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Race, Family, Crime and Poverty

Submitted by Roanman on Sat, 02/06/2010 - 09:14

Alright, here's the story:

Black People on average,  earn less money than Asians, White People, Hispanics and American Indians (pretty close), in that order. This is true regardless of the level of educational attainment. Black People on average are less well educated than White People, although they are on average better educated than Hispanics.

Up until recently, in a given year, more White People (about 38.8%) than Blacks (about 37.2%) have collected welfare benefits. 

Black People make up about 12% of the American People.

Black People are imprisoned at a significantly higher rate than Whites.

Blacks commit a significantly higher percentage of violent crimes relative to their percentage of the total population (FBI crime statistics combine Whites and Hispanics into the same group, called White). Asians on average commit fewer violent criminal acts than anybody.  

The right seemingly loves to reference a 1990 report that I can't find (but am inclined to believe exists) from The Progressive Policy Institute research arm of the Democratic Leadership Council that states the “relationship between crime and one-parent families” is “so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low-income and crime." 

Additionally, children from biological two parent families on average miss fewer school days, have higher grade point averages, and are more likely to attend college. Of those who attend college, children from biological two parent families are more likely to graduate than children from both single parent families and children from biological/stepparent families.

They are also far less likely to live in poverty and far less likely to engage in criminal behavior. 

As an aside, children from single father families, father/stepmother families and mother/stepfather families have consistently lower educational attainments than children from both two biological parent and single mother families. The Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services, in a 1994 report entitled “Family Status of Delinquents in Juvenile Correctional Facilities in Wisconsin,” (which despite being referenced  like crazy, has seemingly disappeared from the web) found that only 13 percent came from families in which the biological mother and father were married to each other.  By contrast, 33 percent had parents who were either divorced or separated, and 44 percent had parents who had never married.

The 1987 Survey of Youth in Custody,  published by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, found that 70 percent of youth in state reform institutions across the U.S. had grown up in single- or no-parent situations. Black children under age 18 are significantly less likely than other children to live with two married parents, with only 35 percent living with two married parents in 2005.

The percentage increased from 33 percent in 1995 to 39 percent in 2002 before declining to 35 percent in 2005.

In 1965 the Office of Policy Planning and Research of the United States Department of Labor published a report titled  The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, later commonly known as the Moynihan Report, after Daniel Patrick Moynihan then Assistant Secretary of Labor and future three term Democratic Senator from New York, Ambassador to India, and United States Representative to the United Nations, which stated as follows:

"The United States is approaching a new crisis in race relations.  In the decade that began with the school desegregation decision of the Supreme Court, and ended with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the demand of Negro Americans for full recognition of their civil rights was finally met. The effort, no matter how savage and brutal, of some State and local governments to thwart the exercise of those rights is doomed. The nation will not put up with it — least of all the Negroes.

The present moment will pass.  In the meantime, a new period is beginning. In this new period the expectations of the Negro Americans will go beyond civil rights. Being Americans, they will now expect that in the near future equal opportunities for them as a group will produce roughly equal results, as compared with other groups. This is not going to happen. Nor will it happen for generations to come unless a new and special effort is made.

There are two reasons. First, the racist virus in the American blood stream still afflicts us: Negroes will encounter serious personal prejudice for at least another generation.  Second, three centuries of sometimes unimaginable mistreatment have taken their toll on the Negro people. The harsh fact is that as a group, at the present time, in terms of ability to win out in the competitions of American life, they are not equal to most of those groups with which they will be competing. Individually, Negro Americans reach the highest peaks of achievement. 

But collectively, in the spectrum of American ethnic and religious and regional groups, where some get plenty and some get none, where some send eighty percent of their children to college and others pull them out of school at the 8th grade, Negroes are among the weakest. The fundamental problem, in which this is most clearly the case, is that of family structure.

The evidence — not final, but powerfully persuasive — is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling. A middle class group has managed to save itself, but for vast numbers of the unskilled, poorly educated city working class the fabric of conventional social relationships has all but disintegrated. There are indications that the situation may have been arrested in the past few years, but the general post war trend is unmistakable. So long as this situation persists, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself. 

The thesis of this paper is that these events, in combination, confront the nation with a new kind of problem. Measures that have worked in the past, or would work for most groups in the present, will not work here. A national effort is required that will give a unity of purpose to the many activities of the Federal government in this area, directed to a new kind of national goal: the establishment of a stable Negro family structure. 

In a word, a national effort towards the problems of Negro Americans must be directed towards the question of family structure. The object should be to strengthen the Negro family so as to enable it to raise and support its members as do other families. After that, how this group of Americans chooses to run its affairs, take advantage of its opportunities, or fail to do so, is none of the nation's business. The fundamental importance and urgency of restoring the Negro American Family structure has been evident for some time." 

E. Franklin Frazier had already put it most succinctly in 1950:

"As the result of family disorganization a large proportion of Negro children and youth have not undergone the socialization which only the family can provide. The disorganized families have failed to provide for their emotional needs and have not provided the discipline and habits which are necessary for personality development. Because the disorganized family has failed in its function as a socializing agency, it has handicapped the children in their relations to the institutions in the community. Moreover, family disorganization has been partially responsible for a large amount of juvenile delinquency and adult crime among Negroes. Since the widespread family disorganization among Negroes has resulted from the failure of the father to play the role in family life required by American society, the mitigation of this problem must await those changes in the Negro and American society which will enable the Negro father to play the role required of him."

The Moynihan report was not greeted with great enthusiasm

45 years later.............