The alliance of necessity between social liberals and racial justice advocates creates this problem. There is not anything inherent about “people of color should be treated equally” that also requires buying into “we should disrupt the nuclear family.” That’s just how the political alliances have worked out. The latter ideology in practice works to undercut the former ideology. The contribution to racial inequality is stark: the poverty rate for Black, Latino, and Asian children in two parent households is 1/4 to 1/2 the poverty rate for white children in single mother households.
As a south Asian person, I find the aggressive push to move Asian Americans to the left quite troubling. The intense social norms in south and East Asian culture in favor of two parent households is an incredible advantage we should not give up lightly. But it’s almost taboo in socially progressive circles to say that family structure matters (even though this is obvious to Asians).
Doesn't seem that extreme to me. Even saying that divorce should be avoided at all costs and a two parent household is vastly superior to a single parent one is enough to get labeled as a conservative by many.
Try saying that you believe that two-parent households are better for a kid that single-parent households in the presence of anyone who considers themselves social justice oriented or left-wing.
I live in the very liberal Bay Area, and I have indeed said that repeatedly, and rarely do I get pushback. The biggest question is "do those parents have to be a hetero couple?" to which I reply "nope, but unless the single parent has amazing cash means or a large extended family to support them, then generally regardless of much else, 2 is better than 1".
I've never otherwise had a difficult time supporting that position in front of young SJWs at all.
I usually agree with leftist views and I feel like having both parents is good for the kid. Maybe only fringe leftists believe otherwise. Or maybe it's lacking context, for example the discussion might be about abusive partners, or single people who don't want to marry but want to adopt a kid.
> single people who don't want to marry but want to adopt a kid
ie, a single parent.
BTW, I'm kind of on the left as well, in some ways (eg, I think income inequality and poverty is a huge problem). I just can't stand the current leftist orthodoxy, which is belligerently anti-fact if they don't like where the facts lead (two-parent households being a great example).
I guess I'm a Laschian leftist, or Laschian conservative, depending on your view of Lasch.
The media is Woke twitter, or at least a large part of it.
And if you don't believe that the media doesn't have any influence on people, particularly Biden's base, try reading Chomsky's _Manufacturing Consent_, or even Walter Lippman, if you want to read someone who thinks this influence is a positive thing.
No, but it includes the vast majority of the 20-30 year old college grads that comprise the rank and file of Biden’s staff. And those people are influential.
Clearly “choice” is a sliding scale here that’s based on prevailing social norms. The US has double percentage of single parent, households compared to Germany, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/12/u-s-childre..., almost five times the rate compared to India, and almost eight times the rate of China.
It’s simple. A disproportionate share of racists and nativists are in the conservative wing, and more to the point conservatives are ideologically resistant to potentially aggressive government interventions to eliminate discrimination. So racial minorities are forced to ally with white social liberals. But that alliance doesn’t come for free. Social liberals insist on driving the bus on non-civil rights social issues, such as norms around marriage, child bearing, and premarital sex. (To this day, Black Democrats are far more likely to call premarital sex immoral compared to white Democrats. On that and similar issues they’re actually as conservative as Republicans. But that aspect of the culture is muted as a result of the alliance with disproportionately white social liberals over civil rights issues.)
We've been through this argument, recently, and I'm a little disappointed that you're framing this observation as if that discussion hadn't occurred already.
The implication of your comment is that the alternative to "the nuclear family" is "single-parent families". But the other alternative to nuclear families is "extended families", which you yourself have written about on HN numerous times.
There is an important racial justice issue involving nuclear vs. extended families; to wit: high-status municipalities (and their school systems) discriminate against them, both by mandating single-family housing and by working to exclude students who reside with extended family care networks. That's a thing we're grappling with in Oak Park, where I live just outside of Chicago, right now. It's not random; it's in fact a lot more legitimate than other BLM grievances (against, for instance, capitalism writ large).
I recall that argument, I just don’t read the platform page as charitably as you do. Even in an extended family network, the two parent unit is the nucleus. Particularly in view of the conspicuous absence of the word “father,” I read the platform point as seeking to further normalize the situation where kids are raised in households that lack fathers but includes other relatives (usually grandmothers and aunts).
I agree with you about the need to remove barriers to multi-generational households that include other relatives in addition to two parents. I just don’t read the platform that as being directed to that.
Thanks. But, see, now it's you reading tea leaves. The original language read:
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another , especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable. (em mine)
It's explicit about extended families.
I think we should be able to quickly agree that there are two things going on here:
First, the part you're responding to: Black culture contends with a great deal of blame and social disapproval regarding single mothers and absence of fatherhood (something Thomas Sowell talks a lot about).
Second, like many cultures around the world, including several in Europe, Black culture relies on multigenerational extended family networks for child care. Those family networks were, as I'm certain from previous discussions you agree, explicitly targeted by housing segregationists to keep Black families out of suburban enclaves and to keep Black students out of the best-performing schools.
There's apparently this whole sort of internal cultural debate about Black advancement --- I'm a white dude and talking out of my ass here, but, like, I read some stuff --- between what you might call the Booker T. Washington school, which says Black advancement has to come from Black people improving their own circumstances and correcting the problems that are holding them back, and the W.E.B. DuBois school, which says that the first order of business is to secure formal, recognized equality with white people. It strikes me that you can read Sowell vs. BLM in that light.
They might both be right, with regards to families! Certainly, Oak Park needs to stop rigging systems to keep extended Black families from taking root here. And it's hard to deny that children are better off raised by more than one loving stable caregiver, though we might go back and forth about how important it is that the other stable caregiver be a father, vs. for instance a same-sex partner or a committed grandparent --- I had friends growing up raised by grandparents and those grandparents were probably a lot more conscientious than a lot of our parents.
At any rate, my main argument here is that this "nuclear family" stuff is a weird bone to pick with BLM. They're an easy target! They believe that we can beat back racism without reforming all of capitalism! Pick that fight, not the one that actually does implicate 75 years of racist housing policies that created the impoverished neighborhoods that have trapped and killed so many Black people.
The platform statement mentions mothers and parents, but not fathers. I don't think it's tea-leaf reading to figure out what it's talking about.
> There's apparently this whole sort of internal cultural debate about Black advancement --- I'm a white dude and talking out of my ass here, but, like, I read some stuff --- between what you might call the Booker T. Washington school, which says Black advancement has to come from Black people improving their own circumstances and correcting the problems that are holding them back, and the W.E.B. DuBois school, which says that the first order of business is to secure formal, recognized equality with white people. It strikes me that you can read Sowell vs. BLM in that light.
My point is the internal debate is filtered through a media and academic framework controlled by white social progressives that elevate one view and suppress the other based on their ideology. Don Lemon faced intense criticism when airing the Booker T. Washington view, because Bill O'Reilly said the same thing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2013/07/29/don.... It's pretty hard to get tenure at an American university doing work based on the Booker T. Washington view. But the W.E.B. DuBois view gets amplified through those same outlets. That's not because the Booker T. Washington view isn't extremely common. It's because the alliance between Black people and white social liberals suppresses the strong social conservatism in the Black community, as a matter of political necessity.
Now, I understand why the alliance exists. But as applied to Asians, I think the Booker T. Washington view is obviously correct and the W.E.B. DuBois view would be disastrous. I worry that the increasing affiliation of Asians with the left will suppress the very necessary and important social conservatism that exists in the Asian community.
I think it's quite a rhetorical lift to try to discredit W.E.B. DuBois given how the 20th century turned out, which is what you're inadvertently doing when you suggest DuBois approach wouldn't work applied to Asians. The circumstances of Asian Americans and Black people aren't directly comparable.
We probably don't disagree that much! The bullshit I am on, generally, is that left liberals underestimate just how conservative Black people are, and instrumentalize them in the service of their own policy agendas. It's not hard to find Black advocates of the Booker T school; I think you provided one a week ago!
I think it's important to recognize the validity of both trains of thought.
By all means, take potshots at trust-fund leftists. They richly deserve it! But I'm going to call you out when you pick bad targets, as you did here. There's stuff to criticize even in the specific BLM messaging about families (BLM is a deeply imperfect advocate), but to suggest as you did that "nuclear family" bias is a baffling leftward shift is beyond the pale. It's square in the middle of real, practical problems.
How else should one interpret this sentence other than, "I've already corrected you on this, so you should know better"?
> We've been through this argument, recently, and I'm a little disappointed that you're framing this observation as if that discussion hadn't occurred already.
As a south Asian person, I find the aggressive push to move Asian Americans to the left quite troubling. The intense social norms in south and East Asian culture in favor of two parent households is an incredible advantage we should not give up lightly. But it’s almost taboo in socially progressive circles to say that family structure matters (even though this is obvious to Asians).