My favorite part is how, near the end, he cites statistics on marriage rates for males over the age of 15. Getting married at 16 or 17 is clearly the way to happiness and prosperity, right?
Every day, I wish I would have gotten myself hitched in high school. Man, it would have been so easy to get a prom date.
Um.
Did he really use a fictional story to justify his opinion? He couldn't think of a real-life couple that enjoyed the "benefits of marriage"? Ruby Dee and Ossie? Bill and Camille?
Hell, Bobby and Whitney?
btw, my daddy got remarried this weekend, to a woman I love who happens to be White. I wonder what our friend Mr. Warren would think about interracial marriage... Still the "great equalizer" for us Black folk?
So what do you disagree with? I'm curious. The stats are right, but I would like to spin it differently.
The numbers are what they are. The piece is just moronic, replete with the use of Kunta Friggin Kinte as the case study. I have no idea why an editor ran this.
"Kunta Kinte escaped his master several times only to be caught each time. But one thing finally caused him to change course: his marriage and the birth of his daughter. .... Kunta decided that creating a legacy of hope for his family was more important than escape."
So if Harriet Tubman had seen the light and gotten married, then she wouldn't have been a bitter old maid and kept helping those other marriageless heathens escape?
That was great.
WHAT!? Did that nigga really write that article? As a socially well adjusted individual that was raised in a single parent home, I find Roland's argument a little re-fucking-diculous and offensive. While my parents were married, they got divorced when I was 5. I barely remember them being married, so to me it's as if they weren't really married at all. My Dad raised me alone and as far as I'm concerned a mother and or step-mother wouldn't have made me any more successful.
Unless this Roland cat considers me a failure for pursuing a Masters instead of a PH.D he is totally off base.
BTW in response to Bo's last post can we start calling dumbass educated negroes with good jobs, "Rolands".
i was unaware that Kunta Kinte left a legacy for me...
oh- and rhh, i couldn't have said it better if i tried really, really hard. i mean, REALLY hard...
I mean, the piece is garbage, but it's USA Today. It's hard to argue with his implicit point--that the disintigration of the "traditional"/two-parent black family has adverse economic and social affects at the aggregate level. I think what is rubbing us the wrong way, aside from the terrible writing, is that not only does he completely ignore the complex history of the deliberate destruction of the black family, he acts as if rearing alone can explain divergent racial outcomes: double-income families may provide more income, but it can't stop loan, housing, employment, educational, and legal discrimination. It's the typical conservative fallacy.
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