[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 13] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages 17351-17352] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]BLACK FAMILIES ARE IN A STATE OF EMERGENCY ______ HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL of new york in the house of representatives Monday, July 25, 2005 Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to alert my colleagues of a dangerous condition that threatens the health of our society--the destruction of the black family. The black family has yet to recover from the destructive effects of slavery. In 1712, British slave owner, Willie Lynch was invited to the colony of Virginia to teach his methods of keeping slaves under control to American slave owners. Almost three hundred years later, the techniques that he prescribed seem to have not only been successful in controlling [[Page 17352]] slaves, but lasting as a means of weakening and destroying the black family. In slavery families were purposely divided with husband and wives separated from each other and their children. Black males were humiliated and whipped in front of their wives and children. Stripped of their power and pride, black men were seen as weak and black women had to be the strength of the household, distorting the traditional family structure. Despite civil rights victories and the apparent improvement in socioeconomic status, the black community is suffering from the lack of families. Marriage has become virtually impossible as black men are disproportionately incarcerated, unemployed and victims of early death. Black women on the other hand, have a higher probability of graduating from high school and attending college. This disparity in qualifications renders the two highly incompatible. As a result, an alarming two-thirds of black children are born out of wedlock and a disturbing proportion of them grow up fatherless. Without a father in the home, where do girls find their model for a future husband? Where do boys find their model for being a father? Without such an example, children of fatherless homes are doomed to continue the cycle. Fatherless children are more vulnerable to suffer from societal ills. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human services, children who are raised without a father are more likely to be poor, have higher drop-out rates, are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse, are more likely to commit criminal acts and are more likely to get pregnant as teenagers than those raised in two-parent homes. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have taken it upon themselves to address this problem. Representative Danny K. Davis has sponsored National Dialogues on the State of the African American Male, discussing such topics as black male incarceration, drug addiction and community building. While efforts such as these are a step in the right direction, more has to be done. It is going to take more than a few members of Congress to save black families. While it is easy to identify the reason for the decline of black families, finding solutions is not so simple. However, not knowing the remedy for a situation should not be an excuse to ignore it. Acknowledging that the black community is suffering from the destruction of the black family is a necessary step to confront the issue and begin the process to reverse the effects of this devastating cycle. The following Washington Post article by William Raspberry discusses the state of the black family. Why Our Black Families Are Failing ``There is a crisis of unprecedented magnitude in the black community, one that goes to the very heart of its survival. The black family is failing.'' Quibble if you will about the ``unprecedented magnitude''-- slavery wasn't exactly a high point of African American well- being. But there's no quarreling with the essence of the alarm sounded here last week by a gathering of Pentecostal clergy and the Seymour Institute for Advanced Christian Studies. What is happening to the black family in America is the sociological equivalent of global warming: easier to document than to reverse, inconsistent in its near-term effect--and disastrous in the long run. Father absence is the bane of the black community, predisposing its children (boys especially, but increasingly girls as well) to school failure, criminal behavior and economic hardship, and to an intergenerational repetition of the grim cycle. The culprit, the ministers (led by the Rev. Eugene Rivers III of Boston, president of the Seymour Institute) agreed, is the decline of marriage. Kenneth B. Johnson, a Seymour senior fellow who has worked in youth programs, says he often sees teenagers ``who've never seen a wedding.'' The concern is not new. As Rivers noted at last week's National Press Club news conference, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan sounded the alarm 40 years ago, only to be ``condemned and pilloried as misinformed, malevolent and even racist.'' What is new is the understanding of how deep and wide is the reach of declining marriage--and the still-forming determination to do something about it. When Moynihan issued his controversial study, roughly a quarter of black babies were born out of wedlock; moreover, it was largely a low-income phenomenon. The proportion now tops two-thirds, with little prospect of significant decline, and has moved up the socioeconomic scale. There have been two main explanations. At the low-income end, the disproportionate incarceration, unemployment and early death of black men make them unavailable for marriage. At the upper-income level, it is the fact that black women are far likelier than black men to complete high school, attend college and earn the professional credentials that would render them ``eligible'' for marriage. Both explanations are true. But black men aren't born incarcerated, crime-prone dropouts. What principally renders them vulnerable to such a plight is the absence of fathers and their stabilizing influence. Fatherless boys (as a general rule) become ineligible to be husbands--though no less likely to become fathers--and their children fall into the patterns that render them ineligible to be husbands. The absence of fathers means, as well, that girls lack both a pattern against which to measure the boys who pursue them and an example of sacrificial love between a man and a woman. As the ministers were at pains to say last week, it isn't the incompetence of mothers that is at issue but the absence of half of the adult support needed for families to be most effective. Interestingly, they blamed the black church for abetting the decline of the black family--by moderating virtually out of existence its once stern sanctions against extramarital sex and childbirth and by accepting the present trends as more or less inevitable. They didn't say--but might have--that black America's almost reflexive search for outside explanations for our internal problems delayed the introspective examination that might have slowed the trend. What we have now is a changed culture--a culture whose worst aspects are reinforced by oversexualized popular entertainment and that places a reduced value on the things that produced nearly a century of socioeconomic improvement. For the first time since slavery, it is no longer possible to say with assurance that things are getting better. As the Rev. Jesse Jackson said in a slightly different context, ``What began as a problem has deteriorated into a condition. Problems require solving; conditions require healing.'' How to start the healing? Rivers and his colleagues hope to use their personal influence, a series of marriage forums and their well-produced booklet, ``God's Gift: A Christian Vision of Marriage and the Black Family,'' to launch a serious, national discussion and action program. In truth, though, the situation is so critical--and its elements so interconnected and self-perpetuating--that there is no wrong place to begin. When you find yourself in this sort of a hole, someone once said, the first thing to do is stop digging. ____________________