The chart below explains why the Midwest would be the prime spot for racial protest, either spontaneous or planned.
This chart shows the rate of marriage among the parents of 17-year olds in each major ethnic group, in four regions of the US: Midwest (MW), South (S) Northeast (NE) and West (W). The lowest marriage rate (extreme left) is where the recent violence has been most intense, the Midwest which includes Minneapolis.
To understand some of the population dynamics in play a few facts are needed:
The contrast between Whites and Blacks on rates of marriage is probably greater in the Midwest than anywhere else in the country.
- For family intactness Minnesota ranks at the top or in second place in the nation, every year.
- Yet, the Midwest (which includes Minneapolis, Chicago and Milwaukee) has the lowest rate of black marriage in the country (see the chart above).
Though among Blacks Minnesota Blacks rank relatively high on marriage rates (20%), that is still more than three times lower than for Whites (62% intactness when teens are 17 years of age).
There is no doubt a vast conspiracy to deny black children their right to the marriage of their parents. Though all ethnic groups suffer, none suffer this deficit more than black children do.
Asians deny this privilege to their children at a rate of 38%, Whites at a rate of 46%; Hispanics at a rate of 60%; American Indians and Alaskan Natives at a rate of 76%, and Blacks at a rate of 83 %.
All good people must mourn for all these children! What suffering this rejection visits on them!
The solution proposed by marching protestors (government action to end racism) totally misdiagnoses the problem. Nothing better illustrates the fallacy of this “solution” than a research piece by The New York Times “Upshot” team two years ago. They did a magnificent portrayal of statistical data with live animation which you can still see here. Their topic was the anti-black “racism” visible in the much lower upward mobility of Blacks. However, as our blog pointed out the Upshot team totally misdiagnosed the underlying causes — even though their own data pointed directly at the problem. They placed the blame on systemic workplace discrimination, but the major cause lay clearly in the breakdown of marriage among blacks, even among very successful blacks. Within the Upshot data Black men in the top 1% of income have a marriage rate lower than white men in the poorest income quintile! All social scientists who study the issue know that marriage breakdown lowers human capital — the future earnings capacity — of children. Conversely, marriage contributes immensely to upward economic mobility, which the Upshot model also shows if you look for it— but you have to know what you are looking for. The Upshot team leaves it hidden, but the MARRI blog will help.
Black children are the most underprivileged in the nation, even rich black children, when it comes to having their parents marry and stay married.
Who is to blame? Is it God? He permitted man to fall.
Are His pastors to blame? Blacks are the most religious-worshipping Christian ethnic group in the States, yet the least married. Do black pastors preach Christ’s teaching regarding Christian marriage and chastity to black teenagers? Chastity is the great protector of marriage and children. So many Christian pastors talk much about the need for justice yet avoid this, the biggest justice issue, which also is their mandate from the God they serve. They can do more than anyone else in the country on marriage and chastity should they have the courage to teach what Christ taught. They are most to blame.
Are teachers and schools to blame? Public schools ensure Black children are not taught the benefits of marriage and chastity. The NEA is in total cahoots with SIECUS and Planned Parenthood to bring an unchaste sexuality into the schools, effectively denying children the marriage of their parents, and giving them instead out-of-wedlock-births and abortion, and all the other evils that harm black children: poverty, physical and sexual abuse, crime, and school dropout, to name just a few.
With two major institutions arrayed against them on this issue — the church and the education establishment — what chance does the average Black child have?
Add to this the “professional experts”: psychologists — and especially developmental psychologists — sociologists, economists, psychiatrists, social workers, and counselors along with their professional associations. Include the vast majority of professors of these disciplines in the Ivy Leagues and the state universities. They too (with rare personal exceptions) are part of the same conspiracy of silence regarding marriage and chastity. By their silence, in effect all these professions suppress the data; they do not transmit it to their students or the public. Such abuse of data is a crime against science. Add the 680 feminist women’s studies centers at US universities and colleges which war against the family patriarch (the married father, be he white or black) and you begin to grasp the vastness of the conspiracy to deny black children their inherent right to the privilege of their parents’ marriage.
Eventually we come to the parents themselves. Must we also blame those mothers and fathers who deny this right to their children?
We cannot exclude them, yet, denied education and leadership, how guilty are they? How guilty is the young inner-city girl who is giving birth to her first child even as you are reading this piece? She has never heard of, much less experienced, nor seen in her extended family or community, the marriage of parents. Who is guilty? Who is keeping her in slavery?
Is it Asians? Is it Whites? Hispanics? American Indians?
No. All who deny black children the marriage of their biological parents are the oppressors, be they bishops, pastors, professors, teachers, doctors, journalists, actors, singers, TV producers, governors, police chiefs, or Supreme Court justices.
It is time for black parents to come together and, out of the experience of their own suffering, and their wounded lives, begin to figure out how to give to their children that which even their pastors are conspiring not to give to them: chastity and marriage. Government cannot give this, though government can (and should) enshrine in law the right of every child to the marriage of his biological parents. But only mothers and fathers can give their marriage to their children. Even after a mistake, the poorest parent single can (with heroic effort) pass on to his or her child the ideal of chastity and marriage. These parents are our hope.
For the good of the child, the future of the nation,
Pat Fagan, Ph.D.