Transcription
Too many fathers are also missing. Too many fathers are MIA. Too many fathers are awol missing from too many lives and too many homes. They've abandoned their responsibilities. They're acting like boys instead of men.
You may be a damn good father. You may be a damn good father. You may be a damn good father. But guess what? What are we doing for the community? What are we doing for the children who don't have a father?
Black men are attacking black women. They're not creating homes. They're creating babies everywhere.
73% of all black babies are born out of wedlock.
Experts say there's a crisis crisis when it comes to black fathers in this country.
There's no father culture. Let's get, LET'S GET, LET'S STOP.
Poverty and crime. There's a positive correlation. There's also a positive correlation in the black community of absentee fatherism being one of the root causes leading into criminality.
When it comes to four-year-old Shaniah, Joey, you are not... you ain't. You just like your daddy. You don't do, and you never going to amount to...
It was great seeing you, son.
You, too, Lou. How come you don't want me, man?
The Bowling Green State University NSFG data just showed you guys 55% of black men reported having only co-residential. I'mma stop it right there. Okay? So, I don't want to go into the other statistics. This means that black fathers are physically present in their children's lives even outside of formal marriage structures. Okay? So therefore, single parent household statistics should not be automatically interpreted as father absent statistics. That's where people go wrong.
More than 72% of children in the African-American community are born out of wedlock. That means absent fathers. Absent fathers. Absent fathers.
And the studies show that lack of a male role model is an express train right to prison.
You don't think the black woman got a right to be angry when she been raising two-thirds of the kids by herself for 50 years?
They will see single parent households, but they forget that these houses may be cohabitating. They may be married. You have to factor those things in. And luckily for us, it's actually measured. Okay. So cohabitation, shared parenting, uh, multi-household parenting structures complicate, you know, that narrative substantially when people push that out there. So, and again, I understand how social media works. Critics are going to point out that the CDC, NS, uh, NSFG data and the Boner Green State University fatherhood data, it relied on self-reported surveys. That's true. However, older family structure reports such as the Monahab report also relied on imperfect measurement systems rooted in household classifications, marital status records. Both approaches have limitations. Household level data can sometimes be, you know, obscure cohabitation, shared parenting, and residential father involvement outside of formal marriage. Meanwhile, self-reported survey, uh, data can introduce reporting bias or incomplete disclosure. The key issue is understanding what, you know, what each data set is actually measuring. And like I said, the Monahan framework primarily measured household structure and marital stand status. They didn't measure cohabitation. Okay? And again, the time of the Monahan report, he reported that it was a crisis when it was at 20 to 25% non-marital birth.
Our guest today on Meet the Press is the author of the controversial study, The Negro Family, Mr. Daniel P. Moahan. His report, prepared when he was assistant secretary of labor, at first was warmly praised, yet has recently been sharply criticized. Mr. Moahan, a professor of political science, is now at Wesleyan University. Here's a quotation, for example, from a recent article by William Ryan, a Harvard psychologist who criticizes your report in the nation. And this is what he writes. Quote, "The implicit point is that Negroes tolerate promiscuity, illegitimacy, one parent families, welfare dependency, and everything else that is supposed to follow." Now, that's the criticism he makes of your report. Now, how do you answer those?
I, I can't. I'm not responsible for the fact that he can't read. Um, as as E. Franklin Frasier said, and I quoted from him at some length, there is a lot of evidence that the Negro middle class family, when it when it gets its opportunity, gets a bearing, is if anything more stern, more rigid, uh, than most. But, uh, the evidence is simply clear. Negro Americans live like any other Americans. And when they're forced into the ghetto, when forced into disorganization, they have no more better protection than anyone else.
I'd like to ask you one specific question, which the New York Times quotes you today as, uh, saying. You say that 44% of the children in Harlem are illegitimate. Now, how do you know that?
Those are statistics in the New York City Department of Health, sir. 10, 10 health districts in central Harlem, the area with which the great American sociologist Kenneth Clark described in his Haru report as having undergone a massive deterioration of the fabric of society and its institutions. And right under our prosperous noses, that happened. That hasn't existed for 50 years. That's happened in the last 15 years in this America, and we've been sitting around thinking things have been getting better, and they haven't been getting better for those children.
Now it's at 69.3%. So, yeah, so that's how we had the difference. Okay, so I just wanted to put that out there. I know how social media works. People going to try and dismiss it, but I'm going to discuss that as well.
You mentioned cultural and social retrogressions. Again, I'm quoting you. "Arguably the most consequential of these was the decline in two parent families." Close quote. Explain that one among African-Americans. We're still talking about African-Americans.
Well, you know, when when when they talk about things like this, they talk about the legacy of slavery. Right. Right. And, and, uh, and I argue, well, empirically, it's not that. It's the legacy of the welfare state. Because as of 1960, which is almost 100 years after slavery's ended, uh, the majority of black kids were being raised in two parent households.
Thomas often discusses, uh, welfare incentives, marriage decline, dependency, uh, family instability, and long-term cultural consequences. A lot to which I agree with.
The number one social problem in America by far, but a fatherless. 70% of black kids today enter the world without a father in the home married to the mother, up from 25% back in 1965.
Larry Elder, okay, who frequently discusses fatherlessness, um, crime, educational outcomes, and the importance of two parent households. I agree.
If you have a black child, which obviously exists for some reason, right? Somebody did something to make that black baby. Okay. Two out of three times the dad will not be around. Fact. Charlie Kirk repeated broader conservative talking points surrounding, uh, father absence, family structure, and dysfunction in the black community. Ask yourself why.
69.8% of rape arrests were white. Almost seven out of every 10 people arrested for rape were white. 65.8% of arrests for offenses against family and children were white. That means the majority of arrests in categories that involve harming your own family, neglecting your children, or endangering your household came from white people. 61.8% of aggravated assault arrests were white. The majority of violent attacks that get classified as aggravated assault weren't committed by black people. They were white. 59.1% of all violent crime arrests overall were white, and even prostitution and commercial vice, 50.9% of arrests were white.
The issue is how many people online, and you know, reinterpret these broader conversations into the 70 to 80% of black fathers are absent dead beatats. That, that is not the same claim, and that distinction matters statistically. Okay? Because again, non-marital birth, single parent households, and actual father involvement, those are not identical measurements, guys. And even me saying that, it should start to click in your head like, "Yeah, I have heard people say the same thing."
One of the biggest problems in this conversation is, you know, it's category confusion. People combine multiple statistics together as though they all measure the same thing. They don't. Okay?
So, for example, you guys see non-marital birth rate measures whether parents were married when the child was born. Full stop. That's it. Single motherhood measures household structure. Full stop. Now, father residence measures whether fathers live with their children. And then father involvement measures caregiving and interactions. Okay, those are separate measurements.
But online, once again, people often collapse them into black fathers abandon their children. That is statistically inaccurate, guys. Because a child being born outside of marriage does not automatically tell us whether the father is involved, whether he co-parents, whether he provides support, whether he shares custody, or whether he's active in that child's life.
And this is why the CDC and Bowling Green State University studies that they matter so much, because those studies directly measure father residence, father involvement, and parenting structure. So instead of, you know, assuming absence based solely on marriage status or the, s, you know, the non-marital burst, black non-marital birth, and honestly, I, you know, I'm pretty sure you guys have learned that this is where the most of the confusion begins online. People hear "without father in home," and it mostly translate into, translate that into "deadbeat absent father." Those are not identical claims. Okay?
So if you look at this report here, so this is the often cited statistic: 69.3% of black children are born outside of marriage. So what that actually measures, again, that is the mother's marital status at the time of birth. And what it doesn't measure is what the, was the father present at birth? Does the father live with the child? So on and so forth. We just covered that. So the truth about this is non-marital births are a marriage statistic, not a father absent statistic, whether the woman is married or not. So from moving forward, if you were one of those people that were combining that, and you saw 70% children at a wedlock rate, and your mind automatically assumed that meant absent fathers, you're wrong. So correct it right now, moving forward. Okay?
Why are people angry at the data, at, you know, and once we get to this point, I think the issue becomes psychological, because many people became emotionally attached to those black abs, you know, deadbeat dad father stereotypes. And again, social media rewards, you know, outrage, negativity, and dysfunction. Negative black narratives, they spread faster online than nuance statistical discussions.
Why the hell you think, um, Don Dandre Whitfield didn't share my video on his platform? Because it was some uncomfortable truths in there that black women probably wouldn't take a liking to. And sometimes when you have platforms like this, where you say that you're speaking up for women, we all speak up for women, but that also means holding women accountable as well. And sometimes these men who have predominantly female platforms, they pander. It is what it is. So they can't rock the boat. So that's why I wasn't surprised when he said, "I'm not going to give him no shine." I wasn't disrespectful. I'm never going to be disrespectful to another black man, it's unless he disrespectful to me. Right.
So again, man, when somebody finally introduces, you know, the CDC reports, fatherhood studies, and actual statistics, people become uncomfortable. Not necessarily because the data is false, but because the data actually interrupts a belief system, especially in the black community. The whole blame Germaine thing has literally been debunked just off this hourlong conversation when it surrounds, you know, black fatherhood. And that's why correcting misinformation about black fathers often creates, uh, a, a certain resistance online, you know, because again, think about this. People are comfortable repeating the 70 to 80% of black fathers are absent. But once you, you know, once the data complicates that narrative, suddenly the CDC is questioned, surveys are questioned, the method methodology is questioned, and the standards keep shifting. That's the real issue. Okay.
Lord have mercy.