epiphiny43
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Joined: 10/20/2006
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Doesn't anyone here know the history of the welfare system in the US? The black family was essentially destroyed by the end of the movement to the cities after the WWII industrialization from Southern share cropping rural residence patterns. Despite the massive repression of Reconstruction, the black family before the Depression in rural America was more married than whites and attended church more. When the economy collapsed after the Roaring 20s, welfare or living off the land foraging and hunting in unfarmed forest or marginal land was about it. The whole rural economy collapsed and welfare was instituted, a NEW practice. The political rulers in the South were all white, and exclusively Blue Dog Democrats, in no way or fashion what is now termed a Liberal. All the welfare food programs in the areas with black families were carefully written so that only households without an able bodied male could qualify. This meant that married or not, the father had to leave if the kids were to eat. Many black men started the later mass movement to Northern cities looking for work, which mostly didn't exist till the economy recovered with the impetus of rearming as the war in Europe was obvious and threatening.
The father exclusion laws continued many places till most programs came under Federal rules and even then, local application reflected white prejudice against black males getting any food or money. By the Fifties, the pattern of female led households, often 3 generations held together by the Grandmother was seen all over black America. The more married and more religious black family had become the opposite in less than 2 generations.
As rural economies recovered more slowly, mass migration from areas where sharecropping no longer fed a family, to Northern cities hungry for laborers, led to concentration in urban slums and black neighborhoods that were massively underserved by infrastructure, education, welfare, health care and protective policing. No family tradition long survives desperate circumstances without strong cultural and religious traditions. Both racism and economic exploitation ruled over the older pattern of strong black families. The drug plagues of heroin, coke and later ice, and the corruption and economic dislocations those brought finished off much of the remaining culture of marriage.
The most effective anti-murder campaign in Detroit was one that brought successful black fathers back to the communities they escaped from through education and ambition. They then became role models working with ghetto kids who hadn't actually known any black fathers living with their kids, cashing a regular paycheck, and paying a mortgage. Which role models were transformative for an amazing number of the kids, who turned away from street dealing, gang wars and the early death they knew came with it, and worked for Their dream of a life like other people thought normal. Yeah, Liberal programs suck! Only, there Aren't any others trying to help.
LBJ's War on Poverty tried to remedy much of this, but most programs were co-opted by racist local authorities or simply ruined with many Poison Pills adverse legislators inserted originally or managed to get introduced later.
Saying the many mid century programs were failures is to simply know nothing of history. America went from a rural and immigrant worker culture to by the late Fifties being a strong well paid working class and middle class society with home owner ship unprecedented in urban and suburban areas. We are now seeing this vanish as wealth has managing to subvert the tax structure and continue to lower real wages for those who do the work of the society. Not only the black and white working class is being attacked, but much of the middle class is losing it's position as taxation focuses on the comfortable who don't have the disposable income to organize politically and seek favors the same way investors and the wealthy upper class can.
In disturbing amounts, current racial tensions are instigated and aggravated by 'Conservatives' who seek to deflect attention from who they serve and are paid by, those benefiting from the accelerating concentration of wealth in the top levels of US society. "Family Values" candidates who only vote for programs that make life more difficult for real families are the poster child for this victory of propaganda over realistic public perception. Being at a generally lower economic level, the black family suffers proportionately more, but all working families are seeing a lowering of living standards and aspirations.
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RE: Black Lies Matter - 
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