Martin Luther King’s niece Alveda King. (Facebook/Alveda King)
Restore America – As of Sunday, it’s been 53 years since Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the speech that’s been echoing in the back of your mind for as long as you can remember – that phrase we’ve heard almost as many times as we’ve heard “they’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime”:
“I have a dream.”
That anniversary has come around at a time when life is better for American minorities than ever, legally and culturally speaking, and yet racial dissatisfaction is greater than it’s been since the days of MLK himself.
Why would this be?
Well, there is only one answer, and it is the Democratic Party.
For five decades, the Democratic Party has earned itself a place of honor among African Americans, and when you step back and look at it, you can appreciate the clever – if devious – illusion they’ve created. They are that friend who always seems to be there when things go tragically awry.
It takes a lot of unmasking to see the insidious implications of that.
” Often, black 12th-graders can read, write and deal with scientific and math problems at only the level of white sixth-graders. This doesn’t bode well for success in college or passing civil service exams.” – W Williams
Prof. Walter E. Williams
Though racial discrimination exists, it is nowhere near the barrier it once was. The relevant question is: How much of what we see today can be explained by racial discrimination? This is an important question because if we conclude that racial discrimination is the major cause of black problems when it isn’t, then effective solutions will be elusive forever. To begin to get a handle on the answer, let’s pull up a few historical facts about black Americans.
In 1950, female-headed households were 18 percent of the black population. Today it’s close to 70 percent. One study of 19th-century slave families found that in up to three-fourths of the families, all the children lived with the biological mother and father. In 1925 New York City, 85 percent of black households were two-parent households. Herbert Gutman, author of “The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925,” reports, “Five in six children under the age of six lived with both parents.” Also, both during slavery and as late as 1920, a teenage girl raising a child without a man present was rare among blacks.
A study of 1880 family structure in Philadelphia found that three-quarters of black families were nuclear families (composed of two parents and children). What is significant, given today’s arguments that slavery and discrimination decimated the black family structure, is the fact that years ago, there were only slight differences in family structure among racial groups.
Coupled with the dramatic breakdown in the black family structure has been an astonishing growth in the rate of illegitimacy. The black illegitimacy rate in 1940 was about 14 percent; black illegitimacy today is over 70 percent, and in some cities, it is over 80 percent.
The point of bringing up these historical facts is to ask this question, with a bit of sarcasm: Is the reason the black family was far healthier in the late 1800s and 1900s that back then there was far less racial discrimination and there were greater opportunities? Or did what experts call the “legacy of slavery” wait several generations to victimize today’s blacks? Continue reading →
