Well after 50 years from the end of the Civil War, black Americans in much of the country were not allowed to enter the homes of whites by the front door. Black men could be lynched for looking a white woman in the face. Schools, restaurants even drinking fountains were all segregated.
Today, no such legal discrepancies exist. Yes, fringe actors still show that vestiges of racism remain and maybe always will. Yet even though Americans of all races mingle peaceably, the income gap between white and black Americans stubbornly persists. Racism itself can no longer provide a satisfactory answer.
Educational disparities account for some of the gap. Too many black children are still trapped in inner-city schools, where unionized teachers often can’t manage to educate even one student per school who acquires basic academic skills.
Unfortunately for the students, individuals who graduate from high school with ninth grade academic skills have the lifetime earning potential of a dropout. You can’t fool the real world with a meaningless diploma. It would be astonishing if there weren’t a sizable income gap when such educational inequities exist.
The overwhelming evidence points to fatherless homes as the main driver of black economic stagnation. In 1960, 24 percent of black children were born to single mothers. By 2018 the figure was 70 percent. Overall, 37 percent of black kids live with married parents, compared with 84 percent of Asians and 77 percent of whites.
Families headed by single mothers are five times as likely to live in poverty than those of married couple-headed families. We all know the depressing statistics for fatherless children – the increased incidence of incarceration and drug dependence, the lower probability of educational achievement and the high likelihood they will create single parent-headed families themselves.
It’s neither fair nor accurate to blame black fathers exclusively for this social calamity. In fact, black men are often more attentive fathers than their white counterparts. Black fathers were more likely than others to have a “bathed, dressed, changed or helped their child every day“ according to a National Statistics report.
The problem is not the quality of black fathers but the quantity. Too many black fathers don’t stay to model fatherhood and provide the guidance and structure that children, especially boys, need.
Some critics ascribe this tendency to “black culture“ as if something inherent in blacks is the cause. Others claim that poverty causes weak family structures, not the reverse. But history debunks both contentions.
The institution of the black family emerged from centuries of slavery, poverty and bigotry virtually intact with strong and loyal family structures. By the time of the mid-20th century civil rights movement, family incomes and social standing were also improving. Ironically, it was the Great Society modern welfare state, offering an omnipresent financial incentive for family break-up, that marked the beginning of the decline of the Black family, with all its devastating consequences.
Progressives, especially influential academics, and activists like Black Lives Matter argue that the nuclear family should be dismantled because it is…racist!
For example, a 2021 academic webinar promotion stated “family privilege is an unacknowledged and unearned benefit” that “serves to advantage certain family forms over others and is typically bestowed upon white, traditional nuclear families”.
So the fact that more single parent families are black, according to this traditional Marxist interpretation, means that racism is the culprit? Hogwash alert: the number of parents in the family is a far better predictor of economic outcomes than is race. You can look it up.
Although intellectual sophisticates preach tolerance of all family relationships, they are more traditional in their personal behaviors. The college educated mostly delay childbearing until after marriage and raise their children in a two parent household. It’s called “talk left, walk right” or, in other words, hypocrisy.
Rather than stigmatizing families and their fathers, we should support, in meaningful ways, their importance to human well-being. Judging from the results, families without government “help” do a better job overall of rearing and feeding children, of caring for the dependent elderly and of creating responsible, competent human beings then does government.
We will never close the economic and social gaps until we close the Dad gap.
Tom Patterson is a former member of the Arizona State Senate and was chairman of the Goldwater Institute for more than a decade.