A sobering report by Joy Jones in the Washington Post on the demise of marriage among blacks.
[...] when I taught a career exploration class for sixth-graders at an elementary school in Southeast Washington. I was pleasantly surprised when the boys in the class stated that being a good father was a very important goal to them, more meaningful than making money or having a fancy title.
"That's wonderful!" I told my class. "I think I'll invite some couples in to talk about being married and rearing children."
"Oh, no," objected one student. "We're not interested in the part about marriage. Only about how to be good fathers."
And that's when the other boy chimed in, speaking as if the words left a nasty taste in his mouth: "Marriage is for white people."
He's right. At least statistically. The marriage rate for African Americans has been dropping since the 1960s, and today, we have the lowest marriage rate of any racial group in the United States.
"Since the 1960s"...That date is no coincidence. What we're seeing are the unintended consequences of the anti-poverty approach that began in the 1960s. Government intervention that eliminates the need for traditional societal structures such as family and work might have been done in the name of compassion or social justice, but the long term effects have been terribly destructive. Jones gives an indication of how bad it's gotten:
I was stunned to learn that a black child was more likely to grow up living with both parents during slavery days than he or she is today, according to sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin.
It's not just the black community that can look forward to this cultural devastation. Jones continues:
In his 2003 book, "Mismatch: The Growing Gulf between Women and Men," Andrew Hacker noted that the structure of white families is evolving in the direction of that of black families of the 1960s. In 1960, 67 percent of black families were headed by a husband and wife, compared to 90.9 percent for whites. By 2000, the figure for white families had dropped to 79.8 percent. Births to unwed white mothers were 22.5 percent in 2001, compared to 2.3 percent in 1960. So my student who thought marriage is for white people may have to rethink that in the future.
The modern, "values-neutral" approach to societal issues has proven a disaster. We're unwilling to call misogynistic "Hip-Hop" filth what it is for fear of being "judgmental." We don't expect young people to be chaste and follow abstinence because it's "unrealistic." We're willing to stretch the definition of "marriage" to fit just about any combination imaginable, yet aren't willing to insist on traditional marriage--including an expectation that couples stay together during the hard times. If all this is unrealistic, then here's "Reality:" abusive young men from fatherless families spending half their life in prison and abused young women becoming single mothers, raising the next generation of prison inmates and single mothers.
We need to take a stand. We should do so charitably, out of love for those who have made wrong choices. But we have to be willing to show what we believe by the example of our lives, and pass those beliefs on to the next generation.