Last Saturday, Baltimore celebrated the 2016
African-American festival. As the celebration continued, I began to reminisce
on the conditions of the black family in America. My conclusion was that while
we may claim that discrimination still exists in America, the blacks contribute
a lot to their current problems. Hence, it is not always smart to blame the
whites or the police each time a black person trips over a banana peel. For
instance, if Freddie Gray had stayed away from crime, he will still be alive
today.
Each time people talk about the situation of the black Americans(or
African-Americans), words like ‘poverty’, ‘single mothers’, ‘drugs’, ‘crime’
‘racism’, ‘white supremacy’ and ‘discrimination’ pop up. After celebrating the
2016 African-American festival last weekend, it is time for blacks (for your
information, I am black too) to realize that they have a big problem, which
is that their ‘entitlement’ mindset (I have the right to this or the right to
that, and so on), their dependency culture and the breakdown of the black
family is at the heart of the terrible conditions they face in America. As
soon as they start to realize that their destiny lies entirely in their own
hands, their situation will begin to change.
This does not mean that blacks in America do not encounter
institutional challenges in their lives. Far from it! For instance, the
Baltimore riots of 2015 were sparked by the death of Freddie Gray, a black man
in police custody.1 However, the underlying cause of the riots was
more complex than that: it is a built-up hostility against the establishment
who, the blacks believed, have betrayed them.
Broadly speaking, many Americans feel a confused sense of guilt each
time media reports and activists make public the problems of poor black neighborhoods
in America. This is because they are unsure whether the persistence of crime
and poverty in these black neighborhoods is in some way their fault or the
fault of the residents of the affected neighborhoods. For instance, it is true
that the police are sometimes racist. On the other hand, there are cases of
tensions between blacks and cops even in cities with black mayors, black police
chiefs, and a mostly non-white police force, such as Baltimore City. This proved
that the police and government functionaries are not always racists. As a matter of fact, shortly after last year’s
Baltimore riots, six police officers were indicted for abusing Freddie Gray and
on charges that include second-degree murder. Of these, three were black
officers.2
About fifty-one years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a former bureaucrat
in the U.S. Department of Labor, made a bold and controversial attempt to
explain what has gone wrong in America’s inner cities, which are mainly
occupied by the black Americans. In his report at the time, popularly known as “The Negro Family: The Case for National
Action”, Moynihan argued that the lingering effects of two centuries of
slavery had significantly weakened and destabilized the black family in
America. At the time of the release of the Moynihan report, about 25 percent of
black babies were born to unmarried mothers. According to him, family
instability was the main cause of many other problems faced by black families,
from crime to poverty.3
Fifty-one years after the publication of the report, there is still
little improvement in the situations faced by black Americans. When viewed
in the light of the predictors of success in America(such as education,
employment, life expectancy, the general standard of living, and so on), black Americans
still fares badly. Basically, if African-American’s black community and
neighborhoods were a separate country, it would have a higher proportion of its
citizens behind bars than anywhere on earth, a worse life expectancy than
Mexico, and a worse homicide rate than Ivory Coast.4 In spite of
this overall America still has the richest and the most successful
populations of blacks of African descent in the world.
Not only that: today, America is not as racist as it was during
Moynihan’s day, when interracial marriage was illegal in 19 states of the
country. America also has as a black president – Barack Obama. And it is a
known fact that President Obama won the largest share of white support of any
Democrat in any two-man race since 1976.5 The type of census forms
we have in America today allows people to identify themselves as white and
black too. About 2 million people did so in 2010, which is a significant
improvement compared to what we have in the segregation era.
Yet an updated Moynihan report will definitely acknowledge the fact that
the conditions of white Americans is still better than that of the blacks. More
than four decades after the publication of his report in 1965, the proportion
of African-American babies born outside marriage has exceeded 72 percent.6
According to the FBI, while the crime rate in America has fallen in the past
two decades(a situation that cast some doubt on Moynihan’s claim on the link
between single-parenting and disorder), black Americans are still eight times
more likely to be murdered than whites. Also, black Americans are seven times
more likely to commit murder than whites.7 A large number of
black men in their 30s (about one-third of them) have been in prison. In
addition, blacks are less socially mobile than whites, and they are also
less likely to graduate from college.8
In the past, historians disagreed with Moynihan’s claim that linked slavery with the fragility of the
black family; but many of them now believe in this theory. There is documentary
evidence that every black population in Americas today has low rates of
two-parent families.9 Certainly, we do not expect a race or a group
that have many generations in which they are not permitted to have a
relationship, in which they have no custodial rights to their children or
spouse and their family members can be sold away, not to disintegrate? Yet what
happened in the 19th century alone cannot provide the most reliable
explanation of why the modern-day black families have become so fragmented
since the 1960s; nor why the proportion of white children born out of wedlock
has grown as high as the black ones. This means that in as much as slavery may
have started the dissolution of the black family, something else must have
worsened the problem.
Some argue that welfare should be blamed for the disintegration of the
black family, simply because the nationwide decline in marriage in America
began at around the same time as Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs. Social conservatives lament that for many American
families, the welfare check(cheque) has replaced the male breadwinners, making
them unneeded and irrelevant members of the family. To make things worse, even
those single mothers who chose to tie the knot with their men are often
penalized by the welfare department, since the addition of a father’s income to
the household total income may cause their welfare benefits to be
withdrawn. Some studies, however, had looked
at how marriage varies between states with different rules on eligibility for
Medicaid – one of the largest welfare programs in America. These studies failed
to find a link between welfare and the disintegration of black families in
America.10 This does not mean that welfare played no role in
dissolving America’s black families. Indeed, welfare does have some effects,
but it’s not the main thing.
Fragmentation nation
Some experts argue that the collapse of the black family is largely
caused by the slumping wages earned by unskilled black men. Since the wages of
the unskilled black men are low, they are less attractive as mates to the
ladies. The problem with this argument is that, like the previous one, it can
only be a partial explanation. Generally speaking, Americans of all stripes are
more likely to get married if their incomes rise. But, even among the high income and middle-class Americans, in terms of marriage and staying married, black families look
different from white ones. The percentage of black women with advanced degrees that are single mothers is higher than the percentage of single white women
with advanced degrees. To put this in
perspective, the percentage of single black women with advanced degrees is approximately equivalent to that of single white women with a high
school diploma. According to the available published evidence, when black families income rises above
$200,000 per year, the gap between them and the white families disappears.11
However, only a tiny minority of the black population reaches that income
level.
Low marriage rate among African-Americans can also be explained by
another important factor: the black men are basically ‘missing in action.’ By
this, I mean that many of them have either died early(almost every night, our
news media carry breaking news of shootouts involving mainly black men and or
black gangs) or are in prison. According to the New York Times, for every 100 non-incarcerated African-American
women aged 25-54, there are only about 83 black men. This is a sharp contrast
of what we have for the white population, which hardly has any gap at all: for
every 100 non-incarcerated white women, there are 99 white men.12
A study of inner-city single mothers by Kathy Edin, a sociologist at
John Hopkins University revealed some astonishing results. Many of the single
mothers she interviewed during the study told her that having a baby helped
them to hold on to a boyfriend and to have a purpose in life. The men he spoke
to during the study told her that fatherhood can be a source of pride.13
That may be scant comfort for the children of such unions.
It is only a slight exaggeration
to say that growing up in a single-parent family is not a good experience for most
children. Researchers at Princeton and Columbia universities run a program
known as the ‘Fragile Families’ study.14 Under this program, they examined
how children born to single mothers fare. According to their recent analysis,
about 30 percent of the children born to single mothers have had two or more
father figures in their homes by the time they are five years old. At a 40 percent
poverty rate, the households headed by single mothers are poorer than that
headed by two-parent, where the poverty rate is only 9 percent. If we consider
the type of neighborhoods where most black families live, it is only natural to
assume that the percentages will be higher for the black population.
It is worth bearing in mind that most of the black Americans who live
below the poverty line are the left-behinds of two great internal migrations.
The first internal migration, in which a large number of blacks moved from the south
to the north occurred in the early 20th century. The migrating black
population left behind people in the Mississippi Delta, and to this day, that
part of America has remained the poorest region in the country. More recently,
a second migration is going on. Lots of people are moving from the northern
cities to the southern ones. Georgia, for instance, has attracted more black
migrants than any other state in the past two decades. With this small exodus
of blacks, many blacks are left behind in highly segregated northern cities. A
good example of the areas with a significant population of the left-behinds is
West Baltimore, where 96 percent of blacks live.15 The surprising
thing is that of all the ethnic groups in America, the African-Americans are
the least likely to move even though a large number of them live in the most
benighted places in the country.
Other left-behind neighborhoods can be found in New York, Milwaukee,
Chicago, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Detroit, among others. These places
have an interesting history: black migrants were funneled into them in the mid-20th
century under racist housing policies. The first city to formalize residential
segregation by race was Baltimore. After Baltimore, the other cities soon
followed.
In 1942, about 84 percent of white Americans told pollsters the Negros
should be placed in separate sections of major cities. The fact that that was a
period when black GIS are preparing to go to war did not change their opinion
in that regard. De jure racial segregation is now old news in America, and
since 1970 de facto segregation has declined. However, the rate of decline
varies from city to city. For instance, on a scale where "0" means blacks are
evenly distributed and "100" means they live completely separately(and anything
above 60 is high), Chicago scores 76, New York 78 and Milwaukee 82.16
A Baltimore native(an African-American) who asked not to be named in
this article grew up in one of the affected neighborhoods. He basically grew up
in a house passed down by his grandmother to his mother. According to him, his
neighborhood is one of those localities where gunfire began as soon as the sunset. His was the type of neighborhood in Baltimore City where people throw big
parties when someone gets out of jail, but do nothing when a resident graduates
from college. He recalls one particular night of terror: that night he started
hearing shots in the street outside but did not bother to look outside, only to
discover the next morning that his best friend’s cousin had been killed.
Another friend of his was also shot to death in a nearby basketball court for
no clear reason. Fortunately, he was among the lucky ones: he graduated from
college with a bachelor’s degree in education and is now one of the best
teachers in Baltimore city.
Life stories such as his are not common. As was reported in The Economist, Karl Alexander and his
colleagues at John Hopkins University conducted a study in which they followed
790 six-year-olds who entered Baltimore public schools in 1982 for 22 years.
The results of their study were lamentable: only about 4 percent of the kids in
low-income families where the parents had a combined total of ten years’ schooling
graduated from college.17
The house which the Baltimore native I mentioned earlier inherited from
his mother now has more than ten boarded-up properties for neighbors. In some
areas such as West Baltimore, whole blocks have gone. Not only that, a large number
of houses is worth nothing, particularly those which the owners owe property
taxes. Overall, the crime rate in Baltimore City, where the blacks comprised of
62.9 percent of the population,20 is high. According to the Baltimore Sun, by the end of 2015, the
homicide rate in Baltimore City topped 30-40 per month.21 Most of
the homicides occurred in West Baltimore, where the majority of the
residents(about 44,000) were black.22
The gap between the incomes of black and white families is large
enough. However, the wealth gap is even larger. I will use the median income of
these two groups as an illustration: According to the data published by the Pew Research Center, a think tank, the median white families has net assets of
about $141,900 in 2013; while the median black family has a paltry $11,000.23
It should be noted here that wealth gaps are nearly always bigger than income
gaps, for obvious reasons: people who earn more can save more. For the black
families, this problem is often worsened by the absence of fathers. Generally
speaking, a one-parent family with the same income as a two-parent family often
spends more of its extra income on child care.
Under such circumstances, saving money is extremely hard. This explains
why it is harder for black families to buy a house than white families of the
same income. It also explains why black university students rack up larger
debts than their white counterparts. Only about 40 percent of black students
who enrolled in colleges complete a four-year degree in six years. For whites,
the proportion is 63 percent.24 In some cases, some black students
need to look after a sibling or work to support their families. In others, they
cannot afford the books or the bus fare to attend classes. One black lady I
know said it all: she started off wanting to be a nurse. But now all she’s
concerned about is how to eat the next day.
Make a new plan, Shawntae
This highlights a deeper question: suppose the black Americans in the
worst neighborhoods were given a chance to move out? How about if they are
provided with more opportunities to better their lives? The answer is that these
have already been done in many places. In my life, I have never seen a country
that has as many generous social programs for helping the poor as America. Just
think of food stamps, cash assistance, grants for college education, housing
programs for the poor, and so on, and you will begin to see my point. For
instance, after they were taken to court in 1966 for building all its public
housing in areas that were wholly black, the Chicago city government decided to
do something to compensate the affected population: it provided vouchers for
about 7,500 families to move to nicer (and whiter) neighborhoods of the city
and its suburbs. The state of the beneficiary families was studied 15-20 years
later, with good results: the families affected still live in their new
neighborhoods. Not only that, their children were attending better schools and
doing much better when compared to the
children of those families who stayed behind.25
The federal government tried to copy this scheme in other cities after
the Los Angeles riots of 1992. The results were mixed: those who moved out of
public housing in crime-infested neighborhoods showed lower rates of diabetes
than those who remained. In addition, the mothers who moved showed an increase
in happiness that can be compared to the effects of the antidepressant called
Prozac. However, after moving, their children’s performance was not better than
that of those whose mothers stayed behind, and the mothers did not get better
jobs.26
I do not believe that it is the duty of the government to put broken
black families together. Of course, the families need government support to
stay together, but the bulk of the work must be done by the families
themselves. To be frank, the white folk did not make the black people to have
babies when they were still teenagers and could barely wash their school
uniforms; they also did not force the black folks to drop out of school or to
engage in criminal activities. This means that a lot of the problems the blacks
are facing today are the results of the decision-making they are responsible
for. In my view, black families are stronger and made a lot more progress during the
segregation era than they have in this age of modern liberalism. Just think of
it: it is during that time that strong and well-respected black people like
Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Booker T. Washington, and Jesse Jackson, among many
others, emerged. Also, the black culture of that time was nowhere near as
self-destructive as it is today. This simple fact alone belies the claims being
made by many black people I spoke to that white supremacy, the government or even
discrimination is the root cause of their current problems.
It is true: the whites may bear the burden of oppressing the blacks over
the years through slavery and institutionalized racism(and shame to them for
doing that) but the whites deserves some credits for ending such practices as
well. I said this because many whites also fought, editorialized, protested,
organized, and even voted to end these practices in America. Thus, fairness
compels me to admit that the whites or the government did not cause the decline
of the good black culture, and hence the whites or the government cannot fix
it. In other words, it is the duty of the black people to decide where they
want to be, decide the steps they need to take to get there, and then get to
work. Blaming all their problems and ills on the whites or the government, to
me, is nothing more than a way to avoid accepting responsibility for their own
actions and decisions. One thing is for certain: they can change their
collective fate if they take those three simple steps. In contrast, their
current circumstances will not change if they don’t take those simple steps. It
is as simple as that. All the wailing and blaming of the white people or the
government, or even the police won’t make any difference in their lives.
References
1Black America: The Fire and
the Fuel. (2015, May 9). The Economist.
Retrieved June 29, 2016 from http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21650533-what-dead-white-man-can-teach-america-about-inner-city-decay-fire-and-fuel
2Ibid, p.23
3Moynihan, D. P. (1997). The Negro Family: The Case for
National Action (1965). African
American Male Research.
4Black America: The Fire and
the Fuel, op. cit., p.23
5Kuhn, D.P.(2008). Exit Polls: How Obama Won. Politico. Retrieved June 29, 2016 from http://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/exit-polls-how-obama-won-015297
6Jacobson L.(2013). CNN’s Don Lemon Says More Than 72 Percent
of African-American Births Are Out of Wedluck. Politifact. Retrieved June 29, 2016 from http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jul/29/don-lemon/cnns-don-lemon-says-more-72-percent-african-americ/
7Saxena V. (2015). Fact: Blacks Murder More
Whites Than Whites Murder Blacks. Downtrend.
Retrieved June 29, 2016 from http://downtrend.com/vsaxena/blacks-murder-more-whites-than-whites-murder-blacks
8Black America: The Fire and
the Fuel, op. cit., p.24
9Williams, W.E. (2015). The True Black
Tragedy: Illegitimacy Rate of Nearly 75%. CNS
News. Retrieved June 30, 2016 from http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/walter-e-williams/true-black-tragedy-illegitimacy-rate-nearly-75
10Black America: The Fire and the Fuel, op. cit., p.24-26
11Ibid
12Wolfers J., Leonhardt D.,
& Quealy K. (2015, April 20). The
Upshort: 1.5 Million Missing Black Men. New York Times. Retrieved July
7, 2016 from
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missing-black-men.html?_r=0
13Black America: The Fire and the Fuel, op. cit., p.24-26
14Ibid
15Ibid
16Ibid
17Ibid
20Baltimore City, Maryland (2015). Quick Facts.
U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved July 4,
2016 from https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/24510
21Rector, K. (2016, January 1). Deadliest Year in
Baltimore History Ends With 344 Homicides. Baltimore Sun. Retrieved July
4, 2016 from http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-deadliest-year-20160101-story.html
22City Data (2016). West Baltimore Neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland: 21223, 21216 and
21217 Detailed Profile. Retrieved July 4, 2016 from http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/West-Baltimore-Baltimore-MD.html
23Kochhar R. & Fry R. (2014). Fact Tank:
News in the Numbers. Pew Research Center.
Retrieved July 4, 2016 from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-recession/
24Black America: The Fire and the Fuel, op. cit., p.24-26
25Ibid
26Ibid
