10 ms·

Or, you know, fathers. Half of success in fatherhood comes from simply showing up. Absentee fathers contribute to the generational erosion of the family fabric

by maxaf 7y ago

Or, you know, fathers. Half of success in fatherhood comes from simply showing up. Absentee fathers contribute to the generational erosion of the family fabric that is almost impossible to undo.

k__ 7y ago
I once read, kids need fathers to learn interaction with people who are not their mother. I think, this is where the "atomic family" breaks down. Only having one person for this job, is simply too high of a risk. We should go back to a bigger type of family, so kids can have more people in their early lifes that fill this role, so when one leaves, there are still many left.
- CapitalistCartr 7y ago
  The nuclear family became American dogma after WW2, and it most benefits corporations and a growth economy. Prior to this modern age most people didn't have the resources to move willy-nilly. Even during the Great Migration, people moved in large groups from the Old World to the New, landing in ethnic neighborhoods. Whole villages uprooted. While there are benefits, having no support net (in the USA), has huge downsides. If anything happens to either parent, it's extremely difficult to continue. Having abruptly become a parent last April has been eye-opening. Like bomb blast so.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
shantly 7y ago
It is, quite seriously, heartening, as a father, to know that just 1) being there at all, and 2) trying with some amount of thoughtfulness not to screw up your kids, puts you well into the top half of fathers, by quality. You can still mess up constantly, and pretty badly, but remain better than average.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jeffrallen 7y ago
  It's not a competition. It's a responsibility.
  - shantly 7y ago
    It's more about perspective, to avoid beating oneself up too much on the bad days. "This sucked, but we're still basically OK, just gotta learn and move on".
  - newnewpdro 7y ago
    It's a responsibility to prepare your children as best you can to stand on their own in a competitive world. It's basically just one degree separated from the competition.
    - czbond 7y ago
      Agreed. I'm teaching my kids the things they need to be competitive - by out-thinking or out-doing the people around them. Addition: What you'll find is most of life, is people acting on unsound strategies, poor fortitude, or poor self control, or having personality preferences that are easy to predict, or thinking in group think. Let school handle the mundane, I'm teaching them strategy, leadership, multiple scenario event planning & prediction, personality types and the strengths and weaknesses of each, multiple types of investments & investment patterns, asset strategies, the agility that creating options give you - rather than having it given to you. I'm teaching them how to avoid the types of people and thinking that takes down people and everyone around them. The types of events that downfall a person, and how to get out of the way when people display them. How to read the market, and get ahead of it for prosperity. These things were not taught to me by my smart firefighter father, or great mother (teacher/nurse) - but I was keen to pick up by observing the world and reading, taking stupid risks, and growing. I'm jealous of my future kids - I wish someone had handed these to me.
mjg59 7y ago
The article does not mention whether or not the subject's father was present in his life. Why did you leap straight to that?
- chance_state 7y ago
  Probably because GP is making a general point about the subject of the article. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4104793/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4104793/ It's not easy to link to on this page (unless someone can help me out), but there's interesting data about fathers being present in the lives of their children and its impact. The beige/tan chart about 35% of the way down is what I'm referring to.
  - itsallideologyj 7y ago
    I can link to stats that link absentee black fathers to criminal justice bias, and stats that show lesbian parents are producing stabler kids than hetero couples at scale. If statistical evidence is all we’re gonna rely on, it’s seems less to do with the dangly bits between a parents legs and more what emotional lessons they’re teaching while the other parent takes some very much needed rest. What a shock, sharing the emotional load keeps one anxious train wreck parent from raising an anxious train wreck kid who can’t achieve. Life lessons we knew decades ago but now we have a stat. So it means more I guess to be gentle with each other.
kkwak 7y ago
Exactly. Black fathers are screwing it up for generations it seems. We only need to go back a couple of generations to see how good fathers behaved and how that affected the civil rights movement. As in the type of behavior seen during that era is something I can't imagine today - the behavior of those marching and protesting in peace. Obviously there are bad apples in every batch but by and by...
notrekasa 7y ago
I guess if the government stopped putting a higher rate of black fathers in jail (they may show up).
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  Very insightful. It becomes a vicious cycle when fathers aren’t even able to show up because they’re behind bars.
  - notrekasa 7y ago
    It's a system built on discrimination, the idea that people of different color are going through the exact same thing is ridiculous. People love telling other people how to fix problems they have no idea about.
  - drno123 7y ago
    I am not sure that numbers add up to support this claim. In Oklahoma, which has the highest percentage of black people incarcerated, there is approx 2.5% of the total black population imprisoned, while over 60% of black children are raised without fathers.
    - rootusrootus 7y ago
      Need more information. E.g. 2.5% of the total black population, but what fraction of the black father population? How many kids, on average, does each black father have?
- tpmx 7y ago
  So what's the incarceration rate for black men (or black fathers) in the typical age where they have children? (I guess ~18-35?) Seems like this stat should be publicly available. Perhaps I'm naive, but I can't imagine it to be more than 15% of this population [and that would be pretty extreme]. If that's the case, how can incarceration be considered a major cause of these fathers "failing from showing up?" (I guess we'd need a number for that, too..)
itsallideologyj 7y ago
There’s a number of studies over the years that show lesbian parents have had raised more emotionally stable, socially successful adults than men. “Fathers” full stop is an argument that agrees with what can be true in our reality. It’s almost as if things we know to be true are often just noises our motor functions generate, and may in fact, upon reflection, be belief not rooted in truth.
- aliveupstairs 7y ago
  > Number of studies. Source your claims (at least one.) I very much doubt this because only recently has it been possible for parents of the same sex to adopt, let alone evaluate their performance as parents and generalise it. I would very much love to be proven wrong, however. That being said, the issue here is not the gender of the parent, but rather single parenthood. A working single parent interacts very much little with their kid(s) in comparison with an atomic family.
- mlyle 7y ago
  I vouched your comment which was dead, but I think it's deliberately obtuse. I think what people are speaking to is a second involved parent from shortly after birth-- which will most likely be a father/man. A second parental figure makes a world of difference, especially when confronting poverty and an educational environment that does not provide additional support. > It’s almost as if things we know to be true are often just noises our motor functions generate, and may in fact, upon reflection, be belief not rooted in truth. There's a whole lot of evidence that children of single parents have significantly worse educational and psychosocial outcomes, even when controlling for household income and other confounds; even when considering whether that parent remarries/a step parent shows up. The degree of involvement of the other parent is strongly predictive of the amount of harm; that is, there's a dose-response relationship.
  - grzm 7y ago
    > "I vouched your comment which was dead, but I think it's deliberately obtuse." If a comment is dead and you think it's unhelpful ("deliberately obtuse"), don't reward it by vouching for it. It's likely going to generate even more noise. (Note a sibling comment which is is only argumentative, not moving the discussion forward.) If you have a point to make, make it in a separate comment.
cpayne624 7y ago
That's a simple analysis to an incredibly complex issue. There are many reasons some black fathers aren't around to raise their kids. Some reasons under their control, many not. The cycle continues until underlying circumstances (societal, penal, etc) are addressed.
jenkins6g 7y ago
Agreed, but as a black man who grew up fatherless be mindful why black fathers are absent. Many times it's not by choice. There were and still are intentional systems in place to make it difficult for fathers to get jobs, stay within the prison system, and have access to quality education. I urge people commenting to ask their black friends for their insights. I came from an inner city and graduated from CMU. The two worlds are stark and mind blowing. But in the end, more mentors at an early age can help break the cycle. That's how you can play your part.
- robmiller 7y ago
  Specifically, I understand a 1968 law put into effect the Man in the House rule. Black families had to decide if welfare would pay better than the father's job. Many left the house so the mother and child(ren) could receive the welfare payment. The Moe Factz podcast has been helpful to me in understanding these structural problems in society. https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Man-in-the-House+Rule https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Man-in-the-Ho... http://www.moefactz.com/ http://www.moefactz.com/
  - haecceity 7y ago
    What was the justification for this rule? It almost seems intentionally malicious.
    - wolco 7y ago
      It sounds progressive at the time. Men worked, if one wasn't part of the home then women needed more support.
      - chepaslaaa 7y ago
        poor women worked for decades prior to 1968
    - Nerdfest 7y ago
      I'm guessing the justification was intentional maliciousness.
Meekro 7y ago
'Years ago, I interviewed Kweisi Mfume, then the president of the NAACP. "As between the presence of white racism and the absence of black fathers," I asked, "Which poses the bigger threat to the black community?" Without missing a beat, he said, "The absence of black fathers."' - Larry Elder
- sidlls 7y ago
  A big reason for the absence of black fathers is institutional white racism.
  - zchrykng 7y ago
    The higher crime rates leading to higher incarceration rates is probably a bigger factor than "white racism". Edit: Making this edit to clarify what I'm trying to say, since several responses has tipped me off to how it could be read. Being black doesn't have anything to do with committing more crimes. Higher crime rates is much more a factor of economic and family status. Both of which are negatively impacted by higher crime rates, which reinforces the cycle to everyone's dismay. Those statuses are on average worse in the black community than others, which causes a large part of the statistical difference. The causes of the difference stem from the legacy of racism and choices that were made in designing welfare programs, at least in large part. Which sucks.
    - baselined 7y ago
      The War on Drugs is the cycle of incarceration and racism
      - zchrykng 7y ago
        We can argue all we want about how ineffective and/or misguided the War on Drugs has been, but that doesn't change that fact that crimes are crimes. Were some of the sentencing guidelines structured in a racist way? Maybe, I've heard people say that and don't have any evidence showing the opposite, but that is a side issue.
corporate_shi11 7y ago
It is hard for the Left and social justice advocates to admit this simple truth because it shifts the blame to black mothers and fathers (where some blame certainly belongs) for many of the problems in the black community. There is a compulsion among the political Left in the West for shifting blame to institutions and forces in society rather than individuals, where it often belongs. Shifting blame to outside forces often feels good as it absolves the individual, but this distracts us from real solutions that can bring about real change.
- peterwwillis 7y ago
  If a huge subset of a society is afflicted with problems, it is by definition not a matter of individual blame. If there's an outbreak of measles, the problem isn't individual. There is a compulsion along the political Right in the West for shifting blame to individuals rather than the institutions and forces in society, where it usually belongs. Shifting blame to the individual might make you feel good, but it distracts from real solutions that can bring about real change.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    Culture and shared values are not "individual" matters; they tend to affect society as a whole, or at least non-trivial fractions of it. But they are 'institutions' only in the broadest possible sense, and ones that seldom get acknowledged as such.
wayoutthere 7y ago
There are many, many reasons why this is the case; but they were almost all a product of racist social engineering in the 20th century. And when I say racist, I mean people whose main argument was the genetic inferiority of black people. Progressives consistently caved to their demands under threat of violence. Showing up is hard to do when housing policy explicitly forbids black people from living within a 2 hour commute of the few places that would hire them. It's hard to do when you have to work 2 jobs because the few neighborhoods you are allowed to live in are expensive. It's hard to do when under constant police harassment. The erosion of the family fabric of black communities in America was malicious, intentional, and far more recent than many are willing to believe (which is why this comment will probably be downvoted to hell). And there's no great conspiracy about it because it was done in the open.
- zdragnar 7y ago
  > Progressives consistently caved to their demands under threat of violence. Say what? The progressive movement was born of using science to build a better society, including eugenics, abortion and other means of slowing the growing population of blacks. Edit: this was not to say that conservatives were free from prejudice or fault for systemic injustices, only that there were no blameless hands, least of all those involved in the Progressive movement: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_State...
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    Pretending the big-P Progressives of the 1890s-1920s are the same as today's progressives is as silly as claiming black people should love modern Republicans because of Lincoln.
- whb07 7y ago
  And of course the engineering of the powerful Jews and Asians so that they now represent the upper tiers of the income distribution. /s Employment and family stats were vastly better pre 1960s government regulations. This isn’t some grand evil plan but the standard outcomes of a “we need more government help”, also known as “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
stretchwithme 7y ago
I agree with that. At some primitive level, I think we see our fathers as protector and provider. When he's not around, the pressure is really on boys to assume that role. And so it without the maturity and tools that adults have. My father moved out when I was 14 and, although he was never far away and visited all the time, I was pretty angry about. For years. It really wasn't even his fault. It is not just an issue for black boys, of course. Rates of fatherless homes have been rising in the US for whites and hispanics too.
scarface74 7y ago
And many Black fathers are “absent” because they are incarcerated because of the “War on Drugs”. Study after study shows that minorities are given longer sentences and even stopped more than non minorities. When drugs were affecting the “inner city” it was all about “being tough on crime”. When it started affecting “middle America” it became about “treating drug abuse as a disease” and “increasing social services.”
- lostapathy 7y ago
  I'm not disputing this, at all, but have a weird observation about it that doesn't make sense. I've been to Ft Worth a few times the last few years, and there have been protests about how police "protect and serve white folks only" each time near the area I stayed. But what I can't get my head around is that nearly every cop I saw (near the protest or otherwise) was themselves a minority. So do we have a system where minorities arrest minorities at an unfair rate? Are the (apparent minority) white cops just arresting so many minorities that the arrest rate skews to minorities? I have no theory on it, but couldn't help but wonder if better understanding what the people doing the arresting at (allegedly) unfair rates themselves look like would help find a path forward.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    I didn’t read the report so I don’t have any opinion, but Texas passed a law concerning racial profiling. https://police.fortworthtexas.gov/Public/racial-profiling-report https://police.fortworthtexas.gov/Public/racial-profiling-re...
  - alphabettsy 7y ago
    There is a legacy from centuries of white supremacy as a legal and cultural mainstay that isn’t fully understood, but certainly has a lasting impact. One of those is internalized racism and the societal norms that often cause even black people to apply common harmful stereotypes to other black people. https://psmag.com/social-justice/black-cops-are-just-as-likely-as-whites-to-kill-black-suspects https://psmag.com/social-justice/black-cops-are-just-as-like... https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/02/04/513218656/does-having-more-black-officers-reduce-police-violence https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/02/04/513218656...
jacquesm 7y ago
Absentee fathers are more often than not absent because they got jailed in the war-on-drugs or died as collateral damage in that war. You can't show up when you're dead or in jail.
dang 7y ago
There's a legitimate point here but if you introduce it with snarky one-liners like "Or, you know, fathers", you damage both the conversation and the community. Please don't do that. Instead, please follow the site guidelines, which include: "Don't be snarky." "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- gjs278 7y ago
  there’s legitimate ways to moderate and copy pasting your condescending bullshit isn’t one of them. please don’t do that.
  - dang 7y ago
    If you'd like to make some suggestions about how to improve, I'd be interested to hear them.
    - yesenadam 7y ago
      I want to give this comment some kind of award! Staggeringly impressive. Did you have to have a cool-off break before writing that, or are you such a zen/ninja master by now that you could write that immediately?! Thanks again for the very inspiring modding.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

by maxaf 7y ago

Or, you know, fathers. Half of success in fatherhood comes from simply showing up. Absentee fathers contribute to the generational erosion of the family fabric that is almost impossible to undo.

k__ 7y ago

I once read, kids need fathers to learn interaction with people who are not their mother. I think, this is where the "atomic family" breaks down. Only having one person for this job, is simply too high of a risk. We should go back to a bigger type of family, so kids can have more people in their early lifes that fill this role, so when one leaves, there are still many left.

CapitalistCartr 7y ago
The nuclear family became American dogma after WW2, and it most benefits corporations and a growth economy. Prior to this modern age most people didn't have the resources to move willy-nilly. Even during the Great Migration, people moved in large groups from the Old World to the New, landing in ethnic neighborhoods. Whole villages uprooted. While there are benefits, having no support net (in the USA), has huge downsides. If anything happens to either parent, it's extremely difficult to continue. Having abruptly become a parent last April has been eye-opening. Like bomb blast so.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

shantly 7y ago

It is, quite seriously, heartening, as a father, to know that just 1) being there at all, and 2) trying with some amount of thoughtfulness not to screw up your kids, puts you well into the top half of fathers, by quality. You can still mess up constantly, and pretty badly, but remain better than average.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jeffrallen 7y ago
It's not a competition. It's a responsibility.
- shantly 7y ago
  It's more about perspective, to avoid beating oneself up too much on the bad days. "This sucked, but we're still basically OK, just gotta learn and move on".
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  It's a responsibility to prepare your children as best you can to stand on their own in a competitive world. It's basically just one degree separated from the competition.
  - czbond 7y ago
    Agreed. I'm teaching my kids the things they need to be competitive - by out-thinking or out-doing the people around them. Addition: What you'll find is most of life, is people acting on unsound strategies, poor fortitude, or poor self control, or having personality preferences that are easy to predict, or thinking in group think. Let school handle the mundane, I'm teaching them strategy, leadership, multiple scenario event planning & prediction, personality types and the strengths and weaknesses of each, multiple types of investments & investment patterns, asset strategies, the agility that creating options give you - rather than having it given to you. I'm teaching them how to avoid the types of people and thinking that takes down people and everyone around them. The types of events that downfall a person, and how to get out of the way when people display them. How to read the market, and get ahead of it for prosperity. These things were not taught to me by my smart firefighter father, or great mother (teacher/nurse) - but I was keen to pick up by observing the world and reading, taking stupid risks, and growing. I'm jealous of my future kids - I wish someone had handed these to me.

mjg59 7y ago

The article does not mention whether or not the subject's father was present in his life. Why did you leap straight to that?

chance_state 7y ago
Probably because GP is making a general point about the subject of the article. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4104793/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4104793/ It's not easy to link to on this page (unless someone can help me out), but there's interesting data about fathers being present in the lives of their children and its impact. The beige/tan chart about 35% of the way down is what I'm referring to.
- itsallideologyj 7y ago
  I can link to stats that link absentee black fathers to criminal justice bias, and stats that show lesbian parents are producing stabler kids than hetero couples at scale. If statistical evidence is all we’re gonna rely on, it’s seems less to do with the dangly bits between a parents legs and more what emotional lessons they’re teaching while the other parent takes some very much needed rest. What a shock, sharing the emotional load keeps one anxious train wreck parent from raising an anxious train wreck kid who can’t achieve. Life lessons we knew decades ago but now we have a stat. So it means more I guess to be gentle with each other.

kkwak 7y ago

Exactly. Black fathers are screwing it up for generations it seems. We only need to go back a couple of generations to see how good fathers behaved and how that affected the civil rights movement. As in the type of behavior seen during that era is something I can't imagine today - the behavior of those marching and protesting in peace. Obviously there are bad apples in every batch but by and by...

notrekasa 7y ago

I guess if the government stopped putting a higher rate of black fathers in jail (they may show up).

TimTheTinker 7y ago
Very insightful. It becomes a vicious cycle when fathers aren’t even able to show up because they’re behind bars.
- notrekasa 7y ago
  It's a system built on discrimination, the idea that people of different color are going through the exact same thing is ridiculous. People love telling other people how to fix problems they have no idea about.
- drno123 7y ago
  I am not sure that numbers add up to support this claim. In Oklahoma, which has the highest percentage of black people incarcerated, there is approx 2.5% of the total black population imprisoned, while over 60% of black children are raised without fathers.
  - rootusrootus 7y ago
    Need more information. E.g. 2.5% of the total black population, but what fraction of the black father population? How many kids, on average, does each black father have?
tpmx 7y ago
So what's the incarceration rate for black men (or black fathers) in the typical age where they have children? (I guess ~18-35?) Seems like this stat should be publicly available. Perhaps I'm naive, but I can't imagine it to be more than 15% of this population [and that would be pretty extreme]. If that's the case, how can incarceration be considered a major cause of these fathers "failing from showing up?" (I guess we'd need a number for that, too..)

itsallideologyj 7y ago

There’s a number of studies over the years that show lesbian parents have had raised more emotionally stable, socially successful adults than men. “Fathers” full stop is an argument that agrees with what can be true in our reality. It’s almost as if things we know to be true are often just noises our motor functions generate, and may in fact, upon reflection, be belief not rooted in truth.

aliveupstairs 7y ago
> Number of studies. Source your claims (at least one.) I very much doubt this because only recently has it been possible for parents of the same sex to adopt, let alone evaluate their performance as parents and generalise it. I would very much love to be proven wrong, however. That being said, the issue here is not the gender of the parent, but rather single parenthood. A working single parent interacts very much little with their kid(s) in comparison with an atomic family.
mlyle 7y ago
I vouched your comment which was dead, but I think it's deliberately obtuse. I think what people are speaking to is a second involved parent from shortly after birth-- which will most likely be a father/man. A second parental figure makes a world of difference, especially when confronting poverty and an educational environment that does not provide additional support. > It’s almost as if things we know to be true are often just noises our motor functions generate, and may in fact, upon reflection, be belief not rooted in truth. There's a whole lot of evidence that children of single parents have significantly worse educational and psychosocial outcomes, even when controlling for household income and other confounds; even when considering whether that parent remarries/a step parent shows up. The degree of involvement of the other parent is strongly predictive of the amount of harm; that is, there's a dose-response relationship.
- grzm 7y ago
  > "I vouched your comment which was dead, but I think it's deliberately obtuse." If a comment is dead and you think it's unhelpful ("deliberately obtuse"), don't reward it by vouching for it. It's likely going to generate even more noise. (Note a sibling comment which is is only argumentative, not moving the discussion forward.) If you have a point to make, make it in a separate comment.

cpayne624 7y ago

That's a simple analysis to an incredibly complex issue. There are many reasons some black fathers aren't around to raise their kids. Some reasons under their control, many not. The cycle continues until underlying circumstances (societal, penal, etc) are addressed.

jenkins6g 7y ago

Agreed, but as a black man who grew up fatherless be mindful why black fathers are absent. Many times it's not by choice. There were and still are intentional systems in place to make it difficult for fathers to get jobs, stay within the prison system, and have access to quality education. I urge people commenting to ask their black friends for their insights. I came from an inner city and graduated from CMU. The two worlds are stark and mind blowing. But in the end, more mentors at an early age can help break the cycle. That's how you can play your part.

robmiller 7y ago
Specifically, I understand a 1968 law put into effect the Man in the House rule. Black families had to decide if welfare would pay better than the father's job. Many left the house so the mother and child(ren) could receive the welfare payment. The Moe Factz podcast has been helpful to me in understanding these structural problems in society. https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Man-in-the-House+Rule https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Man-in-the-Ho... http://www.moefactz.com/ http://www.moefactz.com/
- haecceity 7y ago
  What was the justification for this rule? It almost seems intentionally malicious.
  - wolco 7y ago
    It sounds progressive at the time. Men worked, if one wasn't part of the home then women needed more support.
    - chepaslaaa 7y ago
      poor women worked for decades prior to 1968
  - Nerdfest 7y ago
    I'm guessing the justification was intentional maliciousness.

Meekro 7y ago

'Years ago, I interviewed Kweisi Mfume, then the president of the NAACP. "As between the presence of white racism and the absence of black fathers," I asked, "Which poses the bigger threat to the black community?" Without missing a beat, he said, "The absence of black fathers."' - Larry Elder

sidlls 7y ago
A big reason for the absence of black fathers is institutional white racism.
- zchrykng 7y ago
  The higher crime rates leading to higher incarceration rates is probably a bigger factor than "white racism". Edit: Making this edit to clarify what I'm trying to say, since several responses has tipped me off to how it could be read. Being black doesn't have anything to do with committing more crimes. Higher crime rates is much more a factor of economic and family status. Both of which are negatively impacted by higher crime rates, which reinforces the cycle to everyone's dismay. Those statuses are on average worse in the black community than others, which causes a large part of the statistical difference. The causes of the difference stem from the legacy of racism and choices that were made in designing welfare programs, at least in large part. Which sucks.
  - baselined 7y ago
    The War on Drugs is the cycle of incarceration and racism
    - zchrykng 7y ago
      We can argue all we want about how ineffective and/or misguided the War on Drugs has been, but that doesn't change that fact that crimes are crimes. Were some of the sentencing guidelines structured in a racist way? Maybe, I've heard people say that and don't have any evidence showing the opposite, but that is a side issue.

corporate_shi11 7y ago

It is hard for the Left and social justice advocates to admit this simple truth because it shifts the blame to black mothers and fathers (where some blame certainly belongs) for many of the problems in the black community. There is a compulsion among the political Left in the West for shifting blame to institutions and forces in society rather than individuals, where it often belongs. Shifting blame to outside forces often feels good as it absolves the individual, but this distracts us from real solutions that can bring about real change.

peterwwillis 7y ago
If a huge subset of a society is afflicted with problems, it is by definition not a matter of individual blame. If there's an outbreak of measles, the problem isn't individual. There is a compulsion along the political Right in the West for shifting blame to individuals rather than the institutions and forces in society, where it usually belongs. Shifting blame to the individual might make you feel good, but it distracts from real solutions that can bring about real change.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  Culture and shared values are not "individual" matters; they tend to affect society as a whole, or at least non-trivial fractions of it. But they are 'institutions' only in the broadest possible sense, and ones that seldom get acknowledged as such.

wayoutthere 7y ago

There are many, many reasons why this is the case; but they were almost all a product of racist social engineering in the 20th century. And when I say racist, I mean people whose main argument was the genetic inferiority of black people. Progressives consistently caved to their demands under threat of violence. Showing up is hard to do when housing policy explicitly forbids black people from living within a 2 hour commute of the few places that would hire them. It's hard to do when you have to work 2 jobs because the few neighborhoods you are allowed to live in are expensive. It's hard to do when under constant police harassment. The erosion of the family fabric of black communities in America was malicious, intentional, and far more recent than many are willing to believe (which is why this comment will probably be downvoted to hell). And there's no great conspiracy about it because it was done in the open.

zdragnar 7y ago
> Progressives consistently caved to their demands under threat of violence. Say what? The progressive movement was born of using science to build a better society, including eugenics, abortion and other means of slowing the growing population of blacks. Edit: this was not to say that conservatives were free from prejudice or fault for systemic injustices, only that there were no blameless hands, least of all those involved in the Progressive movement: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_State...
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Pretending the big-P Progressives of the 1890s-1920s are the same as today's progressives is as silly as claiming black people should love modern Republicans because of Lincoln.
whb07 7y ago
And of course the engineering of the powerful Jews and Asians so that they now represent the upper tiers of the income distribution. /s Employment and family stats were vastly better pre 1960s government regulations. This isn’t some grand evil plan but the standard outcomes of a “we need more government help”, also known as “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.

stretchwithme 7y ago

I agree with that. At some primitive level, I think we see our fathers as protector and provider. When he's not around, the pressure is really on boys to assume that role. And so it without the maturity and tools that adults have. My father moved out when I was 14 and, although he was never far away and visited all the time, I was pretty angry about. For years. It really wasn't even his fault. It is not just an issue for black boys, of course. Rates of fatherless homes have been rising in the US for whites and hispanics too.

scarface74 7y ago

And many Black fathers are “absent” because they are incarcerated because of the “War on Drugs”. Study after study shows that minorities are given longer sentences and even stopped more than non minorities. When drugs were affecting the “inner city” it was all about “being tough on crime”. When it started affecting “middle America” it became about “treating drug abuse as a disease” and “increasing social services.”

lostapathy 7y ago
I'm not disputing this, at all, but have a weird observation about it that doesn't make sense. I've been to Ft Worth a few times the last few years, and there have been protests about how police "protect and serve white folks only" each time near the area I stayed. But what I can't get my head around is that nearly every cop I saw (near the protest or otherwise) was themselves a minority. So do we have a system where minorities arrest minorities at an unfair rate? Are the (apparent minority) white cops just arresting so many minorities that the arrest rate skews to minorities? I have no theory on it, but couldn't help but wonder if better understanding what the people doing the arresting at (allegedly) unfair rates themselves look like would help find a path forward.
- scarface74 7y ago
  I didn’t read the report so I don’t have any opinion, but Texas passed a law concerning racial profiling. https://police.fortworthtexas.gov/Public/racial-profiling-report https://police.fortworthtexas.gov/Public/racial-profiling-re...
- alphabettsy 7y ago
  There is a legacy from centuries of white supremacy as a legal and cultural mainstay that isn’t fully understood, but certainly has a lasting impact. One of those is internalized racism and the societal norms that often cause even black people to apply common harmful stereotypes to other black people. https://psmag.com/social-justice/black-cops-are-just-as-likely-as-whites-to-kill-black-suspects https://psmag.com/social-justice/black-cops-are-just-as-like... https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/02/04/513218656/does-having-more-black-officers-reduce-police-violence https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/02/04/513218656...

jacquesm 7y ago

Absentee fathers are more often than not absent because they got jailed in the war-on-drugs or died as collateral damage in that war. You can't show up when you're dead or in jail.

dang 7y ago

There's a legitimate point here but if you introduce it with snarky one-liners like "Or, you know, fathers", you damage both the conversation and the community. Please don't do that. Instead, please follow the site guidelines, which include: "Don't be snarky." "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

gjs278 7y ago
there’s legitimate ways to moderate and copy pasting your condescending bullshit isn’t one of them. please don’t do that.
- dang 7y ago
  If you'd like to make some suggestions about how to improve, I'd be interested to hear them.
  - yesenadam 7y ago
    I want to give this comment some kind of award! Staggeringly impressive. Did you have to have a cool-off break before writing that, or are you such a zen/ninja master by now that you could write that immediately?! Thanks again for the very inspiring modding.

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