Revival of National Black Power conference starts today in Marietta

[CaliDude1]

Originally Posted by waltlantz

The whole single parent deal I think is more pressing for our more imporvershed blacks. I'm not writing off on any father just up and running away after the child is born but if one parent has a good enough job and income, the problem isn't nearly as bad as it is if your family is poor IMHO.

I completely disagree with this. Children need both parents no matter what their finanacial situation is. Money will never be a substitute for a father's presence and love. And I used the fathers as an example because they are the ones that are usually missing.

I am a pretty live and let live kind of guy. But if it is one thing that drives me up the wall is how lackidasical we Americans have increasingly become toward parenting. We are doing our children a major disservice.

As far as the Black Power Conference, its not my thing. I am all for addressing the parenting issues in the black community, though. If they at least do that then I'll give them a thumbs up.

[bizchick86]

No problem. I wanted to send this out earlier, but I've been in the process of moving.

There are both old and recent articles on this misconception. One of the older ones that first shed light on this issue is from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: News and Views: Black Out- of- Wedlock Births; The Deception That Put Welfare Reform Over the Top The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 13 [30 September 1996] p.13.

If you have access to Lexis Nexis, you should be able to get it.

More recently, is an article on the Atlantic: Even more on out of wedlock births - Ta-Nehisi Coates
which also cites two CDC reports,
here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_06.pdf and here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr48/nvs48_16.pdf

Another misconception is equating being born out-of-wedlock to living in a single parent family. This is not the 70% rate that people are fond to cite, it's closer to about half-and-half when it comes to black children being raised by two parents (About 4 million living with two parents, about 5.6 million living with one parent as of 2005) according to the Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/population/soc...blackalone.csv)

Further, in returning to the issues raised earlier, policy and power play a significant role in both the make-up of black families and the social issues affecting us. While how a child is born may be important, what's more influential is how that child is raised-- the love, support, and access to resources and opportunities those children get during their childhood and adolescence.

Lastly, all too often, we accept the normative notion of what a succesfful family is--the standard two parent, 3 kids, and a dog ideal. But considering black children are least likey to consume mostly all types of drugs and alcohol than both whites and Latinos, black women are enrolling in college at growing rates despite socio-economic obstacles, and the vast majority of black families, regardless of their composition, continue to work hard and bust their butts for a decent living in this country more than almost any other race (for instance, black women have worked in the labor force more than white women every decade until the 90s, when affirmative action began to benefit white women), who are we to say that mold is better for black people?

The bottom line is that this conference is necessary to changing policies to improve both the lingering family issues and the larger issues that more explicity affect us. Yes, how a child is born may be important, but even more important are the the tracking and over-testing of young black children in education, the injustice in the criminal system that disproportionately imprisons black men for non-violent crimes, discriminatory employment practices that enable white men with criminal records to be hired more readily than black men without one, reverse redlining (which precipitated the economic crisis), the gentrification and continued push of low-income black people to ghettoes lacking significant employment opportunities, and the host of other policy issues that consistently affect us. These are issues that have been tested time and time again to significantly and adversely affect black families, and they affect us far more than what some marriage papers symbolicaly represent when a black child exits her mother's womb.

Originally Posted by jeffreda30238

Well if that is the case, would you mind pasting the link where you obtained your information from? If you make that statement and it is valid, I would like to see where you got your information from and if you got it from a reliable source. I have worked with single mothers and have found out differently, so I will believe what I would like based on what I have seen and worked with, but if you have better info then I am all for better statistics.