Blacks in America face a complex system problem where causes and effects have merged into self-reinforcing barriers, but sometimes we can see through the fog. Here's a letter to the New York times in regard to Bill Cosby's recent initiatives on what is ailing black American family.
To the Editor:
It is surprising to me that in the discussion of black fathers and children, there is no reference to the disappearance of decent working-class jobs in America.
As a teenager in the early 70s, I would often visit friends in Compton, Calif. At that time, the black fathers in Compton worked in factory jobs — Bethlehem Steel or Goodrich Tires. Compton was a black suburban town with two-parent families, nice lawns and fathers fixing their cars on the weekend.
Now, the factory jobs are gone, and Compton is drug-infested. It may be useful to say “get a good education and there’s an engineering job waiting for you in Silicon Valley,” but that socio-intellectual distance is enormous. To address the problems of the inner city, some kind of viable economic structure needs to exist to help fathers act like fathers.
Eric Lindemann
Boulder, Colo., Oct. 16, 2007
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