The Myth of the Fatherless Black Child

Right-wingers seem to enjoy repeating the myth that 70% of black children are fatherless.
It is the simplistic explanation for all the troubled social problems that burden African Americans without casting any blame on the wider society or past history of the races treatment.
60% of black fathers live with their children and 40% officially live apart from them. Slightly over half of the children live with a single head of household usually the mother's, this ignores the millions who live with fathers part of the time due to custody arrangements. Their legal address is with the mother to determine school districts and this is another reason "fatherless" statistics are exaggerated. Also add the incarcerated with children as "fatherless" and the cohabitating couple's children as "fatherless" further skewing statistics.

The CDC found black fathers more involved with their children "Black fathers (70 percent) were most likely to have bathed, dressed, diapered, or helped their children use the toilet every day compared with white (60 percent) and Hispanic fathers (45 percent)."

Further reading:
https://www.fatherhood.gov/research-and-resources/myth-missing-black-father
https://www.chicagoreporter.com/breaking-myths-about-black-fatherhood-this-fathers-day/
https://www.givelegacy.com/resources/the-truth-about-black-fatherhood/
https://www.newsweek.com/absent-black-fathers-myth-racism-1509085

 

That remains a staggering huge number in both percentages and absolute terms.

 

Yes. It does. The OP seems to set out to demonstrate father absence isn't over represented in black families, but then goes on to demonstrate that it is? I am left a bit confused.

Fatherlessness can both be a big problem and racist policing leading to fatherlessness could be one cause. These are not mutually exclusive. One leads to the other (if they are true; I am not giving an opinion on either).

 

I’m related to blacks. My aunt married a black man and they have kids as well that obviously are not white. The dad done a great job and raised some good kids who are now raising kids of their own. That said there are bad parents in every race to some extent.

However, There are some cultural issues mainly in poor black communities that need to be addressed by the community. The culture in poor America can’t be fixed by taxing people more or by giving them free stuff. Education I feel is key but many in these areas don’t go to school and their reading and writing skills are next to none. These communities make up the largest portion of the illiterate portion of blacks. In fact blacks are second highest in illiteracy next to Native Americans.

The reason I don’t see money is the problem is because most learn to read in grade school. The one that receives the least amount of money compared to middle school and high school. If they can’t teach their populace in these areas to read high enough to be deemed literate with the funds they have now it’s most definitely not money. I believe it’s a cultural issue and that Thomas Sowell explains it best in his book “Black Rednecks And White Liberals”.

 

Who is saying that? I'm sure 100% of them have fathers.

 

Also, if unarmed Black men were not being killed by police or incarcerated from so much racial profiling, there would be less fatherless Black children.

 

Just checking but is this supposed to be an ironic or a serious conversation?

 

Neither. It was a made up argument that the OP declared victory on and moved on.

 

Few unarmed Black men are killed by police. And "racial profiling" is a modern myth.

 

And the "myth" lives on.....
69% of black police officers surveyed said they have been stopped due to racial profiling and 51% say they have been questioned due to racial profiling.

 

You forget to mention all the violent crime, raping, drug dealing and gang banging.

 

Blacks are far more likely to be killed by black criminals than by white policemen.



The only solution I can think of to crime is more punishment. Social reform and social welfare spending has never reduced the crime rate. It is actually rather simple: criminals who are executed or incarcerated cannot commit crimes.

The high cost of incarceration can be reduced, and perhaps eliminated by the thorough exploitation of prison labor, the frequent use of capital and corporal punishment, and the end to educational and recreational opportunities.

Joseph Stalin demonstrated that a prison system can be run at a profit to the government. Most of the people in Uncle Joe's prison system were political prisoners who should not have been in prison at all. Nevertheless, his system would work well with robbers, murders, and rapists.

I think murders and rapists should be executed, but I would rather send them to slave labor camps than our current maximum security prisons where I have read it costs more to keep a convict than to send someone to college.

 

You mean the one or two each year who are is what is causing the huge numbers of black children being raised in single mother homes?

Do you believe black men should be allowed to commit crimes rather than police being told a black man committed a crime so be on the lookout for a black man? Should more whites be arrested, even if innocent, to balance the numbers out?

 

I suggest you read Thomas Sowell before you go any further. He is an economist who was actually there.

 

Racial profiling happens because Negroes have a much higher crime rate than whites.

 

Theme From Shaft
Song by Isaac Hayes

Lyrics

Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks?
(Shaft)
You're damn right

https://www.google.com/search?q=Sha...gIIEAAYBRgeGA3CAggQABgIGB4YDQ&sclient=gws-wiz

------------

For too many black teenage boys and men being "a sex machine with all the chicks" is the ideal, rather than being a responsible husband and father.

That, rather than white racism, is the reason the black illegitimacy rate is so high. Those who blame white racism for the high rate of black illegitimacy cannot explain why black illegitimacy has risen dramatically since the civil rights legislation was passed into law.

 

Not really. But the racists love to excuse the negative impact of their racism. The sexual revolution raised everybody's rate of so called illegitimate births. White teenage boys have the same inclination to be sex machines with all the chicks. And if you study the UCR, what you see is an alarming rate of white rape.

“In 1965, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, attributed racial inequality as well as poverty and crime in the black community to family structure, particularly the prevalence of families headed by single mothers. Not only did research at the time cast doubt on this causality, but evidence over the last the 50 years demonstrates that rates of child poverty, educational attainment, and crime do not track rates of single parenthood. Thus, even though the share of children living with a single mother rose for all racial and ethnic groups through the mid-1990s and has remained high since then, school completion and youth arrests for violent crimes have declined significantly, while poverty rates have fluctuated according to economic conditions. Family structure does not drive racial inequity, and racial inequity persists regardless of family structure.”
-Amy Traub, Laura Sullivan, Tatjana Meschede and Thomas Shapiro, DEMOS, “The Asset Value of Whiteness: Understanding the Racial Wealth Gap.”

The root cause of the problems we face as black people is white racism. It is just that simple.

 

Whites actually commit more crimes. And do not try arguing per capita because the only accurate assessment of crime are those participating in crime.

 

Actually, most of those women have boyfriends and as the OP posted the majority of those kids do have a father active in their lives.

 

Since 85 percent of whites are killed by another white person, more whites are killed by white criminals than by police. However, whites are not killed at 3 times the rate of their population by cops, and then we have this:

“The burden of police violence fatalities in the USA is known to fall disproportionately on Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic populations. Recent studies suggest that over the life course, about one in every 1000 Black men are killed by the police in the USA, making them 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than White men. Black women are about 1.4 times more likely to be killed by police than are White women. Systemic and direct racism, manifested in laws and policies as well as personal implicit biases, result in Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic Americans being the targets of police violence.”

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01609-3/fulltext

 

No, she doesn't need to read Thomas Sowell. There are other blacks who were there and they are not trying to appease white people with their commentary.

 

There is often wisdom in tradition. The results of the sexual revolution and the civil rights legislation demonstrate what happens when wise traditions are ignored.

 

My initial statement is correct, and influences white attitudes about young black men we do not know: a young black man, chosen at random is far more likely to be dangerous than a young white man chosen at random.

My rule is to avoid young black men I do not know unless they are obviously dressed for work or church. This rule is particularly true for a group of young black men standing or walking together. Unless they are walking home from church I avoid them.

 

Police violence against blacks is nearly always restricted to black criminals.