The Real Systemic Problem in North America is the Dissolution of the Family
How government abandoned (and continues to abandon) its most vulnerable populations.
Sorry, more bad news. What now, you ask? Well, turn on the news on any station, go to any online news site, scroll through your social media feed - that's the bad news I'm talking about. Yeah, pretty much all of it.
Crime is up, schools are failing our kids, inflation is running wild, mobs are holding our leadership hostage to bizarre viewpoints. It's a bit of a depressing deal, especially if one is inclined to be depressed.
The solutions to these problems are not always obvious or easy, but rest assured, solutions exist.
The first step in identifying any solution is to first identify what's causing the problem.
If we're to believe the constant moaning of our government and their state-sponsored media, we'd know without a doubt that when it comes to some of these problems, like inequality, crime, poverty, etc., the root cause is always systemic racism. (Here’s my take on the real racism problem in this country)
Why are there fewer Black and indigenous people in upper management in this country? Obviously racism.
Why are there more Black and indigenous people in prison. Racism.
Why are there less Black and indigenous people with college and university degrees? Same answer.
Just to be clear, I don't accept that simplistic answer to these complicated problems, and I don't think you should either. Regardless, the facts are pretty clear - all things are not equal in Canada and the US, but I'm pretty sure there's more to it than the catchall phrase of “systemic racism”.
Let's just look at one of these metrics: upper management. When it comes to hiring people for upper management and jobs where very high education is required, it would make sense that only the people with a high education are going to get the job.
Here's how it looks on the education front in the US (from Statista.com):
Evidently high school will only get you so far. We can look a bit further and see the reason for this inequity.
The Scholastic Assessment Test, aka the SAT score is what most American universities and institutes of higher learning look at to determine eligibility for those wishing to enroll. Here's a comparison of SAT scores by race (data from Brookings Institute):
These numbers really do favour a couple of groups, but is that racism?
In the push for “equity and diversity”, many universities have gone away from the SAT score requirement. Predictably, this has given many more students a chance at enrollment, but I guess time will tell if they're up to the task once they're in. I mean, if the whole point is simply to “get in” then dropping the SAT should be a perfect solution - instant equity. Of course, that's really not the point, is it? At least it shouldn't be. The point is to get in and actually be able to do the work. So I guess we'll see.
If there is such an educational gap in the US (and Canada is not that much different), maybe there's another reason behind that.
There are in fact, a myriad of reasons why this is the case and there's been much written on this topic already so sadly, I'm probably not going to add anything new, but what I noticed in researching this is that there is one indication that seems to be mentioned very little. And that indication is fatherlessness.
There has actually been much written on that as well, but for some reason, it doesn't seem to make it into public discourse as much as I think it should.
According to fathers.com, the consequences of growing up without a father in the house are many.
Here's a short list:
Poverty - Children in father-absent homes are almost four times more likely to be poor.
Drug and alcohol abuse - The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states, “Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse.”
Physical and Emotional Health - children living with married biological parents had significantly fewer behavioral problems than children living with at least one non-biological parent. Children of single-parent homes are more than twice as likely to commit suicide, and children born to single mothers show higher levels of aggressive behavior than children born to married mothers.
Educational Achievement - Children living with their married biological father tested at a significantly higher level than those living with a non-biological father. A father's involvement in school means more A's, and 71% of high school dropouts are fatherless.
Crime - Adolescents living in intact families are less likely to engage in delinquency than their peers living in non-intact families.
Sexual Activity and Teen Pregnancy - adolescents in father-absence homes were more likely to report being sexually active compared to adolescents living with their fathers. Also, being raised by a single mother raises the risk of teen pregnancy, marrying with less than a high school degree, and forming a marriage where both partners have less than a high school degree.
After reading through that list, it made me wonder how that breaks down in a country like ours.
Here's what that looks like (data from nsjonline.com):
Now, if we take this chart and put it together with the previous chart, you get this:
So, given what we've discovered thus far, I have several questions:
If we know that these things are true, then why aren't we encouraging couples to stay married longer? And why are we glorifying single-motherhood to the extent that we are? Please understand that I'm not ripping on single mothers here, nor am I criticizing Blacks and Hispanics for being Black and Hispanic. As far as single moms go - more power to them. It's hard enough raising kids with two parents, let alone by yourself, so obviously there's some serious respect that's due any single parent. What I'm saying though, is that single parent households are not the gold standard of how we need to raise our kids and maybe a little more needs to be said about how parents can work together towards that extremely important goal. Not every marriage ends because of abuse, which should suggest that there are ways to make it work. According to insider.com, abuse only ranks #7 on the list of reasons why marriages don’t work and the number one reason, by a long shot (75%), is lack of commitment. There’s basically a tie for second place with infidelity (60%) and too much arguing (58%). Rounding out third place is getting married too young, at 45%. Obviously, there is some overlap in these, but abuse only accounts for about 24% of failed marriages. Still a lot, but the point is that if there was a bit more commitment and foresight, a lot of these problems could probably be solved.
Speaking of abuse, I think it's also high time we stop ripping and berating our young men for being men. There's so much talk of “toxic masculinity” that it's almost just assumed that that's how men are. When we think of child abuse, the first thing we think of is those abusive fathers and “dead-beat Dads”. TV and movies reinforce this.
Here's a shocker for ya:
According to The Canadian Children's Rights Council:
The vast majority of child physical and sexual abuse is committed in single-parent homes, homes usually where the father is not present. "Contrary to public perception, research shows that the most likely physical abuser of a young child will be that child’s mother, not a male in the household."
I don't know all the metrics of this study, and it's possible that some of this abuse is perpetrated by the mother's boyfriends as well, but regardless - it happens because the father (who would normally take the role of protector) is not there.
So maybe if we would stop vilifying men in our society (especially the ones in these affected groups), and instead encourage them to take responsibility for their actions, and make strong commitments and stick to them, we'd have a much different picture than we do.
In 1965, New York Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan saw a “crisis" in America. This crisis that Moynihan saw in the '60s was the 24% unmarried birth rate in the Black community. Moynihan said:
“a national effort towards the problems of Negro Americans must be directed towards the question of family structure … the object should be to strengthen the Negro family so as to enable it to raise and support its members as do other families.”
Wow, really? That sounds like some conservative neo-fascist talking about keeping women home to cook and clean! Actually, those women are still home trying to cook and clean but they're also working at least one full time job and the fathers aren't there to help.
Well, what does Patrick Moynihan know anyway? He was just some old white guy. In case you've forgotten (and don't want to reread it), I'll remind you that in the days since Patrick Moynihan was all up in arms about that 24% unmarried birth rate among Blacks in the sixties, the number of those particular fatherless homes is now almost three times what it was then. Boy, did he ever call it, and obviously his words fell on deaf ears, because it's always so much easier to just throw people some money than it is to actually teach them how to sustain themselves. Now this was in the states, but it's exactly the same here.
Now what we do is celebrate mediocrity as if it's a new religion. We don't tell people to take responsibility for their actions because they might get their feelings hurt. We're now cautioned against speaking about “substance abuse disorder”, and instead encouraged to say “substance use disorder”. And please don't refer to someone on the street as a “homeless person”, but rather a “person without a home”. Feelings matter, apparently much more than results, since that homeless population keeps growing as well.
Now we have people saying idiotic things like: rational thinking and hard work are “white values”; watching the clock and striving to be on time are part of “white culture”. And of course these things are just more evidence of white supremacy when you try to impose them on people of colour.
How surprised should we really be that things have turned out the way they have? When we teach boys that they don't really need to get married (or have any kind of commitment) in order to have children, and then they go around the neighborhood breeding like rabbits with no strings attached, what did we think was going to happen? At least it's obvious by now what doesn't happen: they don't learn self-control, they don't learn anything about delayed gratification, and they don't learn to be responsible for anything else either. Why would they? It's not like there's anyone depending on them.
It seems like our society is so afraid of sounding like a Sunday morning pulpit-pounding preacher that they would rather go in the complete opposite direction even if it means experiencing the metaphorical fire and brimstone that is the every day reality many of these people are living right now. And the truth is that it's got nothing to do with preachers or any kind of church religion - it is simply what needs to happen for a society to function. It's also what needs to happen if you want to keep your marriage together, or get a job, or go to college. Remember what causes 75% of divorces? That's right, lack of commitment. A friend of mine once said, “The way you do anything is the way you do everything,” and I think he's mostly right.
Obviously, this isn't just a problem in the Black community. This applies perfectly to our indigenous people as well. Also, there are plenty of white folks who are stuck in the exact same pile of shit. But guess what? That has nothing to do with racism either, and the causes are usually exactly what we've been discussing here.
In Canada, according to our government, most of the problems afflicting our Black population are due to anti-Black racism. Incidentally, if you follow that link, it'll take you to the Government of Canada's website where they will list off all the problems that are associated with anti-Black racism, and you'll find that the vast majority of them are the exact same ones I listed at the top of this article. So anyway, to quote from that web page:
Discrimination against Black people is deeply entrenched and normalized in Canadian institutions.
Well alright, if you say so. But I'd just like to point out that this is apparently in spite of the fact that according to World Population Review, Canada was rated the 2nd least racist country in the world out of 78 countries, right behind the Netherlands. The United States was #69 on that list, so if it's as bad here as our government seems to think it is, where in the world could one possibly go to escape it? The Netherlands is not very big, but here's a hint: people are coming here - to Canada. This is where they're coming to escape the racism and other problems that are worse in almost every other place.
Maybe the people running the Canadian government need to look a bit further than the tip their own nose and see how real people live.
But this is exactly what I'm talking about: we're being trained to just accept this as an obvious truth which is in turn supported and propagated by every major news outlet in the country and by many of the rich and famous with large Twitter followings. And as soon as someone questions it or disagrees a little bit, out comes the R-word and all of a sudden you're living proof of systemic racism.
But the facts, as is so often the case, tell a completely different story. It may be an inconvenient one to those on the progressive fringe, but the facts really don't care about your feelings or your worldview.
It's not systemic racism that's destroying marginalized Canadians and Americans, it's the utter abandonment of the last two generations by governments that couldn't be bothered to do the responsible thing and encourage these people to do what they only wanted to do anyway - keep their families together. And now that this problem has only gotten worse, the next easy out for them is to blame all of us for perpetuating “systemic racism”.
If you're wondering where this scourge of absentee fathers originated, you need look no further than this absentee government who believes they can just write a cheque and make all these problems go away. When you model irresponsibility, only an idiot would expect anything less in return.
Further reading:
For more about what the US government did with Patrick Moynihan's research and message on this topic, check out The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies, by Kay S. Hymowitz.
