By: Matt Rosenberg and Ted Dabrowski
Chicago’s mayoral candidates may seem like they’re paying attention to the plight of the black community when they talk about crime, more money for city schools, and tough job prospects.
But they won’t talk about the uncomfortable issues. Like fathers who’ve gone missing. Or kids who can’t read. Or the hair-trigger violence that’s fueled by low self-esteem.
There’s more that’s off the table: merit, achievement and excellence.
To progressives who celebrate black victimhood, these assertions will seem to be way over the line. They’re not.
Because if you won’t talk about births to unmarried mothers, kids raised without fathers and students who are functionally illiterate, you’re skating past the root causes of today’s troubles. The numbers are eye-popping: 8 of every 10 black babies in Chicago are born to an unmarried mother. Only 1 in 10 black students in Chicago Public Schools can read at grade level. Four of every five Chicago murder victims is black. And seven out of every ten known murder perpetrators in Chicago is black.
The data is hiding in plain view.
Who is born to unmarried mothers?
The city must face up to the troubling legacy of broken families. It’s at the root of neglected child development and violence. More than 82 percent of black births in Chicago are to unmarried mothers. That’s far more than among any other racial group, and it’s been that way for decades.
There are single fathers and mothers who do a heroic job of raising their kids. But too often for children raised by unmarried mothers, the consequences are dire. University of Pennsylvania sociologist Paul Amato reported that on the whole, children born out of wedlock do worse on a wide range of outcomes.
They “reach adulthood with less education, earn less income, have lower occupational status, are more likely to be idle” or “not employed and not in school.” They are also “more likely to have a non-marital birth (among daughters), have more troubled marriages, experience higher rates of divorce, and report more symptoms of depression.”
In contrast children in married households on the whole enjoy a more stable environment that leads to better outcomes. Census data shows that marriage provides financial stability for parents of all races. Blacks in particular experience the biggest financial gains from marriage. Unmarried black mothers with no spouse have a median income of just $35,000, while married black couples with children earn a median income of nearly $95,000. That’s 173 percent more.
Latasha Fields is a married black mother of four who lives in Chicago’s Washington Heights neighborhood on the South Side. Now long married and with four kids, she had her first child out of wedlock when she was 17. She took college classes in business management, got hired at a property firm and worked her way up to property manager. She also met Ron Fields. He’d been raised by an inattentive mother and dealt drugs starting in sixth grade. As a young man he had trouble finding good work but finally settled on a trade as a barber. He met Latasha through their church. Visit their home and you’ll see how seriously they impart and enforce rules of conduct for their children.
Latasha says, “The greatest youth program is the family. Restore the Moms and Dads if you want to help society.”
She’s not the only black parent in Chicago voicing a message of empowerment through attentive parenting. One more of many is Chicago artist Rahmaan Barnes. He waited until age 36 to become a dad. He’s married to the mother of his young daughter. He accents, passionately and in rich detail, the crucial role of black fathers in child development and socialization.
Barnes says, “I had my mind made up already when I was 13 years old that I was going to be doing this,” building a career as an artist. “That came from having elders [his step-father, an uncle] around me. They cared. They cared about my future. They wanted to see me have a chance and they knew that me having a life goal and a path would give me a chance.”
The themes raised by Fields, Barnes, and other parents in committed marriages are commonly spoken of day-to-day in Chicago’s black communities on the South Side. Yet most local politicians today won’t touch any of this. Not publicly.
It wasn’t so long ago that one prominent black Chicago politician dared to go there. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama called out absent black fathers and said they have to step up: “…if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that too many fathers are missing — missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.”
Risks for children with only one parent at home are of course not confined to blacks. Births to unmarried mothers is also an issue among whites and Latinos. In Illinois cities like Decatur, Rockford, and Waukegan – 50 percent or more of white births and 60 percent or more of Latino births are to unmarried mothers.
But the problem is most acute for blacks.
The problem of one-parent homes is also interwoven with illiteracy and systemic learning deficiencies. That becomes even more evident when looking at disappointing reading and math data in Chicago’s public schools.
Who can’t read?
Kids who can’t read are destined to struggle and many may become criminals, victims, or both.
In Chicago’s public schools, results aren’t encouraging for any racial group, but blacks by far suffer the worst scores in proficiency. Just 1 in 10 black students can read at grade level. In math, it’s even worse. Only 1 in 20 is at grade level. All the more reason parents must help fill the void.
Too many apologists will assert that public schools need more money. But the reality is CPS already spends a staggering $29,000 per student for utterly dismal results. It’s not the money.
What’s also staggering is that city officials and candidates don’t challenge the dismal reading and math results in Chicago’s public schools. It’s all a game, played with the future of the city’s children. Kids can’t read, but 100% of CPS teachers were evaluated as “excellent or proficient” in 2021. Worse still, CPS graduates 83 percent of its students from high school and Mayor Lori Lightfoot celebrates it.
It goes even further. Take a look at the CPS web page on equity. Instead of pushing for better results, they choose instead to highlight and promote an activist video titled “How Can We Win?” It asserts blacks can’t win; and endorses looting and burning to vent frustration. We wrote about it back in August of 2022. And it’s still there on the CPS “equity” page.
But when 9 in 10 black public school students in Chicago can’t read, there’s no denying something is badly askew. Parents can’t depend solely on schools to educate their children.
The good news is, talk to black community leaders on the South Side and you’ll often get an earful about how black parents have to commit to each other and their children. And read to their children, and introduce words, ideas and experiences that spark their development.
Who gets murdered or wounded?
Eroded family structure and neglected child development pave the way for black-on-black violence of outsized proportions. The data is overwhelming.
Blacks are 30 percent of Chicago’s population and 24 percent of Cook County’s. But 79 percent of homicide and non-fatal shooting victims in Chicago from 2019 to late 2022 in Chicago were black.
What about the perpetrators? In 2022 alone, more than 75 percent of all convicted murderers in Cook County were black, according to a database kept by the Office of State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. That’s in line with more long-term data. From 1991 through 2011, blacks were more than 70 percent of the known murder perpetrators charged, according to the Chicago Police Department data.
Excuse-making for Chicago’s violence – so much of it black-on-black – runs rampant. Mayor Lightfoot does it. She said, “violence is the expression of poverty.” Columnists also make excuses, arguing peak violence of the 1980s and 1990s means there’s no real problem today. 697 murders in 2022 or not.
But nothing grants someone the right to kill, unprovoked by any mortal threat to his own safety.
Not being broke. Not being mis-educated. Not being angry. Not feeling wronged.
In 2021 the head of the University of Chicago Crime Lab testified to the U.S. Senate that three-quarters of Chicago’s shootings were tied to arguments. She stated, “the vast majority of murders in America are not motivated by money, robberies, or wars between gangs over drug turf. They are most often the result of an argument that spins out of control…”
‘Nobody’s got time for a person who can’t read and can’t count’
“Diversity” and “equity” have trumped merit and achievement. Traditional standards of writing, grading, and teaching are now called “racism and white supremacy.”
South Side Chicago native Glenn Loury was the first black tenured economist at Harvard and now teaches at Brown University. Loury recently said,
“We’re in the twenty-first century. The year is 2023. The country is changing and changing and changing. Tens of millions of non-European immigrants are making lives here. The politics of this country, the Hispanics are a more significant ethnicity than the blacks in the long term when you think about ethnic pluralism in the country. The Chinese are coming, the world is changing. Globalization. Nobody’s got time for a person who can’t read and who can’t count….I think this is shtick. ‘We were enslaved. We are black. We are owed something’ is a house of cards.The idea that, perpetually, you would warp American institutions to favor people who were not excelling on the merits because of these kinds of second and third-order claims about exclusion and racism? It shouldn’t happen and it won’t happen.”
Chicago’s political agenda is hostile to real equality through color-blind accountability. Too many in Chicago’s political class are neutral or hostile to the idea that parents should be married and that they should focus sharply on child development. That disaffection for – and distancing from – marriage has done great harm to blacks and to young black males in particular.
Parenting isn’t a job, it’s a passion project. There are no do-overs.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- No, Mayor Lightfoot hasn’t put more cops on the streets. Beat cops are down 19% since she took office.
- Five reasons why the latest spin on Chicago’s murder problem is dead wrong
- Chicago’s mayoral candidates’ won’t like it. Ted Dabrowski lays out the inconvenient truths about Chicago that politicians don’t talk about.
- Forget reading and math. Chicago’s Lightfoot wants CPS students working on her reelection campaign.
- Chicagoland has nation’s 4th-worst metro unemployment rate
- Chicago’s progressive agenda has been destructive for black communities
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
I generally agree with the points the author made. I’m a clinical social worker: my job is to empower individuals and groups to make good decisions which, ideally, would improve society as a whole. However two very important points I went to add. First, quite the contrary to what Mr Obama asserts, I do not think most black fathers willfully abandon their children. I think government policies and programs for decades have deliberately removed males from homes; black families are just more vulnerable to this. In particular are the War on Drugs and feminist-run social services like family services. I’ve… Read more »
You don’t need more money for school. Blacks in Chicago don’t attempt school.
One major reason for black-on-black murders is lack of vocabulary. When non-blacks have a disagreement, a dispute or an argument they can usually come to some sort of agreement after hearing each other’s viewpoint. But black vocabularies are so lacking that after one or two cursory exchanges, the disputants run out of words, i.e., they can no longer express themselves. They then become frustrated and that frustration not infrequently leads to violence, the means of communication so frequently employed by the ignorant.
Things aren’t going to get better by continuing to lower the bar, that’s for sure. I don’t know which of those statistics is most horrifying, but illiteracy is right up there.
If you talk about it; you own it. That’s why Lori has been silent. Success a thousand parents.A murderous c city is an orphan.
Thanks for writing this. It is clearly troubling that mayoral candidates in Chicago aren’t focused on the underlying social problems plaguing the black community. There are too many black victims of violent crimes from other black perpetrators, too few fathers in the household to help raise stable children, and too many black babies born out of wedlock. All combine to produce a powder keg of violence, refressive educational results, and decay in future success for most who were unfortunate to live this. Local politicians need to get a grip and address these underlying issues plaguing their communities.
It all boils down to the fact that the leftists and rinos in political power, not only in Chicago but also the rest of the country, don’t care about the black community. They just use them as cash machines by beating the taxpayers over the heads with “guilt” over things that happened long ago. Case in point, the CPS/CTU couldn’t care less that the majority of their students aren’t getting an education. Those kids are the cash cows for the teachers union. Large CPS school buildings with less than 100 students, where the kids still can’t read or write, tells… Read more »
Matt… your work is always superb. Fact based and to the point. But nobody in Chicago cares or they would vote for politicians with a different vision. If anything the city has doubled down on their bad decisions electing ever more radical politicians over the past decade. It will take a full crash and burn and then 1-2 decades of misery until enough people will realize they need to change. That is what happened in Detroit. In the 1970s I did a study of the Oakland neighborhood on the South Side. It looked like a war zone back then. Burnt… Read more »
BLACK LIVES DO NOT MATTER! They should. But they don’t. Using them for power is the ONLY thing that matters. Matt’s data has been written about, studied and known for decades. In the 70’s WP columnist William Raspberry wrote about welfare policies destroying the black family: AFDC. 50 years ago!! Walter E Williams, Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder and countless other black scholars have done the same thing since. Yet here we are 23 years into this century of extraordinary technological and social progress and it’s the same pathetic story year after year. The so called black “leaders” will not even… Read more »
Excellent read. Most of us genuinely care but a proud culture of people has been lied to by not only their own people but ultra liberal democrats who have manipulated them for almost 60 years. Very unfortunate as the self destructive behavior is not going away until family values and cultural values based on success and perseverance (Booker T Washington) are embraced again. The opportunities are there for the taking if they would just stop listening to “those that know what is best for them”. Government never is the answer, individuals and the family unit is the core of our… Read more »
Excellent article on the problems of black families and their resulting children. Latasha says, “The greatest youth program is the family. Restore the Moms and Dads if you want to help society.”
A moral compass is a wonderful thing.
The problem with almost all that ails society these days, and certainly the black community, is the absence of God in their lives. Biblical values that were once common are all but gone. The claim that marriage is what makes the household income skyrocket is somewhat misleading. That is most likely an indirect result of having traditional values instilled in said couple individually more often than not The fact that the number of unwed mothers is so high is particularly disturbing considering that the number of aborted black babies is far higher than most as well. The answer is for… Read more »
This is a generational problem that can’t be solved by our current political climate. It seems to me that some politicians probably want this kind of outcome. It is only going to get worse as long as the CTU is in bed with the Democratic politicians in Chicago and Cook County. It’s sickening to see these outcomes for these people and no one form the City/County is helping—only making it worse.
Matt, Thank you for your fact-filled article. Fatherless and motherless families are a huge issue across all demographics around the globe. My hands-on experience is in the predominately white west suburbs where I grew up and currently reside and the Bronzeville and Woodlawn areas in Chicago. Your data highlights a potential reason why crime is so concentrated in the areas with the highest percentage of unwed births. Before a problem can be addressed, it must be acknowledged. “We know what’s going on. We just don’t want to talk about it,” I was told by several leaders in the Bronzville area… Read more »
Matt Rosenberg and Ted Dabrowski provide a clinically dispassionate view of the results of the calamity manifested by the bumper sticker politics that has come to infect modern political discourse. As has been widely researched and reported, the single greatest determinant of poverty is single heads of households. This isn’t to cast dispersion or scorn on single mothers. It is to cast a light on that single item that fosters and with demagoguery, encourages and prolongs a host of societal ills. It is no wonder that the DAs across the country have allowed a revolving door with recidivists; evidence means… Read more »
LOL White supremacists masquerading as Blacks on social media to perputate myths about Black fathers and crime rates is hilarious. This racist nonsense has been debunked repeatedly by scholars and federal studies. Most astute observers recognize it for what it is– anti-Black racism and Black misandry. Even the CDC has acknowledged Black fathers spend more time with their children than other groups and White on White crime and White supremacists are a greater threat to national security than street criminals. Don’t even get started on law enforcement corruption, police sexual misconduct and White sex offenders. Read the FBI Crime Reports… Read more »
You live in a world of fantasy. How much time did George Floyd spend with his five children from three different women?
Okay, okay, You’ve convinced me. You really have. I’m going to free my slaves today. I hope that at least a few more of us white supremisists will too.
You can always hope.
Svi Joye, that just might be the most pitiful comment ever posted here. Obama’s position on this was not racist, and nothing is more settled in sociology than the link between single parent homes and crime/poverty/despair.
Wake up and start thinking for yourself. Its actually good to see you here because there are always many sides to these issues. I don’t trust government data, never have never will. I don’t believe the government or politicians, I think for myself and read and become well educated on the issue so I can speak on the topic. I do respect your opinion and your freedom of speech when I may not agree with any of your points. The main stream media is not a source of truth nationally or locally. You want the truth you need to come… Read more »
The other thing is that fatherlessness isn’t just a black family phenomenon. It’s actually worse in bi-racial families with black fathers. Prior to St. George Floyd’s death, there was some research into these social issues. But after our racial reckoning, where now it is verboten to suggest two-parent mom/dad households are best, much of this research has been scrubbed from the internet, and is hard to find. The particular study below from 2015 has nearly been scrubbed from the internet, in fact, it’s impossible to find what journal it was first publishd in. You can’t even download or read the… Read more »
Coming back full circle, George Floyd had 5 children with three different women. He had little to no involvement in any of his children’s lives. In fact, he had a six year old back in TX, that he abandoned in Houston, so he could move to Minneapolis to party and use more drugs. The articles have been nearly scrubbed from the internet, but the articles say that he barely knew any of his children and had no involvement in any of their lives.
Matt Rosenberg has again spelled out a plague that has been destroying the Black community for decades. Decades! He wrote: Latasha Fields is a married black mother of four who lives in Chicago. She says, “The greatest youth program is the family. Restore the Moms and Dads if you want to help society.” Yup! Matt’s final sentence says everything you need to know: “Parenting isn’t a job, it’s a passion project. There are no do-overs.” Why do not elected officials, community leaders, or the press-tocricy say this? The answer is simple: “Twit-zis” (Twitter Nazis) and the… Read more »
Politicians are worthless. Utterly worthless. I read in the Trubune today that Toni Preckwinkle is leading a push for “guaranteed incomes”. Well, we already have guaranteed incomes…it’s called welfare (dirty word). The country is spiraling toward Socialism because the Left wants to abandon American exceptionalism, in favor of a “new world order” led by the likes of George Soros. Soros spends millions to achieve this goal. Imagine if he spent his millions making sure kids growing up in Chicago could read and write at grade level. Imagine if politicians dedicated themselves to the same goal…simple enough, right?…make absolutely sure that… Read more »
You all could have just shot the slaves when you were done using them. That’s all you’re hyping yourself for. You don’t have to try so hard, I’m certain you’ll all be rounding us up to shoot us in droves anyway, but this really cements it huh? Never again, means never again. (*Except if it’s anyone except Jewish people.)
Brookings Institute “simple” formula to avoid poverty: 1) Finish H.S. 2) Get a full-time job 3) Wait until 21 to get married and have children. (I might add find Religion. Faith and Community are critical to getting on the straight and narrow.) I was struck by the data you gave about the percentage of births to single mothers. It actually dropped significantly since 2010. Why? Cynically it may be due to abortion being more readily available or welfare less available. But maybe youngsters are wisening up. Hope?
Everything in this article is right on except for one really important fact even though the percentage is high for unmarried Hispanic women the majority of the father’s are living with the mother and raising the children.
Great writing. Great reporting. Matt Rosenberg and Ted Dabrowski uphold the highest standards of quality journalism, which is a step in the right direction—a small step toward helping Chicago find the answers embedded in becoming a better city for all its residents.
Kudos!
On Monday, 2-13-23, a woman named Trish called into Dan Proft’s radio show when stand-in host Charles Thomas was co-hosting with Dan. A lady named Trish called in about an hour into the show and unleashed the most heroic, dramatic, passionate, desperate and stunningly accurate diatribe about the moral decay in this country and the prioritizing of profits over values. I would encourage everyone to listen to it at about the 01:38 minute mark. Her riff was the most honest description of what fatherless households do to society and how many of today’s youth are hopelessly unmotivated.
James, I heard it too and it was a truly strong, powerful riff. I will try to find it and share.
Please do – thx Ted!
I heard it, she should have her own show.
A study of vicious criminals found that not one of them had low self-esteem. Obsessing about yourself was promoted by the likes of Erich Fromm, who said “Belief in God is a childish illusion” but “the lack of self-esteem is central to the personal and social ills plaguing our nation.” In fact, science says the higher the self-esteem the “more likely to commit crimes” and “the more likely one will be immoral, violent, and a sociopath.”
I work in a jail counseling criminals. I doubt this study you cite is saying what you are think it is saying. Perhaps you could share this study’s name or DOI? My rebuttal to your point is that many of the criminals I encounter are deeply insecure with very low self-esteem which is contingent on risk-taking behavior. They may talk a big game with plenty of bling but they’re not very integrated or stable.
Excellent piece! I just disagree that low self-esteem causes violence.
Finally we have those who are willing to speak the hard truths. We cannot solve problems we refuse to identify. Reminds me of the courage of New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (March 16, 1927 – March 26, 2003) decades ago. Well done!
We have watched this for decades, it is a societal break down and has been instituted by design. The more a group is dependent on government the more they will vote for those that are giving them what they need.
This is a fabulous post, but “All the Kings Horses & All the Kings Men won’t put this Genie back in the Bottle Again”.
Inasmuch as money is a a motivator for so many, perhaps The States ought to offer $2,500 to each and every fella willing to agree to the tuba ligation procedure. Perhaps Beer & Snacks in the waiting room. $2,500 buys ‘a whole lotta shit’ and reduces public spending by a gazillion future dollars.
Men are sterilized with vasectomies. This has been attempted many times in the past, often for free. It is generally opposed by feminists because any social program which solely benefits males is by definition oppressive against female.
What a powerful article! I’m going to take it a bit further than the article does. For 50 years, we were told that Roe versus Wade could not be overturned. That it was impossible to reverse it. Yet it happened. And many, many Americans celebrate that. As we should! However, if pro-life Americans want to see abortion eradicated, they need to go to the root cause of the abortion in the first place. That root cause was the sexual revolution, and if abortion is to be ended, so too must contraception, no-fault divorce, and the plethora of other social pills… Read more »
To the left, this “system” has produced many votes and keeps the rackets going. It’s been very successful for Democrats. Think about how many people have been hurt over the past 60+ years. And it’s not just in Chicago. While they targeted major cities starting in the late 50s, they expanded it. For example, the “War On Poverty” was really the “War For Poverty.” It’s been a good business model for the left.
Children raised in communities of fatherless homes often repeat the behavior. Dysfunctional families are generations in the making. How to break the pattern? It begins with teaching and emphasizing respect. Respect for self, children, life, success.
There are so many data points here and whenever you bring them up, you are considered a racist or a white mansplainer. It’s clear from Economist Gary Becker’s research that if you graduate from high school you do better. If you grow up in a two-parent family, you do better.
More money doesn’t solve this problem.
“If you graduate from high school you do better. If you grow up in a two-parent family, you do better. ” But why does it have to be this way? Why should society require people to graduate high school and enter into two parent (male and female) families? Why not reorder society completely so citizens without the privilege of schooling and an intact family to succeed? These are the premises underlying the most academic and fervent of progressive believers, even if they don’t articulate them as such, and they rarely understand the logical conclusion of their values. Other models for… Read more »
Bravo for addressing the obvious!
Great article! As I know, too well, what plagues the black community which, in my opinion, is all a political plot of destroying the homes, imprisoning men, promoting whoredom and feminism. This article details the statistics which everyone needs to come to terms with if we are going to set out to turn things around. I am all in!!
Young mothers who themselves are not educated are at a disadvantage from the start. Some of these young moms in fact grew up without a father. Discipline is doled out with straps and beatings. And then we wonder how these kids turn out as they do. It’s no wonder these kids have anger issues. To be beat and have no way to defend oneself. Violence begets violence. Our schools have been failing these students for a long time. Gangs have become the absent father. Our school system needs a huge overhaul. School choice is now a must. Let the money… Read more »
But WHY do the women choose to have sex then give birth to more and more fatherless children? This question has not been adequately addressed. Is it “free” money, provided by the government to the mothers for each subsequent child? Or is it love of children and the need to be surrounded by love by mothers who may not have the family love surrounding them? Or something else. As usual, the facts, figures and assessments provided by the authors are excellent. However, I have not seen research focused on such softer data like “feelings”, or mothers incentives or thought processes.… Read more »
I’ve thought about this a lot, and it’s actually quite simple. Like the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. Because in traditional hunter/gatherer tribal society, everyone was procreating with everyone else and they collectively had extended families that were essentially clans and tribes. The men were gone during the day hunting, and the women all raised each other’s children, because all of their children shared the same fathers. That’s what many people are doing today, especially in the black culture and south/central american cultures. The majority of them have children with two or more men, and… Read more »
The problem is that this family structure fails in modern society. it may have worked OK in pre-columbian Africa or indigenous mezo america, but it causes massive dysfunction in the modern world. We have a western/eastern based society where people marry and entered monogamous marriages, and raise their own children, for millennia, and all of our societal structures are based upon this premise. Since the 1960’s, we have superimposed a massive and ineffective bureaucracy over our judeo-christian based society to accommodate alternative family structures not native to our civilization. Government is now the provider for families of single mothers with… Read more »
Society needs to reestablish a moral compass. With so many government programs it seems to make it easy to have children without any male commitment. Trusting the politicians and government to take care of you is a dead-end proposition.
Sometimes the conversations are hard and the solutions difficult, but ignoring them will not help.
History will not be kind to the generations who ignored this crisis
History will not be kind to those who caused it.
We can and do throw so much money at any problem and get that same results each time. Until government stops being supportive of single parent families and holding teachers more accountable for their teaching and parents not setting rules, NOTHING gonna change. In the meantime politicians pick and choose what’s important to them in order to get elected.
Thank you, gentlemen, for saying what needs to be said. Lori Lightfoot is an insult to our city. We need to elect someone who really cares about the people and the city, and will step up to do the hard work of making headway out of this disaster.
Spot on, politicians avoid tough topics. It’s all about the vote. No separation of church and state as well. Only thing that matters is the VOTE.
Politically, it’s far easier and convenient to focus on the symptoms, than to engage in a rigorous root-cause analysis on many of these “uncomfortable issues.” Kudos to Rosenburg and Dabrowski for taking on the latter! The long-time political M.O. of, “Do something…do anything!” has created a death spiral in many of these once great cities, because the solutions they offer are the proverbial “band-aid on gangrene,” leaving the actual root causes untouched.
They can’t acknowledge that progressive programs are the root cause. Progressives never analyze the results of the programs to see what works and what doesn’t. When the programs fail, they simply ramp up the moral outrage and recommend doing more of what failed. When our progressive-run cities were clearly in trouble, we started to hear the hysteria of “institutional racism”. Can’t possibly be that their ideas are terrible.
They are simply incapable of believing their ideas are terrible, and produce terrible results, because they base the entire progressive world view relies upon the infallibility of their premises. The logic conclusion of progressivism is a gay BIPOC matriarchy that enslaves cisgendered white males. Along this degenerate road is drag queen story hour, child genital mutilation, racial set-asides, increased segregation and so on. Schools are starting to get rid of urinals in male bathrooms and replacing them with tampon dispensers because some men menstruate, and, it’s discriminatory to offer different style toilets between men and women. For many years we… Read more »
Moral and spiritual decline has brought us to this, including the breakdown of a two parent family. The kids have one less parent to guide them, and coupled with the absolute crimes of the public schools, these kids will have few chances in life. Life basics that we took for granted growing up have disappeared. These kids have been failed as a result. Very serious situation.
Liberal Sen Danial Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) warned that this would happen in the early 1970’s. Well intended welfare programs have destroyed the black nuclear family.
So what’s to be done, Mattski? The frontrunner mayoral candidates aren’t talking about two things–reconstruction of the black family, and blowing up the CTU. Both are mountains to climb over probably decades. But it has to start somewhere. Even Vallas only alludes to it, because if he came out & spoke 100% truthful words, there goes his candidacy.
These statistics are staggering.
I have previously stated that CPS needs to be dissolved and either broken up into smaller districts or taken over by the State.
Parents have to DEMAND better for their children.
Family breakdown and cultural acceptance of it. Living consequences of immoral behavior whether it’s crime or pregnancy. Responsibilities are abandoned. There is so much pressure to stay in the norm, it is difficult to break out when your mentors don’t encourage what they don’t know themselves.
No Mentors and no Role Models other than sport stars, celebrities and gangsta’s. Intact multi-generational familes the rare exception rather than the rule. Present and working fathers of these city thugs, a rarity as opposed to the norm. And we the taxpayers pick up the pieces and endure the losses of our unfettered freedoms, in the second largest city in America.
I can only speak for my own generation, who are now actively retiring en mass. We’re leaving these burning cities as fast as we can !