Socialism and the Decline of the Black Family

Children need fathers, but social fragmentation gives an advantage to those who seek centralized power

By Jason Riley. Excerpts:

"socialism’s impact on the traditional family structure is no less concerning. Children from intact families are more likely to finish school and avoid poverty. The absence of fathers is strongly correlated with teen parenthood, drug addiction and involvement with the criminal justice system. The cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote that “every known human society rests firmly on the learned nurturing behavior of men” and that civilization “depends upon social inventions that will make each generation of males want to nurture women and children.”"

"socialists such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels dismissed the traditional family as a tool of oppression"

"many of the social and economic problems in low-income black communities stem from the sad fact that some 70% of black children are born to unwed parents and nearly 45% live with a single mother."

"Asians are the highest earners, followed by whites, Hispanics and blacks. Similarly, Asians have the highest marriage rates, followed by whites, Hispanics and blacks. Maybe it’s no coincidence."

"Following emancipation, one of the first things black people did was seek out spouses and children from whom they had been forcibly separated during slavery."

"Between 1890 and 1950, black men and women married earlier and were more likely to be married by 35 than their white peers, Mr. Squires writes. That suggests black attitudes toward marriage and child rearing today are the product of incentives and circumstances that developed long after the end of slavery. “More than 70 percent of black children were born to married parents in 1965—a century after the abolition of slavery,” Mr. Squires writes. “Today, only 30 percent are."

"The black family was more intact after three centuries of chattel slavery than after three generations of the federal government’s ‘war’ on poverty.”"