Years ago, I interviewed Kweisi Mfume, then the president of the NAACP. “As between the presence of white racism and the absence of black fathers,” I asked, “Which poses the bigger threat to the black community?” Without missing a beat, he said, “The absence of black fathers.”
by
Larry Elder Prager University |
It was President Barack Obama who said,
"We all know the statistics. That children who grow up without a father
are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more
likely to drop out of school and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.”
The Journal of Research on Adolescence
confirms that even after controlling for varying levels of household income,
kids in father-absent homes are more likely to end up in jail. And kids who never
had a father in the house are the most likely to wind up behind bars.
In 1960, 5% of America's children entered
the world without a mother and father married to each other. By 1980 it was
18%, by 2000 it had risen to 33%, and fifteen years later, the number reached
41%.
For blacks, even during slavery when marriage
for slaves was illegal, black children were more likely than today to be raised
by both their mother and father. Economist Walter Williams has written that,
according to census data, from 1890 to 1940, a black child was more likely to
grow up with married parents than a white child.
For blacks, out-of-wedlock births have gone
from 25% in 1965 to 73% in 2015. For whites, from less than 5% to over 25%. And
for Hispanics, out-of-wedlock births have risen to 53%.
What happened to fathers? The answer is
found in a basic law of economics: If you subsidize undesirable behavior you
will get more undesirable behavior. In 1949, the nation’s poverty rate was 34%.
By 1965, it was cut in half, to 17% -- all before President Lyndon
Johnson’s so-called War on Poverty. But after that war began in 1965, poverty began
to flat line. From 1965 until now, the government has spent over $20 trillion
to fight poverty.
The
poverty rate has remained unchanged, but the relationship between poor men and women has changed – dramatically. That’s
because our generous welfare system allows
women, in effect, to marry the government. And this makes it all too easy for
men to abandon their traditional moral and financial responsibilities.
Psychologists call such dependency "learned helplessness."
How
do we know that the welfare state creates disincentives that hurt the very people
we are trying to help? They tell us.
In
1985, the Los Angeles Times asked both the poor and the non-poor whether poor
women "often" have children to get additional benefits. Most of the
non-poor respondents said no. However, 64% of poor respondents said yes.
Now, who do you think is in a better position to know?
Tupac Shakur, the late rapper,
once said: "I know for a fact that had I had a father, I'd have
some discipline. I'd have more confidence." He admitted he began he began running with gangs because he
wanted the things a father gives to a child, especially to a boy: structure and
protection.
“Your mother cannot calm you down the way a
man can,” Shakur said. “You need a man to teach a boy how to be a man."
My own father was never angry or
bitter--and insisted that today’s America was very different from the world of
racial segregation and limited opportunity in which he grew up. "Hard work
wins,” he told me and my brothers. “You get out of life what you put into it.
You can’t control the outcome, but you are 100% in control of the effort.
In my book "Dear Father, Dear
Son," I write about my rough, tough World War II Marine staff sergeant
dad. Born in the Jim Crow South of Athens, Ga., he was 14 at the start of the
Great Depression. Growing up, I watched my father work two full-time jobs as a
janitor. He also cooked for a rich family on the weekends--and somehow managed
to go to night school to get his GED. When I was 10, my father opened a small
restaurant that he ran until he retired in his mid-80s. And before blaming
other people, he said, "Go to the nearest mirror and ask yourself, What could I have done to change the outcome?”
This advice shaped my life.
Fathers
matter. Until we have
a government policy that makes that its first priority, nothing will change.