White Privilege, Blah…Blah...Blah? - Part II

By Patrick Hall

A famous economist once said, when you subsidize something, you get more of it. In the case of the welfare state, we got acceleration in the breakdown of the black family.  Single-parent households, headed by mainly young uneducated mothers, became the rule instead of the exception that it was in families before the rise of the welfare state. This breakdown in the black family was not, as some believe, a legacy of slavery. Before the so-called benefits of the Great Society Programs of the 1960s, two-parent homes were more prominent.1

 It was thought by many public policy experts of the 1960s that increasing welfare benefits from a variety of confiscatory government programs were the key to uplifting these families. The actual result was that women had more children when welfare payments were pegged to the number of children they had.  This marginalized the need for a male. Feminists like Gloria Steinem once quipped that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.  This snappy retort was fine in the rarefied air of a feminist conference or college seminar. Still, it was murderous to the life of the black underclass, who had to live with the reality of an unrestricted welfare culture.

 It is not white privilege nor systemic racism that has nullified the aspirations of the black underclass. The lack of a stable family structure previously taught young men to take care of the women they impregnated, instead of becoming useless, "pants-pulled-down-to-their-ass-sperm-donors,” that many of them are.  It is a lack of a work ethic that views entry-level jobs beneath them as chump work.  It is labeling other blacks who are trying to educate themselves as acting white.  By the way, this is one of many demonic tenets underpinning Critical Race Theory or CRT.  It's not learning or even caring how to present oneself in public. That too is labeled, acting white by too many in the black underclass. Once more, a gift that keeps on giving, courtesy of “the wizards of smart” pushing CRT.  It also gets down to simple things like picking up garbage in one’s neighborhood instead of throwing down beer cans, food wrappers, and disposable diapers.  It is not white privilege nor President Biden’s unending hyperbola about white supremacy and systemic racism that stops the black underclass from raising children in such a way that they take responsibility for themselves. Instead, it is a victim mentality that has metastasized in far too many corners of the black community including, pathetically enough, in upper class blacks and millionaires such as, Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey or Lebron James. 2

 The mind-numbing nonsense over racial profiling and police brutality is the most discernible of the myths that distract the black community from looking at the structure or lack of family.   The loud cacophony that is heard over the nightly news about racist police being the existential threat to black Americans is a dangerous charade.  Black criminals, primarily young men who are heirs of the Great Society Program, are the real danger that most living in urban areas fear.   Like “hands-up-don’t-shoot” propagated by Black Lives Matter, the Congressional Black Caucus, and Rev Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Lies will not address the decades of cultural anomie in places like Chicago, Baltimore, or East St. Louis.  Unfortunately, it is much easier to objurgate about white privilege, white supremacy, and systemic racism than to explore ways to address the demise of the family structure.   The black underclass will continue to be underlings if the vexing problem of family dislocation and breakdown is never seriously a focus
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1. Thomas Sowell, “Discrimination and Disparities,” (Basic Books: 2019).  
  2. Patrick Hall, “I can’t spell cat, but I have high self-esteem,”  Conservative Review (July/August 1997): p 9-10.

[Patrick Hall is a retired university library director. He is a graduate of Canisius College and the University of Washington, where he received three advance degrees. He has published in Freedom's Journal Magazine, America, Commonweal, Headway, Journal of Academic Librarianship, American Libraries and others. He currently volunteers at a local VA hospital in the town of Erie, Pa.]