Joy Jones is obviously educated, articulate and literate and she's got the vernacular all wrong. Listen for two minutes to any one of the multitude downloading their little minnie-me's and what you'll hear is an absence of the proper possessive, in effect: baby daddy. "My baby-daddy". It's illustrative of all that is wrong with their 'culture' that they don't even know 'baby' needs an ess or a father married to their mother.
The destruction of the black family is traceable directly to the liberals who developed, promoted and presereved the Great Society welfare programs. Years ago I read an analysis that said up through the 1950s the black 2-parent family was just as common and just as stable as in white society. But the Great Society "welfare" programs paid women for babies only if there were no man in the house, and paid them more than the average (young, newly-married) black man could bring home after taxes, expenses, union dues, etc. The women made rational economic choices and kicked the men out in order to keep the welfare checks coming.
As the relatively early birth ages that are seen in the black community, we've now had fully three generations of mama-only families, teaching girls that getting pregnant and raising children without a husband is normal, and teaching boys that men don't have a place in the home with children. Just changing the welfare rules won't undo three generations of experience very quickly.
Of course, the liberals who have promoted these "welfare" programs over the decades deny any responsibility for the consequences, demanding instead that they be judged by their "intentions" to "help" people.
Ms. Jones speaks of only one segment of her culture: women who have avoided the trap of juvenile child bearing, and consequently escaped the consequences on her education and economic status.
A sociological article I read about 15 years ago talked in detail about the social dynamics of child bearing for the inner city poor.
In gross summary, the attitudes of teenagers was that bearing children was one of the few paths open to them for status and self esteem, and that the peer pressures tended to work towards that end, reinforcing the cycle of poverty.
Completely absent was any significant message they deemed credible to "avoid teen pregnancy, stay in school, and sort out your future".
These kids had already accepted and internalized a bleak outlook for their future, a self fulfilling prophecy.
LBJ' Great Society continues to echo down the years, damaging not only the black family and other minority families, but damaging America as well. White families were not immune to the fact that the government might pay an unmarried woman with children more than their father might be able to bring home, at least on a temporary basis, and more kids meant a bigger check.
But the argument that single-parent families disproportionately hurt boys is suspect.
Depends who you ask. I took a cultural anthropology class several years ago, and the professor made the following proposition: girls instinctively know how to become women, but boys have to learn to become men. In other words, girls tend to grow up to be functioning members of society under most circumstances, but a strong male role model is necessary to teach boys how to constructively channel their masculinity. The extended family, consisting of the father, grandfathers, uncles, etc., is instrumental in raising boys up to be responsible men. In the black community, it's mostly women who raise the children -- the mother, grandmothers, aunts, etc. There's no doubt that daughters need fathers, too, but the condition of black males today tends to support the above proposition.
I lost my father and grandfather when I was nine. All the other "male role model relatives" lived over a hundred miles away, so there was no one to take their places. Later, my first boss took over as a role model with me and with my two brothers. He is still a revered friend at age 73. Looking back later, it was obvious what a void there was for about six years and how well he filled that void.
Gee, DJ, that's rough. I'm glad someone was there to bridge the gap. Don't know how many people could say that of their bosses.
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>
JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2006/03/in-re-culture.html (7 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
Joy Jones is obviously educated, articulate and literate and she's got the vernacular all wrong. Listen for two minutes to any one of the multitude downloading their little minnie-me's and what you'll hear is an absence of the proper possessive, in effect: baby daddy. "My baby-daddy". It's illustrative of all that is wrong with their 'culture' that they don't even know 'baby' needs an ess or a father married to their mother.
The destruction of the black family is traceable directly to the liberals who developed, promoted and presereved the Great Society welfare programs. Years ago I read an analysis that said up through the 1950s the black 2-parent family was just as common and just as stable as in white society. But the Great Society "welfare" programs paid women for babies only if there were no man in the house, and paid them more than the average (young, newly-married) black man could bring home after taxes, expenses, union dues, etc. The women made rational economic choices and kicked the men out in order to keep the welfare checks coming.
As the relatively early birth ages that are seen in the black community, we've now had fully three generations of mama-only families, teaching girls that getting pregnant and raising children without a husband is normal, and teaching boys that men don't have a place in the home with children. Just changing the welfare rules won't undo three generations of experience very quickly.
Of course, the liberals who have promoted these "welfare" programs over the decades deny any responsibility for the consequences, demanding instead that they be judged by their "intentions" to "help" people.
Ms. Jones speaks of only one segment of her culture: women who have avoided the trap of juvenile child bearing, and consequently escaped the consequences on her education and economic status.
A sociological article I read about 15 years ago talked in detail about the social dynamics of child bearing for the inner city poor.
In gross summary, the attitudes of teenagers was that bearing children was one of the few paths open to them for status and self esteem, and that the peer pressures tended to work towards that end, reinforcing the cycle of poverty.
Completely absent was any significant message they deemed credible to "avoid teen pregnancy, stay in school, and sort out your future".
These kids had already accepted and internalized a bleak outlook for their future, a self fulfilling prophecy.
LBJ' Great Society continues to echo down the years, damaging not only the black family and other minority families, but damaging America as well. White families were not immune to the fact that the government might pay an unmarried woman with children more than their father might be able to bring home, at least on a temporary basis, and more kids meant a bigger check.
But the argument that single-parent families disproportionately hurt boys is suspect.
Depends who you ask. I took a cultural anthropology class several years ago, and the professor made the following proposition: girls instinctively know how to become women, but boys have to learn to become men. In other words, girls tend to grow up to be functioning members of society under most circumstances, but a strong male role model is necessary to teach boys how to constructively channel their masculinity. The extended family, consisting of the father, grandfathers, uncles, etc., is instrumental in raising boys up to be responsible men. In the black community, it's mostly women who raise the children -- the mother, grandmothers, aunts, etc. There's no doubt that daughters need fathers, too, but the condition of black males today tends to support the above proposition.
Sarah:
I think your professor was dead right.
I lost my father and grandfather when I was nine. All the other "male role model relatives" lived over a hundred miles away, so there was no one to take their places. Later, my first boss took over as a role model with me and with my two brothers. He is still a revered friend at age 73. Looking back later, it was obvious what a void there was for about six years and how well he filled that void.
It was also the best job I ever had.
Gee, DJ, that's rough. I'm glad someone was there to bridge the gap. Don't know how many people could say that of their bosses.
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>