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Dreams Over Despair
Before I begin citing the problems facing those born into Black America, let’s begin before birth. If you are potentially Black in America, but still have yet to take your first breath, you have about a 27% chance that you will never be born (according to a study by the American Journal of Public Health.) Other studies suggest that this statistic could be much higher, especially in NYC and other large cities. If you are lucky enough to take your first breath, you have about a 69% chance that you were born to an unwed mother. Other statistics suggest that you have a 33% chance that you will grow up in poverty. Even if you are not impoverished, you have a 46% chance you will be poor, that is your family’s annual resources comprise less than 2X the poverty rate. Note that 27% of low income Black families have no visible means of support at all, that is no one in the family is employed. If you live in a single parent household, you are almost certain to be impoverished.
There is some reasonably good news; if you are Black, you still have about a 79% chance that you will graduate from high school. However, the quality of your high school education may not prepare you for work or college. If you go to college, there is a 58% possibility that you will drop out before graduation. Though African Americans (self-identified in census data) make up just 12.6% of the US population, FBI arrest statistics indicate that Black Americans commit over 50% of the murders and robberies committed in the US. The victims of those crimes are nearly always Black as well. The incarceration rate for Black American males is over 4%, so babies unlucky enough to be born both Black and male face a 4% chance of becoming a prison inmate. Once in the system, you will likely remain there; 86% of Black prisoners are rearrested and sent back to prison (80% for Whites, alas.)
If you are Black and of working age, you are more than 2X as likely to be unemployed as a White person. This statistic is likely to be much higher in large urban areas (like 6.5X in Washington, DC.) These figures move with economic conditions though the ratios remain stable. The numbers are quite a bit worse for younger working-age Black Americans.
So what is at play here in America? Why is it so difficult to be successful in America if you are Black? Who stole Black America’s dreams and left them wallowing in despair? Is this evidence of White Privilege and Systemic Racism, or is something else at work here?
What is at work here is racial politics that encourage poor choices and bad outcomes. In pandering for the Black vote, politicians have allowed communities to be overrun with crime, drugs, and despair. Instead of encouraging good choices and pursuit of dreams, politicians have provided a desperate existence of state dependency, public or subsidized housing and unwed motherhood. Schools have been allowed to decline, achievement has been denigrated, and expectations have been serially lowered. Success is measured in how easily and readily one can game the system and score free benefits or hide under the table earnings. Property has no value to those who have none. Lives have no value to those who see no future. Politics and politicians become the means to continued subsidy. And worst of all, wanting more, wanting out, working to better oneself, is seen as despicable, as an affront, as disloyal. If you obviously try to seek a better life, you are a pariah. Despair, you see, must triumph over dreams.
So how to address these issues.
First and foremost, there is the problem of unwed mothers and unplanned pregnancies. This problem is not exclusively a Black American problem. The Hispanic and White illegitimacy rates have been rising for decades as well. And with illegitimacy comes poverty and state dependency. Two-parent and earner families have more stability and flexibility, can pursue opportunities where ever they arise, and are much less likely to remain mired in poverty. In better circumstances, children are more likely to thrive and achieve. Expectations are higher all around. So from a policy perspective, whatever we can do to encourage intact family formation and marriage, then the horrific outcomes that are unfortunately the rule in single-family households mired in poverty, can be averted. These initiatives should be entirely colorless but will impact the Black community most because illegitimacy disproportionately affects that community.
No doubt, education must also play a role here. We must improve schools in predominately black and other impoverished communities; this is obviously not just a funding problem. Some of the worst-performing schools in the nation (NYC, Boston, Baltimore) spend more than 2X the national average per student on education, and yet the schools in poor and declining neighborhoods are failing. Support for charter schools and voucher programs has proven to be an efficient and effective way to force public schools to perform and compete for students. A major effort must be made to encourage education and allow both parents and children to see educational achievement as a means to a better life. Everyone must understand that opportunities are unlimited if they strive for better, acquire skills, and achieve in the classroom.
Lastly, Black communities must be purged of all crime, drugs, and gangs. These corrosive influences destroy communities, place them under siege while leaving the neediest and impoverished, those who cannot leave, to be easy victims, stuck in a horrific situation. Drugs and dependency are always the wrong choices. Children who grow up in such a desperate environment, who cannot see any kind of better future for themselves, are recruited into lives of crime and drugs, of poverty and dependency.
Once crime is controlled, incentives can be used to bring back commerce, to renovate property and to rebuild communities.
In the meantime amid this horrific collective tantrum some call protests, we have to get the message out. We care about these communities. We want every American to achieve and make something better for themselves. We have no reason to wish anyone anything but contentment and success. And most of all, we want nothing but success and achievement for Black Americans, but it’s not something that they can take. Like every other American, they have to work for it, overcome obstacles, persevere, and achieve.
Published in General
Doug, your post is spot on. It’s grounded in reality and offers down-to-earth suggestions. You’ve obviously been thinking hard about this.
Unhappily, it’s like a cry in the wilderness. Few these day will pay attention to the reasonable recommendations your post offers up.
What a sorry state of affairs we’re going through now. To use part of a Yeats quote: “. .the worst are full of passionate intensity.“ That passionate intensity is carrying the day right now. Perhaps in the future, we’ll return to sanity and your wise suggestions will strike lightning.
I remember seeing a video several years ago of a black grandmother who said no one in her family had a job for three generations. And she was proud of it.
Even before the possibility of abortion, the genetic dice were loaded against you at conception. You will likely have an IQ lower than the whites and (especially) Asians against whom you must compete. It is verboten to acknowledge this probability, however, so you will spend your life in frustration and telling lies to yourself about why you and your fellow blacks don’t match up to other races in cognitively challenging endeavors. Your life would be much happier if this simple truth were acknowledged, along with the acknowledgement that IQ does not equal human worth.
@dougkimball, you structure the discussion the right way. No one doubts that black citizens as a group have a tougher time in America than other groups. The question is why? And that is what you so eloquently answer. There needs to be a special place in Hell for the “leaders” that personally benefit from selling black men and women into government dependence and other choices for which there is a clear, documented record that they result in poor outcomes for themselves and their children. These choices aren’t forced on them by evil white supremecists. They are enticed into dependency by black and white race traders that leads to despair that leads to self-medicating which leads criminality. It is beyond sad. It is the same system that enslaved their ancestors to the plantation owners. That the era of Jim Crow should be the zenith of black entrepreneurism and stable middle class complete family units is just….(there are no words).
this is dumb on many levels.
@dougkimball Thank you for systematically presenting the data. It is both shocking and depressing.
The solutions seem an appropriate path towards the needed change. But they require more strength of character than we all seem to have right now.
A focus on drugs is a mistake. That just creates a bigger wedge between people an police. Work on improving opportunities and the drug problem will take of itself. I would like to see a revitalization of urban churches. A vibrant church is a great anchor for a community and provides a lot of good models in a hurry. Having a multiple male role models is just as good as having good fathers. I would like to see more capital investment in minority owned businesses. The urban enterprise zones can be expanded to include service providers sole proprietorships. Add in a comprehensive vocation education and you have a pipeline of small business owners. Of course there needs to be less regulation and free legal help for young business leaders to overcome government obstacles. To re-iterative the proven (conservative) solutions: (1) religion (2) marketable skills (3) capital investment.
Support for a conclusion helps.
The Leftist view of blacks was perfectly stated by Joe Biden, to the effect that: “If you have trouble deciding whether you will vote for Trump or me, Then you ain’t black!” In the Leftist view, blacks are meant to stay on the plantation.
Didn’t really advance the conversation, did it?
Unfortunately it isn’t. Not just for blacks but for all races. There was cultural consensus on this back in the 1990’s, well articulated by David Blankenhorn’s “Fatherless America” in 1996. Bill Clinton even started a Fatherhood Initiative. I remember at the time being energized that finally a difficult but unavoidable social truth was being recognized and real progress could be made. Then the consensus drifted apart over the next decades, I suspect because restoring fatherhood turned out to be much more difficult than people thought, and because other cultural priorities took over. Insisting that Heather might as well have two mommies is another way of saying that fathers are dispensable.
Fathers are so…patriarchal.
Great post Doug. The problems and the solutions are complex and difficult. I despair that in the current climate the solutions applied will only make things worse rather than better. When I talk with my young adult children they buy into the theme propagated by the media and academia that the problems are all from the legacy of slavery and systemic racism. If you miss identify the source of the problem your solution will also be wrong.
The easiest way to avoid this is through sex robots and genetically engineering people to be more prudent. That’s probably going to be easier than changing the culture.
There are black grandmothers whose kids have all worked two jobs unless they were going to college and she is more annoyed about the welfare grandma than you are.
I’m sure that’s true. There’s no racial component to self-respect.
I hate talking about this – especially in this climate. But the evidence for this is really solid. Anyone I’ve read, left right or eccentric, who really studies genetics and IQ believes this. Richard Haier and Linda Gottfredson go into with with great details that can be understood by normal people. I also recommend reading Nicholas D. Wade’s book, A Troublesome Inheritance. Richard Haier is a lefty by the way and I don’t know Linda Gottfredson’s politics.
This doesn’t change anything that DonG has said, “To re-iterative the proven (conservative) solutions: (1) religion (2) marketable skills (3) capital investment.” We should do all of this while still talking about the realities of I.Q. distribution and race.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY4sShDt9to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZPsXYo7gpc
I agree with you. The value of recognizing the realities of IQ is how we judge success. The results of DonG’s suggestions, even if perfectly implemented, probably won’t be that proportionately just as many blacks as whites go to Harvard, or that there are proportionately just as many black as white physicists. Right now that is how the culture measures progress, and since real conservative solutions won’t change that any more than bogus liberal ones do (excepting quotas of course), conservative solutions are dismissed as “failures”.
First and foremost, blacks need to realize they are in charge of their own lives, and most of the changes have to come from within. Sure, there are external factors beyond their control, but everyone has external factors beyond their control.
Neither party has shown the ability to make things better for blacks, but the Democrat party excels at making things worse. The best thing that could happen is for blacks to put Republicans in charge, then say, “Stop helping us.”
I think those are somewhat related. A child without a father will look for father figures elsewhere and gangs can fill that void. A gang could be the closest a kid comes to the feeling of family (granted, a crime family)
All true and extremely well-stated.
But this is precisely the kind of analysis that is not permitted.
These negative outcomes, conditions and behaviors are merely reflections of
prejudiceracismsystemic racism. They emanate from the sick collective unconscious of white people. There is no cure, no therapy, no vaccine. So there must be an eternal political guilt quarantine while race hustlers, lazy academics and corrupt politicians can prevent or undo progress.I mean no disrespect, but I was kind of waiting for the punchline.
I’ve come to the conclusion white people need to stop “helping” black people to solve their problems. All we do is convince them of their helplessness and lack of moral agency. And this is primarily a moral problem*, not an economic, education, or (lack of) family structure problem.
Now, what I would like to have happen is for white Democrats to be held accountable for the devastation they’ve caused among blacks with their noxious policies and (mal)education establishment. That would be “social” justice. And white conservatives are the ones who should do it, but blacks should too. If we’re going to “educate” blacks, this is the first order of business: white Democrats have been selling you down the river for decades. Only you can escape the plantation, and only by exercising good moral choices.
I also think the problem with discussing IQ is that we’re always talking about averages. Individuals are not averages, and that’s how we should think and talk about not only black people, but all people. Clearly Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell are a lot smarter (and wiser) than most whites (especially Democrats). It would not have been helpful for them growing up to know that people of their race have a lower IQ on average. And, really, it’s not helpful for people who fall below the average either.
*We always hear how strong the black churches are, but I’d like to see some stats on that from NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit . . .
What difference does it make to the individual that half of whites have a lower capacity to reason than the rest? It might, I suppose, energize me to work harder that I might prove myself “just as good”: Or it might allow me to say “I can’t help it, I was born stupid”.
Excellent post @Doug Kimball….the other interesting aspect of this is that we know that this was not the case before 1960. Historians (granted these historians were not allowed much of a voice) know that the GDP of African Americans increased by over 500% from 1865-1960….compare that to the 75% of the Russian Serfs who were freed around the same time slavery ended in the United States. We also know literacy increased to around 95%, the number of doctors and lawyers were comparable to whites, that the divorce rate was lower than that of whites and that the illegitimacy rate was comparable to whites….all that changed around 1960…..obviously Patrick M. Tried to raise awareness of this (which African-American sociologists knew already) but we know how that went over….so went wrong…One issue was that the New Deal Deal and the Great Society created a political class whose job was to get votes not reform or help with the community.
Racism/fear among different groups for sure must be factored into this….we are human…we are tribal…it is part of us and must always be on the look out for It especially in a multi-ethnic experiment such as our nation state. However, to try to place every issue to just systemic racism is just not the way to go nor is it backed up by the data.
One of the things that is bothering me the most this past week is that no political pundits/commentators have really come to the side of the United States and tried to defend our institutions…do our institutions have issues…of course….they are human institutions….but our institutions have made real attempts to rectify issues and nobody on the right has really come to their defense. The Dispatch may as well be NPR and others are putting their head in the sand ad going on like a nationalistic diatribe…and the New Left is having a hey day because they are using this as more of a reason top burn it all down. Even Commentary has been lackluster at times as well as NR. Our institutions are not perfect but we are the only nation that has ever made a real attempt to try and fully integrate a former slave population into the body politic…..Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Acts were real attempts flawed they may have been…nobody discusses that.
So what we have now is something like Ancient Rome where you have 2 generations who have not been taught Reconstruction or Civil Rights Acts (accept in a cynical way) who do not think our institutions are worth saving and now we have Conservative outlets (who should be conserving) joining the call to burn it all down
Crazy times ahead…..
And many of those terrible statistics in the first half of your post are worse than they were 80 years ago.
Even as recently as 50 years ago the illegitimate birth rate among blacks was “only” 25% – and that was then considered horribly high.
According to either Walter E. Williams or Thomas Sowell (I can’t remember which – they both say so many sensible things) the black unemployment rate was similar to the white unemployment rate before minimum wage laws and union employment rules were instituted
In my rare more hopeful moments, I like to point out that a black child born to married parents has almost no probability of becoming part of those terrible statistics you cite. The poverty rate among married blacks is quite close to zero (I think it’s something like 4%). Virtually none of the men serving jail time for crime (black, white, or any other color, but we’re mostly looking at black here) come from a household with married parents.
It shouldn’t make any difference. For whites and Asians, it doesn’t. For instance, every engineering student notices the overrepresentation of Asians in college science and engineering departments. The Chinese professor or TA you can’t understand because of the heavy accent is a stereotype every engineering student endures because it is true. There is nothing sinister about this overrepresentation, however. It’s a reflection, at least partly, of the relative IQ distribution among whites and Chinese. So what? That’s just the way it is. And no one tries to “fix it” by forcing whites into positions they don’t really belong. There’s nothing to fix.
But if you are a bright black high school student, maybe valedictorian of your minority high school, and someone one who would do just fine at UMass without any set asides or special accommodations, you may be admitted to Harvard and urged to go there, where you would find yourself competing against people who just have more talent than you do. Choosing to go to Harvard rather than UMass to prove yourself “just as good” would be a serious mistake. Instead, believe what the SAT scores are telling you: The fact you scored average for UMass instead of Harvard isn’t because the test is racist. It’s because UMass rather than Harvard is really the school appropriate for you and where you have a chance of thriving.
There’s nothing comparable to affirmative action for college basketball scholarships, is there?
This is an important and provocative thought. The value of IQ is in prediction about the likelihood that an individual can successfully perform certain tasks. The reality is that roughly 10% of all people of all races are not high functioning and society needs to grapple with that. And so it is that incrementally more of these people will likely be in one racial group rather than another. At the other end of the spectrum incrementally fewer of people in one racial group than another will be amongst the highest functioning members of your society. But the increments while statistically significant in no way create a natural barrier to individual achievement. And if your society simply rewards individual accomplishment then comparing predicted outcomes with actual outcomes based on IQ rather than population distribution would be a better indicator as to whether artificial barriers were retarding individual achievement. It is the misuse and disuse of IQ analysis that is the problem.
Education is about content, and anyone of any IQ can and should be exposed to good, wholesome content. This is the mission of Hillsdale’s Barney Charter Initiative and E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge curriculum. It’s an anti-establishment conspiracy.
Before I moved my oldest to a charter school, she attended our neighborhood public school where the science curriculum covered recycling (teaching a bunch of lies about sustainability) and man-caused species (wolf) extinction (it helps to live in the West to appreciate the facile, anti-human arguments made about wolf extinction). In second grade!!!! These topics don’t teach much about the scientific method (she says dryly) and require a lot of subtle thinking not appropriate to 7-year-olds.
If there’s one thing I’d like to see burned down, it’s this stupid, toxic, anti-American, leftist (but, I repeat) education establishment.
I know that emotions are running deep within me right now, so I will try to temper my comments. I am certain that the statistics listed in Doug’s article are accurate. The concept that two-parent families are preferable both socially, emotionally, and financially is obvious–just look at the successful people of all colors and they predominately were raised by two parents. Raising families in crime-infested neighborhoods yields crime-infested families. Duh! Dysfunctional families will produce dysfunctional schools. no doubt about it.
Guess what, there’s nothing I can do about any of it. I would never ask, let alone, demand that anyone bow before me. In 73 years of living, that concept has never entered my mind. Anyone demanding that I bow to them will receive a decidedly negative reaction from me as well. It is not for me to solve the problem of being black. For one thing, being black has never been a problem because it’s not the color of one’s skin, it’s the depth of one’s character that matters. I cannot provide character for anyone else–black, white, or yellow. The lack of respect for others coming from this group of protester/rioters is jaw-dropping. I cannot believe this is happening in our country. This attitude has driven me away. I just don’t care. Hopefully time will soften my heart. I’m just not ready yet.