The Effects Of Single Mothers In The Black Family

2043 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Negative effects of single parent households essay

Family is a precarious subject. Some people love their families, hate their families, or do not have one at all. In America, we have this ideal picture of what an American family should look like. A mom, a dad, two kids, and a dog. But, we have come to notice the family structure is ever changing and we should just throw the “ideal” picture of a family out of the window. In today’s society there might not always be a father or a mother. Grandparents or a family friend might even raise the kids. It is not who is in your family but what lessons you learn from them. Is a two-parent household, the only household that a child can be adequately raised? Are single mothers the cause of the downward spiral of the youth in the Black society? In the Moynihan report, Daniel Moynihan speculates that the mother headed household is the main cause of problems in the African American community. The Moynihan was not well received by blacks when it was first release. Many felt they it was a racist report drawing biased conclusions about the black community. How could one white man know what exactly is happening in a world far different from his own? His statistics were correct, but he never took the time to reach out to black people to find out what was really going on in their homes. It takes a village to raise a child, but when that village is only a mother then problems may ensue. Providing for a family is hard when there are hardly any jobs available. Blacks in 1965 were still heavily discriminated against in all factors of society. Racism still was ingrained in the minds of white and African Americans were still inferior. The fight for equality pulsed from every person of color and some whites could not understand why freedom was not enough... ... middle of paper ... ...ng anything about their fathers from his profession to his family. The last major deterrent of the Negro community from a successful societal presence in America is the sad state of segregated housing. About fifty percent of Negro Americans are in the middle class, however many members of that middle class are living right in the ghettos next to the Negro Americans who are in a perpetual state of deterioration. The reason for this confinement is because white families did not accept Negro families living next to them, across them, or even in the same vicinity as them. Negro housing communities are miles away from white communities and were undersized compared to white communities, so even when middle class Negro Americans have the means to leave certain Negro communities, they do not have the power, the are stuck between a white community and a hard place.

Show More
Related

  • Robert Staples In Sociocultural Factors In Black Family

    759 Words  | 2 Pages

    Daniel Moynihan’s controversial and needed report opened my and many others’ eyes to the societal issues that African American families face. He claims that the African American condition is caused by the fall of the family. In the Tangle of Pathology he addresses several concerns such as welfare dependence, crime, gaps in educational achievement, and children born to single-mothers as the effects of the demasculinization of Black men and the shift of the matriarchal household. Using historical context, sociology, and psychology he centers his thesis around that the matriarchy in Black families is the main issue compared to patriarchy in White households. In this report, Moynihan shed light on several studies that concluded him to assume

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Black Picket Fences By Mary Pattillo

    601 Words  | 2 Pages

    Specifically, she found that members of the Black middle class still face income and wealth disadvantages, housing segregation, limited job opportunities, racial discrimination, family disruption, and crime victimization, among other social problems, at a higher rate than their White middle-class counterparts. As a result, Pattillo (2013) concluded that Black middle-class neighborhoods often “sit as a kind of buffer between core black poverty areas and whites” (p. 4). Otherwise put, the Black middle class are situated in a position between middle-class Whites and underclass Blacks, where they are not at parity with the former, and are only slightly better than the

    Read More

  • More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City

    1316 Words  | 3 Pages

    William Julius Wilson creates a thrilling new systematic framework to three politically tense social problems: “the plight of low-skilled black males, the persistence of the inner-city ghetto, and the fragmentation of the African American family” (Wilson, 36). Though the conversation of racial inequality is classically divided. Wilson challenges the relationship between institutional and cultural factors as reasons of the racial forces, which are inseparably linked, but public policy can only change the racial status quo by reforming the institutions that support it.

    Read More

  • Shelby Steele's On Being Black And Middle Class

    1241 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his essay, “On Being Black and Middle Class” (1988), writer and middle-class black American, Shelby Steele adopts a concerned tone in order to argue that because of the social conflicts that arise pertaining to black heritage and middle class wealth, individuals that fit under both of these statuses are ostracized. Steele proposes that the solution to this ostracization is for people to individualize themselves, and to ‘“move beyond the victim-focused black identity” (611). Steele supports his assertion by using evidence from his own life and incorporating social patterns to his text. To reach his intended audience of middle-class, black people, Steele’s utilizes casual yet, imperative diction.

    Read More

  • Summary Of White Like Me By Tim Wise

    1272 Words  | 3 Pages

    Moynihan, born to a broken family in the great depression era, entered politics and developed to become an important political figure in the labor department during the 1960’s. The principal belief of Moynihan was that unemployment was destructive to the potential social mobility of the poor, a lynchpin of the American dream. Once the civil rights movement gained momentum, Moynihan gained interest on how his theory affects black families specifically and began to research this topic. The results of his research showed just how devastating the effects of three hundred of years of slavery and institutionalized racism were on black families and how much worse off they were than white families in general. These findings led Moynihan to draft and publish a government report titled “The Negro Family.” “The Negro Family” illustrated how debilitating the present society was for black families but offered no possible policies to address the problem, something very peculiar for a government report. The reason for the lack of policies is stated by Moynihan, “It would have got in the way of the attention-arousing argument that a crisis was coming and that family stability was the best measure of success or failure in dealing with it.” (The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration, “Lower-class Behavior in our Cities is Shaking Them Apart”) President Johnson had

    Read More

  • On Individualization And Victimization In Shelby Steele's On Being Black And Middle Class

    1259 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his essay, “On Being Black and Middle Class” (1988), writer and middle-class black American, Shelby Steele adopts a concerned tone in order to argue that because of the social conflicts that arise pertaining to black heritage and middle class wealth, individuals that fit under both of these statuses are ostracized. Steele proposes that the solution to this ostracization is for people to individualize themselves, and to ‘“move beyond the victim-focused black identity” (611). Steele supports his assertion by using evidence from his own life and incorporating social patterns to his text. To reach his intended audience of middle-class, black people, Steele’s utilizes casual yet, imperative diction.

    Read More

  • Criticism In The New Negro, By Alain Locke

    762 Words  | 2 Pages

    “The New Negro” brings negroes from the south together with Negros from the north after the beginning of the World War. “So, what began in terms of segregation becomes more and more, as its

    Read More

  • Moynihan Negro Family

    1321 Words  | 3 Pages

    Moynihan perceives the inclusive problem amongst the black family to be its structure. This is a product of disintegration of nativism in the black community. The “racist virus” still flowing through the veins of American society hinders, in virtually all aspects, the progression of the Negro family. Moynihan discusses the normativity of the American family as a reason that people overlook the problems that occur in Negro and nonwhite families. He emphasizes the significance of family structure by stating “The family is the basic social unit of American life; it is the basic socializing unit.” (Moynihan, II 4). This assertion implies that due to the instability within the black family, socially, the Negro family would be unable to prosper. Because Moynihan feels the largest overall issue in the black family is structure it’s structure, he believes that it will only continue to disintegrate. To further his idea, Moynihan highlights the subdivisions of this structure: matriarchy, failure of youth, economic differences, alienation etc. Each of these subdivisions of family structure contributes to the overall issue Moynihan within the Negro family.

    Read More

  • Behavior in the Home in Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families by Annette Lareau

    713 Words  | 2 Pages

    After reading “Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black families and White Families,” by Annette Lareau, it was evident that she collected much data from her study of different types of families. In this study with the help of other sociologists, Lareau went into the lives of both black and white middle class and working class/ poor families. In her study she observed the behavior of children at home, school, and in the public eye. She observed the parenting methods the adults chose to use and the child’s reaction to them. Lareau and her team were able to see what influences certain factors such as income, race, family size, home location, schooling, and career choices had on each family and their children. The purpose of this study as well as the central argument is very well addressed by Lareau in the text and leads to many well supported conclusions.

    Read More

  • Housing Segregation and Minority Groups in the United States

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    The downgrading of African Americans to certain neighborhoods continues today. The phrase of a not interested neighborhood followed by a shift in the urban community and disturbance of the minority has made it hard for African Americans to launch themselves, have fairness, and try to break out into a housing neighborhood. If they have a reason to relocate, Caucasians who support open housing laws, but become uncomfortable and relocate if they are contact with a rise of the African American population in their own neighborhood most likely, settle the neighborhoods they have transfer. This motion creates a tremendously increase of an African American neighborhood, and then shift in the urban community begins an alternative. All of these slight prejudiced procedures leave a metropolitan African American population with few options. It forces them to remain in non-advanced neighborhoods with rising crime, gang activity, and...

    Read More

  • The Impact Of The Great Migration

    1694 Words  | 4 Pages

    Although they needed African Americans for their factories and work ethics they did not agree with them having the same rights or sharing any rights with them. They wanted them just to work for them and have authority over African Americans. The more Africans Americans populated their living area, the more whites felt upon to call for action. For example whites wanted to feel much superior...”African Americans had to step off the sidewalk when a white person approached”(Digital Collection for the Classroom). This quote illustrates how whites did anything in their power to feel superior. The Great Migration caused whites to fear and enable them to more injustice actions. Although the Great Migration did benefit many African Americans in certain aspects it also crated unintended consequences. Due to the large growth of the African-American population there was an increasing competition amongst the migrants for employment and living space in the growing crowded cities of the North. Besides, racism and prejudice led to the interracial strife and race riots, worsening the situation between the whites and the African Americans. Racism became even more of a national problem. The Great Migration intensions were to let African Americans live a better life style economically wise and help them from poverty not cause even more issues with racism or become competition against others. Because many white people did not want to sell their property to African Americans, they began to start their own exclusive cities within that area of sell. These exclusive cities were called the “ Ghetto”(Black, 2013). The ghetto was subject to high illness, violence, high crime rate, inadequate recreational facilities; lack of building repairs, dirty streets, overcrowded schools; and mistreatment from the law enforcement. Although the ghetto cities helped unify African Americans as

    Read More

  • The March on Washington - August 28, 1963

    1353 Words  | 3 Pages

    Nabrit, James M. Jr. “The Relative Progress and the Negro in the United States: Critical Summary and Evaluation.” Journal of Negro History 32.4 (1963): 507-516. JSTOR. U of Illinois Lib., Urbana. 11 Apr. 2004

    Read More

  • Residential Segregation Essay

    1077 Words  | 3 Pages

    From slavery to Jim Crow, the impact of racial discrimination has had a long lasting influence on the lives of African Americans. While inequality is by no means a new concept within the United States, the after effects have continued to have an unmatched impact on the racial disparities in society. Specifically, in the housing market, as residential segregation persists along racial and ethnic lines. Moreover, limiting the resources available to black communities such as homeownership, quality education, and wealth accumulation. Essentially leaving African Americans with an unequal access of resources and greatly affecting their ability to move upward in society due to being segregated in impoverished neighborhoods. Thus, residential segregation plays a significant role in

    Read More

  • The Problems Of Crime, Underemployment And Poverty In The Philadelphia Negro?

    1408 Words  | 3 Pages

    People constantly say that a stranger realizes what the real problem is rather than those who are a part of the problem. In The Philadelphia Negro by W.E.B. Du Bois, the city of Philadelphia was concerned with the Negro problems of crime, underemployment and poverty. African Americas in the seventh ward were blamed for everything that went wrong in the city because they were the minority. Even though they had abolished slavery, during the 1890s blacks were still judged and discriminated against. The problems of crime, underemployment and poverty were not because of the blacks, but because of the city itself and the people living in it. The city as a whole decides to view the blacks as a problem because they need someone to blame. African Americans want privileges just like everyone else, such as the right to vote, the right to receive an education and equality without people thinking they are a problem to the city or anyone.

    Read More

  • Traditional Family Essay

    1075 Words  | 3 Pages

    Prior to the period of slavery, the majority African family structure was in the realm of 2-parent households and was the main importance for everyone. However, during the period of slavery and beyond, the 2-parent household has been transformed and its looming effects are still in place today. The effects include the phenomenal increase in female-headed households and also the increase in households with individual living by himself or herself. African-American family structure has been inconsistent, and it has a tremendous impact on the children. Statistics have shown that African American males growing up without a father are more likely to end up in prison (Krampe & Newton, 2012). It is important, as the children are dependent on the family in terms of obtaining success in the future. In addition, the single-parent mother ends up taking new roles as mother and father for the child. This topic has many aspects, which showcase the prominent influence in

    Read More

More about The Effects Of Single Mothers In The Black Family

Open Document