The next stage in black family disintegration

The blogger Stag Heath (VFR reader Matthew H.) quotes from Heather Mac Donald’s article, “Chicago’s Real Crime Story: Why decades of community organizing haven’t stemmed the city’s youth violence”:

The next stage in black family disintegration may be on the horizon. According to several Chicago observers, black mothers are starting to disappear, too. “Children are bouncing around,” says a police officer in Altgeld Gardens. “The mother says: ‘I’m done. You go stay with your father.’ The ladies are selling drugs with their new boyfriend, and the kids are left on their own.” Albert’s mother lived four hours away; he was moving among different extended family members in Chicago. Even if a mother is still in the home, she may be incapable of providing any emotional or moral support to her children. “Kids will tell you: ‘I’m sleeping on the floor, there’s nothing in the fridge, my mother doesn’t care about me going to school,’ ” says Rogers Jones, the courtly founder of Roseland Safety Net Works. “Kids are traumatized before they even get to school.” Some mothers are indifferent when the physical and emotional abuses that they suffered as children recur with their own children. “We’ve had mothers say: ‘I was raped as a child, so it’s no big deal if my daughter is raped,’ ” reports Jackson.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 15, 2010 07:02 PM | Send