Losing Ground
"Actually black families were destroyed during the 60's...
the 1960's. Black families used 2 be strong & tight knit
as were the forcibly segrated black commnunities which used
to be vibrant places. A side effect of integration was the
destruction of the black family & black community & black
mom'n'pop businesses.... "
I would say it was the 1940s, the 1950s, and the 1960s, with the '60s being just the nail in the coffin. (By the '70s, the black communities were already caricatures of a healthy society, filled with addicts, pimps, whores, gangs, hustlers, welfare queens, and Superfly wannabees.)
There were many factors:
1. The move of large numbers of rural blacks into inner city cores, to work in defense-related jobs (ship-building, ammunition, etc.) This accounted for a huge increase in black populations in Oakland (Henry Kaiser's massive ship-building center), St. Louis (ammunition), Chicago (shipping), Detroit (vehicles), L.A. (aircraft), Washington, D.C. (clerks, janitors), and many cities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc. (steel, coal, etc.).
2. Whites moved in large numbers to the new suburbs and ring neighborhoods in the 1950s. Many former immigrant areas of major cities turned into black ghettoes almost overnight. Unfortunately, most of the best jobs and best assimilation prospects were happening in the outer areas, leaving the lowest-paid jobs in the inner cities. The cruel irony was that the blacks were getting to the cities just as the cities were becoming less central to the surging economy.
3. During the 1950s, welfare was still called "general relief." A true last resort, and shameful to be "on relief." Social planners in the early 60s looked at how few inner city residents would apply for "general relief" and decided to de-stigmatize it: it was renamed with various names like "Aid to Families with Dependent Children" (AFDC), WICC, and was declared to be an "entitlement." From being a shameful last step, it became the birthright of every 15-year-old ghetto girl: become pregnant and get your own apartment (a crib for your cribs), an annual check from the government, and no husband to tell you what to do. (The schemes were set up to aid single mothers, which discourage marriage, obviously. Get married and your independence evaporates. This led to an extremely high rate of unwed mothers, further destroying the family structure.)
Charles Murray's "Losing Ground" outlines this entire sad situation very clearly. Here's just one of many comments on his book:
""Without bile and without rhetoric it lays out a stark truth that must be faced: Two decades of well-meaning programs to erase racism and poverty in the U.S. have left those at the very bottom of the ladder worse off than ever." - Daniel B. Moskowitz, Business Week"
--Tim May |
