How the nuclear family was forced on black families

[StudentMI]

In traditional African culture, the village could be quite small, and not that different from an extended family. And there is nothing wrong with citing similarities with lion cubs, because there are many. And there are many other animals that follow more of the strictly nuclear family, especially some birds. It is just a fact.

. . . .

I highly suggest reading part two chapter five of this.

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/p...peace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html

 

[ThinkingSapien]

That depends on how you define family.

Under one of the older uses of the word “Family”, people that lived within the same household, irrespective of shared ancestry, were considered part of a family. This included servants, which is less surprising given that the etymological root “famulus” means servant.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Traditional African culture is not Christian if we’re going to be frank about it. Should we not evangelize?

This particular aspect of traditional African culture is compatible with Christianity. If by evangelize you mean encourage them to live as isolated nuclear families in suburbia where they barely know their neighbors’ names, no we should not.

 

[StudentMI]

This particular aspect of traditional African culture is compatible with Christianity. If by evangelize you mean encourage them to live as isolated nuclear families in suburbia where they barely know their neighbors’ names, no we should not.

The denigration of the family that this article shows is not compatible with Christianity. Pushing the father to the sidelines is not.

As for ‘isolated’ nuclear families, that’s a whole other debate. And unfortunately the characterization of such showed a lot more than you intended, I think.

 

[Motherwit]

StudentMI:

It takes a family, not a village.

That depends on how you define family. Who was Jesus’ family when they lived in Nazareth? Was it only Mary and Joseph? Why would Mary and Joseph assume for 3 days that Jesus was in the caravan coming back from Jerusalem and were not worried that they had not seen him all that time if they did not have a wider concept of family than just the three of them?

Yes the Jews have a strongly tribal culture that although giving emphasis to mother/father/children, is part of a larger village of technical ‘cousins’ who are referred to as ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ in recognition of that structure.

That unit has proved to be an enduring model of wellbeing and making sure nobody gets left behind rather than what we experience ie. competition to ‘keep up with the Jones’s’.

In fact the Jews strong family/tribal culture is why Hitler hated the Jews so much. He saw it to be strong and vibrant and a threat to his ideology.

 

[StudentMI]

In fact the Jews strong family/tribal culture is why Hitler hated the Jews so much. He saw it to be strong and vibrant and a threat to his ideology.

This comment shows a deep misunderstanding if not lack of knowledge of history, I’m sorry to say.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

The denigration of the family that this article shows is not compatible with Christianity.

It is only denigration of the American model of the nuclear family - not of the concept of family generally. It is compatible with Christianity, and was probably the kind of family Jesus lived in. He certainly did not live the American ideal of the nuclear family.

Pushing the father to the sidelines is not.

As opposed to the American model which pushes the mother to sidelines? (Along with the aunts and uncles and grandparents.)

 

[StudentMI]

As opposed to the American model which pushes the mother to sidelines? (Along with the aunts and uncles and grandparents.)

I’m sorry for whatever area of the US you seem to have grown up in but whatever part you did, it’s not representative.

 

[JonNC]

One of the main points of the article is that traditional African culture places more emphasis on the village than the American nuclear family model which almost completely discounts the village.

Which has virtually nothing to do with the overwhelming majority of American blacks.
I am third generation American. My ancestry is primarily German. I have zero in come with Germany. Most American blacks can trace their ancestry in America long before mine.

Or that you believe it is the case, but that it is a bad way to order one’s life?

It is irrelevant.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Which has virtually nothing to do with the overwhelming majority of American blacks.

Well, no. Not any more. That was the point of the article. This aspect of their culture was squeezed out of them as they went through slavery, and never returned.

 

[Pattylt]

The problems that Christianity brought to the African family structure was that it replaced a Matriarchal structure with a Patriarchal one. It’s not that father was pushed aside, it’s that the mothers were. Most people can’t just switch their entire historical society structure without some unusual stresses being introduced. African mothers, after being used to their historical roles and fathers having to take on roles they weren’t prepared for nor used to assuming, caused havoc to their identities. The bigger question now, is why haven’t they just adapted to it? Perhaps they still don’t feel it’s a better solution for them? Perhaps some still feel the village system was better?

I don’t know. I can’t say with any certainty that Patriarchy is a better system. It’s just the system that Judaism and then Christianity has. Christianity doesn’t seem to allow a village or matriarchal system.

 

[StudentMI]

The bigger question now, is why haven’t they just adapted to it? Perhaps they still don’t feel it’s a better solution for them? Perhaps some still feel the village system was better?

I doubt it. My guess is it’s been assailed by different influences throughout history, most recently the welfare state that subsidized single motherhood.

My worry is that this type of mournful mythologizing is leading towards some sort of ‘racial memory’ type nonsense that is dangerously close to the racial nonsense we saw in the early twentieth century.

 

[Motherwit]

Motherwit:

In fact the Jews strong family/tribal culture is why Hitler hated the Jews so much. He saw it to be strong and vibrant and a threat to his ideology.

This comment shows a deep misunderstanding if not lack of knowledge of history, I’m sorry to say.

The gist of Hitlers fundamental hate for the Jews was their body organisation which he believed threatened the supremacy of German race. He called their ‘organisation’ boshevism or bolshevist Judaism which of course it wasn’t at all. It was social and consequently economic fraternity.

 

[StudentMI]

The gist of Hitlers fundamental hate for the Jews was their body organisation which he believed threatened the supremacy of German race. He called their ‘organisation’ boshevism or bolshevist Judaism which of course it wasn’t at all. It was social and consequently economic fraternity.

The roots and explanation of Nazi antisemitism lie much deeper than that. I can only recommend two books: The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt and Liberty or Equality by Erik von Kuehnelt Leddihn.

 

[Motherwit]

Motherwit:

The gist of Hitlers fundamental hate for the Jews was their body organisation which he believed threatened the supremacy of German race. He called their ‘organisation’ boshevism or bolshevist Judaism which of course it wasn’t at all. It was social and consequently economic fraternity.

The roots and explanation of Nazi antisemitism lie much deeper than that. I can only recommend two books: The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt and Liberty or Equality by Erik von Kuehnelt Leddihn.

Antisemitism is complicated for sure. I find Hitlers own words most revealing of all.

Adolf Hitler Collection of Speeches 1922 -1945

 

[StudentMI]

While Arendt’s work is not in the public domain, Kuehnelt Leddihn’s is luckily available online in its entirety.

Liberty or Equality: The Challenge of Our Time | Mises Institute

Sometime in the 18th century, the word equality gained ground as a political ideal, but the idea was always vague. In this treatise, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

mises.org

He devotes two chapters to the origins of National Socialism, roughly 70 pages.

 

[twf]

One of the main points of the article is that traditional African culture places more emphasis on the village than the American nuclear family model which almost completely discounts the village

Yeah…but wasn’t that also true of medieval or even early modern European culture as well? If the nuclear family was imposed on Blacks…then maybe we could say it was also imposed on whites… I think the “it takes a village” was pretty much universal until fairly recently…

 

[JonNC]

Well, no. Not any more. That was the point of the article. This aspect of their culture was squeezed out of them as they went through slavery, and never returned.

And there is no one alive responsible for that. The tragedy recently is the destruction of the nuclear family that was serving American blacks So well prior to the Great Society programs.

 

[Regular_Atheist]

And how did African villages work wrt parents, children, etc., before the West came and disrupted it all? And how do we know that?

And how do we know that people did not voluntarily give up what they had for something they saw as better?

There is historical and sociological work written in regards to this, it isn’t any kind of enigma. You can find ample works written about indigenous people in Africa and elsewhere and how their family and social lives are structured.

As a general rule I would say that African communities did not “give up” their traditional way of life in response to seeing a better model for living. Famously David Livingstone was unable to make the Africans reject polygamy, even with the one African that he managed to convert to Christianity (he basically just had to overlook it). I am also somewhat aware of the meddling in African social relations that the British performed within their colonial empire, which generally led to a weakening or crisis in the traditional relations but not any kind of mass conversion to the “nuclear family.”

It’s worth keeping in mind that the nuclear family makes sense in a certain historical situation, but not outside of it. The Piraha in Brazil practice a form of free union and are not strictly monogamous and do not form tight family social units, but frankly if you live in a relatively small hunter-gatherer community where everything is basically shared in common anyway then there is no point for such a family unit to exist.

 

[Roselle]

I didn’t read the article.

From what I’ve read, historically African Americans have had high rates of the nuclear family, with a husband and wife. It’s only recently in American history that single motherhood, with father’s missing, became the norm. Often times it is the welfare state that has been mentioned as the cause of the change. An example of this ~

Is Racism Responsible for Today's Black Problems?

I doubt whether any American would defend the police treatment of George Floyd that led to his death. But many Americans are supporting some of the responses to Floyd’s death — rioting, looting, wanton property destruction, assaults on police and other kinds of mayhem by both whites and blacks.

walterewilliams.com

excerpt:

…The most devastating problem is the very weak black family structure. Less than a third of black children live in two-parent households and illegitimacy stands at 75%. The “legacy of slavery” is often blamed. Such an explanation turns out to be sheer nonsense when one examines black history. Even during slavery, where marriage was forbidden, most black children lived in biological two-parent families. Professor Herbert G. Gutman’s research in “The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom 1750-1925” found that in three-fourths of 19th-century slave families, all the children had the same mother and father. In New York City, in 1925, 85% of black households were two-parent. In fact, “Five in six children under the age of six lived with both parents.” During slavery and as late as 1920, a black teenage girl raising a child without a man present was a rarity.

An 1880 study of family structure in Philadelphia shows that three-quarters of all black families were nuclear families. There were only slight differences in family structure between racial groups. The percentages of nuclear families were: black (75.2%), Irish (82.2%), German (84.5%) and native white Americans (73.1%). Only one-quarter of black families were female-headed. Female-headed families among Irish, German and native white Americans averaged 11%. According to the 1938 Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, only 11% of black children and 3% of white children were born to unwed mothers. As Thomas Sowell reported: “Going back a hundred years, when blacks were just one generation out of slavery, we find that census data of that era showed that a slightly higher percentage of black adults had married than white adults. This fact remained true in every census from 1890 to 1940.”

The absence of a father in the home predisposes children, especially boys, to academic failure, criminal behavior and economic hardship, not to mention an intergenerational repeating of handicaps. If today’s weak family structure is a legacy of slavery, then the people who make such a claim must tell us how it has managed to skip nearly five generations to have an effect…