The Breakdown of the Black Family

The Atlantic ^ | Oct 4, 2015 | Kay Hymowitz

[TroutStalker]

With the publication of “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration” Ta-Nehisi Coates has added an elegant and forceful voice to the growing frustration with the inefficacy and injustice of America’s criminal-justice system. Mandatory-sentencing laws, the War on Drugs, juvenile-justice sentences that seem to do more to create than deter criminals, racial arrest and sentencing disparities: All are ready for a tough national cross-examination.

But even in the unlikely event that Washington and state legislatures successfully adapt the nation’s crime policies to a safer, more racially sensitive era, the nation will still look around to find more black men in prison than it might expect or want. There’s a simple reason for that, one that Coates himself notes: Relative to other groups, blacks commit more crimes. To understand why is to tackle some very hard-to-talk-about realities of black family life. And on that issue—and despite his announced interest in the topic—Coates has been the opposite of lucid.

Coates puts forward two interconnected, but flawed, theories about mass incarceration. First, he argues that there is no relationship between crime and incarceration rates, pointing his readers to a chart showing two apparently disparate trend lines. The first line shows crime levels rising dramatically after 1960; the second shows the rise in incarceration rates coming some 15 years later. Because of the 15-year gap, Coates concludes something other than a crime wave must have led Americans to lock up so many black men after 1975. “Imprisonment rates actually fell from the 1960s through the early ’70s,” he writes “even as violent crime increased … The incarceration rate rose independent of crime—but not of criminal-justice policy.”

[Mercat]

It was probably almost 20 years ago that I got a call from a black man who was almost in tears. He and his wife had I think 4 kids and his wife had told him that she had gone to the welfare people who had told her that she would have X amount of money in the household if she divorced her husband. It was more than he was bringing home so she was going to kick him out. I was shocked. That’s the cause of the breakdown. My SIL is a retired lactation specialist and she told me years ago that the single moms would come in to deliver their babies and calculate to the penny how much money and other perks that they would get if they went out and got pregnant again. No mention of fathers.

[Uncle Miltie]

[Uncle Miltie]

Moynihan issued his research under the title The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, now commonly known as The Moynihan Report. Moynihan’s report[4] fueled a debate over the proper course for government to take with regard to the economic underclass, especially blacks. Critics on the left attacked it as “blaming the victim”,[5] a slogan coined by psychologist William Ryan.[6] Some suggested that Moynihan was propagating the views of racists[7] because much of the press coverage of the report focused on the discussion of children being born out of wedlock. Despite Moynihan’s warnings, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program included rules for payments only if the “Man [was] out of the house.”[citation needed] Critics said that the nation was paying poor women to throw their husbands out of the house. Moynihan supported Richard Nixon’s idea of a Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI). Daniel Patrick Moynihan had significant discussions concerning a Basic Income Guarantee with Russell B. Long and Louis O. Kelso.

After the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress, Moynihan agreed that correction was needed for a welfare system that possibly encouraged women to raise their children without fathers: “The Republicans are saying we have a helluva problem, and we do.”[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Patrick_Moynihan

[Darteaus94025]

Getting to the root causes:

And before Barack Jr. started banging, he stopped going to school.

And before Barack Jr. stopped going to school, he was lying to his mother.

And before Barack Jr. was lying to his mother, he had no father in the home.

And before Barack Jr. had no father in the home, the Dhimmicrats started giving Mom money to have kids and no dad.

And before Dhimmicrats started giving Mom money to have kids and no dad, Barack Jr. had a dad, a mom, the truth and an education.

[brivette]

money changes everything...

[Darteaus94025]

oh, and no need for Dhimmicrats.

The party of slavery never quit, they just found another way: use your money!

[Iron Munro]

The federal government is the father.

[GOPJ]

Another way liberals broke the back of black fathers was with money for birthing. A pregnant black unmarried teen would be encouraged NOT to marry the father of her child until AFTER the birth because the State would pay for the birth only if she was unmarried. Usually the young people made the decision to wait to save money... but reality being what it is... often the 'father' lost interest by the time the child was born.

[BitWielder1]

The high incarceration rate is a symptom, not a cause, of the breakdown of the black community.
Letting more people out of jail will not improve life for the blacks either, it's not like the ex-cons are suddenly going to turn into providers.
Some may, most of them won't.

[Responsibility2nd]

If you only read four words of this entire article; read these...

blacks commit more crimes

That explains everything.

[Robert357]

bump for refereence

[GOPJ]

Before 1960, when poverty and racism were by all accounts far worse, the black family was considerably more stable. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the large majority of black women were married before they had children. Black children were less likely than whites to grow up in two-parent homes, but only slightly so. It was only after 1960, even as more black men were finding jobs and even as legal discrimination was being dismantled with civil-rights legislation, that the family began to unravel. It was precisely that unexpected disconnect that spurred Daniel Patrick Moynihan to warn that “the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself” in his 1965 report.

Thanks for posting... odd to find this in the Atlantic...

[HiTech RedNeck]

That’s what you call a perverse incentive. We thought they had learned better than this way back with the opening follies of the Great Society. I guess they hadn’t.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The poverty and racism ills that one can do to oneself can be far worse than what can be done to one by others.

[Chode]

and that POS LBJ is never mentioned...

[HiTech RedNeck]

Interesting... did Mr. Obama personally get caught in this perverse incentive scheme himself, or are you just using his name symbolically?

[Feckless]

more racially sensitive

What happened to "Blind Justice"?

[HiTech RedNeck]

I believe it was JFK who said that he would have that [racial slur] “voting Democrat for the next hundred years.”

[DungeonMaster]

Black Wives Matter.