Politics and Culture

Jackson's concern is that blacks are especially affected by economic issues like the mortgage crisis, which Jackson gave as an example. I assume that Jesse Jackson believes that racism is the differentiating factor.

Assuming Barack Obama is sincere about his criticism of the black community- that black fathers need to be more responsible (What about black mothers? Most men of any color wouldn't pass up an opportunity for sex.), and I'm not sure he is since he's never talked about people taking responsibility in any other area of their life, is Obama's position superior to Jesse Jackson's?

I'd say that the problem is poverty; poor people must overcome more obstacles than the non-poor. In addition to all of the familiar detriments to being poor, poor people may have to pay higher interest rates when they want to purchase a home or car, for example. Whose fault is one's own economic condition? One can argue that poverty, in 2008 America, is very nearly voluntary.

When people elect to have children without first marrying, a problem not exclusive to blacks, but more pronounced in the black community (Remember, Jackson and Obama are talking about social outcomes amongst blacks relative to whites and others.), they're much more likely to be poor.

If, whether organically or by Obama decree, blacks begin to practice four behaviors in greater numbers:

1) Finish high school
2) Get married before having children
3) Have no more than two children (I like when anybody has children- they're a national resource. In an Asymmetric world, people who fulfill the other three wouldn't suffer for having many children.).
4) Work full time

...they'd have a 99% chance of being above the poverty line. It's not as simple as that, obviously, as a business may close, a parent may die, or another factor outside of one's control may effect one's circumstance; but the main point is that individual Americans control their own destiny and that the key to escaping the ills Jackson assigns to racism is behavior.

Conclusion:

Obama is correct to suggest that people can experience less problems in life if they make different choices.

Additional statistics:

• The poverty rate for children living with cohabiting parents is five times that of children with married parents. The poverty rate for children living with single mothers is seven times that of children with married parents.

• The average married father annually contributes about thirty thousand dollars to the welfare of his children. The annual contribution of a non-custodial father averages about three thousand dollars yearly.

• In 1998, 12% of black children with married parents lived in poverty, BUT 55% of black children with single moms lived in poverty.

• Only 6% of births to women above the poverty line are out of wedlock. To contrast, 44% of births to white women under the poverty line are out of wedlock.

• Children who grow up with only one of their biological parents are three times more likely to have a child out of wedlock, 2.5 times more likely to become teenage mothers, and 1.4 times more likely to be out of school and unemployed.

• Daughters of single parents are 164% more likely to have a premarital birth and 92% more likely to have a divorce than daughters of married parents.

• According to a 1994 report in American Economic Review, those who leave welfare because of marriage are the least likely to return.

• "Among married-couple households, the bracket with the largest number of households is $75,000 and over. Among ‘other family groups,’ the bracket with the largest number of households is that under $10,000."

• Children of two-parent lower income black homes perform better in college than children from single-parent affluent black homes.

• Children who grow up with one parent are twice as likely to drop out of high school than kids with both parents at home.

• Children whose parents are divorced are more likely to exhibit conduct problems, psychological maladjustment, and lower academic achievement.

• Children in two-parent families receive the highest grades in school of any family structure.

• Seventy-two percent of America’s adolescent murderers, 70% of long-term prison inmates, and 60% of rapists come from fatherless homes.

• Boys raised outside of an intact nuclear family are more than twice as likely as other boys to end up in prison, even controlling for a range of social and economic factors.

• Married women are much less likely to be victims of violent crime than unmarried or divorced women. Only 14.4 married women per 1000 are victimized versus 60.6 never-married women per 1000 and 53.6 divorced or separated women per 1000.

• A cohabiting boyfriend is thirty-three times more likely to abuse a child than a married father who lives with the mother.

• A biological father who cohabits with the mother, but is not married to her, is twenty times more likely to abuse his own child than fathers who are married to the mothers of the child.

• Cohabiting women are more likely to suffer severe violence from their partners than are married women.

• Children without resident fathers are more vulnerable to predators, both sexual and physical, outside the family.