Two Views of the Black Family, cont.

A letter from a reader and a response from Robert Woodson

My recent post featuring a debate from a meeting at the Woodson Center has generated a lot of commentary. And deservedly so. We’re talking about one of the thorniest American problems of the last half-century: How to get poor, black, urban families back on track. Anyone who thinks seriously about race matters in this country is going to have an opinion on the matter, usually a strong one.

So in the spirit of continuing the debate, I’m presenting below a response from our frequent correspondent Clifton Roscoe, who is quite critical of Robert Woodson’s approach to the problem. I thought Clifton’s critique was deserving of a response itself, so I sent it on to Robert Woodson himself, who obliged. You’ll find his message below Clifton’s. (Both have been very lightly edited.)

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Dear Professor Loury,

At the risk of being harsh, I was disappointed by what I heard from Robert Woodson.  I really expected more of a blueprint for rebuilding Black America from a guy who won a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award and has been doing this work for 40 years. Does he not have some well-developed hypotheses about how to build strong Black families by now? Is good parenting really a mystery? Can't he benchmark what successful Black parents are doing compared to those whose children are floundering and often don't become productive adults? Can't those deficits be laid out and plans to address them be developed? Is it really too much to ask that this problem be addressed in a structured, systematic way? 

While I appreciate Robert Woodson's take on innovation and the importance of learning from outliers, it feels like he's looking for moon shots. If so, he's on a path with a low-probability of achieving meaningful results at scale. He might be able to change the life trajectory of a few people through heroic interventions, but that's not what's required to put Black America on a better path.  

Let's start with the premise that there's no quick fix for Black America. It may take one or two generations to get Black America on a better path. Better parenting has to be a top priority. I could be wrong, but my sense is that most Black parents want to see their children achieve success as adults. Many of them don't know what to do and would be open to coaching. This is especially true of single mothers who are raising sons. They would respond well if somebody gave them a roadmap for raising their children and offered them support and resources to draw upon throughout their parenting journey. These are the kinds of things that families have done for generations, but it's less common among Black families today because so many or our family structures are fractured and our culture discounts the importance of strong nuclear families..

Speaking of culture, you may find this article interesting. Here's an excerpt:

BlazeTV host and sportswriter Jason Whitlock comments on rapper Lil Nas X likening the release of debut album to having a child. Blaze contributor Delano Squires said in the past he would have brushed this stuff off as coincidence or a disconnected person, now he feels "most of this stuff is being coordinated."

"I don't know by whom," Squires continued, "but it all fits way too nicely."

"This week we had the state of Texas that will prohibit doctors from performing an abortion after a heartbeat is detected. And in the same week, we have our cultural overlords pushing Lil Nas X as a pregnant man. Now I guarantee you, they wouldn't want to hear someone say he should abort his baby."

Squires said they want to see black men pregnant while black women have abortions.

"As a Christian, I'm thinking how do the things that are being pushed in culture whether by, again, media or by the government, how are those things squaring with what I know to be true about human nature, about God as a creator and about the nature of his created beings," he said.

"This is a clash of worldviews," Squires said. "The question is is Caesar God or is God God? And ultimately the American public is going to have to answer that question because right now we're being pushed in the direction where the culture people, CNN, and our institutions, and our professional leagues - the NFL came out of the closet a couple of weeks ago."

"All the institutions of the culture are using their power, their might to tenderize our children," he said. "To soak them and marinate, to loosen those fibers, the things that parents try to put into them. They're trying to break that all down to get kids to accept things they would have never accepted 50 years ago."

While I'm not pushing for a culture war, it's way past time for Black folks to come to grips with the sorry state of Black culture and the toxic effect it has on young Black people and Black America overall.

Best regards,

Clifton Roscoe

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Response from Robert Woodson

First of all, I appreciate the commenter’s questions, because they reflect a really common misunderstanding with what both Bob Hill’s research focused on and what I’ve found leads to both individual and community transformation under challenging circumstances. By saying we should focus on strength and capacity building in lower income communities, I am not saying we should ignore or dismiss weaknesses. I am saying that the path to success lies in building on existing strengths, and that we will never know what those strengths are (or that they exist) unless we look for them.  

A fact that is underappreciated by many people who have strong opinions on these issues is that it takes a very different set of skills to raise middle-class children to do as well or better than their parents than it takes to raise lower-income children to survive their childhood and leap one or two income quintiles from the time of their birth to when they are established in adulthood. Middle-class children typically do not need to learn how to navigate unsafe neighborhoods, extract knowledge and skills from underperforming schools, or set goals and priorities for themselves that may not be shared by most of their peers.  

The question isn’t whether there should be more and better support or “coaching” for lower-income black parents; the question is what form should that support take, who should design it, and who should offer it? Both conservative and progressive elites tend to favor interventions designed by and implemented by outside professionals. I would argue that such support should be designed by people who are intimately familiar with the challenges facing particular lower income parents and children (that can almost never be gained without living in the same neighborhood), that it should be designed in partnership with the parents themselves and that it should be delivered by people who have the trust and confidence of those parents being supported.  

In my experience, going into low-income communities and lecturing the people there on how they are raising their children wrong will not get you any farther than going into a middle- or high-income community and telling them they are raising their children wrong.  

Bob