War on Cops Follows War on Family

Posted by Tina

I hesitate to use the word “war” in this context given the horror of Islamic Terror, but it seems to fit. A silent but deadly war on family structure began decades ago. It is a war of gradual erosion and dissolution and it is the underlying cause of increased crime and violence in America and the hopelessness, fear, and despair too many preteens experience. This war has affected white families as well as black families but the black population has been hit disproportionately, creating great hardship to individuals and communities. It is the seed that created the current civil unrest:

The rise of the welfare state in the 1960s contributed greatly to the demise of the black family as a stable institution. The out-of-wedlock birth rate among African Americans today is 73%, three times higher than it was prior to the War on Poverty. Children raised in fatherless homes are far more likely to grow up poor and to eventually engage in criminal behavior, than their peers who are raised in two-parent homes. In 2010, blacks (approximately 13% of the U.S. population) accounted for 48.7% of all arrests for homicide, 31.8% of arrests for forcible rape, 33.5% of arrests for aggravated assault, and 55% of arrests for robbery. Also as of 2010, the black poverty rate was 27.4% (about 3 times higher than the white rate), meaning that 11.5 million blacks in the U.S. were living in poverty.

When President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 launched the so-called War on Poverty, which enacted an unprecedented amount of antipoverty legislation and added many new layers to the American welfare state, he explained that his objective was to reduce dependency, “break the cycle of poverty,” and make “taxpayers out of tax eaters.” Johnson further claimed that his programs would bring to an end the “conditions that breed despair and violence,” those being “ignorance, discrimination, slums, poverty, disease, not enough jobs.” Of particular concern to Johnson was the disproportionately high rate of black poverty. In a famous June 1965 speech, the president suggested that the problems plaguing black Americans could not be solved by self-help: “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line in a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,'” said Johnson.

Thus began an unprecedented commitment of federal funds to a wide range of measures aimed at redistributing wealth in the United States.[1] From 1965 to 2008, nearly $16 trillion of taxpayer money (in constant 2008 dollars) was spent on means-tested welfare programs for the poor.

The economic milieu in which the War on Poverty arose is noteworthy. As of 1965, the number of Americans living below the official poverty line had been declining continuously since the beginning of the decade and was only about half of what it had been fifteen years earlier. Between 1950 and 1965, the proportion of people whose earnings put them below the poverty level, had decreased by more than 30%. The black poverty rate had been cut nearly in half between 1940 and 1960. In various skilled trades during the period of 1936-59, the incomes of blacks relative to whites had more than doubled. Further, the representation of blacks in professional and other high-level occupations grew more quickly during the five years preceding the launch of the War on Poverty than during the five years thereafter.

Despite these trends, the welfare state expanded dramatically after LBJ’s statement. Between the mid-Sixties and the mid-Seventies, the dollar value of public housing quintupled and the amount spent on food stamps rose more than tenfold. From 1965 to 1969, government-provided benefits increased by a factor of 8; by 1974 such benefits were an astounding 20 times higher than they had been in 1965. Also as of 1974, federal spending on social-welfare programs amounted to 16% of America’s Gross National Product, a far cry from the 8% figure of 1960. By 1977 the number of people receiving public assistance had more than doubled since 1960.

The most devastating by-product of the mushrooming welfare state was the corrosive effect it had (along with powerful cultural phenomena such as the feminist and Black Power movements) on American family life, particularly in the black community. As provisions in welfare laws offered ever-increasing economic incentives for shunning marriage and avoiding the formation of two-parent families, illegitimacy rates rose dramatically.

For the next few decades, means-tested welfare programs such as food stamps, public housing, Medicaid, day care, and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families penalized marriage. A mother generally received far more money from welfare if she was single rather than married. Once she took a husband, her benefits were instantly reduced by roughly 10 to 20 percent. As a Cato Institute study noted, welfare programs for the poor incentivize the very behaviors that are most likely to perpetuate poverty. (continues)

An article in the web publication, Your Black World citing the Urban Institute mirrors this view:

According to a report released by the Urban Institute, the state of the African-American family is worse today than it was in the 1960’s. Before you become offended and charge, “What about the White family?!” The report also discloses that families of all ethnicities are showing a decline; however, the African-American household has suffered the worst decline. Plus, YourBlackWorld.com offers you news specifically about the state of Black America, so, our focus will be on the state of the African-American family.

In 1950, 17 percent of African-American children lived in a home with their mother but not their father. By 2010 that had increased to 50 percent. In 1965, only eight percent of childbirths in the Black community occurred out-of-wedlock. In 2010 that figure was 41 percent; and today, the out-of-wedlock childbirth in the Black community sits at an astonishing 72 percent. The number of African-American women married and living with their spouse was recorded as 53 percent in 1950. By 2010, it had dropped to 25 percent.

A disturbing video report, brought to our attention by Harold a few days ago, explores the life of Diamond Reynolds, the woman in the car in the Michael Lynch shooting. This report places an exclamation point on the overall condition in the dysfunctional black community. Warning, the lifestyle and danger to this woman’s children are disturbing.

Children need the support of stable mothers and fathers to become strong, successful, contributing members of the community. As a nation we have failed our children over the past fifty years, particularly in the black community. This has created a condition of anger and mistrust that is manifesting currently in the war on cops. Should we be surprised? The police officer is the closest surrogate to family authority in any family or community where fathers are absent:

It has been widely reported for years now that the out-of-wedlock birth rate among American blacks is over 70 percent. Almost always, mothers are left to raise their children alone. In U.S. cities, where the violence and poverty among U.S. blacks is most pronounced, the out-of-wedlock birth rate is even worse. For example, in Chicago about 80 percent of black children are born to single mothers. Today, only 17 percent of American black teenagers reach age 17 in a family with their biological parents married to each other. In no state in the U.S does black family intactness exceed 30 percent.

Social science is finally revealing what sound morality and good common sense always told us: Children of single mothers do worse in almost every metric measured: school achievement, poverty, crime, emotional well-being, drug use, delinquency, violent behavior, and so on. These negative outcomes are even worse for black children born to single mothers. Millions of black youths — because of the frequent absence of fathers — are growing up poorly disciplined, poorly educated, and poorly churched.

Thus, gangs and crime have become far too common in the black communities of America. Sadly, these broken and vulnerable black families typically live in the most dangerous parts of our nation. From the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003, until the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011, there were 4,485 U.S. casualties. The city of Chicago alone had 4,265 murders during the same time period. Perhaps the most shocking statistic of all when it comes to black Americans and violence is that black men in the U.S. are half as likely to die if they are in prison than if they are not.

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Children need direction, guidance and discipline in addition to love and nurturing. The war on cops is, in may ways, a unrecognized inner scream for these things which are missing in too many young men’s lives today. There is much work to be done. More of the same will not do. Our nation has been feminized to the point of great imbalance and self-destruction. Over the last half decade we have attempted to super impose feminine strength as an answer to the worlds problems. We have engaged in narratives to depict men as violent rather than strong, unreasonable rather than firm and disciplined. Neither gender can be characterized by it’s worst or best attributes but that is what we have sought to do.

The war on cops will not be resolved by meetings, workshops, more government money or protests, violent or peaceful. It will resolve when welfare reforms are made so that family structure is supported and independence and work become the goal. It will resolve when respect for authority, particularly male authority figures, returns…and that, my friends, must start with male figures in the home.