catzmeow
Gold Member
- Banned
- #81
I'd like to talk about this seriously with you, so I hope you can take me that way.
What are you talking about when you say "something" happened in the 60s and 70s? It seems like that was a pretty good time for blacks what with the civil rights movement and black power movements and all. Can you explain what you mean?
I don't think that the civil rights era was particularly good for blacks. One thing that happened was that the black family became increasingly splintered.
Widely reviled in its time, the Moynihan Report, released in 1965, detailed how marriage and family played an increasingly small role in black life. Here is a good overview that you can read, if you'd like:
Issues & Views: The Moynihan Report
I think it is even more true in 2008 than it was in 1965. Here is another article on it:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_3_black_family.html
the basic cultural insight contained in the report: that ghetto families were at risk of raising generations of children unable to seize the opportunity that the civil rights movement had opened up for them.
The reason I say that "something" happened is that there are many possible scapegoats: the welfare system, which rewarded unwed mothers; the white and black liberals who pushed blacks away from skilled trades and provided a disincentive to work that remains to this day (it is so common in the inner city to hear kids say, "I deserve better than minimum wage in a fast food restaurant," even though many of us grew up doing that work, and thought nothing of it); the liberal policies that pretended that black families were not the linchpin of black society; and black men who abandoned their children and families. It was a clusterfuck of all of the above, in my opinion...and the civil rights era was the framework which allowed the criticisms raised in the Moynihan Report (legitimate, correct, serious criticisms) to be silenced and shamed.
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