Ta-Nehisi Coates issues an extraordinary challenge to the president and white progressives (not just Jonathan Chait) to dispose of their conviction “that poor black people are not ‘holding up their end of the bargain,’ or that they are in need of moral instruction.”
At the root of the debate is the question of whether or not black culture in America has some kind of “hangover” from the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow that inhibits their progress, or whether, as Coates believes, the drinking session is still ongoing.
How you come down on that might not seem to matter too much, unless you want to assign some to degree of blame or responsibility on blacks for their current condition.
Coates seems to deny that there are any “pathologies” in black culture resulting from their history of oppression in America. He goes to great lengths to show that black freedmen thirsted for education and a nuclear family life as much or more than their white contemporaries.
His examples are interesting and educational, but ultimately unconvincing. Yet, it’s hard to indict his whole argument because it is so ambiguous. He isn’t, after all, arguing that blacks don’t suffer from the legacy of slavery and segregation. He’s arguing that they were never truly liberated from them. As a result, it’s not fair to lecture them about the importance of family or work ethic, as if they are on equal footing with every one else.
Yet, he seems unwilling to grant that there is any real difference between white and black culture in terms of educational or family expectations. Since he’s making two simultaneous arguments that don’t appear to be compatible, it’s difficult to engage in the debate on his terms.
If his argument is that blacks don’t deserve to be lectured to, he may have succeeded. But he needs to decide whether there is an actual cultural problem or not, regardless of who might be responsible for it.
His original column is a bit clearer on this issue and I’ve already waded in on Paul Ryan’s remarks and the reality of inner city life. I think there is a much bigger distinction between what the president has to say about black culture and what Ryan has to say than Mr. Coates does, but I also think its very important that people try to understand things from Coates’ point of view.
Coates is one of America’s greatest political writers.
Far be it for an old white mental midget like me, to argue against his point(s).
primarily by mothers, is a pathology.
I don’t care about morality. I have few moral opinions other than murder is bad, theft is bad, and breaking your word is bad. That’s all I care to say, because those are moral convictions of almost all societies.
But any race/ethnic group in which a majority (2008-2012) of families with children are single-head-of household is slated for poor school outcomes, poverty, and socialization issues. Black families – 75%. Hispanic families – 65%. White families – 35%. Asian families – 20%.
http://www.actrochester.org/children-youth/family-support/single-parent-families/single-parent-famil
ies-by-race-ethnicity/charts
And if you are the child of a single mother, please, no long diatribes about racism, misogyny, blah blah blah. Single-parenthood is a disaster, and it’s a problem for our society.
And, no, European examples are not helpful. We have friends in France who are not married, but they are together for long periods. Plus European social support is much, much better. Single-parenthood still sucks.
Coates says nothing about this today. He does say that
It’s clear he thinks this is important, but says nothing about it today. Until there is another DP Moynihan who will honestly address this issue, it will continue to be a problem, and continue to be a huge bar to improved conditions for blacks, hispanics and whites.
My sister was a single mom. It was a disaster, due in part to her borderline schizophrenia as well as other problems. But the kid was not helped by the single mom situation. Kid is now 22, and pretty much away from his mother.
Pointing out the giant disparity in black male incarceration rates says nothing about single parenthood?
Maybe he needed to make that connection more explicit for you.
Is that a serious comment? It makes no sense. There is no such thing as an implicit argument in an essay. You either say it or you don’t.
He says that black families were married in the reconstruction era, but says nothing about today. So my point stands. He leaves out a huge issue.
Your comments make no sense, really. You’re arguing against something that TNC never said, then complaining when I point out he did actually address your concern obliquely.
Maybe you should start by quoting the part of the piece where Coates says, “Black culture suffers from no pathologies.” Or possibly, “Black culture has some pathologies, but single parenthood definitely isn’t one of them.”
Wrong in that statement. 75% single-parenthood is either “less responsible, less moral, or less upstanding”.
He argued there are no problems. I present a problem that everyone just wants to gloss over, a problem which is 2x as common in black families as white, and 3x as common in comparison to Asian.
It’s a problem. It makes his whole essay look ridiculous.
So you are identifying single parenthood as an intrinsically black pathology then? Absent the impact of white culture, black rates of single parenthood would be higher than white rates?
Please explain how you would prove that hypothesis.
I don’t do hypotheticals.
However, Coates himself refutes your “point”. He states that they used to have a majority of married couples.
Read his article.
And read my initial comment to see why your snide little dig about “exclusively black” is not what I said. I said “higher rates”. Please don’t distort my comments.
It’s not a “snide little dig”. I’m not trying to trap you, and I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m trying to get you to think more deeply about a position you hold which – based on the personal anecdote you related – you seem to be invested in.
Do you believe the following is true:
If you do, how would you prove it?
And if you don’t, then what exactly is the “pathology” you think is afflicting blacks? Because at its root, it’s not single parenthood. That’s just a symptom.
Honest to god, I have no interest in this kind of Bobbesian exercise in crap. We are where we are. I don’t give a flying fuck what the hypothetical situation would be given that dogs could talk or turtles were made of gold or any other such idiotic non-actual situation. This is exactly why no politicians do hypotheticals. Hypotheticals are nothing but made up scenarios and have no impact on our situation today.
We are where we are. Deal with it.
And yes history is important. It’s also very important to remember that individuals make choices, and the fact that something happened a while ago has nothing, NOTHING, to do with the reality on the ground today. People make choices, and some choices are bad. Some choices are made by a huge majority of specific groups, and these choices do not make their situation better, but rather worse. That’s my final comment.
Duly noted.
By the way, you conflating “hypothetical” and “hypothesis”. They aren’t the same thing.
Actually I did no such thing.
You used hypothetical as a noun, which has a different meaning than hypothesis.
Hypothesis: a proposition, or set of propositions, set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena
Hypothetical (n): a hypothetical circumstance, condition, scenario, or situation.
I did not try to trap you into defending a hypothetical situation. I asked you to confirm whether something was your hypothesis or not, and to clarify what your theory was if what I stated was incorrect.
Instead of clarifying you refused to answer the question at all, which unfortunately speaks volumes about how little thought you’ve put (or are willing to put) into this subject.
But I meant “hypothetical” as a noun or rather as a shorthand for “hypothetical situation”. I did not mean “hypothesis”. Had I meant “hypothesis”, a word that I use perhaps 100 times every day and can write in my sleep, I would certainly have used it.
The two are not the same.
I don’t do hypotheticals in arguments.
You are happy to criticize my level of thought, but you not once, never, addressed a single point that I made. So, I’m not worrying about my argumentation or level of consideration of the situation.
These two consecutive sentences seem to indicate that you don’t believe history has any influence at all, in what those choices are, what people believe their choices to be, or how easy some courses of action, once chosen, are to enact.
I hope that’s not the case, because that would be delusional. At best.
History can’t be changed, and current policies can be. I get that. But,just like those poor colored people, if policymakers don’t understand the context of policy options – including the relevant history – they’re much likelier to make bad choices. And if they aren’t willing to acknowledge the impact of white supremacism and institutional racism as is continues to manifest today – including the fact that pressures on black family structures are, on average, far greater than they are on white ones – they’re going to wind up making policy based on blaming the victim. Which, with your focus on “bad choices,” sounds a lot like what you’re saying as well.
When a woman wears a short skirt while walking alone on a dark street at night and gets sexually assaulted, she made bad choices, sure, but the ultimate responsibility for stopping rape lies with changing the behavior of the rapists.
Stop obsessing on the short skirts. Give African-Americans equal access to job opportunities and equal pay for equal work, put decent money and equally qualified teachers into schools with large non-white populations (and stop with the unequal disciplinary practices), change law enforcement and judicial system practices, increase access to medical care (including pre-natal care), improve access to nutritional food, and about a dozen other things, and come back to me then and I’ll be happy to help scold people about their bad choices. Until then, I’ve got better – and more productive – things to focus on.
Actually, he didn’t. Re-read what you quoted.
Well, that’s the end of our discussion.
OK, I’ll rephrase:
Less moral, responsible etc, than what?
All parenthood is by two people. Single parenthood by either sex is not a pathology, except it marks the failure of two people to have a long-term living arrrangement (not even necessarily a matter of commitment). I know couples who are still committed to each other, see a lot of each other, collaborated with each other in raising their kids, and cannot inhabit the same space for very long without conflict. It’s all too easy to pass judgement on situations one doesn’t understand.
Again, this is not an argument. It’s an anecdote. When we have 75% vs 35% (which is a huge number itself), we do not have a few people who can’t get along. We have an entire society with a serious problem.
And this is one reason why the contraceptive mandate is so very important. But unfortunately role models of single mothers are so common, and some people aspire to that situation. That is the problem. We need people saying that single parenthood is NOT good, and NOT an acceptable choice. And yes, some people start off as dual-parents and get to single parenthood by accident, or by some disaster. Those situations have always been around, and are a small proportion.
Why is single parenthood in and of itself a serious problem? I’m not so sure that single mothers, even successful (economically and socially) single mothers see themselves as role models. And I have not seen some contagion of single parenthood because most single parents would like some help dealing with their multiple responsibilities.
What was the case before 1965 was a substantial fraction of double-parent families were essentially legally enforced war zones. In the 1970s, contraceptives, expansion of job opportunities allowed many spouses to escape those dysfunctional situations. Having the option to escape is now considered the social norm.
Single mothers are single mothers because (1) they were raped and nonetheless decided to keep the child; (2) they had consensual sex, had a contraception failure, decided to keep the child and the father either never married or married and turned out to be drunk, abusive, or incompatible; (3) married, had children within wedlock, the father was a drunk, abusive, or incompatible and they divorced; (4) consensually decided to have a child and be a single mother; (5) was part of a same sex couple that decided to have children through artificial insemination and then split; (6) several other possibilities.
The failure of men to be responsible looms large in at least half of those scenarios.
Single-parenthood is a problem for 2 reasons:
It’s simple economics, really. Time and money. That’s why I am not commenting on the moral issue. But moral comments, that it’s bad to do this or that, are the manner in which society makes economic arguments.
Both of which are related to larger economic values. We have a society that no longer values parenthood and no longer supports it economically through public services or adequate work hours and wages and salaries.
Yes, it is difficult, but that doesn’t make it a societal or moral problem that should focus exclusively on the single mother.
And a structural description is not an anecdote.
Here’s a link to more data about what is actually happening in families carrying the “single parent” label.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/01/16/3175831/myth-absent-black-father/
I don’t agree. Do they do the dishes, read the bedtime story if they live 3 streets over? Do they provide financial support? Those are the issues.
Agree or disagree, the data was collected and published by reputable people – the Pew Research Center and the CDC, respectively – who’ve been rigorously researching parenting for years. These new findings are consistent with earlier data.
As the linked report tellingly notes:
Ya might want to rethink your handle. Just saying since data isn’t really your thing.
Oh, I’ll stick with it. No links were given. I’ve just returned from reviewing grants for a federal agency, where I am the statistical resource.
OK, read the link, which was there.
The link indicated that black fathers who did not live with their children were equally likely as other fathers to do stuff.
That’s good.
The problem is that this is totally irrelevant. The issue is that 75% of black families do not have the father. Thus, to determine how many black dads do stuff, you multiply:
Proportion in full population of dads doing the right thing:
Read to kids daily
Black: .75*.10 + .25*.41 = .1775
White: .35*.05 + .65*.28 = .1995
White fathers are a little better. Not huge.
Talk about day:
Black: .75*.16 + .25*.67 = .2875
White: .35*.18 + .65*.67 = .4985
Far more white fathers talk about the day in 1-P and 2-P households.
Fathers in both situations are not different. There are more black fathers who are not in the house. That makes a difference. Good source. Makes my point for me.
Not exactly. His main point is that there’s no way to view American black culture in isolation from white supremacy to determine whether such pathologies exist, or what impact they actually have relative to white supremacy.
His related point is that, historically, black culture has been far less degraded (whatever the cause of that degradation) than white culture expected it to be whenever it set out to measure that degradation.
Basically, he’s telling Chait “Why are you attributing that degradation to something you can’t prove or quantify when there’s a completely plausible, verifiable cause staring you right in the face.”
you know, eventually it all comes back to what advice or guidance you’re going to give to a 12 year old boy or girl living in the inner city. Maybe it’s my pragmatic side, but I have a great deal of impatience for abstract arguments that don’t somewhat quickly resolve into practical applications.
So, if the president is speaking to a generation of blacks in the inner city, primarily focused on those still young enough to make life-decisions, what is he going to say?
I think it’s reasonable for him implore people to seek an education, but of course he needs to back that up with policies that make it a rational and possible decision.
I don’t see a problem with advising people that having children that you don’t plan on parenting is a recipe for poverty, either.
The big difference, as I see it, is that the GOP thinks you can lecture away urban poverty, while the president believes that you need to apply a whole host of efforts to make a dent.
I think – and this is strictly my opinion – that Coates would say Obama has a responsibility to aim higher than simply giving young inner-city blacks a generalized version of The Talk.
I think TNC would argue that Obama shouldn’t be giving in to the implicit argument that the progress made by Dr King in the 60s was about as far as conditions could progress; that the struggle is still ongoing and while it’s still being fought then yes, young blacks may have to try harder and walk a narrower line just to achieve the same outcomes, but that’s not the way things should be and not the way things will be.
It’s the simplification of that to “Well, you’re black so you have to try harder and walk a narrower line” where the problems arise. The context is essential.
I would say this is the key:
I think it’s reasonable for him implore people to seek an education, but of course he needs to back that up with policies that make it a rational and possible decision.
Except that really the imploring should be backing up the policies, not the other way around. Because the question really isn’t what advice and guidance you’re going to give to these kids, it’s what resources you’re going to devote to helping them.
Thanks for your comments Erik. You’ve expressed so well what I almost set out to do. I would only add one thing and that is…
It would be so refreshing if “concerned” whites like Chait would just once seriously attempt to address the degradation of white culture. And by degradation, I’m talking about a moral and spiritual poverty made evident by events like:
Well you get the idea…
The dominant white culture of this nation is extremely sick. Somebody somewhere needs to address for its own future if not for the welfare of everyone in the world it abuses.
I thought Coates was clear enough and I’m looking forward to checking out his book recommendation – by Eric Foner.
Could there be a less constructive or effective point in which to lecture others with “ought to do” and “should do” than twelve year old kids? Probably not which is why it’s so prevalent. Plus, it’s easy and cheap. Satisfies the need of conservative, authoritarians to repeat their “up by your own bootstraps” worldview. Satisfies the need of liberals to express a seemingly empathetic version of “up by your own bootstraps” worldview.
This is better messaging and for a more appropriate audience:
And this:
Since when does the need to do something, however incorrect, override the need to be correct? No offense, I don’t really care about your pragmatic side if it isn’t interested in answering what can we do about structural inequality. There are no black cultural pathologies. There are responses to long standing racism and a racial social structure that is geared toward making its victims seems crazy, lazy, or failures wanting of moral character. You’re actually just continuing a hegemonic ideology in the name of doing something “practical”. Understand culture as a framework that allows one to explain and survive in their context. You want the framework to go away then change the context. Do you know how arrogant that is? You’re denying people’s realities and are explaining to minorities how to deal with a racism you, I’m assuming, in no way will experience in a similar fashion.
Coates is right and honestly this feels like a failure to take the cause seriously. It isn’t reasonable to ask black people to be more than human because you don’t have shit else to say. Find a better answer or just shut up.
Not sure why anyone is defending the nuclear family. From my perspective the extended family is the healthiest model and the best support for the single mother. Single motherhood in and of itself isn’t a disaster. Single motherhood plus poverty is a big problem. Single mothers with means do very well raising healthy children. Seems to me that ultimately, poverty and joblessness are the issues.
It costs less per year to give someone a full ride to a university than it does to incarcerate them, yes? If we diverted the funds spent on prisons to education, how much different would be the outcome for most single mothers?
Single-motherhood leads to poverty in many cases.
If you can afford a maid or an au pair or a nanny, that’s not really single-motherhood. The issue is the poor parent (i’m trying not to use the gender terms) who must 1) earn the money itself difficult by one person 2) make the dinner 3) wash the clothes 4) coordinate house cleaning and 5) occasionally read or help with homework.
Another statistic about poor vs not-poor households is talking to children. Not-poor houses talk 2x-3x as often to small children. This is itself a serious problem, and is again a problem with single-motherhood.
I didn’t define means as having a maid and an au pair. I define it as being able to afford a childcare of some form in the early years, a dwelling, food, clothing, healthcare and extra-circular school activities. I know women who do just fine as single mothers because they have extended family help, or have jobs that allow them to have all the above. Many single mothers struggle with childcare and still manage to do the laundry, clean and be chauffeurs to their children if they have a decent job and reasonable hours. Being a single mother does not have to lead to poverty in the presence of a good job and a decent support system.
“being able to afford childcare” always sounds strange to me. We want someone to work so they can afford to pay someone else to care for a child?
Why not just pay the person to care for their child? I know… that would reward some sort of “bad” behavior. But if the worker at the child care center should get paid, why shouldn’t the parent?
It’s all very strange.
Otherwise… this debate about “black culture” is way beyond me. I don’t much like white christian culture either.
As another poster pointed out, the extended family provides the support system. If that is the case, as it was with Obama, things work fine.
I think the problem is that family structures are incredibly important. A strong extended family can compensate for a weak single-parent family. Case in point: Barack Obama.
It would be worth examining the broad family structures of African American children who comes from two parent households, single parent households or an extended family household (with a single parent).
My guess – and it’s only a guess – is that you wouldn’t see the same disparities between nuclear and extended fam/single parent children as you would between those two and a single parent without life-in support from an extended family.
It’s not that it takes a mommy and a daddy. It’s that it takes more than one adult.
But I also think that whatever the root causes in American racism and American poverty, the “having children too early and without a stable household” has become a part of African American culture. We can deplore the guilt we bear as Americans for making this happen, but we also need to solve the problem.
100% agree. More than 1 adult is what is needed.
Yeah, he could be clearer about what he’s saying, but I think I see his point. There’s something that he reiterates that I think is pretty important:
In other words, stop seeing black people as “them” or “you,” but as a group of Americans who face certain challenges. It actually simplifies things quite a bit. You can look at a concrete problem, like say shitty public schools, and you can say, “Oh hey, I think I see why these schools are so shitty. We aren’t giving them any money.”
And then he mentions the blues, passingly, but he could have gone further along that line. The idea of “cultural pathologies” tends to obscure the contributions of blacks to American culture, which really are beyond all calculation. People who are languishing in cultural pathologies don’t create jazz, for instance. Jazz takes a tremendous amount of discipline.
(Which is not to say, on the other hand, that there aren’t such things as cultural pathologies, but then you need to be careful about implying that only inner city black people have them.)
It is very interesting that the lecturing focuses on black inner cities and ignores the supposedly defeating pathologies of other sacrifice zones, like Appalachia, or reservations, or migrant camps, or suburbs that have been hit with foreclosures, or the rich and famous whose lifestyle is manifestly irresponsible (Hello Rushbo). First of all there is a double standard.
Here are some pathologies for you. Institutional discrimination in the treatment of black students that starts in pre-school and never quits–first because there are still racist teachers in all sorts of schools and second because there are African-American teachers who are “toughening” or protecting kids and preparing them for “The Talk”. Institutional discrimination in law enforcement with impunity. A pattern of retail workers given black young people “the look” when they are behaving no different from other shoppers. Continued (often self-conscious) institutional racism in hiring, promotions, layoffs, and firings.
Yanis Varoufakis, professor of economics at the University of Athens had done behavioral economics studies of class discrimination that show among other things:
The explanation of how real power evolves, and what makes it sustainable, is to be found in the mind, and the beliefs, of the majority of the disadvantaged who succumb to the ideological belief that they are entitled to less than the advantaged.
His experimental setup was to randomly identify test groups a red or blue and set up a class narrative about what that meant. Strangely and interestingly, people began behaving according to that class identity.
The behavior of the majority of the disadvantaged class that they are entitled to less than the advantaged class is what sets up the pathology. That belief was created in slavery through violence. Today, it is created through the school-to-prison pipeline. Both of those are pathologies of the advantaged class that play out in the beliefs and behavior of the disadvantaged class.
It is not black behavior that needs to change is the the behavior of white and privileged decision-makers that affect black communities.
It is a political power issue.
There is certainly an assumption of pathology for Appalachia! Certainly the existence of the lazy Mexican stereotype and anchor babies / demographic winter exist too.
Exactly and Coates is pretty clear on where his analysis differs from Obama’s, Chait’s, and that of other progressives.
Moral rectitude is no match for the on-going and nefarious mechanisms of institutionalized white supremacy.
Exactly and Coates is pretty clear on where his analysis differs from Obama’s, Chait’s, and that of other progressives.
How did Chait ever come to be considered smart? Curious since he keeps stepping on rakes over and over again.
I get so tired of these arguments. Of course pathologies result from centuries of white supremacy; how could they not? All Coates is arguing is that those pathologies are not endemic to African-Americans; they have developed as a result of the specific conditions in which they have lived, and continue to live. To anyone who is even minimally informed about racial issues in the US – which is to say, all people of color and a depressingly small (but growing) number of white people – this is stating the obvious.
Initiatives like My Brothers Keeper help with the symptoms. But all the triage in the world will not fix the problems, because until the white supremacism stops, new problems will continue to arise every day. Old problems will keep being reinforced, every day.
The reason I find these debates tiresome is that they’re debates white people, especially conservatives like Paul Ryan but also a lot of liberals, love to have. It’s a lot easier for white Americans to debate What’s Wrong With Teh Blacks than to examine white behavior, let alone commit to dismantling the white supremacism and white privilege that we benefit from and share responsibility for. Never mind working as individuals to unpack the racism each and every one of us, as whites, have been taught and internalized.
For some reason, those conversations happen a lot less frequently, and almost never in national media platforms.
Here’s Kathleen Geier’s take.
Well this is somewhat disappointing; I was hoping his column(s) would be addressed here, though this is not quite what I had in mind. At least many commenters seem to get his point, though.
Off-yet-related topic:
‘The Boondocks’ returns, but without creator Aaron McGruder
I had my problems with “The Boondocks,” in that it had deep-seated misogyny and homophobia bleeding throughout; even a lot of Cosby-esque-Obamaisms. Light-skinned women are clearly objects in McGruder’s world; dark-skinned women were stupid and/or crazy; white women are the true prizes. I do enjoy the show, though, and it had some poignant critiques of white supremacist society on its own.
Still, now expect it to either get worse in those problems, or take a dark trip down “Dave Chappelle Alley” (which is why Chappelle quit) to fulfill the racist impulses of those white people who helped ghost-write it to begin with; probably both.
This whole discussion is so disgusting, nauseating, I could just vomit. Black, white or green poor people need help and all they get is this moralizing and intellectualizing about nothing, absolutely nothing. Why don’t all these fancy people full of words recognize the situation as it is and make positive proposals to move forward from here. No, they have to show how clever they are. A bit like Obama, a showman who has no show.
Very clever and so strongly self-righteous. What is your plan for all the poor people? We are here to discuss the comments made by a prominent writer, BTW, not solve the problems of poor people. He made comments, we are making our various comments on his. We hate to detain you on the way to the soup kitchen? When do they serve dinner?
I’m not in for a pie fight.
Black culture isn’t cancerous. It’s being attacked from the Majority US Culture and has been for almost 400 years now.
Fuck, this ain’t rocket science. In fact, there is a whole fucking field of study you can look to. It’s called history!
I know, history is a liberal art, and since it doesn’t make oligarchs money it is frowned upon, but it sure does have a lot of wisdom and knowledge to offer.
These types of problems exist elsewhere, and don’t particularly involve “race” as it is understood here.
Take a look at a lot of cultures that have poor, downtrodden subcultures that are constantly attacked and excluded. Castes in India. Fuck, Native Americans here in…uh…America.
I’m a lot more worried about the culture of criminality on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms.