"A Threat to the Future"

By KURT ANDERSEN

Coming to grips with the crumbling black family

The most difficult fact for white Americans to understand is that. . . the circumstances of the Negro American community in recent years [have]probably been getting worse, not better. The fundamental problem . . . is that of family structure. The evidence--not final, but powerfully persuasive--is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling.

--Daniel P. Moynihan

U.S. Department of Labor report, 1965

Practically a generation has passed since that well-intended policy paper, the notorious "Moynihan Report," prompted an angry dispute over the nature of the modern American black family. The report is still persuasive, yet the touchy issues it raised were until recently judged almost unfit for public debate. Now, however, the precariousness of so many black families has become a central concern of black leaders. Unstable and ill-formed families are, says Eleanor Holmes Norton, former chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, "a threat to the future of black people without equal." Last week a national black sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, held the first of 43 local conferences it has planned on the subject. At Nashville's Fisk University, about 200 scholars and officials from all over the country gathered for marathon discussions -- alternately erudite and emotional, brooding and hopeful -- on the black family's plight.

The statistical evidence of the "crumbling" family has grown more alarming in the years since Moynihan's depiction. Today a majority (55%) of black children are born to unmarried, often teen-age mothers; in 1965 only 26% of non white new-borns were illegitimate. Half of all black children have no father at home, and the median income of these single-mother households is only $7,458. The incidence of divorce among black couples is twice that among whites. One out of twelve black children lives with neither parent.

Poverty accounts for a large part of this rampant family instability: the unemployment rate among black men (16%) is nearly three times as high as among white men, and black family incomes are, on the average, 56% of white family incomes. It is hard to keep any family together under such financial pressures. Fathers, feeling defeated and useless, drift away. "The strong growth in female-headed households," says Norton, a law professor at Georgetown University, "is the central problem in black families and why poverty is so lasting." Teen-age mothers too often produce children who become teen-age mothers. Says John Bayne, a Washington social services official: "It is harder to break the cycle for kids who have only known staying home, watching the soaps on TV and getting a welfare check. They are kids who have kids." Many critics of the welfare system complain that it provides incentives for recipient families to break apart. The evidence is mixed. A recent federal study found that higher benefits encourage unmarried mothers on welfare to move away from their parents, thus increasing the number of households headed by women. "A lot of time the kids [who become pregnant] are trying to get away from home," says New York City Welfare Caseworker James Silvers. However, black families rupture along various fissures: the mother of one of Silvers' 17-year-old clients, for instance, recently kicked the daughter out of their Harlem apartment when she became pregnant out of wedlock; the baby's father left town.

The Fisk conference, sponsored by the N.A.A.C.P. and the National Urban League, would have been unlikely a few years ago: dirty linen was washed only in private by the black Establishment, if at all. This apprehension lingers: the ten Fisk workshops were closed to the press. But black leaders talked frankly about sensitive issues. Said National Urban League President John Jacob: "As for the black male and his responsibilities, we are openly acknowledging that problems exist. We are not defensive any more." But Jacob contends that the remnants of American racism are also responsible for the broken black family.

The Fisk workshops emphasized voluntarist remedies, such as black church programs and promoting home ownership among working-class blacks. They also urged a "domestic Marshall Plan," as well as wage and price controls. Although the black family's problems do not seem soluble by quick fixes, there are a few heartening signs. Among black teenagers, the birth rate has declined slightly; more effective access to contraception could accelerate that trend. Some recent research has found that the "culture of poverty" is escapable. According to one University of Michigan study, most children from poor families do not become impoverished adults.

Scattered grass-roots attempts to aid black families also seem hopeful. In Los Angeles, Dr. James Mays, a black physician, has set up an adopt-a-family program: each of 200 enrolled families is being provided with legal, medical and other services by a volunteer group. Washington recently put 40 welfare mothers through an experimental eight-month job-training course; most found employment. Five years ago, South Boston High School started encouraging its student mothers not to drop out; a pediatric nurse spends two days a week at the school dispensing advice on bringing up babies.

On Detroit's west side, the Lula Belle Stewart Center last year gave practical help and counseling to more than 700 teen-age mothers and fathers, nearly all black. One of the center's typical clients is Donna, 15. Her parents are heroin addicts, and her month-old-child's father has been charged with burglary. But her future is not absolutely hopeless: the center has taught her the rudiments of infant care, found her a doctor and persuaded her to return to school.

Despite evidence of modest progress, University of Pennsylvania Sociologist Frank Furstenberg, among others, is not optimistic. "I think the situation is very grave," he says. "Unless we take steps to alter the situation, I think we are going to have a lost generation of black youth that is ill equipped to enter the labor force or to form families." At least black leaders are now declaring that family instability is an urgent concern. "It has been the strong black family that is the reason for our survival as a people," said N.A.A.C.P. Executive Director Benjamin Hooks at the Fisk conference. "When the strongest link of our culture is threatened, our very survival as a race is threatened."

--Kurt Andersen.

Reported by Patricia Delaney/Washington and B.J. Phillips/Nashville, with other bureaus

With reporting by Patricia Delaney, B.J. Phillips, other bureaus