Conservative commandment #1- The war on poverty destroyed the black family.

[Fountain79]

I've heard this argument over and over again by Rush et al. I've heard it repeated ad nausea by conservative family members and friends. I am curious what evidence there is to debate against this? What accounts for the rise in single parent families in general in this country?

[muntrv]

1. Not slavery, not Jim Crow laws, but war on poverty

is bad for Black Americans. Typical Rush being a tool.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. I think the conservative argument is partly right.

Welfare policies were partly responsible for the breakup of family structures. The problem as I recall it was that the only way an unemployed man could feed his family was to abandon them because the laws didn't permit welfare payments to intact families with a male "wage earner," even one who wasn't earning any wages. The government's idea was to keep parasitic males from sponging off women with dependent children, but the effect was disastrous.

[Odin2005]

4. I've heard that replacing old black communities with "the projects" was disasterous as well.

[Jackpine Radical]

6. Indeed.

There was a whole mess of social psychology research that came out of that fiasco. All kinds of stuff about how people perceive public & private space, etc.

[nealmhughes]

13. Check out the book "Back when we were colored" which laments a childhood now lost of

Black doctors, dentists, and bankers, insurance salesmen, funeral home directors, teachers and principals, etc. serving their communities. Now with the exception of the funeral and barbering trade, it seems that the Black community is sorely lacking in neighborhood institutions, per se.
I have an elderly friend who is in his early 80s and has in succession: been a teacher/principal of a segregated school, then after retirement an insurance salesman, then after retiring from that running a BBQ restaurant and also running a string of taxis -- all in the "Westside" of our city.
All of Mr. Roy's children have advanced degrees and one of his daughters is the Supt. of the second largest school system in Alabama. His status in the community has accordingly shifted from one of the "leaders" to being merely "Dr. Roy's father, the old man with the cabs who makes BBQ."
See, the grandkids and kids have jobs outside of their community, and no longer even live in town, much less on the Westside. . .
I love to visit him and hear his tales of how a few Black doctors had the trade wrapped up, and that even ardent racists ran to them begging for treatment of an abcess or infection when the white doctors refused to allow them credit to pay off their bills, how his lawyer friends had "it made" due to their clients' refusal to use anyone other than them for civil and criminal cases, etc.
Of course, he doesn't miss the days of segregation and de jure as well as de facto racism, but he does miss the sense of community very sorely.

[MadMaddie]

3. Then it stands to reason that if we are to use this

argument then the war on poverty has destroyed White, Hispanic and other families? Poverty is not just a black problem.

It's a stupid argument because they have nothing else....

[Iris]

5. Not just stupid, but sickeningly hypocritical as well. After all, Rush & his ilk are the creators of

the "welfare queen" myth. First they use black folks to make white people mad enough to vote against their own best interests and then they pander to the black folks by trying to act all concerned about their families. Well, did they give a SHIT about their families when black women were working in white homes and raising white children during the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s? Who was taking care of the black families then?

[MadMaddie]

7. You have raised a very good point....

the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s? My Grandmother was one of those black women raising someone elses children.

[Iris]

10. yep. It's an important point that is often overlooked.

In fact, some students I was helping read a book in their history class that made the claim that white men didn't want to pay black men too much money because they were afraid that if they did, the black women could stay at home and they wouldn't need to clean white people's houses for extra money.

But I guess it's just easier for idiots like Rush Limbaugh to keep blaming the New Deal and other progressive movements for the unhappiness of his fans/followers.

[sandnsea]

14. 40% of babies are born on Medicaid

Actually, the requirements for social programs does keep a lot of low income people from marrying. Considering the divorce rate is 50%, I don't know that these families would stay together if they were married, but it does seem to me relationships break up easier than marriages. Regardless of income or race.

[harlinchi]

8. How many of the dollars spent on the 'War' actually reached Blacks?

Conversely, how many of those dollars were spent on service-providing companies, supervision and management, schools and other poverty-abatement companies, primarily run by not-Black folks? Where do folks think the US learned how to screw people?

The connected companies of the US learned over many years how to pretend to help while really enriching themselves. One really cannot think that the boondoggle in Iraq is the very first policy of prestidigitation, can he? It's not the first time the government/corporate alliance insisted that folks pay attention to their right hand while they rob you or deceive you with their left. The methodology was learned by experimenting on Blacks. It is a rich and poor thing (it always has been, it's just that more Blacks fall into the 'poor' range).

Like the Comcast commercial where the tiger-striped individual insists that his new Comcast phone should allow him to get a different response from the tattoo artist who applied his stripes but instead hears from his artist that, "Sorry, Roger! You tigah now!", if you are not rich, the GOP and corporate America is saying to you and to the world, "Sorry, world! You ni@@ah now!"

[yardwork]

9. Lead poisoning leads to violence. The US used high levels of lead in gasoline.

Children living in the projects were exposed to high levels of lead from the gasoline powering cars on the highways near their homes.

There is a direct correlation between increasing lead exposure and increasing violence.

http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=9738

[frogcycle]

11. classic RW specious argument

no doubt some of the caveats in the social programs backfired - just as "no child left behind" is serving primarily to get schools to focus solely on improving the marginal students' test scores, ignoring the good and the poor students, and ignoring education vs working the tests

social engineering is incredibly complex. The mistake government makes is NOT in providing assistance, but in attaching poorly-thought-through strings

the RW uses this argument to condemn all forms of welfare, because they think that is a way to reduce government spending

they don't mind nclb, because it is a fundamentally punitive program, intended to find ways to WITHHOLD funding

of course the honest response is to say 'gee, maybe this is not what we intended; let's tweak and improve' rather than to claim the deficiencies prove the concept bad

[kineneb]

12. cut assistance, watch crime rate go up, build more prisons

there is more money to be made incarcerating folks than in assisting them back onto their feet... just sayin'

as to single-parent families, the American Corporate environment is very anti-family... there are no social supports that encourage families to stay together, be they rich or poor... and the "extended family" is now spread over the continent, so there is limited family support as well...

[wuushew]

15. kick

:kick: