Shortly after I sent Townhall.com’s editor my review of Star Parker’s White Ghetto, I read an op-ed called First comes baby, then comes marriage?, by Maryann Reid. As if the dire statistics in Parker’s book hadn’t depressed me enough, the op-ed disheartened me even more.
Black liberals have serious personal problems with me and my blogging. I write too much about negative things going on in the black community and too little that’s positive, they say.
My typical response was, “Start your own blog and write about positive things,” or “Stop reading my blog if it upsets you so much.” I’d already explained here and there why I blog the way I do, but I decided to confront the question head on.
A post called Do You Hate Black People may give the most straightforward answer to why I focus on certain topics.
Some have argued that as a high-profile and “educated” black blogger, I should do something to uplift blacks instead of always condemning them. I approach the controversy from a totally different perspective. I’m not condemning anyone; my sin is airing dirty laundry in front of a mostly white readership. There are plenty of black bloggers, writers, politicians, educators, etc., writing and talking about positive things going on in the black community. But too many for my taste gloss over what ails us.
Too many avoid the harsh truth. “Racism” is a cop-out and too absurdly childish for serious discussion. That’s why I skip it. You’ll never hear me say or write that racism doesn’t exist; I choose to focus on what we bring on ourselves.
So let’s talk about the scandalously high illegitimacy rate. There are numerous theories floating around about why the black out-of-wedlock birth rate is so high. In one camp, you have your economists arguing about “incentives” and lack of a living wage. In another, you have your “legacy of slavery” crowd who insist that because some slaveowners broke families apart, subsequent generations of blacks repeated the pattern by having babies without the benefit of marriage (never understood that one, given the numbers that indicate otherwise). Others say our ancestors came from a matrilineal society, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with strong matriarchies. I don’t think Africa is the best role model for family life, do you?
(Some say female-headed households may be better for children!)
Back to the op-ed. Reid wrote a novel called Marry Your Baby Daddy. Three unmarried women must marry their “baby daddy” to receive their grandmother’s inheritance. Disappointingly, the publisher chose to highlight a quote calling the book “full of steamy sex scenes” to sell it. But whatever. I’m not endorsing the novel; I hope Reid compliles her research into a thoughtful non-fiction book.
Reid discusses something I’ve blogged about: the weakened stigma against illegitimacy in the black community:
Through my interviews with hundreds of cohabiting but unmarried black couples with children across the economic spectrum, I learned about something we rarely discuss anymore: The motivation from peers or families to get married is gone, and so is the stigma about having a child out of wedlock. In fact, children without married parents have become so common in black communities that the term “baby daddy,” an unwed father usually stereotyped as a ghetto caricature, has gone mainstream.
“Mainstream” is an understatement. It is the norm to see black children without residential fathers. Every time I run across a black child whose parents are married — to each other — I want to burst out in tears of joy. That’s a shame. 
Stigma matters. Stigma is effective. That’s why I make the distinction between widowed, divorced, and unmarried mothers. To mask what’s really going on and remove the shame and righteous judgment against illegitimacy, many prefer to lump unmarried mothers into one category: “single mothers.” It is an insult to women who’ve lost their husbands to death or divorce to equate them with women who didn’t bother to prepare a stable home for their children first.
This isn’t simply about women exercising their “right” to have babies how and with whom they wish. Their choices aren’t isolated events. Weak family formation affects us all. In general, strong families create strong societies. Weak families burden the whole system, social services in particular. People who get married, especially men, are more dedicated to and invested in their children, which is extremely important to a child’s well-being and for society. Children reared in such homes are much better off than children who aren’t.
But these days family instability is funny in popular culture. It is celebrated and emulated. Song after degrading song glorifies sexuality without responsibility. “Baby Mama” and “Baby Daddy” songs, movies, TV shows, and comedy routines are standard fare. What was considered indecent and scandalous is now an insidious, widespread, and everyday reality. There’s at least one generation of blacks who have never and will never know what it’s like to live with two married parents: a mother and a residential, biological father. Sadly, some believe that marriage is unnecessary:
The attitude that marriage is not necessary to nurture and raise our children is actually a new one in the black community. Historically, blacks have valued the institution of marriage and the traditional two- parent household. In 1890, 80 percent of African-American families were headed by two parents, even though many had started life in forced family separation under slavery. Even in the 1960s, when black Americans were in the height of civil rights strife, 23 percent of black babies were born out of wedlock, a modest figure compared with 70 percent today. And today’s single moms aren’t just welfare teens, either. Most out-of-wedlock black babies are being born to women in their 20s and 30s across the economic spectrum.
To argue that female-headed households are not harmful to children, despite formal studies and informal observation to the contrary, is to open yourself to ridicule. I don’t think reasonable people make such claims; they just downplay it. It is my contention that weak family formation has devastated the black community socially, economically, and spiritually, and we’ve only begun to bear the fruit. From the article:
While the stigma against children born out of wedlock has diminished, the impact on community bonds has not. A recent study for the journal Criminology has revealed that “neighborhoods with larger portions of adults who are less ‘invested’ in marriage and residential stability are more likely to see higher rates of assault by African-American males.” Children raised in fatherless homes are more likely to be delinquent, do poorly in school, have lower self-esteem, become chemical abusers, and reproduce the same family pattern in their own lives. In most cases, no matter how strong or diligent a mother may be, children have a subconscious knowledge of what is right and wrong in a family set up. Boys turn to their fathers for their sense of masculinity and manhood. If their dad isn’t around, the streets and group aggression are the next best thing for most.
Those are the typical and most publicized pathologies associated with fatherless homes. The lack of spiritual development is most harmful, and simply going to church every Sunday won’t repair the damage. What can we teach our boys about being godly men when all around them they see no godly men? There are men and women who call themselves “Christians” who have baby after baby out of wedlock. Are we reading the same Bible? What can a father who occasionally sees his son teach him about headship and his place in God’s divine order? What can his father teach him about selfless love, sacrifice, and holiness when the boy doesn’t see him living it?
How can he teach him about financial responsibility and taking care of a home while he’s laying up with his other “baby mama?” And let’s talk about how ungodly and unmanly it is to have another man take up the slack for you. In racial terms, you have courts and government — the “white man” — chasing down black men to compel them to be men and take care of their own children! A disproportionate number of black women are taken care of by the “white man” because black men are taught that being a man means impregnating and abandoning as many women as they can.
And what about the women? I’ve argued in Black Marriage that the fault rests with men and women, not just the men. Although God created men to be leaders and heads of their families, women also have godly responsibilities.
Nothing makes me angrier than to be chastised by Christians who have absolutely nothing to say to those who’ve doomed black children to ungodly living. The condemnation goes not to those who deserve it — the shiftless, the lazy, the permissive, the immoral — but to those who dare name the disgusting thing. Unbelievable.
And this is what really gets my blood boiling: There’s a legion of jackasses who think I’m a dangerous self-hater for blogging about this. They send nasty e-mail and try to leave foul comments on this blog. The ones who consider themselves too sophisticated to send e-mail or comment spend a whole lot of time criticizing my blog posts and write nary a word about the immorality that has gutted the black community and cheated future generations of strong and safe homes.
Brought into this world not of their own accord but by the decisions of their parents, children have a right to be safe and feel loved. They deserve the very best we can give them. Too many black children get the very worst.
If only my critics (and the black community in general) spent as much energy stigmatizing and chastising those responsible for our children’s plight instead of hating on me and blaming “racism” or “economics,” imagine the potential to improve the lives of black children in broken and/or low-income homes — from their general well-being to their academic performances to their spiritual development.
But obsessing over a “black Republican” blogger is easier and safer.
(Image credit: Pacific Products)
Sources:
- A Portrait of the Black Family (PDF)
- The Legacy of Slavery Hustle
- Understanding the Black Family: A guide for Scholarship and Research
- Black Marriage Day
- Divorce Statistics: Effects on Black Community
- The Marriage Movement and the Black Church
- Marriage Market Decisions of Black, Hispanic, and White Women
- Marriage: A social justice issue
- Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States
- Can Married Parents Reduce Crime? (PDF)
- The Age of Unwed Mothers: Is Teen Pregnancy the Problem? (PDF)
- Do Mothers and Fathers Matter? (PDF)
- Welfare reform at 10
Father absence is the bane of the black community, predisposing its children (boys especially, but increasingly girls as well) to school failure, criminal behavior and economic hardship, and to an intergenerational repetition of the grim cycle.
…
The absence of fathers means, as well, that girls lack both a pattern against which to measure the boys who pursue them and an example of sacrificial love between a man and a woman.
…
Interestingly, they blamed the black church for abetting the decline of the black family — by moderating virtually out of existence its once stern sanctions against extramarital sex and childbirth and by accepting the present trends as more or less inevitable.
(Emphasis added)
