Black families

One aspect of the Superdome/Convention Center demographics that has received a lot less comment than the skin color is the gender of the people sheltering at those two locations. There were almost no men, other than the very old, among the throngs of people waiting for help at those shelters. There were women and children everywhere, but as Mary Mitchell asked in Sunday's Chicago Sun-Times, "Where were the babies' daddies"?

The destruction of the black family was a feature of American slavery for more than two centuries. It was inevitable that it would take a long time to undo all that damage to the structure of black family life. However, over the past four to five decades there has been regression, not progress, and the bonds of family life among black people have been weakening again.

Mitchell again

In July, veteran syndicated columnist William Raspberry pointed out that because of the decline of marriage and the absence of fathers, "for the first time since slavery, it is no longer possible to say with assurance that things are getting better."

"It isn't the incompetence of mothers that is at issue, but the absence of half of the adult support needed for families to be most effective," Raspberry said.

According to the latest U.S. Census, black women are a lot less likely to get married today than they were 50 years ago. In fact, the percentage of "never married" black women has doubled over that time period -- from 20.7 percent to 42.4 percent.

Daniel Moynihan identified this problem in 1964.

There are still, for example, important differences in family patterns surviving from the age of the great European migration to the United States, and these variations account for notable differences in the progress and assimilation of various ethnic and religious groups. A number of immigrant groups were characterized by unusually strong family bonds; these groups have characteristically progressed more rapidly than others.

But there is one truly great discontinuity in family structure in the United States at the present time: that between the white world in general and that of the Negro American.

Things have gotten worse since the 1960s. If we're going to make sweeping generalizations based on what we saw in New Orleans, I'd like it to be 'black families need strengthening'.