Transcription
If the black community is going to rebuild trust between black men and black women, we must also rebuild the history that we've been told. Because for the past 50 years, we have lived inside a narrative that was never based on truth, never based on data, and in some cases wasn't even created inside our community. Today, I'm fixing that.
>> [music] [music] >> To understand why the black family looks the way it does today, we have to walk through the actual timeline, the real timeline of what happened to us. Not the myths, not the recycled talking points, not the narratives pushed in college classrooms or trending on social media. The truth. So, with that being said, let's begin.
Before welfare myths, before feminism, before mass incarceration, and before the gender war, we must anchor one fact. In 1960, over 60% of black adults were married, and most black children lived with two parents, and black men were employed at higher rates and were the backbone of our households. This is the reality. The black family was not broken. We were not in crisis, and we were not dysfunctional. The collapse came later, and it came from forces far bigger than black men or black women.
The infamous myth claim, Black women kicked black men out to get welfare. But here's the actual story. In the 1950s and the early 1960s, welfare caseworkers conducted nighttime raids, searched closets for men's shoes, checked bathrooms for razors, looked for toothbrushes, and questioned neighbors about male presence. If they found evidence of a man, benefits were cut. But this is what people never mention. The rule targeted only the poorest unmarried mothers. Married couples were not impacted. The vast majority of black families, over 60% married, were not affected. Black women did not create or control this policy. It was government surveillance and not black female betrayal. And later during that decade, in 1968, the Supreme Court struck it down in King versus Smith.
Four otherwise eligible children were denied welfare payments because their mother was cohabitating with a man within the meaning of an Alabama regulation designed to discourage immorality and illegitimacy. The United States Supreme Court considered the validity of that regulation in the 1968 case King versus Smith. The Social Security Act of 1935 created the Aid to Families with Dependent Children or AFDC program. The program provided welfare payments to all dependent children, defined as needy children with a dead, incapacitated, or continually absent parent. Alabama participated in the program, but it had a substitute father regulation in place. The regulation denied AFDC payments to otherwise eligible needy children whose mother cohabitated inside or outside of her and the children's home with any single or married able-bodied man. As used in the regulation, cohabitating meant having frequent or continuing sexual relations. Additionally, the regulation's goal was to discourage immoral sexual behavior and illegitimate births. Mrs. Sylvester Smith was a resident of Dallas County, Alabama, and a mother of four children with dead or long-absent fathers. Although the Smith children were otherwise eligible for payments, they were denied AFDC payments solely because Mrs. Smith was having sexual relations with a Mr. Williams on the weekends. Mr. Williams had no legal duty to support the Smith children, and given that he was married with nine children, he was neither willing nor financially able to do so. Mrs. Smith filed an action in an Alabama federal district court against Reuben King, the commissioner of the Alabama Department of Pensions and Security, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. Mrs. Smith challenged the substitute father regulation on the grounds that it conflicted with the Social Security Act and the equal protection clause. The District Court ultimately agreed with Mrs. Smith and entered judgment for her. But the emotional damage lingered, and the myth still lives today. So, let me be clear. This was not black women choosing welfare over black men. This was the US government policing black poverty.
Now, we arrive at a real turning point. Between 1970 and 1980, factories closed, steel mills collapsed, auto jobs disappeared, and industrial work dried up. And who was hit first? Black men. By the late 1970s, black male unemployment was double white male unemployment. Marriage rates declined because stable jobs declined, and economic strain destroyed the family formation. This wasn't matriarchy, this wasn't welfare abuse, this was the economic foundation of the black husband and father being ripped from under him. Marriage follows money. When the economy collapsed, marriage collapsed.
Now, here's where balance and honesty matter because two things are true at the same time. Number one, the government targeted black communities on purpose. Crack versus powder sentencing, I don't know if this illustration will be effective or not. First, this is flour, and this is an indication of the amount of powder cocaine that would result in the sentencing for this weighted amount of crack cocaine, 100 to 1. Uh 18 to 1, I'm sorry. 18 to 1, which uh is an indication that if there's no science between the difference, the sentencing is dramatically different. Uh I think that is the simple, direct point we're trying to make at this hearing. Mandatory minimums, Why does the US jail more people than any other country? One reason, mandatory minimums. These were introduced in the 1980s and applied to low-level crimes. Mandatory minimums mean convicted people have to serve a minimum sentence, whether or not a judge thinks they deserve it.
>> [music] >> For example, drug crimes involving crack, heroin, or marijuana trigger minimum sentences. So do crimes involving firearms, pornography, and immigration. But opponents [music] say the punishment doesn't always fit the crime. Take the story of Kemba Smith, an unemployed woman who moved in with her drug dealer boyfriend. >> [music] >> After he was murdered, she was charged with conspiracy to traffic all the drugs he left behind. >> [music] >> Mandatory minimum sentence, 24 years. In another case, John Horner, a 46-year-old fast food worker with prescription painkillers, [music] met a friend who wanted some of his pills. The friend turned out to be an undercover agent. Conviction for drug trafficking, 25-year minimum. At 25, Timothy Tyler got caught selling LSD with [music] his dad. Because he had been caught selling twice before, the mandatory sentence, life. Since mandatory minimums were imposed, there's been a 500% increase in the incarcerated population at a cost of $80 billion to run the prison system.
Over-policing, How can police reform stop disproportionate arrest rates? Imagine living in a neighborhood where police are everywhere, and most stops target certain groups. That's often how over-policing in communities of color happens. When police focus heavily on these areas, it leads to more arrests for minor issues. Take a look at New York City. Here, black people are being arrested and stopped at almost twice the rate as the average New Yorker. Now, if you went over to Tulsa, Oklahoma, being black means you are 2.7 times more likely to be subjected to physical force by police officers than white people. Now, zoom out, and the story nationally doesn't change. For example, data shows that across the US, [music] police officers stop black drivers at higher rates than white drivers. This is often called over-policing. It happens when communities either face a large police presence in their daily lives or face aggressive policing for minor offenses, and sometimes for nothing at all.
Disproportionate arrest and systems designed to incarcerate black men. Mass incarceration means that we've got a very [music] high rate of incarceration historically, comparatively. And the other thing is the rate of incarceration [music] is so high, so socially concentrated, that we're no longer incarcerating the individual, but we're incarcerating whole social groups. [music] The rate of incarceration now is about five times higher than it was historically. Historically, it was 100 per 100,000. Now, it's about 500 per 100,000 [music] if we look at prison. If we add jail to that, it's about 700 per 100,000.
>> [music] >> Nowhere in the world incarcerates as much as we do. We've seen extremely high rates of exposure to the criminal justice system >> [music] >> for African American men with very low levels of schooling. So, if we think about black men who were born in the late 1970s [music] and who were growing up through the American prison boom of the 1980s and the 1990s, the chances that they're going to serve time in state or federal prison if they dropped out of high school >> [music] >> is about 70%. So, going to prison for that group of black men with very low levels of schooling, [music] that's become a normal life event. That's really only happened in the last 10 years. This was real, this was intentional, and this was structural violence.
But here's the part that I must say out loud. Many black men contributed to the destruction. Not all black men, not most black men, but enough black men. Some black men made choices that harmed our own community. They sold poison in the black neighborhoods. They recruited younger boys into the trade, escalating violence, participating in shootouts in retaliation, prioritizing fast money over community stability, fed the addiction epidemic. We cannot pretend that every man caught up in the system was just a victim. We must acknowledge that some men caused damage from the inside. Frank Lucas was an incredible street dealing boss. Mr. Untouchable, Leroy Nicky Barnes, whose photo on the cover of the magazine caused genuine anger of US President Jimmy Carter. And I must say, the anger is well deserved because what president wants to see on the cover of the New York Times, one of the main drug lords of the country who has about 3,000 dealers bringing him millions of dollars. Both forces broke our families. The system destroyed the foundation. Some brothers knocked down the walls from the inside. And black women and children lived through the fallout.
There was another warning about cocaine today. Crack now has spread to almost every American city. It is a problem in Houston, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Tucson, and Sacramento. [music] In the 1980s, the media sounded the alarm that a new drug, [music] crack cocaine, was taking over American cities and that it had an especially [music] devastating effect on pregnant women and their newborns. A new study says that babies born to women who use cocaine during pregnancy are three [music] times as likely to be born with birth defects. They tend to be what we call jittery. [music] A very, very high risk for cerebral palsy, mental retardation. These children, who are the most expensive babies ever born in America, [music] are going to overwhelm every social service delivery system that they come in contact with throughout the rest of their lives. Drugs take away the dream >> [music] >> from every child's heart and replace it with a nightmare. This is the accountability piece that we cannot ignore black men because if we ask black women to face uncomfortable truths as well, we must do the same. Damn. Crap. Masculinity requires honesty. Leadership requires responsibility. And healing requires transparency.
Now we reach one of the most influential and harmful pieces of the modern gender divide. In 1979, Michele Wallace released Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, a book arguing that black men were patriarchal, chauvinistic, insecure, abusive, weak, and imitators of white male oppression. But here's the truth that most black feminists do not understand and acknowledge. She conducted no real research, no census data, no marriage statistics, no economic data, no CDC fatherhood studies, and no academic methodology. Wallace didn't study black men, she assumed black men. And she assumed black men based on personal frustrations, anecdotal stories, 1970s feminist ideology, recycled narratives from the Moynihan report, and then something major happened. Gloria Steinem, the most powerful white feminist of that era, aggressively promoted Wallace's book. She gave it national coverage, media exposure, credibility, distribution, and cultural influence. In a 1979 interview with the Washington Post, Gloria Steinem said that Wallace's book, quote, made every reader understand the political and intimate truths of growing up black and female in America. And in coverage through Ms. magazine, the magazine Steinem co-founded, she described Black Macho as the book that would shape the '80s. That comes from Ms. magazine's promotional coverage of the book, cited in Wallace's biographical sources. So, not only did Steinem praise the book, she helped give it national visibility and legitimacy. Her platform put Wallace's ideas into college classrooms, feminist circles, and public discourse. This matters because Steinem had previously worked for a CIA-funded organization called the Independent Research Service in the 1950s and '60s. This is not speculation. Steinem admitted it, former CIA officials confirmed it, and the New York Times reported it in 1967. And you're probably asking, what was her job? Her job was to influence youth political ideology during the Cold War. A decade later, she used that same media and ideological influence to elevate a book that blamed black men, reframed systemic issues as gender issues, weakened black gender unity, aligned with white feminist interests, downplayed racial oppression, and shifted all of the responsibility onto black men.
But the most prevailing and the most vocal statements about what the new black man expects from the new black woman came when I met with a group of young unmarried friends one Saturday afternoon. I think that what's happening in America as far as black men and black women is concerned is that there's a revolution within a revolution. We are fighting our own woman. Our woman will not allow us to emerge as black men. But our black women who has been put in this role of aiding white America, white structure, and castrating the black male has continued doing this. She cannot live with us. It's not that we can't live with her. >> Are you blaming us? Are you saying that it's our fault that this happened? No, I'm not blaming black American women. I just said that I'm blaming the system. They are victims of the system like the black male. Well, why do you say that we are castrating you? You say that you want to be the leaders. Okay. Well, what about the black professional woman? Are you saying that there should be no black professional woman? Are you trying to deny black women the right to be creative, the right to function? We're not asking for you to take a backseat. We're saying that you have got to be astute enough and can view the situation well enough where you just automatically know what your role is and step back. And whenever you want to have that aggressive thing, this is the thing that the young black man today is not going to tolerate. My old man tolerated because he was his old man tolerated came up for years and years and years. But today, the young black man is not going to take it. He's going to be out there as the leader. >> White America has used black women to keep the black male in his place. And you're still aiding him by saying, "Well, we are qualified. We want to work. We can help."
Black scholars such as Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Toni Morrison all rejected Wallace's book for the exact reason. And at the same time, Steinem boosted Black Macho. And at the same time Steinem boosted Black Macho, Ronald Reagan was selling a racist stereotype. And that's where we get the black welfare queen. The stereotype of the so-called welfare queen has been used to demonize those on public assistance for decades. It's a politically potent image depicting an undeserving aid recipient getting rich on the backs of taxpayers. Politicians, including former President Ronald Reagan, have been accused of exploiting this image as a kind of racist dog whistle. Meanwhile, the original welfare queen that Reagan used as a basis for his caricature was based on a real person. The new book, The Queen, tells the story of a woman who went by many names, was accused of many crimes, and whose image as a Cadillac-driving welfare recipient has lived on. Hari Sreenivasan recently spoke with the book's author, Josh Levin, about the real-life woman behind the moniker. Her name was Linda Taylor, and she was identified by the Chicago Tribune in 1974 as a person who had committed welfare fraud while driving fancy cars, including a Cadillac. And very quickly after that, she was given the nickname the welfare queen. And it was a nickname and a stereotype that really very quickly blew up.
Black women were demonized, black men were implied to be absent, and the black family was framed as dysfunctional. Two different forces, one conservative, one feminist, were pushing the same result. Black men and women lost trust in each other, the family begins to fracture, and the gender war begins. By the 1990s, Black Macho became required college reading. Talk shows pushed stereotypes. Dr. Phil, Oprah, Sally Jessie, and others amplified dysfunctional narratives. You know, for many of [music] us, it is hard finding a good man. No matter what your race, no matter what your background. But where are all the good black men? >> [music] >> During the statistics that there are very few black men for women, I find it difficult at times to have [music] a relationship with a black man. Academia frames black men as patriarchal failures, social workers assume absentee black fathers, media portrays black men as irresponsible. >> JAMES, YOU LAID OFF. JAMES, NO. BIRTH STATS GET MISQUOTED, mass incarceration context gets ignored, and black male unemployment gets forgotten. Black women were taught black men are the problem. Black men were taught black women don't respect us. And both were repeating narratives that originated outside the black community, not from our elders, not from our marriages, not from our families, and not from statistics.
And before I leave you, let me be clear. The black family did not fall because of black women. The black family did not fall because of black men. And it definitely did not fall because of welfare checks. The collapse came from economic sabotage, mass incarceration, government surveillance, feminist narratives not rooted in data, racist propaganda, poorly researched books, and a political system that benefits from black gender division. But now, you all know the truth. You have the data, and we understand the timeline. So, black men, it's time to take responsibility where it belongs. And black women, release blame where it doesn't belong, and take accountability for your actions. And all of us, stop repeating lies that were never ours to begin with. The black family didn't fail America. America failed the black family. And now it's time for us to rebuild it together. Peace.
>> [music] >> Like a spur, [music] like a spur. Boom, boom.