The following article, published recently in the LA Times, is by one of the most prolific and thought-provoking black conservative voices of our time, Shelby Steele, Stanford University research fellow and author of the new book Whit Guilt.  One of the best pieces on contemporary race in America I've read in a long time.

The benefits of marriage to children are well documented.  Kids in married-parent homes are at lower risk for living in poverty or suffering neglect and/or abuse and children growing up in single-parent homes; also, children in married-couple homes are more likely to do well in school as well as avoid risky behaviors, such as premarital sexual acitvity and drug and alcohol abuse.

The article shows a graph indicating how the U.S. marriage rate reached historical highs during the first 30 years of post-WWII period, before declining from the 1980s onward.  The divorce rate, the graph shows, peaked from 1979 to 1982 as a result of no-fault divorce laws, but has also declined (though to a lesser extent than the marriage rate) in recent decades.

(As an interesting side note, Janice Shaw Crouse of the Concerned Women for America's Beverly LaHaye Institute, penned a very relevant commentary piece in yesterday's Times called "Having a Popeye Moment."  Ms. Crouse cites the recently published National Center for Health Statistics data that 36.8 percent of all American children - 2 out of 5 -  are born out of wedlock, a trend lead primarily by single adult women who, given the ready availability of birth control, should know better.  Attached to the article is a political cartoon featuring an older married couple looking down at the crib of an unmarried couple with three small children.  The unmarried mother says "We have three kids but aren't married because we're afraid of commitment.")

The article goes on to list a series of marriage proposals developed by leading pro-marriage scholars, sponsored by pro-marriage and family organizations, many of which are receiving federal grant money to the tune of almost $120 million per year over five years to help their efforts at strengthening marriage.

Part II, out today, is entitled "Selling couples on marriage," and opens with a program called "Wedded Bliss," which will receive $1.3 million from the federal government in its efforts to help encourage black couples in low-income neighborhoods in Washington, DC and Prince George's County, MD to marry by helping them build intimacy and teaching communication skills and commitment.  Regarding the role of religion in fostering marriage, the article states:

Churches and religious groups have always played a crucial role in sanctioning marriages, encouraging them and providing couples counseling. Marriage is an essential part of the three Abrahamic faiths -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam. 
    
But modern culture continues to question the definition and validity of marriage. 
"Increasingly, it is not obvious to our young people, the singles, the twentysomethings, why they should go ahead and get married," said Michael Lawrence, associate pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in the District. "That case has to be made." 
    
Peter Murphy, family life director for the Archdiocese of Washington, agreed.  "The images of marriage are very negative," he said. "Couples think it's going to restrict their freedom. ... There is fear of commitment to something long term in a culture that is so short term and noncommittal." 
    
In response, some churches are teaching more often and more robustly about marriage and challenging teens and singles on their attitudes about marriage.  "We try to show that marriage is actually freeing and will bring life," Mr. Murphy said.  Churches also are creating small groups for newly married couples, led by older couples, and adapting counseling to meet challenges unique to second marriages. 
    
Marriage, Christians believe, is primarily a way to imitate the Triune God. Husbands are to love and lead their wives sacrificially, in the same way that Jesus Christ died to save His church. Wives, equal in value but with different roles, are to support their husbands.  "Marriage is a picture of the Gospel," Mr. Lawrence said. "Marriage was created by God to help us understand that he loves us in Jesus Christ."  Marriage is also a "crucible" in which each person's weakness and sinfulness is exposed, leading to repentance and change by God's power.  "God puts us with another person that is sometimes very different because it forces us to put aside selfishness and pride," said Pastor Paul Petry, who oversees family ministries at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. "If we fix our eyes on Christ and make it a goal to love that other person in a sacrificial way, there is something mysterious that happens, and that marriage becomes a wonderful thing." 
    
Judaism views marriage as "a relationship that is set apart from all others," said Rabbi Jack Moline of the Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria.  "It is uniquely intimate and exclusive, and as such, it is a reflection of the nature of the relationship between the Jewish people and God," he said...
    
Muslims also see marriage as a fundamental part of practicing their faith.   "Marriage is the most important aspect of a Muslim life," said Imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, one of the largest mosques in the area.  "The whole Koran talks a lot about marriage and the relationship between husband and wife and the family," he said. "There is so much emphasis in the Koran on teaching about this issue." 

The article goes on to describe what groups such as the Marriage Savers, as well as long-married couples are doing to mentor couples contemplating marriage and couples experiencing marital problems.

I'll blog on Part III of this series tomorrow.  In the meantime, what are your thoughts?

The media and academia are continuously obsessed with "gaps" and "disparities" in income. As one talk show host put it, "It makes no sense" that a corporate executive makes over $50 million a year.

Ninety-nine percent of all the things that happen in this world "make no sense" to any given individual. Do you understand how your automobile's transmission works? Could you repair it if something went wrong?

Do you understand how aspirin stops headaches? How to make yogurt?

Years ago, a famous essay pointed out that nobody knows how to make a simple lead pencil. That is, there is no single individual anywhere who knows how to grow the wood, mine the graphite, produce the rubber, and manufacture the paint.

Complex economic processes cause all these things to be done and coordinated by a wide variety of people, just in order to produce something as simple as a lead pencil. Multiply that by a hundred or a thousand when it comes to the complexity of producing a car or a computer.

If you cannot understand something as simple as making a lead pencil, why should you be surprised that you don't understand why someone is making a lot more money than somebody else?

Moreover, if this obsession with income disparities is to be something more than mere hand-wringing or gnashing of teeth, obviously the point is that somebody ought to "do something" to change what you don't understand.

Usually that means that the government -- politicians -- should impose policies based on your ignorance of what is going on. Can you imagine anything more dangerous than allowing politicians to decide how much money each of us can earn?

Of course, such political control of incomes is usually advocated only to deal with "the rich." But, when income taxes were imposed in the early 20th century, they applied only to "the rich" and they took a very small percentage of their income.

Once the floodgates are opened to this kind of political power, however, we have seen with the income taxes that they not only spread far beyond "the rich," they took a serious share of even middle class incomes.

Moreover, the income tax has spawned an intrusive bureaucracy, creating so much complexity and red tape that millions of ordinary citizens have to go get some accountant to fill out the forms for them -- and then sign under penalty of perjury that it was done right.

If you knew how to do it right, you wouldn't have to go to somebody else to have it done, would you?

Incidentally, it took a Constitutional amendment to enable the federal government to impose an income tax. The people who wrote the Constitution were wise enough to understand what a dangerous thing it would be to allow government to take money from people just because those people had it.

Unfortunately, "progressives" were foolish enough, or envious enough, to single out "the rich" for a process that would inevitably spread across society and become insatiable in its demands.

Today's "progressives" want to expand political control of incomes even more. They call it "social justice" but you could call it Rumpelstiltskin and it would still mean politicians deciding how much money each of us can be allowed to have.

It is also worth noting that the people who are said to be earning "obscene" amounts of money are usually corporate executives. There is no such outrage whipped up when Hollywood movie stars make some multiple of what most corporate executives make.

This is social or ideological bias added to envy and ignorance. It makes quite a witches' brew on which to base national policy.

Lofty talk about "social justice" or "fairness" boils down to greatly expanded powers for politicians, since those pretty words have no concrete definition. They are a blank check for creating disparities in power that dwarf disparities in income -- and are far more dangerous.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy.

In 1967, the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia struck down the last of the anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, and with this, the frontier of available marriage choices shifted out. The number of interracial marriages in the United States has been on the rise: 310,000 in 1970, 651,000 in 1980, and 1,161,000 in 1992 according to the U.S. Bureau of the census 1993. Interracial marriages represented 0.7% of all marriages in 1970 to 1.3% in 1980, to 2.2% in 1992. With the introduction of the mixed-race category, the 2000 census revealed interracial marriage to be somewhat more widespread, with 2,669,558 interracial marriages recorded, or 4.9% of all marriages (census 2000 PHC-T-19). (Here, marriages between two mixed-race persons, or where they are the same race but one is Hispanic and the other not, are not counted as interracial.)

Black & White

Although mixed-race partnering has increased, the United States still shows huge disparities between African American male and African American female endogamy statistics. The 1990 census reports that 17.6% of African American marriages occur with White Americans. Yet African American men are 2.5 times more likely to be married to white women than African American women to white men. In the 2000 census, 239,477 African American male to white female and 95,831 white male to African American female marriages were recorded, again showing the 2.5-1 ratio. Despite this, slightly more white men are married than white women.

Asian & Black

With African Americans and Asian Americans, the ratios are even further imbalanced, with +598% percent more Asian female/Black male couples than Asian male/Black female couples according to the 2000 US Census for the six largest Asian American ethnic groups, but the absolute numbers of Asian American women are +51% percent more for Asian American women as opposed to Asian American men among the six largest Asian ethnic groups. Asian Americans of the 1.5 generation and of the five largest Asian American ethnic groups had Black male/Asian female marriages +222% more than Asian male/Black Female relationships. Even though the disparity between Blacks and Asian interracial marriages by gender is high according to the 2000 US Census, the total numbers of Asian/Black interracial marriages are low, numbering only 2.2% percent for Asian male marriages and 10.2% percent of Asian female marriages.

"The Marriage Squeeze"

A new term has arisen recently to describe the social phenomenon of the so-called "marriage squeeze" for African American females.  The marriage squeeze refers to the belief that the most eligible and desirable African American men are marrying non-African American women, leaving those African American women who wish to marry African American men with fewer partnering options. According to Newsweek, 43% of black women between the ages of 30-34 have never been married.  Explanation of this phenomenon is three-fold.

In part it may be due to relatively fewer European American men statistically being willing to marry African American women as the result of the lingering effects of social ostracism which past white American men, who have historically pursued relationships with African American women, were heavily subjected to -- although today one in five white Americans would seriously consider marrying across the color line nonetheless. 

In part it may also be the result of a desire among African American women to marry an African American man due to concepts such as "racial loyalty", "black solidarity" and the internalized stereotypical belief that non-African American men wouldn't find them attractive.

Lastly, there is a desire among educated women of all races to "marry up", although rising income for women has lessened this factor.

There is a corollary "squeeze" for Asian American females who may view marrying White American men.

If anyone out there additional information and/or statistics on this subject, please feel free to share it with me.

On "The View" Wednesday, O'Donnell said Trump's news conference with Miss USA Tara Conner had annoyed her "on a multitude of levels." Trump decided to give Conner a second chance after she was accused of underage drinking and using drugs.

"Left the first wife, had an affair, left the second wife, had an affair. Had kids both times, but he's the moral compass for 20-year-olds in America," the comedian and actress said to roars of audience laughter. "Donald, sit and spin, my friend."

In responding to O'Donnell's personal slight, Trump has come out guns blazing!

"Well Rosie is a loser. Rosie’s been a loser for a long time. Her magazine failed. She got sued. She folded up like a tent. It was too bad.

"Everything about Rosie, and I watch her — and actually somebody sent me a clip of what she said — Rosie is somebody out of control who really just doesn’t have it. And she ought to be careful cause I’ll send one of my friends to pick up her girlfriend, and I think it would be very easy.

"Rosie’s first show had very poor ratings, and at the end she was doing very badly because the public got tired of her, and Rosie is somebody you get tired of.

"But her show did very poorly. Her magazine, I think it was called Rosie, was a total failure. Rosie is a failure.

"Ultimately she will be a loser and you watch. Watch what happens to 'The View.' I will bet the ratings very shortly will start going down. People can’t stand watching her. She’s both unattractive inside and out. She’s got some big problems.

"Well you know what, I’m worth $5 billion plus — by a lot. And Rosie said Trump went bankrupt. I never went bankrupt. She’ll say anything that comes to her unattractive mouth. She said I went bankrupt. I’m worth much more than $5 million.

"She said lots of things. She said the Miss USA pageant was the small sister to Miss America. Miss America was thrown off the air. It’s on cable. It’s on a small cable network.  And the Miss USA is getting great ratings and most importantly, it’s on network television. It’s on NBC.

"So she says things that come to her mouth. She’s not smart. She’s crude. She’s ignorant, and to be honest, I look forward to suing Rosie.

"I’m going to sue her and I look forward to it. She’s really very dangerous for the show. Now the people on the show don’t like her, the people that watch don’t like her and let’s see what happens.

"She’ll find out. She’ll find out. Rosie will find out what we’re suing her for. She knows what we’re suing her for. It’s something I look very forward to. ...

"In the case of Tara I wanted to give her a second chance and I thought it was important and somebody like Rosie doesn’t take it seriously because Rosie doesn’t have sensibility.

"Well look, Rosie is a very unattractive woman. I’m saying something. I’m not a politician so I’m not running for office so I can say it. I’m mean, Rosie is a very unattractive woman but as unattractive as she is on the outside, she’s even worse on the inside, and she’s very lucky to have a nice girlfriend.

"I think you better hold onto your girlfriend Rosie because if you lose her, you’ll never be able to get another one."

Right on, Donald!

Now, some (such as FNC's Bill O'Reilly) might say, "Well, Trump shouldn't have stooped to Rosie O'Donnell's level.  He should've taken the high road," yadda, yadda, yadda.  I disagree.  It's impossible to effectively deal with guttersnipes like O'Donnell by "taking the high road."  Sometimes, you gotta get in the gutter with those who try to bring you down and beat them at their own game, so that next time they know not to screw with you again.  I don't believe in responding in personal attacks by taking the moral high ground (which, I admit, may be my own character flaw).  Yreat garbage like garbage.  In my view, Donald Trump did the right thing.

I've been waiting for someone to put that obnoxious, loudmouth blowhard actress/comedian in her place.  Just watching her onscreen is worse than, as Bernie Goldberg has said, being a political prisoner in Uganda.  Her constant insults of President Bush, as well as Republicans and conservatives in general; her ignorant and horrifically ill-informed far-left political pontificating on Iraq and other topics of the day (she couldn't even pronounce Abu Ghraib correctly, nor would she go on Sean Hannity's radio show last year to back up anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war tirade); and her shoving her lesbian relationship down everyone's throats have at times made me want to put my foot through the TV screen. 

Hurray for The Donald for having the testicular fortitude to step up and give a female far-left gasbag a long-overdue and well-deserved verbal butt-whipping.

Wagoner is with his child part of the time, and part of the time he's not. He and McDaniel share child-raising duties but there's no formal agreement, and Wagoner pays no child support.

In many ways, this is a new norm. Single black mothers almost outnumber black two-parent families, and absentee black fathers have become a staple of conversations, sermons and stand-up comics. Some 48 percent of all black children live without their fathers in the home, nearly double the rate of any other ethnic group in the United States. On his block, Tim Wagoner knows more guys his age who have been shot than who are married with kids.

Many single women make it work. But according to the census, children in mother-only families, regardless of race, are more likely to live in poverty, be arrested as juveniles or have children in their teenage years -- all things that lead to a lifetime of difficulty...

Black Families Unraveling

"Guys are doing what they learned at home," says Tony Dugger, an activist who works on fatherhood issues with the North Capitol Collaborative, a District nonprofit. "They care about their kids emotionally, but they don't see it as odd that they don't live with them. You can't tell them they're doing something wrong because their life experience tells them it's completely normal."

The fact that fatherless, single-parent black families are "the norm" in large sections of black America is far from sad: It is cause for outrage.  Scholars Stephen and Abigail Thernstrom have argued that the academic skills gap between black school children and their white and Asian counterparts should be the premier civil rights issue of our time.  As serious as the academic underperformance of black children is, I would argue now that before that problem can be effectively dealt with, we must, must, must deal with the three-generations epidemic of black fatherlessness. 

We will not be able to solve the problem of black academic underperformance (an issue I care very deeply about) until we tackle the more important crisis from which that and other symptoms of societal malaise (e.g. poverty, juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, crime and teen pregnancy) afflicting the black family result. 

FATHERLESSNESS.

I respect and admire the effort by the nonprofit organizations mentioned in the article who are trying to tackle the crisis of black fatherlessness.  However, I firmly believe that change comes from within.  I agree with conservative black minister and activist the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, who says that black America suffers from a crisis of moral character.  Linguist, scholar and cultural critic John McWhorter has written extensively on black America's moral and cultural decline since the mid-1960s, and what needs to be done to reverse it. 

Basically, we know what the problems are.  We know why the problems exist.  It's just that too many of us (i.e. black folks) are too afraid to own up the part that we have played in our own cultural, spiritual and moral downfall.  Furthermore, we know what we need to do to get our collective house in order.  The time for making excuses and blaming others (read: "Whitey") for our own mess is over.  The sooner we get to cleaning up our own mess - on our own - the sooner we will be on the road to a spiritual, moral and cultural recovery that is sorely needed.

The lives of future generations depend on it.

HO', HO', HO': DOLLS TO MAKE YOU CRY
by Kirsten Powers
December 14, 2006 -- WHEN did the doll section turn into a porn shop?

Just feet from the Etch-A-Sketches and paint-by-numbers were dolls dressed in garter belts, bustiers, fishnet stockings and high heels. "Ella" was in a teddy; "Justine" in an evening gown with her breasts overflowing. Cleavage and lingerie were the order of the day.

As small children filed by, I felt myself panicking, wanting to cover their eyes or steer them away, as if they were going to be exposed to something they weren't meant to see. Never mind that they were the target audience for these hyper-sexualized dolls. I was, after all, in a toy store.

A 4-year-old girl was mesmerized by one of the dolls with the flowing cleavage. Next to her was another doll wearing just a black bra and panties, set on a mini sofa, with legs splayed. The girl's father mindlessly pulled her away, seemingly unconcerned.

A few feet down was the worst of the dolls - with baby faces, but the bodies of grown women. The cherubic faces, with painted lips and eyes, sat incongruously atop stick-figure bodies - interrupted only by the requisite bustiness - clad in revealing evening gowns and other adult outfits. None were named JonBenet, but the point was clear: What's sexy is a child made up to look like a woman. Bizarrely, parents seem to by buying it.

What's next? Dominatrix Barbie?

My lawyer/mom friend helped me cross-examine a store clerk, who claimed that "it is in the eye of the beholder" whether these dolls are too sexualized for children - then led us to an installation of dolls set in glass boxes high up (but not too high for a child to see). Most looked like hookers.

These, the clerk proudly explained, were done by a famous designer, and created for adults, not children. So why were they on sale in a doll section for young girls in a toy store? She wasn't sure.

The now-famous Bratz dolls - which imitate celebutante Paris Hilton, actress Lindsay Lohan and their pop-tart cohorts - seem to have just been the warm-up act. What an act they are: Dressed for a night of clubbing in hip hugger jeans and tight tank tops, these dolls reinforce the message of MTV and the cottage industry of celebrity magazines that being female means baring it all, sexing it up and being really, really tacky.

Feminists used to complain that Barbie sold girls an unrealistic body image. Modern dolls make Barbie look like what she was meant to be: child's play. There were no bustiers and garters for Barbie when I was growing up, nor did she sell a particular lifestyle. She could be a stay-at-home mom or a working woman, depending on who was dressing her.

The new dolls have gone beyond selling a body image and now sell a materialistic, hyper-sexualized, party lifestyle. Where Barbie had no real-life counterpart, the newer dolls are clear rip-offs and reinforcements of what's already being sold 24/7 to girls through movies, reality TV, music performers, MTV and glossy magazines:

Be like Spears - the fading pop star who made out with Madonna on national TV and has been photographed in the last few weeks drunk, falling out of her dress and wearing no underwear.

Be like Lohan - actress and party girl, who at 20 attends AA meetings.

Be like the girls in the MTV videos, nameless bodies gyrating to the tune of another. Dress like a hooker, just because. (Needless to say, there will be no "washed up" Bratz girl doll - after she parties so hard she loses her career and respect of the public or ends up in rehab.)

And by all means, make sure you send these messages to girls as young as possible by buying them these dolls. Why wait for MTV or US magazine to tell them what females should be like when you can corrupt their views when they are 3 or 4 years old? Why wait until marketers start trying to sell them their first thong at age seven (you can get a "Hello Kitty" one if you like). You can start before they can even speak.

Rise in Out-of-Wedlock Births Is Bad News for America’s Kids
By Jeffery M. Leving and Glenn Sacks

The rates of the four major youth pathologies--teen pregnancy, teen drug abuse, school dropouts and juvenile crime--are tightly correlated with fatherlessness, often more so than with any other socioeconomic factor, including income and race. The research is clear that children need fathers, not simply as breadwinners, but also for the valuable parenting--and fathering--they provide.

For example, a long-term study of teen pregnancy rates was conducted in the United States and in New Zealand and published in the journal Child Development. The study concluded that a father’s absence greatly increases the risk of teen pregnancy. The researchers found that it mattered little whether the child was rich or poor, black or white, born to a teen mother or an adult mother, or raised by parents with functional or dysfunctional marriages. What mattered was dad.

There are various popular interpretations of the out-of-wedlock trend. One is to blame men who, we are told, routinely impregnate naïve, hapless women and then abandon them. However, given modern women's birth control and reproductive options, when women have children outside of marriage, it’s usually because they want to.

Nevertheless, our society often goes to great lengths to see unwed mothers as victims. The highly-publicized Fadia Ward case provides a good example. Ward founded www.sorrya**babydaddies.com to publicly shame “deadbeat dads” and “take their manhood away." She has appeared on ABC News Now, Black Entertainment Television, BBC Radio, Good Day Philadelphia, and many others, and has been portrayed as a heroine in numerous newspaper articles. Few have challenged her assertion that she bears no responsibility for her situation, even though she had four children by four different men by the age of 27.

Another explanation for the rise in single motherhood is that it’s a symbol of women's increasing independence and empowerment. According to this view, it’s hard to find a good man, so women are justified in having kids on their own, and we should be happy that yesterday’s unfair stigma against out-of-wedlock births is gone.

Two of the leading proponents of this view are Rosanna Hertz, Ph.D., author of the new book Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice: How Women Are Choosing Parenthood Without Marriage and Creating the New American Family, and Peggy Drexler, Ph.D., who last year released Raising Boys Without Men: How Maverick Moms Are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men.

Drexler portrays father-absent homes—particularly “single mother by choice” homes—as the best environments for raising boys. Hertz concludes that “intimacy between husbands and wives [is] obsolete as the critical familial bond." For her, fathers aren’t necessary—in fact, "what men offer today is obsolete."

Our children would beg to differ. Studies of children of divorce confirm their powerful desire to retain strong connections to their fathers. For example, an Arizona State University study of college-age children of divorce found that the overwhelming majority believed that after a divorce "living equal amounts of time with each parent is the best arrangement for children."

Famed athlete Bo Jackson provided a heart-wrenching depiction of a child’s father hunger in his autobiography, the first chapter of which is devoted to the father he didn’t have. Jackson explained that as a child, when he wanted something, “I could beat on other kids and steal…[but] I couldn't steal a father. I couldn't steal a father's hug when I needed one."

There are some unwed mothers who really are victims. As a society we're very aware of the ways some men misuse their power, particularly in the family. Now, however, it’s time to take a hard look at the ways some women misuse their power. Needlessly creating fatherless babies is one of them.