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The Key to Student Excellence Is Married Mothers and Fathers
Standardized tests–SATs and ACTs–are disappearing from undergraduate admissions. Only 20 states, including Washington, D.C., require the SAT for high school juniors. Over 80 percent of four-year colleges have spurned standardized tests for admissions this year.
The removal of standardized tests was because blacks’ and Latinos’ scores were consistently lower than their white and Asian counterpart on these tests.
Most colleges and universities want equity–not equality. Equity equalizes outcomes for all students, depriving those who demonstrate merit-based success for those who cannot.
The average SAT score in 2022 for Asians was 1229. For whites, it was 1098. For Hispanics/Latinos, 964, and for blacks, it was 926. The highest score on the SAT is 1600.
The average ACT score in 2022 for Asians was 24.7; for whites, it was 21.3. For Hispanics/Latinos, it was 17.7; for blacks, it was 16.1. The highest score on the ACT is 36.
I’m glad that SCOTUS eliminated race-based affirmative action.
If you have yet to read the decision, you should. Roberts’ opinion was acceptable.
Clarence Thomas’ opinion challenged Justice Jackson’s estimation that historical discrimination means the country must engage in contemporary discrimination. Justice Jackson’s perspective reflects those who advocate critical race theory and antiracism.
CRT Critics Misplace the Blame for Racial Disparities
Advocates of critical race theory (CRT) claim that academic merit, excellence, and hard work are “myths” to preserve “white privilege” and “white supremacy” regarding the racial achievement gaps. Merit-based success and personal excellence are disappearing from our cultural vocabulary. Supporters of CRT want to focus on “systemic oppression” and “institutional racism” to show why racial achievement gaps exist.
“Systemic oppression” and “institutional racism” are not legitimate explanations for why these racial achievement gaps endure. Unfortunately, some people still hold racially discriminatory views. But individual racists are not the same as racial segregation, which was the paramount example of institutional racism in America. ‘Systemic oppression’ and ‘institutional racism’–segregation–ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It also prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Provisions of this Act forbade discrimination based on sex and race in hiring, promoting, and firing.
If one looks at CRT, advocates of this ideology never explain how ‘systemic’ or ‘institutional’ racism exists. CRT critics state both as facts without explicit examples to prove the conspiracy. Stokely Carmichael and the Black Power Movement continued to use the phrase “institutional racism” after segregation was outlawed. It is up to those who promote CRT to express, specifically, where this racism exists, why, and how–since they suggest that systemic racism and institutional racism remain. Their explanations for these ideas, frankly, are unclear to justify these claims.
Racial Discrimination Harms All Students
History shows us that racial discrimination made our culture worse, not better. But Ibram X. Kendi, in his book How to Be an Antiracist, suggests that discrimination is the answer to past and present discrimination. Kendi says, “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
Unfortunately, school administrators are following Kendi’s instructions. School districts nationwide are implementing the tenets of critical race theory and antiracism to the detriment of all students.
Many school districts nationwide are appropriating CRT and antiracism curricula. CRT and antiracism are racial anthropologies that practice the same racism against whites that blacks faced during segregation. It diminishes the agency and opportunity of black and Latino students and encourages them to adopt nihilism and racial victimization. Schools must teach students the proven path to excellence for people of all backgrounds. Parents in school districts around the country want schools to teach children what they can accomplish–and who they can be–rather than what they can’t do or can’t be.
The Real Key to Excellence
In 2003, Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill, Senior Fellows at The Brookings Institution, published a policy paper identifying four realities that increased economic opportunity for poor people. These realities are to finish high school, get a full-time job, and wait until age 21 to get married and have children. This research shows that of those who follow this plan, almost 75 percent have joined the middle class, while only 2 percent are in poverty. The American Enterprise Institute found that of Millennials who followed this plan, 97 percent were not poor when they reached adulthood.
However, marriage is the key.
Low marriage rates and disinterested parents are the real reasons for the racial achievement gaps regarding education–especially concerning the so-called “oppressed.” Affirming excellence, academic merit, and diligence is much easier when married mothers and fathers provide home stability and are actively involved in their children’s education.
In 2020, the marriage rate for black immigrants was 61 percent, the Asian marriage rate was 58 percent, the white marriage rate was 52 percent, and the Hispanic marriage rate was 43 percent. The black marriage rate was 30 percent compared to the national marriage rate of 48 percent.
Furthermore, 52 percent of black men and 48 percent of black women have never been married. The number of black children that lived in single-parent households in 2021 was 64 percent, compared to 42 percent for Latinos, 24 percent for whites, and 16 percent for Asians.
Single parents can try to instill moral qualities in their children– like excellence and merit-based academic achievement. Sometimes it works. Sometimes, it doesn’t because children need married mothers and fathers to ensure stability regarding home life and their children’s education.
If an unmarried mother works, sometimes, there’s no father at home. Without a father, the children will watch television and social media more than they study and excel in their academic subjects. Learning leads to higher test scores. Without a father instilling within the children confidence and the need to set and achieve goals, people will think they cannot achieve greatness without racialized equity, which undermines achievement.
According to the Pew Research Center, black and Hispanic teens stand out for being on the internet more frequently than White teens. Some 56% of black and 55% of Hispanic teens say they are online almost constantly, compared with 37% of White teens.
The data confirm this. Children raised by active, present fathers are less likely to drop out of school, wind up in jail, and are more likely to avoid high-risk behaviors. Also, fathers that attend events with their children are more likely to impact them confidently than absent fathers.
Society Should Encourage Marriage to Foster Excellence
Critical race theory’s anthropology of racial discrimination focuses not on success but on victimization. This trend can be reversed through the Christian principles of human flourishing– with pastors explaining the need for mothers and fathers to be married first, have children, and be as involved as possible in their children’s lives–as God ordained.
Suggesting that black and Hispanic children can’t achieve excellence is discrimination. Frankly, it’s prejudiced to say that lacking academic excellence is because blacks and Hispanics/Latinos are “oppressed” or “victimized” by white society. This idea robs both groups of free will, personal responsibility, and individual initiative, which, if internalized, will force both groups to expect leniency from mainstream America.
Thomas Sowell once said, “It is amazing how many people think they are doing blacks a favor by exempting them from standards others are expected to meet.” Sowell’s wisdom rephrases the much-repeated quote, “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
Believing that groups are “victimized” transfers agency from blacks and Hispanics/Latinos to American culture based on equity, leveraged by white guilt and redemptive liberalism.
Shelby Steele, a Hoover Institution fellow, said that redemptive liberalism is an activism that initially appropriated a redeeming profile by focusing on social engineering for blacks–rather than allowing blacks, and eventually, others, the individual freedom to achieve excellence. This liberalism eventually became a moral authority. It wanted a more ambitious goal of an equal society, concerning itself with the wounded souls of racial victims and the self-righteous moral intentions of the leftists who embraced this liberalism.
Married parents involved in their children’s lives set the foundation for morality, excellence, and merit-based achievement in all areas of life.
Personal, moral, academic, economic, and merit-based forms of excellence are superior to racial equity. Racial equity sees the victimized as helpless and needing special treatment to excel.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The only thing blacks need is for their parents to get and stay married to produce moral and academic excellence.
We see this in Asian and black immigrant families very often.
Published in General
They also preserve us from aircraft that fall out of the sky and bridges that fall into rivers.
Amen. And this shouldn’t be controversial. Progressive icon Barak Obama said …
“You and I know how true this is in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled — doubled — since we were children. We know the statistics — that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.”
Yet for some reason, we refuse to address this issue.
The high school nearest to the farm that Grandpap grew up on was at the other end of twenty five miles of bad road. Sending him would have involved paying for room and board, and his parents were unable to leverage their white privilege sufficiently to arrange for that. So instead he ran through his parents’ large library that they had painstakingly assembled. They checked his work, critiqued his writing, and when he was ready they sent him to sit for a high school equivalency exam. He did so well that in addition to the high school certificate, the state enclosed a teaching certificate as well. That was as much a reflection on his parents’ hard work as it was his own.
A black guy who used to comment on blogs, I think his handle was Obsidian, said that in his experience, black women with a college degree would not marry a man without a degree….even if her degree were in some fluffy subject and the man was doing very well as a skilled worker or tradesman.
He also said, “Watch out, white guys! If this hasn’t happened in your world yet, it will.”
As described above, this argument is not valid. It describes correlation, not causation.
This doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily wrong, but that it doesn’t prove its claim. Other evidence would be needed.
As an example, 100% of the time that the light goes on in my office, I flip the switch. This does not mean that you can cause me to flip the switch by having the light come on. Quite the opposite.
One of the difficulties with social science research is proof of causation. It may be that other underlying factors — hereditary IQ, or religious practice, or having an intact family, or neighborhood, or region of the country, or others — affect multiple variables such as finishing high school, getting a full-time job, and not having children until 21 and married. These other underlying factors might explain further economic success, in whole or in part.
This doesn’t even mention problems like substance abuse or criminality, which might undermine positive outcomes in a number of areas.
Social science is tricky.
It would be a fun hypothetical to put to Mr. Kendi: would you rather fly in a plane designed by engineers who were admitted to school based on their social justice scores, or based on their SATs?
Yes.
Yes and no. It describes correlation, and points to causation.
It’s not “valid” only in the technical terminology from the logic textbooks, meaning that it’s not 100% perfect proof.
It’s still good probabilistic reasoning.
Thank you for speaking the truth on this issue. It’s not magic. Thomas Sowell grew up in a time when marriage rates were higher for everyone and being poor didn’t mean you had no path into the middle class and financial success. But the key was as you listed: marriage, a job and HS graduation. Raising kids with two parents is hard enough. Yes, some have succeeded having only one. But it requires a more extraordinary single parent with a strong faith and moral code. That’s true even if there’s someone else to help with the inevitable challenges. (Experience speaking…)
I really like your writing Derryck Green. May I add on to your essay that poor whites raised by an unreliable mother are about the same as black-Americans raised by an unreliable mother?
I work with poor whites and I see all the dysfunction that you have mentioned among them. Social dysfunction is certainly not unique to black-Americans.
Absolutely.
This is another reason why I cannot stand the so-called ‘white privilege’ theme. It literally makes no sense when it comes to poor whites who live a similar life to blacks.
Colleges are shooting themselves in the foot by lowering standards. If a diploma doesn’t mean that a graduate knows anything then potential employers will look to other means to determine competency, including using their own tests.
Slight slip here. In fact, equity equalizes outcomes for specifically gerry-mandered categorizations of students. No two students are made equal — only arbitrarily chosen groups are raised or lowered to an equally arbitrary standard.
“Equity” in the current parlance is the antithesis of the individual, of rights and responsibilities, of agency and of citizenship.
A system literally can not be made to work in these conditions, and verily, it will not work. And so the shooting starts as this becomes clear.
Further, applying that standard no conclusion could ever be drawn from the argument since all the potential students would not be born nor married/unmarried. The “experiment” would never end. One need not call it a science to consider whether a set of behaviours is desirable more often than not.
Yes to all of the above and…attentive, devoted parents (beginning, virtually always, with Mom) actively assist in the development of an infant’s brain by…being Mom. That is, by interacting with the child in the way that only someone who loves him/her can or will.
The intensive assault on intact families, and the rise in single-parent (almost always female) households, not to mention the explosion in drug addiction, domestic violence, crime and other…distractions… translates into too many mothers who simply do not have the time, support, energy or emotional bandwidth to engage with an infant.
Studies of neglected children’s brains reveal that the human baby’s rich neurological endowment will be excessively “pruned” if given inadequate stimulation. This isn’t just (or even especially) a cognitive issue, it is a limbic-brain problem, meaning that we are seeing adults who cannot and do not express capacities so basic, we tend to take them for granted. The most basic empathy, for instance, or the ability to form bonds with other human beings other than those based on the reptilian motivation of fear or anger.
As others have said, this is true of white children and black children: I see the white ones, since I live in a mostly-white state, and I can tell you that just about anything you could say of an inner-city black child, you can say of a trailer-trash white kid. The damage is remediable, but only with a major expenditure of time, effort and money. At the moment, the worst products of this “revolution” are locked up, either in jail or in the open-air, dangerous, dirty, truly horrible “mental institutions” we have established on our city streets.
In all groups, (as Murray, et al, have pointed out) alterations in social mores regarding sex, work, drug use, family formation/preservation, inadequate or faddish education and so on, can be survivable in middle or upper-middle-class families and devastating to working-poor and poor families.
From the college standpoint, it equalizes outcomes for the reason you stated: for those who do not have the merit-based success, which are typically blacks and Hispanics. Equity, in the common vernacular, is social and material redistribution for those who do not have the academic credibility to meet certain standards– that is, to keep up with fellow students or the teacher. Generally, these students either dropout, or the teachers, who want a “diverse student body” engage in grade inflation so the students won’t drop out, which masks the inability of students to keep pace at institutions that exceed the level at which these students are admitted.
However, everyone knows what’s happening at higher-level academic institutions.