I’m not an expert on the black family. I haven’t studied the institution of slavery in any academic sense. I can’t speak authoritatively about what it was like to be a father or a mother and a slave. I don’t know how often fathers and mothers had a marriage ceremony in their church, or how frequently they managed to remain together long enough to raise their children. But I do know that slave states did not recognize any marriage between slaves. Slaves were property and could not legally enter into contracts. Their children did not belong to them in any legal sense. And white slaveowners were under no obligation to keep families together.
Now, it’s true that a troublingly small percentage of black kids growing up today enjoy the security and stability of being raised by both of their biological parents. How does the percentage compare to the black kids of the 1860’s in, say, Virginia? I really don’t know the answer to that question. But, first of all, we need to be careful to remember that we’re comparing apples to oranges here.
Even in 1860 in Virginia, a black father and mother who had been married in their church and we’re living together with their children, were not “raising” their children in the common meaning of that term. Their child answered to different masters. And they, or their child, could be sold to another owner at a moment’s notice.
I think black slaves developed a different sense of family in response to their lack of security and stability. So, once freed from slavery, they didn’t immediately copy white people’s way of doing things.
It’s hard to say how much today’s family situation in the black community owes to the legacy of slavery. I’ll leave that to people with more knowledge on these matters.
I’ll just say that things are not worse today than they were under slavery. It might suck to be raised by a single parent. It might be kind of lame to have your grandmother or your great aunt serve in place of your Mom and Dad, but at least they aren’t under constant threat of rape.
Now, there’s this idea that strong belief in Christianity makes families stronger. And most black slaves were pretty strong Christians. So, you know, they must have had really strong families. But you can’t have a strong family unless the law respects your family and will help you keep it together. If your Dad can be traded away like some common athlete and your mom can become the forced concubine of some bored slaveowner’s son, then there’s not much in the way of family. Hell, no matter how well your parents are raising you, it won’t mean a thing if you get shipped off to some plantation in Georgia and never get to see them again.
So, maybe strong Christian values have helped blacks build and sustain strong families in the time since slavery ended. It’s possible. Maybe it is even likely. And maybe a lack of strong faith has contributed to a weakening of the black family over the last half century. Again, I’ll defer to people who actually study these matters. But, even if this were all to be true, it’s nonsense to suggest that black families were stronger under slavery than they are today.
And, I don’t want to pick on Christianity, but the slaveowners used Scripture to justify the institution of slavery, and slavery made families weak. So, it’s a little simplistic to say that simply believing that Jesus was the Son of God and that divorce is wrong is going to automatically make families stronger. In the context of slavery, this was obviously not the case.
