During the week after Father’s Day, I received a number of
interesting emails from readers asking me to write about the dearth of
looting after the recent floods in Iowa. Specifically, they wanted me
to write about the reason there was so much more looting in New Orleans
after Katrina hit the “Chocolate City” in 2005. Of course,
the problem involves so much more than race – a factor most
people are thinking about, even if they won’t admit it.
That people would oversimplify many post-Katrina problems as
“race problems” is unfortunate but somewhat understandable.
I recall watching a Fox News reporter standing on a bridge in a flooded
area of New Orleans just after Katrina. When the first black individual
came wading out of the projects the reporter was simply astounded. Like
me, the reporter had no idea that folks had been sitting in the
projects waiting for someone to come and escort them out of
harm’s way.
It was also sad to see that it was one black face after another
emerging from the flooded waters. And it was sadder still that the
words “we need” were the first spoken into the camera by
these citizens – all utterly unprepared to provide for themselves
and their families.
But of course the ugliest scenes were yet to come as looters would turn
downtown New Orleans into a place more like downtown Baghdad. Some of
the looters who would participate in the destruction of their own
neighborhoods would later suggest that they were entitled to loot
because of years and years of “oppression.”
Of course, talk of historical oppression goes a long way towards
explaining why blacks would be more inclined to loot than whites. But
it doesn’t go far towards explaining the fact that looters are
predominantly male rather than female. At some point, variables other
than race have to be written into the equation.
There is another observation that is just as obvious as the fact that
black males are more likely than black females to take advantage of the
opportunity to loot as a means of eradicating historical oppression. I
am referring, of course, to the fact that black females are more likely
than black males to take advantage of affirmative action as a means of
eradicating historical oppression. In fact, overall differences between
blacks and whites - in important areas including income and education
– are largely due to the failures of black males relative to
everyone else in society, including black females.
Sociologists have, at least to date, failed to grasp what lies behind
this problem. This is largely because of their foolish contention that
there are no inherent differences between men and women. They continue
to believe, or pretend to believe, that gender differences are merely
“socially constructed.” I believe otherwise.
A man has as an inherent component of his being a need to be useful in
some form of occupation. He also needs to provide for his children if
he has any. The man who is able-bodied and does not work does not need
to be taught to feel worthless. He feels that way without instruction.
That is why a man is less likely to be driven to unemployment by drink
than to drink by unemployment. That feeling of worthlessness similarly
accompanies the man who does not care for his children. And it need not
be taught to him by others. He imagines what people should be saying to
him long before the first aspersions are cast.
For some forty years now the government has been providing incentives
for (predominantly minority) men not to work and for women not to keep
them around to care for their children. This idea that they are not
needed as workers or as fathers cuts against their nature as men. It is
a very dangerous pair of ideas with a very dangerous pair of
consequences – only one of which has been addressed in this short
essay.
The violence that is committed in an act of looting is not born of some
idea that a man is entitled to the things kept from him by historical
oppression. The violence against another man’s place of work is
born of his own sense of worthlessness for having not fulfilled his
responsibilities as an able-bodied man. This non-sense about oppression
is merely an afterthought – a form of rationalization in the
Freudian sense. If used often enough it becomes more than an individual
malady. It becomes a cultural malady as well.
But the personal violence exhibited by minority men against other
minority men is not so easily explained by economic oppression.
Enlightened minds can easily grasp the effect of illegitimacy - and I
speak here of illegitimate fathers because there are no illegitimate
children – on minorities raised in single parent homes. But I
believe the separation of fathers from their children explains, not
just the transmission, but the genesis of violence in minority
communities.
Sociologists write volumes on the scores of black men executed annually
in the criminal justice system. But they are silent regarding the
thousands of minorities killed at the hands of other minorities
annually. Such a thing would not be possible unless black males had
come to hold other black males in such low regard. And that is
something that, in turn, would not be possible unless they also held
themselves in very low regard.
So I am not at all impressed that, on Father’s Day, Barack Obama
chose to chastise black men for failing to take care of their children.
It takes little courage to state the obvious fact that their absence
will make things tougher on the current generation of children raised
in single parent homes.
I would be far more impressed were there any indication that Barack
Obama understood the impact the War on Poverty has had on the current
generation of fathers who have been displaced by government programs.
Of course, if he did understand that he might be tempted to admit that
he, too, is contributing to a very complex problem. And there is every
indication that, if elected president, he will continue to contribute
to the problem and force the rest of us to contribute our “fair
share” too.
Jeremiah Wright recently found himself embroiled in controversy for
suggesting that the government invented the AIDS virus to kill black
people. It would have been closer to the truth to say that was the
reason they have injected the virus of government aid into minority
communities.
