Bazz,

There are many accents that are hard to understand.
Scottish, Irish, German, come to mind. And then of course you
get the various dialects in Britain itself. But that's
true of many languages. I recently met a chap at the
Lithuanian Club in Melbourne and I couldn't understand
what language he was speaking. I speak Lithuanian fluently.
He told me it was lowlander Lithuanian. I couldn't understand
a word he said. Neither could any body else around him.

To Banjo Paterson.

You said:

<<racial discrimination and poverty create frustration, despair and conflictual relations in many coloured (not just black) families, and lead to their ultimate breakdown. Discrimination and poverty – injustice and inequality – are the root causes that need to be eliminated or, at least, drastically reduced if the family units are to have any chance at all of remaining intact and flourishing.>>

I disagree with your conclusions. Discrimination, poverty, injustice, and inequality are un-win-able by just saying you stand against them. Find the what causes the injustice, that fuel the poverty. Start there. One of the big elements that is noted between black families and many other demographics is the amount of single parents trying to juggle their family and a job to support their family. Without extra help, drugs, gangs, or a general intolerant and violent element rise up. Why is that? It's because there was hardship in raising the population when they were children. It's not discrimination when domestic abuse or other violent crime has black people harming other black people. It's poverty, and often a shift in blame to not having a good foundation going up.

If more of the population struggled hard to increase a family foundation in the community (through programs similar to the anti gang and anti drug programs that try to help the impoverished zones in schools, a similar approach can be made for telling men and women the standards they should have when picking a mate, or even a boy/girl friend. Have a stable foundation to start from, and a stable family to grow from that. Have a stable family, and the family as a whole is able to withstand the hardships in life better, and continue on despite the inequality they face.

I'm not saying to not fight against inequality or injustice. But I am saying that start with a stable family and go from there. Without that much there's no point to say you fight injustice, because violent black people kill other black people at a higher rate then any other population kills them.

To Bazz.

Now you're seeing the issue. Or at least one of them. In US politics the welfare system only occurs in an "on/off" mode. Where if you get better to a small degree you lose out on the assistance you need (the small amount of improvement doesn't account enough to be self sustaining), so too often people in the welfare system are stuck and can't get out without going into a worse situation then they were before.

I wasn't aware this included single parent families as a population "helped" in this way, but it doesn't surprise me. There is something that needs to be fixed in the welfare programs of the US.

That said, I think that even with political landscapes causing burdens, if people have a stable family as their safety net, they can get through more then they can without that kind of a foundation.

So while I agree politics need to change and system wide programs that make it worse need to change. I know that often the politicians will bicker about what changes to do, and spin their wheels. Start with a stable family foundation, and that should help and be a quicker fix, then trying to change all the broken and corrupt politics.

Either way. I like what you've found. Means looking at the problem and looking for solutions,min stead of just throwing supportive gestures towards the black lives that are, as a demographic, worse off then many other demographics.

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Dear mhaze,

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That’s an interesting historical analysis you made (page 45). However, I’m not so sure the 1950s were all that advantageous for the black community in the US.

According to an article in encyclopedia.com :

« Republican Dwight Eisenhower earned an easy victory in the 1952 presidential race, beating Democrat Adlai Stevenson. The 1956 election saw the same two opponents, and the same results.

« Of all the domestic political issues facing the United States during the 1950s, the one that was most far-reaching involved the escalating Civil Rights movement. Until the 1950s, America was almost completely a segregated society. Blacks and whites went to separate schools, ate at different restaurants, and lived in different neighbourhoods. However, separate did not necessarily mean equal. The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas U.S. Supreme Court decision decreed that separate was unequal with regard to segregated schools. This decision would be a milestone in equal rights for black Americans in all aspects of national life »

As for the 1960s, history.com indicates :

« On November 22, 1963, John F Kennedy was shot and killed. Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president later that day aboard Air Force One.

« Soon after taking office, Johnson declared a “War on Poverty”. He actively pushed Congress to pass legislation attacking illiteracy, unemployment and racial discrimination.

« After routing Republican candidate Barry Goldwater by more than 15 million votes in the 1964 presidential election, Johnson introduced a slate of new reforms that he said would build a “Great Society” for all Americans.

« His ambitious legislative agenda created the Medicare and Medicaid programs to provide federal health insurance for elderly and poor Americans. It also included measures aimed at improving education, preventing crime and reducing air and water pollution.

« Johnson also made great strides in attacking racial discrimination by signing the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. His wide-reaching achievements improved the lives of millions of Americans and contributed to economic growth and prosperity »

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(Continued …)

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(Continued …)

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Naturally, I agree with you and NNS that, ideally, the best family structure to raise a child is in a two-parent family, but on one crucial condition : that they live in relative harmony.

Unfortunately, the harsh reality of life in many disadvantaged communities is so oppressive that separation is a form of salvation. Living in the constant terror of domestic violence, drug and alcohol addiction, incest and child abuse causes far greater harm to children than simply being raised by a single parent.

Another factor that merits consideration is the different psychosociological effect of single parenting on Afro-American children compared to white children. Christina Cross, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of sociology at Harvard University in the US studied this factor and comments as follows :

« Because of historic and contemporary structural racism, black youths are more likely to be exposed to socioeconomically stressful environments than are white youths. Some scholars predict that the additional stress incurred by living apart from a parent is only marginally impactful, above and beyond the existing disadvantages. Other researchers point to the fact that black families tend to live closer to extended relatives than do white families and that they exchange substantially more emotional and practical support. Greater involvement in extended family networks may protect against some of the negative effects associated with parental absence from the home.

« Blindly promoting the merits of marriage and the two-parent family is not the answer. My research shows that differences in access to resources largely explain the relationship between family structure and outcomes for black youth. If this is the case, then what deserves policy attention is not black families’ deviation from the two-parent family model but rather structural barriers such as housing segregation and employment discrimination that produce and maintain racialized inequalities in family life »

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Banjo,

I wasn't for a moment suggesting that things were all sunshine and rainbows for the black community back in the 1950s. Far from it.

But they were, in those days, on a path out of disproportionate disadvantage and as a demographic they were doing better and advancing more quickly than other demographics. Things weren't ideal but they were improving.

But that all unravelled in the 1960's with the combined blows of the so-called Civil Society (which achieved the opposite of its claimed intentions) and the attacks on the foundations of family (which affected the black demographic much worse than others).

So my point was that the path out of poverty for the black community doesn't lie with more government programmes and handouts but with an effort to strengthen the black family.

Earlier in this thread I linked to a story about a black father, a family man whose house had been burned down during the riots - quite how that helped racial harmony is something only a so-called progressive would understand. That man, raising 5 kids with his wife, was working on an old house he' bought and was trying to bring it up to code so that his family would have a home. THAT'S the type of man who should be the future and the face of the black community, not some lout with a brick and a stolen HDTV.

PS on that gentlemen. His house was uninsured because it wasn't currently up to code. But generous Americans have donated to his cause and it seems his efforts will be salvaged and his family will indeed have a home.