I am 71 and have been grappling with these issues ever since they took down the Whites Only signs in my rural Texas home town. The Moynihan report was controversial when it came out (he was accused of racism but that is no surprise) but seems vanilla now.
My own thoughts have fluctuated. A few years ago I looked at the comparative rates for children out of wedlock by ethnicity and came to the preliminary conclusion that the entire society is collapsing. I'm sticking with that until someone convinces me otherwise.
Factors: Lots of them. For example, among blacks a whole lot of their middle class got cleaned out when segregation ended: why go to a run down grocery store when you can get waited on anywhere? Or work anywhere? Why go to a department store that has cut rate goods of limited choice when you can go to Macy's or Dillards? They started going to the white owned restaurants etc and most of the black ones died. Their owners became employees.
When they could rent anywhere they could afford the ones who could moved to the areas with real schools and left behind the ones who could not afford to do so.
The sexual revolution started in the 20s and geared up during WW II, when the Greatest Generation started divorcing and cheating and just fooling around in huge numbers among all ethnicities and that led to more divorces and eventually to the creation of no fault divorce which ramped it all up.
The use of governmental entities to play mom or dad did not cause the collapse of the family, rather it was a product of it and now a contributor.
The collapse of religious belief is a factor. I went to a mass last weekend and maybe 2% of the congregation was 20 or younger. At least 50% was 60 or older. I wasn't even close to the oldest. The churches are dying and only the fringe ones are even holding their own. Why? The sciences have been rolling over received wisdom for over a century, the christian churches are not geared to a hedonist society and nobody much is into asceticism any more. And then there are the sex scandals. And mass entertainment.
Anyway, there are a lot of factors and my reading of the bird entrails tell me the nation I grew up in and imagined would last longer than Rome is circling the drain.
I would be happy to hear a compelling argument to the contrary
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Agree x 3
Last edited: Apr 12, 2019