It's time to rethink the plight of black America, said Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times. 'œA slew of new research,' including a major report by the National Urban League, paints a bleak picture of the state of the nation's blacks—especially young men. The true jobless rate of black men in their 20s who have no high school diploma is 72 percent, and there are currently about 190,000 more black men in prison than in college. The typical African-American family has assets of just $6,166, or less than 10 percent of its white counterpart. What's particularly disturbing about these statistics is that the usual explanations of poverty and prejudice just doesn't wash anymore. Nonwhite immigrants are climbing the economic ladder. The economic boom of the '90s added millions of jobs. So why is black America 'œsuch a mess'?
The answer isn't 'œstructural,' said Orlando Patterson in The New York Times. It's 'œcultural,' and it starts with the disastrous, self-inflicted breakdown of the black family. Today, a black child is less likely to be raised in a two-parent home than a black slave was in the 1850s. Much of the blame lies with the 'œcool-pose culture' of the urban hip-hop gangsta world. Its seductive emphasis on violence, drugs, material objects, and promiscuity means that thousands of young black men are abandoning maturity for the dead-end life of the streets. By the time these dissolute youths finally grow up, said Joy Jones in The Washington Post, black women have given up on them. They've already gotten educations and jobs, and won't tie themselves to men with criminal records, illegitimate children, and few prospects. No wonder the black family is endangered. As one 12-year-old black boy told me, 'œMarriage is for white people.'
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