Here wherein Lawrence O'Donnell explains and points out that despite O'Reilly's protestations that he and on he has the Magic Bullet to saving Black Culture - which he claims is more Weddings - actual social scientists and actual socialiologist have indeed studied and looked at issues and problems of the Black Family and found that yes indeed, Slavery, as well as Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Segregation and the confusing confounding nature of segregation aftermath have more to do with the state of the Black Family - than having more weddings.
Recent studies have shown that Poverty Itself has a more devastating impact on early child development than in utero exposure to cocaine, so what power does a diamond-cut gold ring from Jared have against that?
Apparently O'Donnell has a better understanding of this than O'Reilly.
“Never mind that Trayvon Martin was the son of a very involved and loving father and never mind that [President] Barack Obama grew up without a father and went on to do rather well for himself and be a credit to his single mother,” O’Donnell said on Monday.
Oh yeah, that's right,
Tracy Martin wasn't an absentee dad - his son was living with him when he was killed. Oops.
Continued.
As it turns out the out-of-wedlock rate for Native American is 66%, and for Latinos it 53% but we don't see O'Reilly making a Crime correlation with them now do we? However the U.S. Census has found a correlation, if not a causation link, between Poverty [hey, that's a familiar word] and the Out of Wedlock Births that O'Reilly Rails about.
There was a .6 Pearson's correlation between state-level poverty and the percentage of women reporting out-wedlock births, according to the report. A correlation of 0 would suggest no relationship between the two, while correlation values of 1 or -1 would suggest a strong correlation.
Coupling statistics for the percentage of women without a high school degree in a state and the state's median income "explains about 67 percent" of out-of-wedlock births, according to the report. The precise correlation between solely educational attainment and out-of-wedlock births was not included in the report.
Further the overall
American Divorce rate is 40-50%, so nearly
quite a few of us regardless of our racial heritage are growing up with splintered and broken families with missing fathers. In the end we have to realize that being a good parent, singular or plural,
has to do with much more than having a wedding document on file or a ring on your finger.
But then again, people who've actually studied this kind of thing already know that.
“The struggles of Black America have nothing to do with slavery in Bill O’Reilly’s very narrow and uneducated mind,” O’Donnell said mockingly, before citing not only the 1965 Moynihan Report, but later studies by Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson and Harvard University professor William Julius Wilson.
“Professor Wilson and his friend, the former Harvard Professor [Daniel] Moynihan, would never consider discussing or analyzing family structure in the Black community if that discussion did not begin at slavery and include all the dynamic factors — good and bad — that have shaped the Black American experience since slavery,” O’Donnell said.
O'Donnell then went on to talk to two African-American young men, one attending Yale, the other attending Harvard, both of whom were raised by single mothers as was our current President Barack Obama and for that matter as was the previous Democratic President, William Jefferson Clinton.
O'Reilly is like one of the four blind men who were asked to reach out and describe what he feels when touching an Elephant. He's like the guy who insists that what they've found is a Python, because he can feel the trunk, while others say they've found a pillar as he touches the leg, another says he's found a wall as he touches the side and the last says he's found a rope as he touches the tail.
O'Reilly is the one who was argue the loudest with the rest that its REALLY REALLY a Snake, ignoring all the others and berating them, never considering they might all be wrong because they haven't put all of the evidence together.
The point is that their are far more complexities and subtleties to America in general, and to Black Americans specifically, than you can fit into any 3-4 min television segment.
Tyler Perry, whose nowhere near close to covering it all, has done how many movies so far?
It's not all about Slavery. It's not all about Reconstruction or Jim Crow or Segregation. I think what's crucial to understand though is that although Black people did, by force, spend most of the time outside of the main cultural stream of America, they did not do so idly. They were brought to America by forced, and stripped of their native languages, stripped of their family ties, stripped of their individual cultural heritages, stripped of every recognizable element of who they truly were and were then told by people and by law that they literally were not people. They were property, objects to be bought sold and traded.
Bur they were not objects, they truly were people, and in that tattered existence they began to forge their own rag-tag version of modified english mixed with remnants of their own native languages. They were not taught to read, for it was outlawed, but they taught themselves what they could. They adopted and adapted their own brand of Christianity. They created their own marriage rituals, "jumping the broom", even though their own marriages were not legally recognized. They invented their own cuisine from the remnant of what was left to them as inedible slop.
During all that time, they built their own culture. Independent and parallel to that of the assimilated-immigrant culture of the rest of America. They HAD To, there was no other choice.
This did not end with the end of the Slavery or the Civil War. The forced cultural separation continued through Reconstruction and Jim Crow. It's easy to say that Slavery was a long time ago and it shouldn't matter anymore but legally, through Plessy and other measures it did continue, through Lynchings, segregated Lunch Counters, segregated Hotels and Motels, segregated Buses, Schools and Jobs. It continues today in our church pews, in our barber shops and hair salons, and in the urban/suburban split of our cities. We may wish to pretend this splits do not exist, but they do.
All during that time period Black people continued to develop organically their own independent culture with both incredible successes and incredible losses. There was an independent Black Film Industry. There was the Black Wall Street in Greenwood, Oklahoma until it was firebombed and destroyed. During which there were the Tuskegee Airmen (most recently documented by the George Lucas film Red Tails even it was a box-office failure), there was the founding of so many unique American forms of musical expression from Ragtime to Jazz, Blues, the original Rock 'n Roll, Gospel, R&B, Funk, Soul, Rap and Hip Hop. There was also the scourge of drugs, crime and gangs.
All of these are part of the picture.
Some would argue that we should ask, if not demand, that Black American now charge to abandon their own culture, the culture they themselves built within America. That it's scars and welts during that difficult process birth and survival are too much to repair, too deep to fix, and that they all should be jettisoned away in exchange for simply - acting like everybody else.
As if the last 400 years didn't happen. Like we're all now just immigrants fresh off the plane or the boat, with no independent American heritage or history of our own.
I think that view is deeply mistaken. I think that what we've been through and understanding it is essentially to the path we chose in going forward.
The challenges we've all faced since the Civil Rights Act & Voting Rights act are severely complicated by the fact that the forces that stood clearly and directly in the path of Black people - and many others for that matter - are no longer clear and obvious. They no longer come as little signs that say "Whites Only". They are no longer overt. Now they are hidden, and in some cases subconscious, sometimes buried within our own psyche.
When the walls of segregation came crumbling down, we didn't - or couldn't - pick up all the remaining pieces. The bits of strewn about parts of rubble still remain. We may have had the 24th Amendment to ban Poll Taxes and Literacy Tests, but even today we still have Acorn Panic and unnecessary restrictive voter-id requirements and discriminatory re-redistricting plans.
The danger we faced before was clearly written on the walls. Now it's buried in this hidden traps and tricks that can be blown off as "racially neutral" when we all know they aren't. It's hidden inside our criminal code, inside our drug policy, inside our police procedures, inside our lending policies, inside our housing and renting policies. It's all over the place. The rubble is still there, underfoot, waiting for us to trip on it.
We've reached a point now where we can't completely tell if the latest pratfall is the result of residual systemic racism or our all carelessness in how we place our footsteps. Did someone else mess me up, or did I mess myself up by worrying too much that someone was going to mess me up?
It's a little crazy making.
That is the core of the argument going on now in Post-Trayvon American. Can African Americans learn to tip toe and sidestep their way through the rubble or should they continue to stop and say - "Hey, would someone please Clean this SHIT UP finally?.
O'Reilly's position is that we should just learn to dance and dodge better. Never mind the racism, nobody can see the racism, nobody can prove anything. The O'Reillys like to stand their and laugh when we trip ourselves up and immediately turn to point fingers ignoring the fact that this time, we may have tied our own shoe-laces together in response to all the confusion and stress. [Don't ask who built the wall, left all this crap strewn about and created that stress in the first place because that's "Blaming" and "Race Hustling" to mention that stuff] Some of us, like Don Lemon, agree with that self-defeatism even if only on general principle. But most of us I think, do not. Many of us feel that to ask the recipients and the victims, many of whom have suffered their own emotional and family scarring through the last 3-4 centuries, to be the ones to do ALL the heavy lifting is just another element on the racial abuse that began in 16th Century Virginia.
If this is really going to get fixed, we need all hands on deck. Both Black and White and Other Americans need to look with clear eyes and see that the road is not yet cleared, and to roll up their sleeves and finish the job that started with the Civil War, continuing through the 13th, 14th, 15th and 24th Amendments. Through Brown and the Civil Rights Act. Through the Voting Rights Act and right until today. There's still a lot of work to do. Difficult tricky work.
Because it still matters today. We still have things to do. A few more marriages, a few less N-words, a few more diplomas and a few more belts might be nice, but those won't even begin to clean up this mess. Not even the pebbles.
IMO It's only by harnessing the strength that has gotten us this far - through all the darkness and horrors - that we, as a nation, can put forth the continued effort needed to finish the job that only started with the CRA and Voting Rights act. It's only by understanding the depth and strength of our Black and American culture that we can finally pick up all those rocks and pebbles and finally put them away.
That's the only way we're going to finally clean this shit up.
It's not the left-over trash in the streets we need to be worried about, it's the trash in our hearts.
Vyan
While you're pondering that Join Color of Change Campaign to Repeal Stand Your Ground Laws and get your asses Registered to Vote [Share the QR below], check out the Dreamdefenders.org and BlackYouthProject.com because at a certain point we have to start seriously thinking and acting on what happens #AfterTrayvon
2:36 PM PT: Not that this relates to the diary but I just got home from UCLA Medical Center where my wife was having a checkup, and as I turned onto our street a set of 3 Chinook Twin Rotor (CH-47) copters followed by 2 Sikorsky's with White and Dark Green markings flew over my House. A quick check of WH.gov confirms It was the President on his way from Camp Pendleton to LAX to leave town.