demagoguery. There's just not much bang for the buck there.
Instead, we should focus on issues that do have a huge pay off. Controlling our borders would be a great start. Abolishing the IRS and going to a retail sales tax would be another. Building more nuclear power plants and oil refineries would be a great one too.
Solving black on black crime is something that just isn't worth pursuing right now since we have so many bigger fish to fry.
Courtesy your friendly neighborhood Publick Screwel and the ACLU!
>>While you're right about the consequences of illegitimacy, you have no actual knowledge about any of these offenders.<<
True, which led to my usage of the phrase "it's a safe bet". Inner city black illegitimacy is approximately 90%, so statistically, my assumption has a 10% chance of being incorrect. If not a "safe bet", it's certainly a "good bet".
>>Your assumptions give rise to the kind of stereotyping that plagues Republican efforts to cement their majority.<<
The facts that are known are:
1. Inner city high school
2. Mostly black student body
combined with
3. out-of-wedlock males are significantly more likely to commit violent crime
Making the leap that the perps are black and fatherless is hardly a stereotype, it's more like connecting dots.
Also, the gargantuan effort of the media to avoid any mention of race (for fear of being called racist) is a virtual guarantee that the perps are black.
While I agree whole-heartedly that the culture has indeed changed, the effects of fatherlessness are not in question.
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:bYtgxQTmw_MJ:www.familyfirst.org/capitolwatch/0899.shtml+wedlock+crime+poverty&hl=en
The Importance of Marriage
If someone told you that they had a remedy for poverty, out-of-wedlock births, crime and a host of other social ills, how would you respond? Even a cynic would at least want to hear what this person had to say. The truth is that the remedy is not really such a mystery; a growing body of social-scientific evidence demonstrates that the root cause of poverty, crime, and many of the problems attendant thereto are linked undeniably to the presence or absence of marriage.
Children in families disrupted by divorce and out-of-wedlock birth do worse than children in intact families on several measures of well-being. Broken families earn less and experience lower levels of educational achievement. There is a direct statistical link between single parenthood and virtually every major type of crime. And while the public is generally aware of the correlation between these problems and the breakdown of the family unit, most are probably unaware of the breadth of the supporting evidence.
The following is a brief overview of the research demonstrating the links between broken families and poverty, crime and children's well-being:
Poverty
Fatherless children are six times more likely to live in poverty than children living with both parents. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics, Survey on Child Health, Washington D.C., 1997).
Almost half of American families experience poverty following a divorce. (Julia Heath, Determinants of Spells of Poverty Following Divorce," Review of Social Economy, Vol. 49 (1992), pp. 305-315).
Seventy-five percent of all women who apply for welfare benefits do so because of a disrupted marriage or a disrupted relationship in which they live with a male outside of marriage. (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Factors Affecting the Labor Force Participation of Lone Mothers in the United States, prepared by the Panel on Evaluation Factors Affecting the Labor Force Participation of Lone Mothers, Paris, 1989).
The vast majority of children who live with a single parent are in households in the bottom 20 percent of earnings. Specifically, about 74 percent of families with children in the lowest income quarter are headed by single parents. Conversely, 95 percent of families with children in the highest quarter of income are headed by married parents. (Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey, 1997).
Over 12.5 million children in 1994 lived in single-parent families that earned less than $15,000 per year. Only 3 million such children lived with families that had annual incomes greater than $30,000. (Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey, 1994).
Crime
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 70 percent of all juveniles in long-term correctional facilities did not live with their father growing up. In fact, a case study in Wisconsin revealed that nearly 88 percent of juvenile delinquents in state custody came from broken homes.
A 1996 survey relating to the family background of jail inmates revealed that 60.3 percent grew up in broken homes. Furthermore, 46 percent indicated that a family member had been incarcerated. (Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, "Profile of Jail Inmates 1996," 1998).
There is a strong correlation with the number of single parent families and the crime rate in cities with a population of over 100,000. (From the Journal of Legal Studies).
According to a study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania, young men who grow up in homes without fathers are twice as likely to end up in jail as those who come from traditional two-parent families.
Children's Well-Being
According to a study published in Psychological Reports, children of broken families experience significantly lower self-esteem and poorer self-concepts than children of intact families. The former also report more depression.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that children of never-married mothers are more than twice as likely to have been treated for an emotional or behavioral problem.
Children whose parents separate are significantly more likely to experience conduct and mood disorders, engage in early sexual activity and abuse drugs. This effect is especially strong for children whose parents separated when they were five years old or younger. (David M. Ferguson, John Horwood, and Michael T. Lynsky, "Parental Separation, Adolescent Psychopathology, and Problem Behaviors," Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry, 33, 1994).
Nebraska is not exempt from these problems. During the 1990's, Nebraska has averaged 6,351 divorces per year. Since 1980, the percentage of out-of-wedlock births has increased every year, except for a slight dip in 1995. In 1998, over 26 percent of births were to out-of-wedlock mothers. Statistics reveal that the average income of Nebraska women heading their families is $14,000.
As healthy, intact families are replaced by living situations that lead to crime, abuse and a myriad of other problems, the burden on society will also become greater, and society itself will be less equipped to cope with it. Unfortunately, anti-family government policies have played a role in creating the current problem. Examples of such policies include the proliferation of no-fault divorce laws; welfare policies which provide disincentives for marriage; and family discriminatory tax policies (i.e. the marriage penalty, federal estate taxes, the earned income tax credit).
However, federal, state and local governments can play important roles in rebuilding the family to ensure that children escape the inherent problems associated with the disruption of marriage and out-of-wedlock births. One of the most effective things the State can do is adopt general policies and positions favoring marriage and the stability of two-parent homes. For instance, the State could encourage a public service ad campaign espousing the benefits of marriage. Given the high social costs associated with divorce and out-of-wedlock births, dollars expended on such a campaign would be money well-spent.
Other possible actions could include changes in no-fault divorce laws, better enforcement of child support laws, and revamping school curricula to ensure that the benefits of marriage and costs of divorce are fairly covered. In the private sector, businesses should be encouraged to become "pro-parenting" by doing such things as allowing flex time so that at least one parent can be home when the kids arrive after school. Churches and communities can also play vital roles by providing more parent surrogates for the parentless. Where parents are missing or unwilling to uphold their responsibilities, mentoring programs should be supported. Research has also shown that church involvement drastically reduces the likelihood of children from broken homes falling into the dangerous behaviors that beset many of their peers. Churches can further help by instituting pre-marital counseling and taking a strong stand against divorce and infidelity. It will take an integrated approach such as this to reverse the devastating effects of a culture that has devalued marriage.
>>I think that the welfare state and over zealous child support laws have caused much of this. Why should a woman bother staying with her baby's daddy if she can do just as well financially (or even better) without him?<<
For the good of the child perhaps???
I don't think the decision to have children out-of-wedlock is based on economics. I think it's based on the self-serving desire of the mother to fill a void in her life, and the self-serving desire of the father to have unprotected, irresponsible sex.
Has a Hate Crime been committed?
Everything you said is true but it doesn't necessarily mean it has anything to do with this case. Until you know that all the perpetrators were born out-of-wedlock, or that all the people who cheered them on were born out-of-wedlock, then you're just dealing in assumptions. What if it turns out that one of the perps or cheerers has his father at home? Would that change your opinion?
Look at post 333. Someone bounces in and, probably sarcastically, wonders if a hate crime has been committed. He's hoping to have something to throw in the liberal's faces. He's almost wishing that it was a white girl. That's what the libs race-consciousness about everything has led to, and that's what I've been trying to fight, as mentioned in my original post.
If you are saying that fatherlessness is a bad thing for society, and has been horrible for blacks, I'm right there with you. But if you're saying that something like this couldn't be committed by white kids, we'll have to part company.
>>If you are saying that fatherlessness is a bad thing for society, and has been horrible for blacks, I'm right there with you. But if you're saying that something like this couldn't be committed by white kids, we'll have to part company.<<
For the record...when I FIRST heard this story without any of the details...my INITIAL assumption was that everyone involved was WHITE. Sociopaths come in all colors, and abhorrent teen behavior knows no racial bounds.
My only point is that the ROOT cause of this type of behavior...not ALWAYS, but LARGELY...is illegitimacy and fatherlessness...behavior that is endemic to the black community. And while I agree that the focus should NOT be on the race of the perps, I sincerely believe that it is not possible to openly address the topic of illegitimacy without any mention of race...especially because the mere mention of illegitimacy will almost certainly draw instant accusations of racism FROM the black community.
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