http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=21471
Jesse knows best?
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© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
Now we know. Rev. Jesse Jackson's admission that he fathered a child out of
wedlock helps to answer the big question. Why does the so-called black
leadership fail to fight the No. 1 problem facing the black community:
children having children?
In his statement acknowledging an extra-marital affair resulting in the
birth of a daughter, Jackson said, "I was born of these circumstances, and I
know the importance of growing up in a nurturing, supportive and protected
environment. So I am determined to give my daughter and her mother the
privacy they both deserve."
Jackson also said he provides "emotional and financial support" to the
mother and their daughter.
Flashback to 1970. Sociology 101: My college freshman class read a highly
controversial book by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, later the Democratic senator
for the state of New York. His book, "The Negro Family: A Case for National
Action," made an argument many considered racist -- that the rising number
of black children born outside of wedlock threatens the stability of the
black community. The nearly all-liberal, predominantly white class went
bonkers. They taunted Moynihan, calling him "racist," "Eurocentric,"
"patriarchal," as well as one who subscribes to "middle-class values."
But now we know. Since Lyndon Johnson's so-called War on Poverty, government
taxpayers "invested" trillions of dollars, much of it designed to "alleviate
poverty." The result? In the last 30 years, the black poverty rate
stagnated, while the percentage of black children born outside of wedlock
exploded from 25 percent to nearly 70 percent. What, no marches, no
picketing, no sit-ins?
The absence of a father in the home increases the odds of a child going on
welfare, dropping out of school, getting involved in crime or becoming a
teen parent. Did Rev. Jackson's situation, and his possible concern about
the revelation of his out-of-wedlock child, cause him to pull his punches on
this disturbing phenomenon?
Certainly we place Jackson -- as an adult with resources -- in a different
category than a teen-ager impregnating another teen-ager, after which the
male often abandons his spiritual, emotional and financial obligations. The
president of the NAACP, Kweisi Mfume, fathered five children out of wedlock.
Like Jackson, he says that he supported and remained involved in the
children's lives. But because of his past, does Mfume, like Jackson, spend
more time pursuing the Great White Bigot at the expense of far more pressing
issues of personal responsibility?
In 1911, Booker T. Washington said, "There is (a) class of colored people
who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships
of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to
make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit
of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly
because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his
grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. ... " And, "There
is a certain class of race problem-solvers who don't want the patient to get
well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy
means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make
themselves prominent before the public." Hm-mm.
Rev. Jackson frequently complains about the income and net worth gap between
blacks and whites. But the employment rate for married black men approaches
parity with that of married white men. And, for welfare recipients, the
quickest and easiest route out of poverty remains marriage. Men who father
children and then take a hike create the moral equivalent of a drive-by
shooting. Jackson, Mfume, and other "black leaders" could and should lead
the charge. But they don't.
Think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, as well as many government
studies, reach the same conclusion: Dads matter. Black columnist Jonetta
Rose Barras wrote, "At 13, my older sister was pregnant and unmarried. I
followed in her footsteps, becoming pregnant at 17, continuing a series of
bad choices. My older brother had already begun his walk down his own
crooked road, getting arrested by the time he was 16 on a half-dozen
occasions for petty crimes. We were linked by fatherlessness. None of us
knew it then, but the loss of our father through divorce ravaged our lives.
It took two decades to discover fatherlessness was at the core of my
vandalized childhood and resulting adult dysfunction."
Reconciling Jackson's behavior with his wife is Jackson's business, for he
is an adult who acknowledges his paternity and who possesses resources for
the child's welfare. But what about the inner-city 15-year-old who gets
pregnant by a 19-year-old "inseminator"? It may be hard for a Jesse Jackson
or a Kweisi Mfume to say children cannot assume adult responsibilities. But
they must. That they don't, well, one can only ask why?
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