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Race, Family, Crime and Poverty ..... Redux

Submitted by Roanman on Tue, 01/13/2015 - 15:10

People keep saying that they want that "National Conversation About Race".  We are of the opinion that for the most part they're lying through their teeth. But just in case someone is telling the truth on that one, here's a good start.

As always, clicking on the chart will take you to it's source.

Black Americans at the median, earn less money than Asian Americans, White Americans, and American Hispanics, in that order.

Black Americans at every level of educational attainment suffer higher rates of unemployment than do White, Asian and Hispanic Americans.

Apologists for Black America frequently site the statistical fact that there are more White Americans than Black Americans on the welfare rolls. The following is a chart reflecting that fact with regards to SNAP recipients.

Unknown?????

Apologists for Black America invariably fail to mention another statistical fact. Black Americans make up only about 13% of the total American population. As opposed to between 64% and 72% for White Americans, depending on your criteria regarding just exactly who is White.

Black Americans are imprisoned at a significantly higher rate than are White Americans.

Again, apologists for Black America complain loudly that this disparity has to do with racist sentencing policies for possessing and selling illegal drugs, and in particular differences in sentencing across the board for use, possession, sale and distribution between crack and the powdered form of cocaine, Black Americans cocaine users being significantly more likely to indulge in Crack than are White American cocaine enthusiasts who prefer the powdered form.

They certainly have a point when it comes to the category "Street Level Dealer".

However, that Black Americans commit a significantly higher percentage of violent crime relative to their percentage of the total population than any other racial group in America is not even debatable. (FBI crime statistics combine Whites and Hispanics into the same group, called White)

Clicking on the image below will take you to the 2013 FBI Uniform Crime Report. It is important to understand that these statistics are for arrests and not for convictions. Having said that, the figures are truly ugly as Black Americans make up 52% of the arrests for Murder, 56% for Robbery, 33% for Aggravated Assault and with the exception of Driving Under the influence, Liquor Law violations and Public Drunkenness, Black Americans never approach their relative percentage of 13% of America's total population. Interestingly, 36% of the total arrests for "Suspicion" and 44% of all arrests for Curfew Violations and Loitering are made on Black Americans which I think can be easily construed as evidence of the pervasive "Arrested for Driving While Black" charge, registered by Black Americans against Police Departments across America for generations now.

BUT! ......................... 

What if maybe, all of this has nothing to do with race or racism or anything of the kind? What if there is something else at work here altogether?

The Right just loves to reference a 1990 report that has seemingly disappeared from the internet from The Progressive Policy Institute research arm of the Democratic Leadership Council that states as follows, “... the relationship between crime and one-parent families” is “so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low-income and crime."

As early as 1965 New York Democrat, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan came to the identical conclusion in his report titled "The Negro Family: The Case For National Action. Office of Policy Planning and Research United States Department of Labor March 1965" aka "The Moynihan Report".

That report was for the most part vilified as both sexist and racist.

Results of a 1994 Wisconsin study on juvenile incarceration, based on data collected in 1993, when combined with census data for the state of Wisconsin from it's Current Population Survey for 1993, are as follows;

Additionally, children from biological two parent families on average miss fewer school days, have higher grade point averages, and are more likely to attend college. Of those who attend college, children from biological two parent families are more likely to graduate than children from both single parent families and children from biological/stepparent families.

Here is some of the research.

Test Scores: Elementary school children from intact biological families earn higher reading and math test scores than children in cohabiting and divorced single and always-single parent families. David J. Armor, Maximizing Intelligence (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003): 80.

Test Scores: Adolescents from non-intact families have lower scores than their counterparts in intact married families on math, science, history, and reading tests. Youngmin Sun and Yuanzhang Li, "Parents' Marital Disruption and Its Uneven Effect on Children's Academic Performance- A Simulation Model," Social Science Research 37 (2008): 456.

Test Scores: Adolescents living in intact married families or married stepfamilies (with stepfathers) performed similarly on the Peabody Vocabulary Test, but adolescents living in single-mother families or in cohabiting stepfamilies (with their biological mother) did worse than those in intact families.Wendy Manning and Kathleen Lamb, "Adolescent Well-Being in Cohabitating, Married, and Single-Parent Families," Journal of Marriage and Family 65 (November 2003): 876-893.

Grades: High school students who live in intact married families have a higher average combined GPA in English and math (2.9) than those in married stepfamilies, divorced families, or intact cohabiting families (2.6) and those in always-single parent families or cohabiting stepfamilies (2.5). National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. As cited by Patrick F. Fagan, "Family Structure and School Performance of U.S. High School Students." Available at http://www.frc.org/content/mapping-america-family-structure-and-school-p.... Accessed 12 September 2011 .

Attending College: Over 57 percent of children who live in intact biological families enter college, compared to 32.5 percent of children in stepfamilies, 47.5 percent of children in single-parent families, and 31.8 percent of children who live in families without either parent present.Gary D. Sandefur, Sara McLanahan, and Roger A. Wojtkiewicz, "The Effects of Parental Marital Status during Adolescence on High School Graduation," Social Forces 71, no. 1 (1992): 112.

College Graduation: Students from disrupted families are less likely to complete four-year college than their peers from intact biological families. Michele Ver Ploeg, "Children from Disrupted Families as Adults: Family Structure, College Attendance and College Completion," Economics of Education Review 21, no. 2 (2002): 174.

Overall: Adolescents from single-parent families and cohabiting families are more likely to have low achievement scores, lower expectations for college, lower grades, and higher dropout rates than children from intact biological families (after controlling for other family socioeconomic factors).Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994): 79.

Behavior: First grade students born to married mothers are less likely to behave disruptively (i.e. disobey a teacher, be aggressive with other children) than those born to single or cohabiting mothers. Shannon E. Cavanagh and Aletha C. Houston, "Family Instability and Children's Early Problem Behavior," Social Forces 85, no. 1 (September 2006): 551-581.

Suspension: Adolescents in single-parent families, married stepfamilies, or cohabiting stepfamilies are more likely than adolescents in intact married families to have ever been suspended or expelled from school, to have participated in delinquent activities, and to have problems getting along with teachers, doing homework, and paying attention in school.Wendy Manning and Kathleen Lamb, "Adolescent Well-Being in Cohabiting, Married, and Single-Parent Families," Journal of Marriage and Family 65 (November 2003): 876-893

Attendance: Compared to adolescents from intact married families, those from divorced families and cohabiting families have many more unexcused absences and skip more classes.Barry D. Ham, "The Effects of Divorce on the Academic Achievement of High School Seniors," Journal of Divorce and Remarriage 38, no. 3 (2003): 180.Dropping Out: Students from stepfamilies and single-parent families are three times as likely to drop out of school as students from intact biological families, even when controlling for socioeconomic status.[13]

Dropping Out: Students from stepfamilies and single-parent families are three times as likely to drop out of school as students from intact biological families, even when controlling for socioeconomic status.Herbert Zimiles and Valerie E. Lee, "Adolescent Family Structure and Educational Progress," Developmental Psychology 27, no. 2 (1991): 314-320.

High School Graduation: Eighty-five percent of adolescents in intact biological families graduate from high school, compared to 67.2 percent in single-parent families, 65.4 percent in stepfamilies, and 51.9 percent who live with no parents. Gary D. Sandefur, Sara McLanahan, and Roger A. Wojtkiewicz, "The Effects of Parental Marital Status during Adolescence on High School Graduation," Social Forces 71, no. 1 (1992): 112.

Applying to College: Sixty-nine percent of children from intact biological families applied to college, according to one study, compared to only 60 percent of students who were not from intact families. Gary D. Sandefur, Sara McLanahan, and Roger A. Wojtkiewicz, "The Effects of Parental Marital Status during Adolescence on High School Graduation," Social Forces 71, no. 1 (1992): 112.

Educational Expectations: The adolescent children of single-parent families or stepfamilies reported that their parents had lower educational expectations for them, were less likely to monitor schoolwork, and supervised social activities less than the parents of children in intact biological families. Nan M. Astone and Sara S. McLanahan, "Family Structure, Parental Practices, and High School Completion," American Sociological Review 56 (1991): 309-320.

College Expectations: Whereas 31.3 percent of sons and 26.7 percent of daughters from intact biological families plan to get a college degree, 42.4 percent of sons and 35.9 percent of daughters in single-parent families do not plan to get a college degree. Rashmi Garg, Stella Melanson, and Elizabeth Levin, "Educational Aspirations of Male and Female Adolescents from Single-Parent and Two Biological Parent Families: A Comparison of Influential Factors," Journal of Youth and Adolescence 36 (2007): 1010-1023.

Parental Expectations: Sixty percent of mothers in intact married families expected their child to graduate college, compared to 40 percent of mothers in cohabiting stepfamilies and 36 percent of always-single mothers. Kelly R. Raley, Michelle L. Frisco, and Elizabeth Wildsmith, "Maternal Cohabitation and Educational Success," Sociology of Education 78, no. 2 (2005): 151.

Graduate Studies Expectations: About 40 percent of sons and 44.7 percent of daughters from intact biological families aim to get more education after obtaining their undergraduate degree, compared to 30.7 percent of sons and 35.3 percent of daughters from single-parent families. Rashmi Garg, Stella Melanson, and Elizabeth Levin, "Educational Aspirations of Male and Female Adolescents from Single-Parent and Two Biological Parent Families: A Comparison of Influential Factors," Journal of Youth and Adolescence 36, no. 8 (2007): 1017.

That there was some of the research.

Can anyone here possibly think that any of the above does not reflect in the potential for the lifetime earnings of an individual child? This matters a great deal because as you will discover below, this problem amplifies itself with every subsequent generation.

From Fair Test, College Board and the Wall Street Journal. Evidently, on average, children from every single economic bracket outscored every single lower bracket in every category on the 2014 SAT exam.

You really should read that again !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now here's where it gets really interesting ..... at least to me.

It literally pays to be married as .....

And ...

Conversly.

Don't just get caught up with the 48% "Never married", take note of the only 13% "Married with husband present" as well.

Seemingly, as John Wooden once famously said,

As an aside, I think that one might logically conclude that this would apply to women and fathers equally well.

But the children of Black Americans by a very strong percentage do not live in two parent families.

Or, the other way to look at it.

Feel free to draw your own conclusions here, but mine are as follows.

While it may not solve the entirety our issues with race in America, Black Americans in general and black American children in particular would be a helluva lot better off if black men and women were to get ..... not necessarily to each other ..... and then stay ..... MARRIED.

This pretty much goes for just about everyone else as well.

Just sayin'.

Sometimes I feel like a fatherless child

Submitted by Roanman on Tue, 10/23/2012 - 17:35

 

This excerpt was taken from one of our favorite sites, The Burning Platform.

Click on the chart below to link up to this very fine analysis of the pathetic condition of American society.

 

In 1960, only 8% of families with a child under 18 were single parent households. Today, that number is 30%. The percentage of children born out of wedlock in this country is 41%, with 72% of black children born out of wedlock. 

 

 

It’s no accident that in 1960, according to the Pew Research Center, five years before President Lyndon Johnson signed into law his War on Poverty, 61% of black adults were married. By 2008, this was down to 32%. In 1960, 2% of black children had a parent that had never been married. By 2008, this was up to 41%. The results speak for themselves:

  • 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes
  • 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes
  • 85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes
  • 80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes
  • 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes
  • 75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes
  • 85% of all youths in prison come from fatherless homes.

 

Even more reading on a Sunday morning

Submitted by Roanman on Mon, 10/11/2010 - 09:40

 

 

From yesterday's Quarter Horse News

 

Trainer Mugged Outside Hotel During The Congress 

 

Dallas Schmidt, a reining and working cowhorse trainer from Cooperstown, North Dakota, was mugged outside of his room at the Baymont Hotel located at the Dublin/Granville Road exit in Columbus, Ohio on Thursday evening. Schmidt was in Columbus attending the Congress.  Schmidt, his wife DaLayne, and their young daughter Bailey had just returned to their room, and Dallas went back to his truck to get a baby bottle.

According to accounts by wife DaLayne, Dallas had parked by some trees and while he was standing on the running boards looking for the bottle, two men came out of the trees and approached him. They told him they wanted his money. Dallas had just emptied his pockets in the room and had nothing for them.

Armed with nothing more than his spurs, Schmidt started kicking his attackers and was able to scare them off. Police later found one of the alleged attackers who was severely injured and is now in intensive care. The spur went under his chin, through his tongue and in to his palate. Because the spur was dirty, he is now fighting an infection.

 

If you would accept a little advice from your Uncle Roany.

Horse trainers work 10 to 12 hours a day wrestling with heavy and/or strong stuff: bales of hay, young horses, sometimes cattle, occasionally buffalo.

Do not mess with these people, they are hard and stronger than hell.

And for God's sake never antagonize a bull rider, even horse trainers are scared of bull riders.

 

Terrible News: Crime is down

Submitted by Roanman on Sun, 08/22/2010 - 07:25

 

I think I've already disclosed that the first thing I do nearly every morning of my life is go to The Wall Street Journal Online looking for the Best of the Web Today column from James Taranto and his minions.

Here's a good example of their fine work.

Terrible News: Crime Is Down 
"Incarceration in America is a failure by almost any measure," according to the first sentence of the blurb for a new Graeme Wood article in The Atlantic. We're locking criminals up, and crime keeps rising anyway! Oh, wait, no, that's not true. From the article:

Even as crime has fallen, the sentences served by criminals have grown, thanks in large part to mandatory minimums and draconian three-strikes rules--politically popular measures that have shown little deterrent effect but have left the prison system overflowing with inmates.

Having read this paragraph, we decided not to bother with the rest of the piece. We'll take Wood's word for it that incarceration is a failure by almost any measure. But it's hard to imagine what measure is more important than the one by which it is a success: preventing crime!

 

Reading on a Saturday Morning

Submitted by Roanman on Sat, 07/31/2010 - 14:04

 

One of the first posts at the old Justthinking.us was also one of the first posts brought across to the new (this) Justthinking.us.

It was titled, Race, Family, Crime and Poverty.

It mostly had to do with ....... you know ....... Race, Family, Crime and Poverty.

It ends with a short discussion of and link to the famed Moynihan Report of 1965, which offers the following on the state of affairs in Black America in that year.

 

The evidence — not final, but powerfully persuasive — is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling.

 
 
So anyway .......
 
I was poking around at Fred on Everything this morning.
 
And having exhausted that content which offers a laugh at the expense of Fred's frustrations and outrage over the state of the world we live in, I scrolled upon his essay titled, Rape in Tennessee.
 
I knew this material, having been directed to it some years ago by one of you ..... Rachel ..... maybe.
 
It's real damn ugly, so despite the fact that I've linked it, leave it alone, unless you're in a mood.
 
Seriously.
 
Anyway, after you get past the initial ugliness, Fred shares his views on Black on White crime and the way it's reported in the media. 
 
Among the items on Fred's long and strange resume' is a tour as the law enforcement columnist at the Washington Times.
 
The result of which is a point of view about race, cops, and crime that is not presented by organized media.
 
Fred on Everything is disorganized media.
 
To his credit, he's man enough to admit it.
 
Somewhere in the middle of all Fred's stuff, is a link to the following report.
 
It's very different from anything you'll get anywhere else, and that includes Fox.
 
Click anywhere below to link to the entire report.
 
 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
And that's how I spent my Saturday morning.
 

Race, Family, Crime and Poverty

Submitted by Roanman on Sat, 02/06/2010 - 09:14

Alright, here's the story:

Black People on average,  earn less money than Asians, White People, Hispanics and American Indians (pretty close), in that order. This is true regardless of the level of educational attainment. Black People on average are less well educated than White People, although they are on average better educated than Hispanics.

Up until recently, in a given year, more White People (about 38.8%) than Blacks (about 37.2%) have collected welfare benefits. 

Black People make up about 12% of the American People.

Black People are imprisoned at a significantly higher rate than Whites.

Blacks commit a significantly higher percentage of violent crimes relative to their percentage of the total population (FBI crime statistics combine Whites and Hispanics into the same group, called White). Asians on average commit fewer violent criminal acts than anybody.  

The right seemingly loves to reference a 1990 report that I can't find (but am inclined to believe exists) from The Progressive Policy Institute research arm of the Democratic Leadership Council that states the “relationship between crime and one-parent families” is “so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low-income and crime." 

Additionally, children from biological two parent families on average miss fewer school days, have higher grade point averages, and are more likely to attend college. Of those who attend college, children from biological two parent families are more likely to graduate than children from both single parent families and children from biological/stepparent families.

They are also far less likely to live in poverty and far less likely to engage in criminal behavior. 

As an aside, children from single father families, father/stepmother families and mother/stepfather families have consistently lower educational attainments than children from both two biological parent and single mother families. The Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services, in a 1994 report entitled “Family Status of Delinquents in Juvenile Correctional Facilities in Wisconsin,” (which despite being referenced  like crazy, has seemingly disappeared from the web) found that only 13 percent came from families in which the biological mother and father were married to each other.  By contrast, 33 percent had parents who were either divorced or separated, and 44 percent had parents who had never married.

The 1987 Survey of Youth in Custody,  published by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, found that 70 percent of youth in state reform institutions across the U.S. had grown up in single- or no-parent situations. Black children under age 18 are significantly less likely than other children to live with two married parents, with only 35 percent living with two married parents in 2005.

The percentage increased from 33 percent in 1995 to 39 percent in 2002 before declining to 35 percent in 2005.

In 1965 the Office of Policy Planning and Research of the United States Department of Labor published a report titled  The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, later commonly known as the Moynihan Report, after Daniel Patrick Moynihan then Assistant Secretary of Labor and future three term Democratic Senator from New York, Ambassador to India, and United States Representative to the United Nations, which stated as follows:

"The United States is approaching a new crisis in race relations.  In the decade that began with the school desegregation decision of the Supreme Court, and ended with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the demand of Negro Americans for full recognition of their civil rights was finally met. The effort, no matter how savage and brutal, of some State and local governments to thwart the exercise of those rights is doomed. The nation will not put up with it — least of all the Negroes.

The present moment will pass.  In the meantime, a new period is beginning. In this new period the expectations of the Negro Americans will go beyond civil rights. Being Americans, they will now expect that in the near future equal opportunities for them as a group will produce roughly equal results, as compared with other groups. This is not going to happen. Nor will it happen for generations to come unless a new and special effort is made.

There are two reasons. First, the racist virus in the American blood stream still afflicts us: Negroes will encounter serious personal prejudice for at least another generation.  Second, three centuries of sometimes unimaginable mistreatment have taken their toll on the Negro people. The harsh fact is that as a group, at the present time, in terms of ability to win out in the competitions of American life, they are not equal to most of those groups with which they will be competing. Individually, Negro Americans reach the highest peaks of achievement. 

But collectively, in the spectrum of American ethnic and religious and regional groups, where some get plenty and some get none, where some send eighty percent of their children to college and others pull them out of school at the 8th grade, Negroes are among the weakest. The fundamental problem, in which this is most clearly the case, is that of family structure.

The evidence — not final, but powerfully persuasive — is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling. A middle class group has managed to save itself, but for vast numbers of the unskilled, poorly educated city working class the fabric of conventional social relationships has all but disintegrated. There are indications that the situation may have been arrested in the past few years, but the general post war trend is unmistakable. So long as this situation persists, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself. 

The thesis of this paper is that these events, in combination, confront the nation with a new kind of problem. Measures that have worked in the past, or would work for most groups in the present, will not work here. A national effort is required that will give a unity of purpose to the many activities of the Federal government in this area, directed to a new kind of national goal: the establishment of a stable Negro family structure. 

In a word, a national effort towards the problems of Negro Americans must be directed towards the question of family structure. The object should be to strengthen the Negro family so as to enable it to raise and support its members as do other families. After that, how this group of Americans chooses to run its affairs, take advantage of its opportunities, or fail to do so, is none of the nation's business. The fundamental importance and urgency of restoring the Negro American Family structure has been evident for some time." 

E. Franklin Frazier had already put it most succinctly in 1950:

"As the result of family disorganization a large proportion of Negro children and youth have not undergone the socialization which only the family can provide. The disorganized families have failed to provide for their emotional needs and have not provided the discipline and habits which are necessary for personality development. Because the disorganized family has failed in its function as a socializing agency, it has handicapped the children in their relations to the institutions in the community. Moreover, family disorganization has been partially responsible for a large amount of juvenile delinquency and adult crime among Negroes. Since the widespread family disorganization among Negroes has resulted from the failure of the father to play the role in family life required by American society, the mitigation of this problem must await those changes in the Negro and American society which will enable the Negro father to play the role required of him."

The Moynihan report was not greeted with great enthusiasm

45 years later.............

 

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