America has witnessed

months

of civil unrest

in cities around America

following the death of

George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Many of the protesters

decry income and net worth

“inequality.” But the most

serious “inequality” is the

unequal percentage of fathers

in Black households, a

phenomenon that has been

encouraged by government

policies that normalize and

reward out-of-wedlock

births.

In 1965, Daniel Patrick

Moynihan, who was assistant

secretary of Labor

to President Lyndon B.

Johnson, published “The

Negro Family: The Case for

National Action.” At that

time, 25% of Blacks were

born outside of wedlock,

a number that this former

adviser to President John F.

Kennedy, future adviser to

President Richard Nixon,

future U.S. ambassador and

future Democratic senator

from New York said was

catastrophic to the Black

community.

Moynihan wrote: “A

community that allows a

large number of young men

to grow up in broken homes,

dominated by women, never

acquiring any stable relationship

to male authority,

never acquiring any rational

expectations about the

future — that community

asks for and gets chaos.

Crime, violence, unrest,

unrestrained lashing out at

the whole social structure

— that is not only to be

expected, it is very near to

inevitable.”

Moynihan, according to

his daughter, “was crucified

by the left,” many of

whom considered the book

racist. Maura Moynihan

said: “To this day members

of the New York and DC

elite insult and attack me

at cocktail parties for being

his daughter.” But since the

publication of her father’s

controversial report, the

percent of Black children

entering the world without

a father in the home has almost

tripled.

One of the most prominent,

if not the most prominent,

liberal think tanks in

America is the Brookings

Institute. On the right, one

of the most prominent, if

not the most prominent,

conservative think tanks is

the Heritage Foundation.

Yet despite their ideological

differences, they agree on

America’s most important

domestic issue: Fathers

matter.

In 2015, Isabel V.

Sawhill, a senior fellow at

Brookings, wrote “Purposeful

Parenthood” and said:

“The effects on children

of the increase in single

parents is no longer much

debated. They do less well

in school, are less likely

to graduate, and are more

likely to be involved in

crime, teen pregnancy, and

other behaviors that make

it harder to succeed in life.

Not every child raised by

a single parent will suffer

from the experience, but,

on average, a lone parent

has fewer resources — both

time and money — with

which to raise a child. Poverty

rates for single-parent

families are five times those

for married-parent families.

… The growth of such

families since 1970 has

increased the overall child

poverty rate by about 5 percentage

points (from 20 to

25 percent). …

“Recent research suggests

that boys are indeed

more affected than girls

by the lack of a male role

model in the family. If true,

this sets the stage for a cycle

of poverty in which mother-

headed families produce

boys who go on to father

their own children outside

marriage.”

In 2014, Brookings

also puRobert Rector, a

senior research fellow at

the conservative Heritage

Foundation, wrote in 2012

“Marriage: America’s

Greatest Weapon Against

Child Poverty,” in which he

made the same case as did

the researchers from Brookings:

“Child poverty is an

ongoing national concern,

but few are aware of its

principal cause: the absence

of married fathers in the

home. According to the U.S.

Census, the poverty rate for

single parents with children

in the United States in 2009

was 37.1 percent. The rate

for married couples with

children was 6.8 percent.

Being raised in a married

family reduced a child’s

probability of living in poverty

by about 82 percent.

“Some of this difference

in poverty is due to the fact

that single parents tend to

have less education than

married couples, but even

when married couples are

compared to single parents

with the same level of education,

the married poverty

rate will still be more than

75 percent lower. Marriage

is a powerful weapon in

fighting poverty. In fact,

being married has the same

effect in reducing poverty

that adding five to six years

to a parent’s level of education

has.”

Rapper T.I. recently said:

“If (Blacks) make up for

13% of this nation’s population,

we should make up

for 13% of the ownership

of land. We should be representing

at least 13%, 14%

on boards (of) financial institutions,

and so on and so

forth.” Does this 13% rule

apply to the NBA, where

three-quarters of the players

are Black? Does it apply to

homicides, given that almost

half of America’s homicide

victims are Black? More importantly,

does this apply to

the percentage of Black kids

born outside of marriage?

© 2020 Laurence A. Elder