I was pretty pleased with Obama’s remarks at the NAACP – he made much the same challenge/critique of the African American community as Bill Cosby has been doing for years, but with the added gravitas of having actually, you know, been elected President and all. Good stuff. The video and link to full transcript are here, too.
Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.
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That is Barack Obama at his best. I’m a pretty harsh critic of the man, and to my taste there’s a bit too much “government can do” and not enough “you are responsbible for” in there, but overall it’s a speech that no Republican President could ever give to the NAACP without getting booed out of the room and pilloried by the press. Much like only Nixon could go to China, maybe only Obama could give this speech to the NAACP.
I just wish he had put more emphasis on family, especially on married couples staying married and raising children as a joint commitment. Of course he’d have outraged much of his base if he had, but I think that’s a missed opportunity.
Still, overall an excellent speech with a lot of truth in it. And yes, much of it did, in fact, sound like Bill Cosby.
Here’s the CDC data on out-of-wedlock births.
Nothing spoken at the NAACP (except a salute to its proud history) is more important than the problem of single-motherhood in the black community.
68% of all births in the black community are out of wedlock. That number is so staggering as to be mind-blowing. Think about how hard life is already — gotta work hard, find a job, pay the bills, find a girl etc, etc, etc. Then add some pretty systemic racism. Then, take away a father to raise you.
It’s a huge crushing burden.
Also, the point isn’t to stigmatize or criticize single mothers. It’s to emphasize that much of life is a competition. Not Hank’s rules, but the rules. And competing in life without a father, against other kids, who have fathers devoted to guiding, mentoring, loving, teaching into adulthood is assymetrical warfare to say the least.
This is a huge problem.
–HB
Hank,
Also proof Margaret Sanger’s eugenics dream is alive and well: Most Planned Parenthood offices reside within black communities.
68% out-of-wedlock births? Abortion facilities within walking distance?
Sounds like supply and demand to me.
There are things I reflexively want to nit pick, but taking a step back, those are trivialities. Instead, I stand back and applaud Obama for delivering such an important message to a culture that needed to hear it, and from a “credible” source. (I use quotes because I have my doubts that the NAACP would consider the likes of Thomas Sowell or JC Watts credible.)
And yes, he is the only person on the planet that could make such comments to the NAACP without being booed out of the room.
68% out-of-wedlock births? Abortion facilities within walking distance?
Sounds like supply and demand to me.
Im trying to understand this but I just dont follow. wouldnt a eugenics program targeted at the black community, in the guise of abortion clinics, mean that there would be even fewer out of wedlock births, not more?
i dont get it. and no, i dont really think that abortion clinics = eugenicism, even though yes Sanger was a proponent of mild eugenics in eth social engineering sens,e much like many other notable personalities in eth early 20th century, including H. G. Wells, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, John Harvey Kellogg, Winston Churchill, and many more.
Im not aware of Sanger or others of her “ilk” – like that noted dicttaor Winston Churchill or those haters of freedom and democracy, Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt – ever engaging in actual genocide the way Hitler actually did. Technically, they were agreeing with Hitler in general, but I think the difference in their advocacy of actual policy is an important one.
but ok, abortion clinic s = genocide of blacks. lets accept this for the sake of the argument (and only for its sake, in this thread, right now). I just dont see how the logic goes from there to more ot-of-wedlock births. Maybe you can talk me thru the reasoning there. Seriously. I just do not get it, and Im not that stupid, though I have my blond moments, admittedly.
(I’m not actually blond)
From teh GSS database:
http://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda3
2000-2008
fertility rate for white, nonhipanic – avg # kids = 1.8
black – 2.14
other (mostly asian) – 1.53
here rae details of the query if you want to reproduce it:
dependent variable: childs
row: race
selection: year(2000-2008),hispanic(1)
(need to exclude hispanics from White so as not to bias)
CC,
You’re getting quite soft in the brain.
Kevin,
Abortion is not an unwed mother issue for those that do not have them.
Although it may be a favorite form of black birth control.
Aziz,
the Hank link:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/statab/t001x17.pdf
From 1980 to 2000, the percentage of unmarried black births went from 56 % to a high of 70%.
The issue is whether there are black male parents who will be responsible for their sired children.
The question is did, Obama, throw some sound bytes and curves to a conditioned NAACP audience.
McK: I find keeping my brain soft to be a better strategy than letting it ossify.
Being raised in a fatherless home is by far the #1 risk factor for going to jail, ending up a drug addict, ending up homeless, etc., not being black.
That said, railing at black fathers is so old it’s almost cliche’d. It’s been going on from black church pulpits (and religious observance is higher in the black community than any other group in America save, maybe, hispanics) and from countless political leaders. Bill Cosby is in no way “new” or “daring” or any of that rubbish–not in that community, anyway. Maybe to the media at large, yeah, but among the black community? The two reactions to Cosby’s ranting on the subject are usually:
1) Yeah, you’re preaching to the choir, Bill, or,
2) Heard it all before, Bill, now when are we going to give black fathers respect?
It’s #2 that doesn’t happen often enough, to fathers in general in this country. And when you hit black boys and young men with nothing but how fatherhood is a crushing responsibility, practically a punishment, you’re not sending the right message. Well, you’re not sending an effective one anyway.
It’s like all the railing about “deadbeat dads,” which is feel-good politics that doesn’t accomplish much except in a few high-profile cases. If father’s rights aren’t being respected, if the rights of children to unfettered access to their fathers isn’t being respected, we can’t do much to expect these fathers to want to be involved.
Some states are getting better, but there’s precious little in the way of VISITATION ENFORCEMENT, which would do more than all the “throw ‘em in jail if they don’t pay” rhetoric and “for shame on you” publicity campaigns.
But for those who think punishment and shame is the only way to get these fathers involved in their kids lives, you only have to look at 20+ years of such efforts to see that gee, that works a little but not a whole lot.
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