“One of the great tragedies of recent history has been the total destruction of the black family. There was a time, forty to fifty years ago, when black men married black women and raised black families; this was the normal thing. Thanks particularly to the Democrats and the welfare system” – Dr. D.
This is of course true, and all conservatives – paleos, neocons, Christian-right, economic conservatives, libertarians – agree on this point.
But I also think that “whitey is to blame” is just as responsible as the welfare state, and indeed served to create a fertile soil for the destruction of the black family by Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”.
Those who are parents realize that if they ever let their children get away with anything without punishment, there will be chaos in the house within a week.
When white people got the option of welfare, they still had to face the stigma of being a bum who’s living off other other people’s taxes. White men still faced the stigma of not taking care of their children. White teen girls still faced the stigma of being “The High School Slut” for having a child at 14.
Some people did not care. As the success of Girls Gone Wild and the abundance of amateur pornography shows, many white girls are not concerned with getting a reputation as a slut. But for most people, the stigma does work.
Stop a teen girl and ask how she would react to being known as a slut in her high school or neighborhood. The vast majority would be horrified.
Blacks previously faced the same stigma. Much of black life was previously centered around church, which had positive effects on black society.
In the 1960s, the traditional church was rejected by many who instead embraced white-hating “Black Liberation Theory” and its insane conspiracy theories about whites.
Traditional Judeo-Christian teachings – marriage, fatherhood, education, “good things come to those who wait” – were replaced in black churches with sermons where the pastor blamed everything on whites, sometimes complete with the damning of America in the more extreme black churches.
Only it wasn’t America that wound up getting damned by Black Liberation Theology, it was Black America.
When Judeo-Christian values were taken out of the Church, there was no reason to go to church – other than as to participate in a racist “rally” at a radical church like Barack Obama’s, or in a more moderate Church that would make you feel better about yourself by blaming all your flaws on white men with less hateful rhetoric.
The early 1960s therefore saw a combined effect of the elimination of Judeo-Christian values from the Black Church and the shifting of stigma – in church and the ‘hood – away from those blacks who actually engage in anti-social behavior such as crime, illegitimacy and chronic unemployment to “The White Man”.
Blacks were now neither taught to “do the right thing” before they engaged in this behavior nor stigmatized after the fact to serve as example to others.
The changes spawned by the “Civil Rights” reforms in the early 1960s meant that the black community served as fertile ground the “Great Society” changes that came in the late 1960s, leading to a welfare epidemic, destruction of the black family, crime and rioting by men who are free from the obligations of work and fatherhood.
White teen girls still faced the stigma of being “The High School Slut” for having a child at 14.
There was a time when that might have been true. But increasing numbers of white women are choosing to have children out of wedlock. They have the entire (police) state apparatus of the child support bureaucracy behind them. You might try checking out the various MRA (men’s rights activist) websites for more info on this one.
The destruction of the family (generally-not just blacks) has its roots in the values shift that took place during The Sixties Cultural Revolution (1965-70). This era saw-among many other things- the birth of Second Wave Feminism and “Gay Liberation”, the mainstreaming of anti-Americanism, and the stigma being taken way from illegitimacy as part of an overall sharp move away from traditional sexual morality. The SCR was a phenomenon distinct from the earlier Civil Rights Revolution and LBJ’s “Great Society”programs. Watch footage of the 1963 March On Washington and marvel at how normal everyone seems to be. Maybe except for Bob Dylan.
OK, Guy, who would you call Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society if not the Democrats and the welfare state? I came from Texas, and I know for certain that LBJ was a Dem; he was our senator for a long time before becoming VP and then President. The level of welfare that we had before the Great Society was small time compared to the Great Society, so I think it is fair to say that the GS and the welfare state are pretty close to one and the same. Not to split hairs, of course ….
The point of my previous comment was that we did the black folks no favors by breaking down the black family. It has been a disaster for them, and a resultant disaster for us as well.
You are correct in saying that the change in the black church has worked against black folks as well. The Christian teaching that fomerly existed there was not just “good things come to those who wait” but rather “good things come to those who wait (defer gratification) and work.” Now what they hear is “good things come to those who complain the loudest.”
We have sent the wrong message all the way around!
This is the standard, non-racial universalist, mainstream conservative narrative of what’s wrong with the black community. It’s true, but incomplete.
There’s an additional element that race realists need to be aware of.
That is that the welfare state’s advocates in America thought that America’s blacks would react like Swedes to the same negative incentives. They were wrong. Low-IQ people need strong incentives for industry and strictly enforced simple rules for proper conduct far more than the cognitive and social elite.
Smart / rich people have a cushion to insulate themselves from the consequences of destructive conduct. The dull and on-the-edge do not.
To be sure, Swedes have also suffered the pernicious effects of the welfare state. But they have been able to coast along on the momentum of their social and cultural capital, their high IQs, their ingrained work ethic and responsibility, etc. Illegitimate Swedish children have tended to be born to long-term cohabitators rather than the utter chaos that constitutes black ghetto families today. And so on.