A very good article on the history of the decline of the black family, written in 2005, is here.
The Moynihan Report identified the problem of black family structure and breakdown as it relates to poverty. However, leftists denied the report, attacked it and invented false theories that received publicity and political support. The linked article reminds us of the false and harmful theories championing such things as single-parent families.
The leftist-Democrat approach, the welfare approach, threw money at the problem and subsidized its ill effects. It spread the problem to white and Hispanic families.
The fact remains that a nuclear two-parent family is essential to a good and productive life for most of us. The fact remains that a solid black family structure far too often remains wanting, and the results are dire.
Do democratic socialists, like Ocasio-Cortez, like Pressley, like Tlaib, like Omar, Warren, Sanders, Harris, Biden and others have a correct understanding of the problem of family breakdown, which would lead them to propose policies that might actually help the people of color they claim to speak for?
Absolutely not! They see the problem as one of power. They see it as a problem of class. They blame a bloated defense budget. They blame corporate tax breaks and privileges. They see the problem as one of justice, of racism and inequality. They blame slavery, Jim Crow and segregation, with the idea that reparations by shoveling money into communities will solve the problems of low income, crime, out-of-wedlock births, teen pregnancies, fatherless families, dope, bad education, and alcoholism.
Power, class, and racism are not to blame. Therefore, they can’t be the answer. If they were to blame, we would have seen the family breakdown relative to whites in the pre-1950 era, but we don’t. It’s before 1950 when segregation and Jim Crow were strongest and when we’d most strongly see the effects of power, class and racism on the black family structure; but we do not see this. Furthermore, it’s after the introduction of the welfare state that we do see the family breakdown.
The Pentagon’s spending is not an obvious candidate to blame. National defense expenditures as a percentage of GDP have fallen between 1950 and the present.
The federal welfare state began in 1935. Employment in World War 2 temporarily postponed the enticements of welfare programs. By 1950 and thereafter, its ill effects began to show up in lower marriage rates. Walter Williams plausibly connects the welfare state to black family breakdown. Thomas Sowell and others agree.
In sum, democratic socialists and their sympathizers are on the wrong track in their family policies. They’re blaming the shrinkage in two-parent nuclear families and other measures of family breakdown on the wrong causes. If we adopted their policies, they would delay real solutions that involve altering incentives. They’d make the problems worse. They certainly would not resolve them. The welfare state and its regulations need to be dismantled, not extended.
2:12 pm on July 24, 2019
