USA Africa Dialogue Series - Response to Kenneth Harrow

Ken,

Your response is typical of the liberal perspective.  Like it or not we need to be coupled.  Being coupled in the youth allows the female the help she needs to raise their young.  Being coupled in our old age gives assistance which would otherwise come from external systems.  

Last week I wrote an essay on the subject of the cost of not being coupled and it was specifically aimed at Black American men.  I brought up issues which I don't think are given much thought.  Insurance, social security payments and finally what happens to the "leftovers" which come from the deaths of young Black men at the hands of persons known (other young Black men).  

I invite you to read the essay and still respond in the same way.  I have a feeling that you've never considered some of the damage single parenthood has brought to Black American family life.  I fully intend to write another essay dealing with the consequences of having a single mother who is actively engaged in partner seeking activities while she is a mother.  Incidental and active sexual jealousy of a daughter and the inclusion of a daughter in the mother's circle of friends.  Presentation of relationship information which is too advanced and inappropriate for a young girl who SHOULD have her mind ordered to school, reputation, and the successful selection of a husband who will father her children.  

Liberals always think that anything is okay for the coloreds while choosing entirely different concepts for their own families.  

Here's the essay:

http://www.lavondastaples.com/2012/11/a-black-mans-scary-hypothetical-math.html

A Black Man's Scary (Hypothetical) Math: Dollars and Organs

If you take 5 million Black men who make between 30K and 150K per year. And say that at the time of their death they were either never married or divorced. Let's give each one an average social security benefit of 1,000 per month (averaging the lowest to the highest). Let's also say that the time of death is between 55 and 67 (which is very close to the actual figures) and their children are grown. Calculate how much per month WOULD HAVE BEEN available to their survivors had they been married. Calculate how much per month is put back into the system and used by other folks who live longer.

Without interest that's 5 billion dollars per month and 60 billion dollars per year. I selected 5 million Black American men as a rough 25 percent of the available population of the group. Since married men tend to live longer the married Black men, statistically and hypothetically speaking, would not be part of this group. I averaged the dollar amount over the two tax groups of 15 and 22 percent income tax. If you find something wrong with the number please correct me.

Sixty billion dollars put back into the system, never taken out of the system because you've assumed room temperature, and not benefitting a wife or your children.  Who gets that money? The people who live longest and draw social security longest. 1. White women 2. Black women 3. White men and 4. everybody else (as Black men have the lowest average life spans in the US). 

Do you think that sometimes we stay single out of selfishness? Being able to do what we want to do when we want to do it? If you think that's a pleasure then you also have to accept that every pleasure has a cost. Have you ever thought of the cost of perpetual dating? Holding two houses when you have been together for ten years? All of that has a cost. I'm sure of it.

If you're a single Black man and you have a job and you die by or around the time of retirement, all of the money you have paid into the system goes elsewhere. This is another reason against co-habitation without a marriage license.  You don't get survivor's benefit if you're not married. And why would anyone invest in something where there's no return? It sounds morbid and it might sound crazy but it's the truth. Ask someone who has lived through this and see if she or he would do it the same way all over again.

What about the numbers of young Black men who die due to homicide?  There's a cost and it isn't the money required to pay the funeral director.  It's actually not a cost, it's a gain.  I've read that there are thousands of murders of young Black men by young Black men. Where do all of those brand new internal organs go? Kidneys, lungs, livers, corneas and hearts. Who benefits when a healthy young man dies? Someone with health insurance and a need. What would happen to the organ donor system if young Black men stopped killing each other? Think about it. Some numbers say five thousand a year and some say as high as ten thousand a year. All in possession of some barely used and perfectly workable human material.

Although I don't have any documentation to support my next statement I'm willing to bet on the actuality being truth.  The young and single who die and the older, employed, unmarried are both groups which leave very little, if any, life insurance to their children.  I'm also willing to bet that a preponderance of these men leave children behind.  What do they leave their children?  And are they really worth more when they are dead, to the American system, than when they were living simply because they lived dangerous lives and therefore supply the most necessary facet of transplants?  Simply because they leave here without a designated and legal beneficiary of all they have paid into the system?  I don't know.  But I'm going to start asking these questions and finding the answers for myself.  I really want to know.  Here are the first questions I would like to ask of you.  I intend to find the real answers for myself.  I just have to know the truth. 

1. Do you think Black and single men buy life insurance at a higher rate than Black and single women?

2. Do you think Black and single men save at the same rate or at a higher rate than Black and single women?

3. Do you think Black and single men experience the same rates of home ownership as Black and single women?

4. Do you think the heirs of Black and single men receive a higher rate of wealth inheritance than heirs of Black and single women?

On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 11:34 PM, <shina73_1999@yahoo.com> wrote:

Wao!

This one speaks powerfully to me as a father. Go Staples! The Lord be with you!


Adeshina Afolayan

Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN

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From: "La Vonda R. Staples" <lrstaples@gmail.com>

Sender: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2012 22:36:10 -0600

To: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

ReplyTo: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Is Marriage for White People?

Dr. Falola,

Thank you for this.  This subject is a recurring theme in my writing.  I feel as if there's some kind of ban on the conversation and "our" people favour stories over statistics and facts.  

I take exception with the statement regarding single parent families doing well with resources.  I recently saw a PBS documentary which stated, factually and without equivocation, that single Black mothers of the highest class (education and economics) experienced more problems during pregnancy than White women of the lowest class.  One of the factors was that the Black mother was more likely to be single and pregnant.  

I believe the show featured a Black woman lawyer and others of the higher-income professional fields.  

I always have to include the personal as I don't hold myself up to anyone's example.  At this point in my life I have a 14 year old child.  I am 46.  We are spending this week preparing ourselves for my re-introduction to a professional, full time career.  No more adjunct work and no more part time commissioned selling.  I am going to join the numbers of mothers who see their child for an hour in the morning and three hours (when possible) in the evening.  I am spending ninety days in training and if all goes well I will be managing a counter (just like managing a small store) in one of the three major luxury retailers common to America (outside of America there are stores such as Harrod's in England).  

My daughter has her mother until Monday.  Making her dinners.  Helping her with her homework.  In general, I order Sarah's life.  More is needed from both of us.  And mind you, this is a child who has never even caught a bus alone and that was the school bus.  Not public transportation.  With my second husband, when I was married, I helped to raise two sons, two step sons, and two grown daughters.  I may have worked full time for about a year ongoing.  It was just not a good financial bet as my ex husband has always held occupations which required at least sixty hours of week work.  If I had been on a career path at that time the boys would have gotten into far more trouble than they actually managed to become entangled.  

I think one of our problems is that "our" men don't want to do the job of husband and provider.  I think one of our problems is that "our" women don't want to be the one who keeps the campfire burning.  I think the biggest problem is that both of these occupations has either not been modeled or castigated in American media.  In example, "just" a house wife or that the man deserves something more than the adoration of his wife and his children.  And sadly, I think that the notion of having a house full of children by different men or a neighborhood of children by different women is no longer a taboo.  

My new job does not require a college degree but I have seen that all of the star performers hold at least one degree.  All of the managers have degrees in marketing, psychology and/or an MBA.  Suffice it to say that I don't think that what I'm doing, starting a "new" career at nearly fifty is something anyone can do.  But what did I get in return for my time? The boys seem to be finding their way (only one is crying to get back into the nest) and I have a child who has earned her way into math and science classes with juniors and seniors.  Sarah Vaughn Staples is a freshman in high school.  Because her father was there and mind you, her father is not Ward Cleaver, but he has let it be known throughout the land that if you have a problem with Sarah you have a problem with him (and our four sons and his step son from a previous marriage).  This is what every girl should have.  There's a way you will and will not treat or speak to Lady Sarah Staples.  That's that.  That's what happens when a girl has the men in her life on her side and her first experience with men is not a bunch of wolves whispering things which only bring shame and derision.  

I said all of that for a reason.  The stereotype of the bitter Black Bee has some truth in it.  How would you react to the world if all you had was on the job training and no daddy or brothers to let you know and others know that you mattered?  

What I am saying may be seen as a nod to patriarchy.  Sometimes I think feminism argues with itself against itself.  There are things, my granma ALWAYS said, that "ain't right but they ain't wrong either."  The more we're willing to accept?  The more we're willing to carry, alone, all by ourselves.  I have never thought a child was the property of one person.  And that brings me to the end of my thoughts and the beginning of yet another question.  Why do we think it's okay?  Why do we think that it's acceptable?  Is it really the experience of close quarters slavery?  Is it really Jim Crow?  Is it really the falling action of Vietnam?  I don't know.  You'll tell me.  

Please wish Sarah and I good luck and bon chance on this new phase of our lives.  We are both a little scared.  New locks have been installed.  Cell phones have been purchased.  And clocks have been synchronized.  At nearly fifty I am beginning my "real" life.  One other thing about Sarah that's a payoff for me?  I have a child who still comes to lay in bed with me, she puts my arms around her.  We lay there, saying nothing, satisfied with the sound of each others' breath.  We have been engaged in these embraces since the moment I brought her home.  I've had chances to leave and I have left her with her with her father to go to the east coast and work.  I was starved for the touch of my child.  I guess I'm a failure because I haven't ever felt that money could make it alright.  

La Vonda R. Staples

On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Obama Needs a Family Plan By Jonah Goldberg November 21, 2012 12:00 A.M. NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE          www.nationalreview.com           PRINT President Obama has several stated ambitions for his presidency. He wants it to be "transformative." He wants to unite Americans of all parties. He wants to build an economy from the middle class out (whatever that means), and he wants to help what you might call the domestic refugees of America's economic transformation. Given the principled disagreements dividing Left and Right in America, it's hard to see how he can accomplish these goals when it comes to conventional economic policy. But there is one area where Obama could be transformative and bipartisan while helping both the middle class and the poor. He could show some leadership on the state of the black family, and the American family in general. The thought came to me when a friend pointed me to a column by the Washington Post's Courtland Milloy about how blacks are fleeing baseball at an alarming rate. Today, only 8 percent of the baseball players are black. In 1959, black participation was more than twice as high at 17 percent. In 1975, the high-water mark, the rate was 27 percent. The reasons for the decline are many and controversial, but one cited by Milloy is that baseball is a game taught by fathers, while basketball and football are more often taught by peers in pickup games. Gerald Hall Jr., the director of a youth-baseball program in Washington, D.C., told Milloy: "If you did a survey, I believe you'd find that the one thing average and above-average players have in common is a father. Baseball is, at heart, a father-and-son sport. And if you're a kid that has nobody to throw to, nobody to talk to, nobody to discipline you in the way that baseball demands, you're not likely to play the game." This struck me as more poignant than the usual bleak statistics about the black family. And they are bleak. About 70 percent of black kids are born out of wedlock. The out-of-wedlock birthrate for whites (29 percent) is now higher than what it was for blacks (24 percent) when Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued his (in)famous 1965 report, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action." Although it's certainly true that the kids of some single parents can do very well, particularly if those solo parents have the financial or social resources to carry the load (just look at Obama's own childhood), it is also the case that as a generalization, kids from single-parent homes do worse. In other words, it may be better to have one good parent than two bad parents, but it's indisputably better to have two good parents. Put aside the arguments about traditional "family values." The simple fact is that two parents who wait to have kids will have more time and money to invest in their kids, and the kids will benefit as a result. Single moms with two jobs don't have time to play catch with, or teach the infield-fly rule to, their kids. The decline of marriage among low- and middle-income Americans is a crisis afflicting all ethnicities. But among prosperous whites, marriage is doing pretty well. And the evidence has steadily mounted that marriage is a big source of that prosperity. Fewer than one in ten births to college-educated women happen outside of wedlock, according to the group Child Trends, while for women with high-school degrees or less, the number is close to six out of ten. As Richard Ralph Banks demonstrates in Is Marriage for White People?, the same cannot be said of blacks. Contrary to widespread perceptions, marriage is not all that popular among middle- and upper-class blacks either. Black women, Banks reports, long for traditional family structures, but black men — even college-educated black men — for a variety of complex reasons are more ambivalent about it. As Moynihan learned, speaking honestly about the state of the black family is politically explosive, even when done with the best of intentions. But if there is one person in America with the moral and political standing to have a transformative and beneficial impact on that conversation, it's Barack Obama, a dedicated father and the most successful black man in American history. Nixon went to China. Maybe Obama can go to black America for something more than votes every four years. — Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and the author of The Tyranny of Clichés. You can write to him by e-mail at JonahsColumn@aol.com, or via Twitter @JonahNRO. Permalink

© National Review Online 2012. All Rights Reserved.

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Toyin Falola
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La Vonda R. Staples, Writer

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www.lavondastaples.com

"If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough."

 

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, This Child Will Be Great; Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President.

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La Vonda R. Staples, Writer

BA Psychology 2005 and MA European History 2009

www.lavondastaples.com

"If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough."

 

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, This Child Will Be Great; Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President.

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