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BLM and the “Village”
[Hat tip to Ricochet member @housebroken for alerting us to this content.]
Fifty-five years ago Daniel Patrick Moynihan published The Negro Family: The Case For National Action in which he posited that the decline in the number of black two-parent households was a barrier to economic advancement, that welfare policies created disincentives to family formation and that restoration of the family should be a policy goal.
The negative reaction was fierce. The phrase “blaming the victim” was invented to attack the Moynihan Report. To focus on choices and behaviors, especially when choices were constrained by external factors was to miss the Real Problem. (We did not have “systemic” racism in those days, only actual, overt racism.) Feminists were appalled at the patriarchal overtones. Moreover, single mothers should not be stigmatized in the name of preserving an oppressive, outmoded social institution. Virtually all homosexual rights advocates were also highly critical of marriage as an institution in those days as well. (Who knew that gays would be the first to desert the anti-marriage side?)
In particular, the reaction tried to popularize the notion that it is preferable to replace the nuclear family with a collective of some kind. The now-tiresome nostrum “It takes a village” is meant to conjure an image of a loving neighborhood of connected households with shared values and a mission to care for the young when in practice it really means atomized people lining up at the county office once a month to renew their benefits eligibility or to vote to re-elect the charlatans who imposed this outcome on them.
I question whether the idealized “village” approach has ever worked. It does not appear to be the key to success in America. The nicest neighborhoods everywhere seem to be composed entirely of buildings designed and arranged to be conducive to nuclear family-centered life rather than village living. And after careful sociological and economic research, I have painstakingly assembled the following data comparing outcomes for certain classes of persons raised in nuclear families in communities based on the nuclear family model versus persons raised by a village:
It is certainly true that African American poverty is not solely attributable to family dysfunction or that the absence of marriage and family is not also a result of other significant adverse factors. But to celebrate dysfunction or to massage fantasies of a “village” is far more likely to worsen rather than help matters.
The entire blacklivesmatter.com website reads as if it were drafted on campus by white undergraduates of a “Studies” department. It would be an understatement to say that it seems a bit detached from what would expect to hear from African Americans of one’s own acquaintance. And it turns out one cannot contribute directly to Black Lives Matter. Instead, all funds go the immensely well-funded white liberal mothership ActBlue.com, a financial structure that perfectly fits the leftist face model. Black people must not live, act or organize to help each other independently of beneficent white oversight but must instead await the outcome of the angelic battle overhead between the good white people and the bad white people.
The ongoing attempt to make African Americans mere extras in the fantasy life of white narcissists is more brazen than ever. When not Changing America from a position of power in super-savior mode, white people must beg forgiveness on bended knee while in Clark Kent mode. Clark Kent mode does not involve parting with tenure, job, home, second home, or personal cash–just oodles of expressions of guilt while knowing that the real power and safety is always still there, much like Daddy’s investment portfolio.
Even if we don’t have clear easy solutions to big issues can we still not make things worse with utter and complete BS derived from the rich fantasy lives of woke white people? I think there needs to be a movement named “Black Lives Matter So Act Like It” that does not require inputs of fake white guilt to effect needed change.
Published in General
There are worse things in life than divorce.
I agree. But I swear it can get about as nasty as can be.
It isn’t so much the finale that kills; it’s the years that lead up to it.
Sometimes.
Greed and entitlement.
True, but it remains incredibly damaging to children.
I hesitate to agree because there’s a danger in the non-specificity of “we should.” Who is this “we?” And the follow-on list seems to indicate government (the only thing “we” do together — Democrats).
Government is terrible at education, healthcare, jobs, . . . Government is meant to secure our (natural) rights, not our family structure. The best government can do is desist from doing harm to the family by enacting crappy policies like the Great Society (welfare, affirmative action, minimum wage, nationalized public education . . .).
Divorce never bothered me if the couple never had kids.
Actually, many African villages like the Masai, were examples of patriarchal privilege as the men did only hunting and the women did all the rest of the work. A friend of mine, whose motto I have adopted, used to say, “If there is any hunting or fishing to be done, or if someone comes to the door and wants to fight, I am ready. The rest is your responsibility.”
It originated many years ago as “Widows and Orphans” relief. Then it became AFDC and deteriorated further after Social Security. The Great Society was the last straw. The War on Men followed as night follows day.
This article describes the origins of BLM.
I wasn’t wild about BLM even when it stood for Bureau of Land Management, it still does to me so I have to read a little to learn they’re referring to black lives matter. The real BLM had budget, purpose, bureaucracy and lots of land to manage. What does this new blm stand for? Who provides their budget? What have they accomplished? What are their objectives? Why does BLM stand for them instead of a Bureau that’s real.
Samuel,
If you look back at the original notion of villages in the Middle East and Africa, let say prior to the reliable recording of history, they essentially were extended families. Intermixing was from absconding with the women and children of nearby conquered tribes, perhaps also from some peaceful trading, but that was not the prevalent means of dealing with strangers.
Correct they were just not polling the correct parties to the divorce. I believe some of the hesitation of the last 20 years for folks to commit to marriage was the first hand witnessing of the emotional carnage, and personal feelings of abandonment this last generation has felt from “no fault divorce”.
I think it is more like everybody’s fault.
Good luck with that nonsense.
GLDIII: “ If you look back at the original notion of villages in the Middle East and Africa, let say prior to the reliable recording of history, they essentially were extended families. Intermixing was from absconding with the women and children of nearby conquered tribes, perhaps also from some peaceful trading, but that was not the prevalent means of dealing with strangers.”
Agreed. But also not mentioned in this “original notion of villages in Middle East and Africa” was the influence of Islam. Islam let certain powerful members of the tribe and the community “marry” multiple wives which often had multiple children so the idea of a “nuclear” family in these settings doesn’t quite have the same meaning. A family in many of these cases literally was it’s own little “village” with many of the wife’s raising the children without much input from the father, which is not too different from the “it takes a village” concept.
I was just watching a podcast regarding the rich and powerful Songhai tribe of sub-saharan Africa along the Niger River. Because for a long time the most ample source of gold in the known world was the Niger River prior to the exploration of the New World , there were a succession of very wealthy, rich and successful Black African empires along the Niger- the Ghana, the Mali and then the Songhai. They traded across the Sahara, via a two month journey in caravans of often over a thousand camels, extensively with the Mediterranean Coastal states of Islam, were fairly sophisticated and had up to the introduction of guns and cannon, military armaments not too different from Europe with armored knights, cavalry, swords, spears, shields, archers and an army of tens of thousands. In each there would appear a Great King who ruled responsively and the Empire would thrive. For a while. But because each of these tribal empires had no laws that effectively governed the succession of the King, each time a successful King would die, his many sons ( one successful king had like 37 sons because of his many Islamic wives) would engage in bitter feuds over who was the rightful king and almost every time there was a Civil War that made War of the Roses look like child’s play. And nearly each time that Civil War brought the empire to ruin, thanks to Islam and it’s approval of many wives for a rich and powerful man. The last Songhai empire was defeated by the Moroccans using guns for the first time in the late 1590’s and the area fell into disillusion. Their Capital city of Gau is little more than ruins today and their learned intellectual city of Timbuktu – Yes Timbuktu – who knew!, which had many libraries and scholars is now little more than a backwater that is slowly being taken back and swallowed up by the Sahara Desert.
Sorry. I get a little chatty when I’ve had too much to drink – and incoherent. I mean literal extended families. Children should know their grandparents if they are fortunate enough to grow up with living ones; they should know their aunts and uncles and cousins.
Samuel, I’d like to throw in a little vote of confidence for extended families.
I live in Southern California. Born and raised. Most of my ancestors migrated from other parts of the country in the past, so I really don’t have a large extended family. That said my best friend is Sicilian from New Jersey with an enormous extended family. On the first day of my first trip to the East Coast in 1977, my friend took me to a big Sicilian wedding, right out of the Godfather. I was the only non-Sicilian there.
But since I have seen that extended family at work now for decades, I can see how the extended family has an enormous socializing and moderating effect on the members of the family where a member of family is not nearly as likely to go off and do something really destructive as many of those now from our typical dysfunctional family is.
Yes! This is the only way young people can learn to treat their neighbor like a brother. Hillary’s village can go hang.
With regard to the multiple wives extended family. That doesn’t work so well. It also leaves lots of men with no women going around making a nuisance of themselves. There has been no polygamous society that has established a democracy. It works alright if you need a surplus of males to throw into tribal wars but we need highly educated soldiers at the moment. Also with constant warfare, win or lose, you are left with less males.
Also, it seems rougher on women and children. I haven’t heard many good things about the children on third wives from either China or the Muslim world.
I built an addition to my house when my grandmother was no long able to live independently in Pompano Beach. My eldest was 2, and my baby was not quite yet born when she moved in. She live with us for seven years until my Uncle convinced her to move up to him in Detroit, located her in a nursing home a few miles from him, and she promptly died 6 months later. I think is was really from a broken heart given her attachment to the boys.
She and the boys were as thick as thieves, and she enjoyed all of the closeness that raising two little boys can be, but without the physical draining of having to alway be “on” for the parenting. They loved her, and her reading to them, and her pushing them around in their little wheeled playcar, and spoiling them with milk and cookies (and playfully admonishing them to not tell mom and dad (who were supplying the milk and cookies)).
My family all lives within 20 miles of Annapolis, and weekly we would all converge at either one of our homes, or at a local Italian joint, who operator was a friend of my from post collage days. It was not unusual that there were 30 of us spanning 4 generations, together, several dozen times a year closing down his restaurant.
So I understand, and cheerfully advocate the importance having close nit families. They really help with the travails that come from being married, and rearing children. You have a built in support system, and something from keeping you from making really dumb decisions.
Moving my immediate family away from our haven in Jupiter was the biggest mistake my father ever made. Nonetheless we survived, but we lost something too.