White Liberals And The Decline Of The Black Family
By Perry Drake
http://ToogoodReports.com/

Did you ever volunteer to do something in the heat of an emotion that you
later grew to regret after the initial rush of giddiness wore off?
I did. Two years ago when I volunteered to organize and host my family's
reunion.
I have a couple of words of advice to anyone contemplating the same:
First (and most important of all) - don't. It'll shave years off your

I was a young, reasonably virile man before I started working on the

but now I have a clear memory of once helping Adam to name dirt, dirt.
My second piece of advice (for those of you who foolishly scoff at the
first) is when figuring the cost of each event (banquet, picnic, tours,
brunches, dances, family picture, etc.) automatically add 15 percent to

estimated prices.
Then total the tab and add another 10 percent. Divide the tab evenly

each participant and then add a 15 percent (silent) surcharge to cover the
deadbeat family members (we all have them) who are sure to show up sans

in hand knowing that you can't turn them away because, well, because

family.
If you don't follow my advice, I can guarantee you that you're going to

up like me today - one broke brother. But broke brother or not, I don't

because I finally got my life back. The 7th Semi-Annual Ford-Quarles &
Taylor-
McGinnis Family Runion (that's how the T-shirt printer spelled reunion) is
history and I just shipped the last of my extended family (my mother, Mary
Ann Jones) back home to Syracuse, N.Y., a couple of days ago.
It's not that I don't enjoy my family's reunions. - I do. I love my family
and mostly have a good time at our reunions. But I must admit that a mild
sort of melancholy colored the entire affair for me. It's not the typical
sort that hangs over such events - the realization that it will probably

the last time in this lifetime that you'll see many of the people that
loved, raised and helped to shape the person that you've become.
No, my melancholy stems from how the gathering of generations in one place
illuminates and reminds me of what has been a steady decay in the overall
fortune of my family from one generation to the next. It serves as almost

perfect timeline for the decline of the black family in general. It's

but true, and I'm sure I wasn't the only person at the reunion that

it.
The eldest members of my family that attended this year's reunion, my
grandmother, Mary Ruth Ford, and great-uncle, RobertQuarlesFromKansasCity
(that's how he introduces himself. No pause. Just one long run-on

were born about a dozen years before the Depression.
They grew up in the South during an era when it could be extremely

(not to mention fatal) to be born a black person in that part of the
country. Jim Crow and segregation were the law of the land. Their
educational and career opportunities were extremely limited, frequently by
law. Hundreds of blacks were still being lynched for the flimsiest of
reasons. Blacks couldn't depend on the ballot box for change since they

oftentimes prevented from voting by violence or threat of violence.
Black people then (as I've been frequently told by family member who lived
through it) caught hell on a daily basis.
And yet, despite those extremely trying circumstances, most of them

and even prospered. Practically every single one of my family members of
that generation wound up as property owners and some even owned their own
businesses. The men worked impossibly long hours to provide and the women
stayed home and watched over their children and various and sundry

nieces and nephews of their female kin who worked cleaning house for white
folks or did laundry.
That was true of my grandparents and their brothers and sisters and

on both my mother's and father's side.
I'm particularly impressed by the branch of my family represented by
RobertQuarlesFromKansasCity. They were of farming stock who somehow

to parlay the money they made from busting sod into a highly successful
waste management business (not hauling trash, as

pointedly and firmly corrected me on a couple of occasions).
One other thing: When they got married back then, they stayed married.

death did them part, and sometimes not even then. My great-uncle James
Cloud, Mary Ford's brother, swears his wife of more than 50 years,

refuses to let him get a restful night sleep - this more than 2 years

her death.
Sometimes people in my family give me the willies.
Anyway, I'm amazed at what the relatives of my grandmother's and
great-uncle's generation were able to accomplish given the time and
circumstances they grew up in, particularly when you consider that they

only a couple of generations removed from slavery. You would think that
subsequent generations would have been able to build bigger and better
things on the back of their achievements. You'd be wrong though.
Beginning some where around the late 1950s, something went horribly awry.
Compared to the earlier generations, the latest generations of my family

a mess. They're riddled with premature deaths, alcoholism, drug addiction,
unwed pregnancies, homelessness, divorce, imprisonment, dismal academic
performance, etc. If it's pathological, it's usually viewing 5 times

including matinee, in my family.
I can tell you what went wrong. My family, as well as most other black
families, was doing all right, thank you very much, up until the time when
white liberals forced the government to start caring about black people.
That happened right about the time the modern-day civil rights movement

into full swing around 1957.
It's been downhill for black families every since. The welfare programs

crummy educational system that they have poured trillions of dollars into

a wasteful attempt to "improve" the lives of black people have had the
opposite effect. Black people are far worse off now than they were at the
height of Jim Crow and segregation.
If any white liberals ever ask me what is it that can be done to improve

lives of black people in this nation, I'd say without hesitation: Bring

Jim Crow and segregation because Lord knows black people were better off
then.


--
"The Declaration of Independence... [is the] declaratory charter of our
rights, and the rights of man."
-- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd President of the United States
(1801-1809)