Part 8
Almost simultaneously with the historic advances in civil rights achieved from 1964 to 1968, LBJ, emboldened by his landslide election victory over conservative Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, pushed Congress, both Houses of which were now controlled by Democrats with large majorities, to enact his massive Great Society expansion of Federal support for welfare programs. Tragically, these programs had unintended consequences for black families and black communities because they dampened economic incentives to marry and to hold a job and created debilitating dependencies on government support.
From 1890 until the explosion of the Great Society programs, the rate of marriage among black women in America was close to or higher than the rate of marriage for white women, and in 1964, fewer than 25% of black children were born out of wedlock. Black families generally were strong support units and provided the foundation of supportive social networks in black communities, notwithstanding the deprivations of racism in our country and the denial of equal civil rights. Similarly, black-owned businesses and other small local businesses thrived in many black communities, both in cities and in less urban areas, and often did so despite the repugnant restrictions of entrenched segregation.
But all of that rapidly changed for the worse after the Great Society welfare expansion rolled out. The welfare programs that received huge Federal expenditures, including Food Stamp benefits and State-administered Aid to Families with Dependent Children, targeted poor families, especially poor blacks, and in key respects they actively discouraged marriage, two-parent families, and the holding of a job—for example, by providing benefits to a woman with dependent children only so long as there was no father in the household and by cutting or eliminating benefits altogether if either parent was employed, even in a minimum-wage job.
Under the perverse incentives of these programs, the rate of out-of-wedlock births for black children shot up: By the 1990s, more than 70% of black children in America were born out of wedlock, and that alarmingly high level has remained fairly constant since, and today, more than 55% of all black children in our Nation are living without a father at home. The connection between the Great Society welfare expansion and the destruction of the two-parent black family is well documented.
For many who start out life in families whose income levels are low, there are three keys to avoiding sliding into the debilitating depths of poverty: finish high school, hold a job (any job), and stay married. Government programs that discourage marriage and work only worsen the level of persistent poverty, and that’s a big part of why our Nation has, unfortunately, failed to win the “War on Poverty” that LBJ launched with his Great Society policies.
With the collapse of strong two-parent families and with government incentives against working, black communities in many areas of our Nation have deteriorated. Businesses have gone under, crime has spiked, and drug use and gang activity have risen. Lots of small businesses that had served predominantly black communities were also put out of business by the burning and destruction of the urban riots that inflamed America’s inner cities in the summers of 1967 and 1968—destruction that had a long-lasting effect.
Many of these communities remain unsafe for families, for children, for the elderly, for carrying on the ordinary and necessary functions of life in a civil society. In recent years, faced with the dogged challenge of these unacceptable conditions, many local leaders in America’s cities have failed to provide even the most basic and effective levels of community policing to protect life and property for the citizens whose lives are held down, threatened, and victimized by crime and insecurity.
And, of course, there is an extra-heavy personal burden on the children of broken families and broken communities: They have a harder time succeeding from a young age at school, gaining admission to the most selective magnet or technical high schools, and ultimately rising as employees in the ranks of private companies or thriving as professionals or business owners with independent control over their own economic lives.
The perverse policy choices of LBJ’s Great Society and the deterioration and destruction of black families and black communities have seriously undermined the truly great advances achieved with the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act. Just as our Nation had approached the promised plateau of true equal civil rights for all Americans backed by the full and effective enforcement power of the Federal Government, the rug of opportunity was pulled out from under many of her most underprivileged citizens and most vulnerable communities. And the hardest impact fell on black Americans. Another sad and devastating part of our Nation’s history.