The last posting made
the point that the historical treatment of African-Americans in this country
has posed that group many disadvantages.
To anyone who is familiar with the social/political history of the US,
they might react by thinking, “what else is new?” But what many seem to overlook are the
logical consequences of such treatment.
That previous posting left the reader with a riddle.
The riddle is: Why is it that African-American students do not
benefit in terms of their school performance, to the degree other racial or
ethnic kids benefit, by being children of higher income parents? Yes, they do benefit, but only to a roughly
thirty percent level as compared with white children. They also don’t benefit to the degree
Hispanic or Asian children do. This has
led researchers to point out cultural factors as the possible reasons for this
shortfall. In turn, these reports have
been highly controversial.
To begin, distasteful information, if
true, needs to be addressed. Now, one
can argue that even if true, it is misplaced, not directly related to the
problem at hand, or taken out of context.
But if correlational studies point out a relationship between or among
certain factors and when there are ample historical reasons for those factors
to be related, policy-makers, wanting to address the related problem, cannot
ignore the apparent causal factors.
Here is what Abigail and Stephen
Thernstrom report:
Today
most social scientists agree that growing up in a single-parent, female-headed
family “is almost always associated with lower educational attainment and more
behavioral and psychological problems.”
Those behavioral and psychological problems, the data indicate, include
getting into trouble both in school and with the law, dropping out of school,
and early pregnancy, as well as depressed academic performance.
We can expect large racial differences
in all of these things, because racial differences in family structure are
huge. Currently, only 37 percent of black
children live with two parents, as compared with 77 percent of whites, 65
percent of Hispanics, and 81 percent of Asian Americans.[1]
Also,
the Thernstroms report that African-American households have on average three
children; while white households have one.
Young black women, 18-years-old or less, have children at a two and a
half times more rate then white women of that age and 50 percent more often
than Hispanic young women. Yes,
historical disadvantages or, better stated, injustices have their consequences,
and many are not direct, but indirect.
Indirect
in that they set up the social conditions, seen around the world, that take on
such behavior patterns that produce these types of results. They are not exclusive to African-Americans. But are the Thernstroms correct; are their
numbers duplicated elsewhere? One
commentator who received some criticism – or controversy – was Don Lemon, a TV
news opinion show host on CNN.
He
reported the negative version of the above numbers; i.e., African-American
households have children out of wedlock at a greater than a 72 percent
rate. Just to report what seems to be a
related fact, Dom Lemon is an African-American.
This caused a fire-“shower” of criticism. Noting the controversy, the online news site,
Politifact, looked into this claim.
Using
data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2010,
that online site reported the rates of births in non-marital situations as
follows: Asian Americans and Pacific
Islanders, 17%; non-Hispanic whites, 29%; Hispanics, 53%; American Indian and
Native Alaskans, 73%; and non-Hispanic blacks, 73%.[2] But “out of wedlock” does not necessarily
mean single-parent.
The
2011 Census Bureau with the Annie E. Casey Foundation looked at data that
narrowed the above purview. They looked
at “children in single-parent families” – kids under 18 in households with
single parents (with perhaps a cohabiting adult). They found the following: non-Hispanic whites, 23%; Hispanics, 42
percent; American Indian and Native Alaskans, 53%; non-Hispanics blacks,
67%. While these numbers are slightly
lower, they follow the same pattern.
Of
interest to this writer is the comparison between Hispanic and non-Hispanic
blacks. As groups they share some
historical factors. Hispanics are mostly
immigrants from lesser developed countries, they initially lack English skills,
and their political/economic background are less than ideal when measured
against democratic standards. But their
background does not begin to compare with the disadvantages, blacks have faced
in American society.
This
writer has had first-hand experience with this, given he is a first generation
American from immigrant Hispanic parents.
He along with his parents did have it tough during his early years, but
by the time he went to school he can honestly say he did not face any
discriminatory treatment. Perhaps he was
fortunate, but from what he saw African-Americans had to go through (a drive
through the South of the 1950s was eye-opening); there was no comparison. And look at the numbers, Hispanics rank high
in these two charts. Conclusion, tough
socioeconomic conditions have their consequences.
And
to the extent they do, a federated society with its governmental/political
institution has a responsibility to issue those policies that effectively
address the entailed disadvantages. The
reason Lemon got in “trouble” was he seemed to put the whole onus on blacks and
did not address the systemic factors hard enough.
The
system – the polity – needs to regulate the economic/political realities these
disadvantaged populations have imposed upon discriminated groups. And no institution needs this type of
regulation more than the educational institution, the key to economic success. One place to start, where it is relevant, is
the civics curriculum.
This
writer is not an expert in this area; he is an expert in the field of
curricular studies, especially civics curriculum. He is open to being convinced he is wrong in
the above argument. The readers of this
blog are invited to express any disagreement with what he expressed in this
posting. For example, the argument does
not yet explain the underperformance of blacks within higher income households,
but if the above is true, it does provide a context for this issue.[3]
[1] Abigail
Thernstrom and Stephen Thernstrom, No
Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in
Learning (New York, NY: Simon &
Schuster, 2003), 132.
[2] “CNN’s Don
Lemon Says More Than 72 Percent of African-American Births Are Out of Wedlock,”
Politifact, July 29, 2013, accessed
November 7, 2018, https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jul/29/don-lemon/cnns-don-lemon-says-more-72-percent-african-americ/
.
[3] This issue will be taken up in a future posting.
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