David Barnhizer
“I had adults who cared about me. My two parents, all my Jamaican relatives in the South Bronx, they watched out for us kids. And if you ever did anything wrong, I mean, you were going to get it.” Colin Powell, former Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, General, and Chairman of the President’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Colin Powell’s words capture the difference between “then” and “now” as the guiding, strengthening, and nurturing role of the family dynamic collapsed over the past six decades. Corey Williams and Aaron Morrison write in an Associated Press report: “A child of Jamaican immigrants who grew up in the Bronx borough of New York City, Powell said he was raised in a community where his neighbors were as invested in his safety and success as his own mother and father.”
I can identify so much with what Colin Powell describes. The first six years of my life I lived in a small three bedroom, one bathroom, house in Youngstown, Ohio with my grandparents Seth Thomas Jones who worked 38 years for Sheet & Tube Steel and Blanche Jones, my wonderful Mother, sister Mary Anne, great grandfather Thomas Jones who had traveled by train all over America in the latter decades of the 19th Century and was a constant fountain of wonderful stories about his travels. My family “gang” also included Aunt Nett, cousin Donna, uncles Tom, Jim and Fred who were like my elder brothers, and Aunts Mildred and Florence.
I never met my father until I was five and a half. He stayed in Germany in the US Army after the War where he fought under George Patton’s command. As a Master Sergeant, when the war ended stayed and ran the Officer’s Club in Munich until returning to the US four years later. He was a good and courageous soldier, a fine boxer, and skilled director of the Munich operation, but turned out to be somewhat less than proficient as a Father. But his own father had been killed in a train crash before Dad was even born, his mother then married a man who basically used him as free farm labor, and he somehow never seemed able to settle down once back in America. I gained compassion for him when I grew older and am glad of that. The reality was that while I had looked forward to his return, my “real” Father was Grandpa Jones, and my family was a wonderful integrated collection of fine people who provided direction, love, meaning, nurturing, freedom, and support in ways that has guided me, strengthened me, and supported me throughout my life.
That is why I am writing this blog post. I simply cannot overstate the vital importance of the family in our development and well-being. The fact that so many young Americans have been deprived of having the tremendous gift of a supportive and guiding family structure makes me sad for them, and extremely concerned about the impact of that loss on a nation I love and admire so deeply—even while being aware of its faults. Somehow we must seek to remediate what has been done to the family over the last five decades, and we need to devise ways to return that spirit to ongoing generations. We have many challenges facing us. But I can’t think of any that exceed that of rebuilding the ideal of the family.
“No More Excuses”!
Chicago Pastor Corey Brooks explains: “It begins with the parents. It doesn't matter if it's only a father or a mother or a grandparent. It begins with the family. Once you decide to take charge, the doors of the world will open. I know this because that was part of my life. Even now, my mother, who is battling cancer, she calls me every day, and she ends the conversation the same way I've heard her for many, many, many, many years as a kid: "Corey, no excuses.” Brooks adds:
“One reason there is no accountability at the school is because too often there is no accountability in the home. For many families in our major urban areas this cycle of poverty, poor education, and limited or no involvement by parents is brutal and vicious. Brooks continues: “I speak of excuses because there is simply no reason why parents should allow their kids to go into a failing school that has such low proficiency numbers. Why aren't the parents boycotting? Why aren't they demanding accountability? I hate to say it, but perhaps there is no accountability at the school because there's no accountability in the home. I've seen a lot of these families, and I've seen how they live. I've seen them not put in the work into the kids. Some of the parents also went to these very same failing schools so they are undereducated themselves. Even the generation and the generation before them. This cycle is brutal. This cycle is vicious. My family came out of slavery, and even they came out of better conditions than some of these homes.” “Rooftop Revelations: Parents must say 'no more excuses' when it comes to educating their kids: Parents need to demand accountability from schools, Pastor Corey Brooks says”, Eli Steele, 1/27/22.
The Truth Is That the “Anti-Racists”—Are the New Racists!
“Anti-Racist Racists”, John Stossel, 8/12/20. An Interview with Larry Elder.
"Black Lives Matter protests led many people to want to do something useful to reduce racial injustice. Racial justice groups are being flooded with money. Big companies made multimillion-dollar donations. “Bad idea,” says black radio host Larry Elder. “It is condescending… and not helpful. I urge white people to chill. Stop helping us, because you’re making things worse!” Making things worse, he says, because it supports the activists’ claim that “Blacks are victims of racism. (But) if racism were in America’s DNA, Obama never could have got elected. Racism has never been more insignificant a factor in one’s success than right now.”
[Stossel asks Elder] “It must be a huge problem or there wouldn’t be all this protest!”
“Well, they’re being lied to,” Elder responds. Teachers, black activists, and the media give “young people the impression that racism remains this huge problem in America when it is not.” It’s not, he says, because today any person who does three things can succeed: “Finish high school, don’t have a kid until you get married, get a job. Do those things, you will not be poor.”
The biggest problem facing the black community today, says Elder, is the absence of fathers. In the 1960s, most black children were raised in two-parent households. That changed when our government’s War on Poverty began. The handouts sent the message that it’s the government’s job, not your responsibility, to take care of you and your kids. “A mother with two children makes more money than she would make on minimum wage because of all the goodies she gets through the welfare state!”
Now, he says, Black Lives Matter actually encourages the breakup of families. Their website does say, “disrupt the Western-prescribed, nuclear family.” That’s a Karl Marx idea straight from “The Communist Manifesto.” Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors proudly describes herself as a “trained Marxist.” … They are even redefining what racism means. Today’s “anti-racists” says racism means “any policy with an effect that is disproportionate.” So even a tax deduction is racist because on average, whites deduct more than blacks. “Anti-racism presumes things about the world that simply can’t be true,” says Kmele Foster, lead producer at Freethink. “We are all at bottom, whatever our race, individuals. Anti-racism takes that and flips it on its head.”
Although They Are in Bad Shape It’s Not Only Poorer Urban Minority Families—America’s Families Are in Trouble Across the Board
As he writes in his book, “Hollowed Out: A Warning out America’s Next Generation”, Jeremy Adams, a teacher in Bakersfield, California, warns.
“A National Teacher of the Year nominee, Adams frets that today’s youngsters are “barren of the behavior, values and hopes from which human beings have traditionally found higher meaning . . . or even simple contentment.” Adams calls them “hollowed out,” a generation living solitary lives, hyperconnected to technology but unattached from their families, churches or communities. He cites statistics showing teen depression rose 63 percent from 2007 to 2017 while teen suicide grew 56 percent. Tragically, he writes, suicide has become the second-leading cause of death for the young. While teachers once helped students become their “best selves” by putting the focus on curriculums, lesson plans and test scores, he writes, that’s given way to trying to “understand” young people through programs emphasizing suicide and depression awareness, human trafficking concerns, or bullying, gangs and shootings.
Adams blames the dissolution of the American family for this shift, with marriage rates down and the number of traditional two-parent homes plummeting. Although studies have shown that regular family dinners leads to less youth “smoking, binge drinking, marijuana use, violence, school problems, eating disorders and sexual activity,” most of Adams’ students say they eat dinner alone each night, focused not on family but the device in their hand. “The neglect of family life is one of the greatest causes of the hollowing out not only of students, but of American life,” Adams writes. … Religion has been replaced by “a mass culture of ‘banality, conformity, and self-indulgence,’ ” Adams writes, not to mention an obsession with technology.” “Gen Z is made of zombies — less educated, more depressed, without values”, Todd Farley, 8/21/21.
John Fonte drew a distinction between Leftist cultural democracy and centrist liberal democracy. See, John Fonte, “Upstream,” National Review, February 6, 1995. He explained:
“In contrast to the philosophy of liberal democracy, which promotes equality of opportunity for individuals irrespective of race, ethnicity, and sex, the ideology of cultural democracy defines justice as achieving a particular result: proportional representation of cultural minorities and women in all sectors of society. To be sure, liberal democrats also oppose racism and sexism, but they define these terms differently and consequently propose different solutions to the problems resulting from bigotry. Traditionally liberal democrats reject racial and sexual prejudice that prevents individuals from achieving the same goals that other individuals are entitled to achieve. The U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 in its original form is a classic example of liberal-democratic thinking, whereas subsequent judicial and bureaucratic interpretations of the bill that established group rights represent cultural-democratic thinking.”
Although we too often treat the terms as if they are the same, “The Left” and True Liberals are distinct in values and aims. The Progressive Left rejects individuality and Liberal rationality as representing a condition of dominance, and instead strives to elevate class struggle and the idea of community as a central focus. One reason for this is that much of the Left’s core identity comes from European Marxist political philosophy. In that dimension, the biological family we think of when hearing the term is strategically replaced by a “collective family” and loyalty is transferred to that collective. Tragically, as we witnessed in Soviet Russia and Maoist China, the nuclear family has often been condemned and even betrayed by its own children whose allegiance has been transferred to the collective mass.
There is a critical difference between the Western Liberal tradition in which individuals were assumed to be responsible for seeking self-actualization as independent selves, and the assertion that people are socially determined, defined and created by their clan, tribe or group’s collective identity. An important strand of Progressive Leftism sees social conditions as class struggle, and they seek to gain control of the institutions by which elites can subordinate the masses by unjustly wielding the power that institutional control allows.
In that conflict, the Left sees cadres of willing intellectuals and academics as instruments of the struggle, to be used or condemned according to the masters they serve. That is why the capture of America’s universities, including particularly Ivy League institutions, but also the K-12 systems have been such a key part of the takeover strategy. Philosopher Eric Hoffer described “revolutionary” intellectuals as “fault-finding men of words” whose role was to use their elite status and aggressive use of critical attacks as ways to undermine and weaken the foundations of the system the Left wants to transform and replace, paving the way the ultimate takeover. That is what has taken place.
The Unforgivable Sin of “Fracturing” the Family
The sin of fracturing the family structure for Black families is unforgivable. It has created an unhealthy and destructive dependency relationship between members of that trapped urban ethnicity, the federal government, and the Democratic Party of which I was a long-time member as well as a lawyer who fought for minority civil rights through the Federal Legal Services program, and as a law professor directing a program in Clinical Legal Education where we provided assistance to significant numbers of poorer Americans and minorities in both civil and criminal matters.
When I was a young federal Legal Services and civil rights lawyer, the still strong family structure, and the “matriarchy” made up of grandmothers and Black churches, helped sustain the urban family and culture—even in the face of undeniable racism. Those wonderful grandmothers have passed away, and the family structures have disintegrated to the point that in too many instances we are in the context of “the blind leading the blind” in terms of values and behavior. In far too many instances, gangs are the only “family” many urban young people identify with, and that is a culturally and systemically destructive relationship for everyone touched by it.
During this period, however, the unwise but well-intended Great Society policies of the federal government related to the terms under which poor and minority families could obtain assistance, launching hordes of government social workers who conducted surprise visits that could fairly be called “raids” to ensure that young women who had borne a child or children did not have a young man to whom she was not married living in the domicile. It was the age of alleged “Welfare Queens” and the harsh policies, coupled with increasingly widespread use of anti-drug laws had a devastating impact on the Black family structure in urban areas. This was coupled with grotesquely inadequate leadership on the part of urban leaders, a situation that continues today in many areas of the nation. The result of such anti-family policies ended up forcing children trapped in the larger cities to endure years of an inadequate education in poorly run public schools from which they could not escape other than by simply dropping out and walking away without a degree or an education.
Kendall Qualls and “Take Charge”
Minnesota’s former gubernatorial candidate Kendall Qualls further explains what has occurred and what must be done. Qualls is a retired United States Army veteran, became a vice-president in the corporate field, and served in leadership positions at several Fortune 100 companies. He is President of “TakeCharge” an organization that works to unite Americans, of all backgrounds, and focuses on our shared history and common beliefs and ideals. It celebrates the promise of America and concentrates on the fact that at this point in the nation’s history the American dream can be achieved by anyone regardless of race or social standing in life. At the time this was written in 2022 Qualls was a Republican candidate for Minnesota governor. See, e.g. the insights of Kendall Qualls. “Instead of refocusing on cultural roots of faith, family and education that sustained the Black family during the most difficult times in our country’s history, we now blame racial disparities on white privilege and systemic racism.” He adds:
“I was five years old when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Then, nearly 80 percent of Black children were born into two-parent families but sadly, the Black community transformed to 80 percent fatherless homes in my lifetime. If the American Black family was a spotted owl or a gray wolf, it would be on the endangered species list. Instead of refocusing on cultural roots of faith, family and education that sustained the Black family during the most difficult times in our country’s history, we now blame racial disparities on white privilege and systemic racism. We know the damaging affects fatherless homes [has for] children after seeing the steep decline of two-parents in the Black community for five decades: 85 percent of children with behavioral disorders; 90 percent of homeless and runaways; young boys and girls suffer higher rates of physical and sexual abuse, and list continues.
The disparities the CBC references are not a result of racism. Ninety percent of the problems in the Black community can be attributed to the fatherless home crisis. Nowhere does the CBC reference the decline of two parent families and its impact on women, children, health, or education. The reason they hide this is sorrowful and treasonous to their communities and the country.
Many of these elected and local community leaders promoted and/or sustained a welfare dependency class with Aid to Family with Dependent Children (AFDC) that tripled in enrollment from 1 million in 1962 to 3 million in 1972. By 1994, 66 percent of AFDC recipients were never married families while in 1975 it was 33 percent. The trends continue with many inner cities experiencing 85 to 90 percent unwed births in the Black community. We have operated for decades as if this has no impact on social norms. To make matters worse, the public schools in these Democratically-controlled cities have failed students for decades, leaving generations of young people unemployed or underemployed.” “Martin Luther King's dream is alive but liberal policies are destroying Black communities: What has happened to the American Black family is not the dream King had and is nothing short of cultural genocide”, Kendall Qualls, 1/15/22.
Bob Woodson Speaks and We Should Listen
Bob Woodson, long-time civil rights activist and founder of The Woodson Center provides telling comments on the vital importance of the family unit and the consequences of its rapid decline. As Woodson explains, prior to the Great Society black families in the cities of America had a nuclear family structure of 75 percent, with marriages and other forms of intact parental units, as well as extended family groupings creating the cultural environment.
Today, that dynamic has “flipped” to one where at least 75 percent of black “families” do not involve an intact family unit with full parental cohesion and guidance. Many of the children, even a majority, grow up without a father’s participation in their lives, often with mothers trapped in a cycle of poverty, and without a strong and nurturing extended family of the kind that Colin Powell describes. This too often takes place under the “guidance” of an uneducated and impoverished young mother without parental skills, very limited education, or other familial support.
Black Lives Matter seeks to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family”. Although the Black Lives Matter organization's website [has] removed a page that included disrupting “the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure” … [It read] “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children.”
The problem with the professed anti-family goal projected by Black Lives Matter, Inc. is that any study that has looked at the problems created by a lack of strong nuclear families in 75 percent of America’s black communities, has highlighted lack of a strong and supportive family structure as an extremely damaging and fundamental challenge for their communities and affected individuals. Studies have repeatedly demonstrated the positive effects of having well-functioning nuclear families for the development of the nation’s youth regardless of race or ethnicity.
Yet the umbrella organization of Black Lives Matter (what I am referring to as BLM, Inc. to differentiate that activity from local chapters) has regularly called for the undermining of the nuclear family in America.
“It is ironic that the radical left is subverting those values upon which black America resisted oppression, and yet they’re saying they’re doing this in the name of helping blacks,” Bob Woodson explained. One of the biggest myths that is being perpetrated by the left is that the kind of decline seen in urban centers in black communities, where over 70 percent of births are out of wedlock, is a consequence of the legacy of slavery and discrimination, Woodson said.
Assault on the fundamental institutions and values of America in the name of pursuing social justice for blacks by the radical left will not benefit black communities but can destroy the nation, said Bob Woodson, a veteran of the civil rights movement. “America’s interest is best served by setting aside race and beginning to promote remedies that reach across class and race lines to heal this nation,” Woodson, founder of the “1776 Unites“ project, said.”
A post on the BLM website, which was later taken down [after exposing the movement’s true character], criticized the nuclear family as a Western symbol of colonialism and advocating opposing it, Woodson continued. The foundation of family, faith, personal responsibility, and self-determination, were the fundamental values, principles, and virtues that enabled black America to endure slavery and racial segregation under Jim Crow laws for 100 years after slavery, and achieve against the odds, build institutions, banks, insurance companies, and hotels, Woodson said.” “Using Racial Justice to Destroy the Nation Will Not Raise Black Communities From Poverty: Bob Woodson: Empowering low-income grassroots leaders helps their communities ‘achieve against the odds’”, Ella Kietlinska and Jan Jelielek, 4/7/21.
“White Values" Daniel Idfresne’s parents learned in Haiti
Eli Steele offers a fascinating report about Daniel Idfresne, a 17-year-old student at Brooklyn Technical High School. Steele describes how this young man, born in America to Haitian immigrants, raised in those parent’s value systems, and still being able to spend a great deal of time in Haiti helping people deal with the aftermath of violent storms and poverty. As indicated above, Daniel Idfresne learned his approach to life from his parents and other Haitians, not from the supposed “White Supremacists”.
Eli Steele: 17-year-old rejects all things woke for the hero's path: Steele: 'How could these values be "white" when his parents learned them in Haiti?’" Eli Steele, 10/24/21. Steele writes:
“What makes Daniel all the more remarkable is how well he knows the lesson of what it takes to become a hero and at such a young age. There were times during our conversation that I forgot I was talking to a teen 30 years younger than myself. His parents raised him to know himself and they gave him the greatest gift any youth can be given: the ability to work hard, the ability to endure countless obstacles and sleepless nights and the ability to resist the shallow temptations of instant gratification. It may be years before we find out what Daniel has decided to do with his life, but it is safe to say that he will work his way out of the identity politics conundrum to become a man of substance. He is already on his way to becoming a hero and America will be all the more better for it.
Daniel spoke of the need to be a hero. … I asked Daniel who he saw as a hero and he named Thomas Sowell. What made Sowell heroic for Daniel was how hard he labored every day without regard for the opinions of others. Fame and glory meant nothing to him. He worked relentlessly, publishing one book after another, creating an unparalleled body of work. He pushed his talents to the extremes, beyond the reach of identity politics, and nobody owned him. By contrast, Daniel said that his woke high school classmates chose the mirroring of social media instead of the path of self development. He explained that social media had radicalized them.
"Anger sells on social media," he said. "That is why police brutality videos thrive on social media and it is why so many on the Left believe that 10,000 blacks are killed by the police every year.” [the real data indicates 18 to 30] The Woke feed off the dopamine rush that they get from the likes, retweets and follows. They get sucked into a vicious cycle where their postings become more and more extreme while they delude themselves into believing they are making a difference. But there is no virtue in posting woke cliches. "It’s false heroism," Daniel said. "They are false heroes.”
Freedom and Individuality versus Collective Identity
[Steele continues] “What struck me was that Daniel was pursuing the path of freedom over the path of identity. The path of freedom is a lonely one. It requires that one gambles on oneself — that one constantly test oneself against reality. It is this baptism by fire that allows one to forge their true individual identity. Perhaps that is why identity politics thrives on social media: it is easy to profit off one’s immutable characteristics and shoot to fame. In this light, it is not difficult to see why Daniel rejected wokeism. After all, the Woke are fond of declaring values such as hard work, discipline and meritocracy as "expressions of whiteness.” But how could these values be "white" when his parents learned them in Haiti?
Daniel revealed to me how fortunate he was to have visited Haiti every two years while growing up. He helped his parents and brothers build a church there and he has witnessed the joy on people’s faces as they embraced clothes that most Americans would look down on. He learned early on in life how blessed he was to be the first one in his family born in America. His parents sacrificed more than he will ever know in order to give him the freedom to test his talents against the world. Why would he betray that freedom for an identity defined by politicized immutable traits?”
Recent Black Immigrants See America Quite Positively
Kendall Qualls writes:
“One the largest and most interesting benefactors of the civil rights movement are Black Americans that have legally immigrated to the U.S. from Africa (non-refugees) and the Caribbean Islands. They see the country much differently than native born Black Americans and based on the U.S. Census; their children grow up in higher levels of two-parent families. Because they see America as a land of opportunity and haven’t been indoctrinated by years of anti-white, anti-capitalism and anti-American propaganda, they earn significantly more in household income and are more educated than those who are native-born.
[T]o make a systemic change worthy of the sacrifices by civil rights leaders, a wholesale cultural transformation is needed from the Black community from the bottom up, starting with a re-dedication to two-parent families, a return to the principles of the Christian faith and recommitment to education. These efforts need universal support taught to children from parents, grandparents, pastors, fraternities, and sororities. Lastly, a solid education is a pathway to prosperity. Unfortunately, many leaders who are supposed to represent the best for the Black community are instead representing what’s best for the teacher’s union. One look at their financial disclosure documents reveals why school choice or vouchers are often hardest to pass in America’s inner cities despite being widely popular with inner cities parents.” “Martin Luther King's dream is alive but liberal policies are destroying Black communities: What has happened to the American Black family is not the dream King had and is nothing short of cultural genocide”, Kendall Qualls, 1/15/22.
The strategy to impose “white guilt”, is a destructive form of racism engaged in by people claiming to be concerned about racism. The strategy is having the short term effects of allowing the new racial bigots to draw others to their cause and to intimidate and shame others into silence or collaboration, but ultimately they are socially divisive and destructive. Such race-based and reverse-racist “guilting” strategies include the invention of numerous “phobias” that include gender, sexuality, religion and ethnicity. These are part of the new racism. The propaganda-driven bigotry that accompanies the new racism is being practiced by people who pretend to be trying to eliminate bias and bigotry. But the reality is that they are employing cynical techniques to acquire power for themselves and their Identity Group.