The Left appoints itself as the moral authority on social issues despite the fact that all the social mores it promotes have undermined the American family, specifically the American black family.
Whenever conservatives dare to discuss solutions for children who grow up in environments where social programs have harmed single black mothers and they provide data disproving left-wing initiatives, leftists always go on the attack and further undermine those they purport to help by using the “racism” weapon.
A good example occurred last week when View co-host Whoopie Goldberg flew into a rage against presidential candidate Representative Michele Bachmann for signing a statement supporting traditional marriage and family called “The Marriage Vow.” This occurred against the backdrop of misleading facts hurled against Bachmann by the vitriolic View women, who were angered that the statement asked GOP candidates to support such things as banning same sex marriage and pornography, and preventing Sharia (Islamic) law from becoming part of American law. However, one section of The Marriage Vow positively drove Whoopie Goldberg over the edge.
The first bullet point, which has since been removed by the Family Leader due to pressure from groups claiming the act is homophobic and supports slavery, noted the “disastrous impact slavery had on African-America families” during the 18th and 19th centuries. Further noted was the damage created by 1960s Democratic policies that destroyed the traditional black family, which had persevered even during slavery. These assertions in particular, while enraging Goldberg, happen to be true—70% of African-American babies are born to single parents today, a drastic departure from historical statistics.
Goldberg’s anger rests on the same unfounded accusations coming from the Left against Bachmann, who had no part in drafting the document. In fact, had Goldberg done her homework, she would have learned that Bachmann never signed the version of the document that contained the slavery statement. Bachmann, who signed another document, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity: “[U]nder no circumstances would any child be better off growing up under slavery and that isn’t what I signed. That isn’t what I believe.”
Rather than give Bachmann the benefit of the doubt, Marriage Vow, Goldberg yelled:
Damn it, I am sick of this crap! Could you [white people] get your act together? You don’t know anything about how slaves raised their kids, or why people worked together. Just don’t add stuff that you don’t know what you’re talking about!
Goldberg’s anger worsened as she launched her personal defense of single mothers and their children, declaring that “some of us turned out okay with single parents…so stop pointing your fingers at single parents! I’m sick of people who don’t know what they’re talking about.” But this rant proved Goldberg knows absolutely nothing about Bachmann, who responded in a public e-mail explaining that her parents divorced when she was young and she “was raised by a single mother” and understands “firsthand the difficulties of growing up with one parent.”
Furthermore, Goldberg intentionally ignored a major fact in the single-parenting argument: President Obama, who was raised by a single mother, declared in his June 15, 2008 Father’s Day message that “more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled—doubled—since we [older black Americans] were children,” and that black fathers “don’t realize responsibility does not end at conception.” The president added that these men “are acting like boys instead of men.”
President Obama’s remarks are backed by authoritative data disproving Goldberg’s claims. The United States Census Bureau reports that by 1994, 66% of unwed American mothers were black women, three times as high as the percentage for white women. The Census Bureau further states that black “non-marital births” were 60% of all out-of-wedlock births in 1993. The figures indicate white non-marital births are also on the rise, reasons conservative presidential candidates like Bachmann signed the Marriage Vow: single American women are getting pregnant in rising numbers and raising fatherless children.
As far as single-parent children “turning out okay,” Child Trend Bank reports that children born and raised by unwed mothers “are more likely to grow up in a single-parent household,” and facing “instability in living arrangements, [they] live in poverty, and have socio-emotional problems.” Also, single-parented children are more likely to become criminals.
Goldberg herself may have “turned out okay,” and Obama may have become president of the United States, but data provides evidence that not all single-parented children turn out okay.
This is not a race or anti-single mother issue. Obama’s comments, specifically about the American black family, are correct and further confirmed by the site Politifact, which states that prior to President Obama’s 1960 birth, only 22% of black children were raised in single-parent homes. By 1968, after President Johnson enacted his Utopian Great Society, that figure rose to 31.4%. By 2006, it rose another 56% with “91.4 percent of single parents of black children” being mothers. Even liberal-minded Democratic Senator Patrick J. Moynihan, himself raised by a single mother, wrote in his 1965 Moynihan Report that black out-of-wedlock births rose 23.6% from 1950 to 1963. Moynihan prophetically warned that children raised in single-parent homes were less likely to succeed in life—a warning that went unheeded.
According to economist Walter E. Williams, only about 30% of American black children today live in a two-parent home. Backing up the Marriage Vow’s original statement, Williams wrote:
Historically, from 1870s on up to about 1940s, and depending on the city, 75 to 90 percent of black kids lived in two parent families. [Today, the] illegitimacy rate is 70 percent among blacks where that is unprecedented in our history.
It is about time the Left faced facts: Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty not only gave massive support to single mothers, it encouraged mother-only families by making black male breadwinners irrelevant and their economic roles replaceable by government. Enabled by government programs, this system has destroyed the black American family, wrecking countless American children’s lives.
Michele Bachmann and GOP candidates did not sign an anti-black/anti-single mother document. The document defends simple facts: marriage is a fundamental part of American society and politics, the family is the core of American society, and teaching these values keeps this nation and our future generations stable. Without two-parent households raising children, children risk living dysfunctional lives that lead to poverty and crime.
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