A dig at fathers in the first paragraph, and a diplomatically stated rejection of the nuclear family in the second.
You need to be very generous to interpret this as anything other than an attack on the traditional family.
You need to be very generous to interpret this as anything other than an attack on the traditional family.
In contrast, single parent households drastically reduce the chances of success in life along a ton of metrics. Those kids get worse grades, drop out early, suffer learning and mental disorders at a much higher rate, are much more subject to domestic violence, etc. A shocking statistic is that around 85% of people in prison had no significant father figure in their life. This isn’t a one-off statistic either as incarceration rates do seem to track with single mothers over time. It even affects the mothers themselves who report higher rates of mental health issues (this tracks over time and across racial and ethnic groups).
Note: This probably would occur with single fathers too, but fathers are unlikely to be granted custody unless the mother has extreme issues going on and the father has a pristine record in comparison. Likewise, with 90+% of elementary teachers now being women (this wasn’t always true), finding a male role model is more difficult during the early, formative years.
That is what we see, in other countries with more robust (and more redistributive) welfare state systems than the US.
But if you are a kid that grew up with one parent, we need to have alternatives to help those kids thrive. Harping on the fact that 2 parents are better than 1 does nothing for kids with only one parent (except maybe make them feel defective and disadvantaged).
The writers are African-American women. Working has been a feature of most African-American women's lives for the entirety of America. It's not a dig at the fathers, who have historically also been working. The traditional African-American family has typically had two workers. (The "double-shift" is working for someone else, then coming home and doing homemaking. Commonly, the father would be working a second job during the evening hours.)
I think reading this as an attack on the traditional American family is making a lot of assumptions about which families are considered "traditional."
What is your vision of traditional black family?
IIRC, The Occupy Movement heavily influenced BLM.
David Graeber talks about the origins of Occupy in The Democracy Project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Democracy_Project
Sure Anarchists like Graeber are adjacent to Socialists, Marxists, and other groups. But Anarchists are for participatory democracy, against government. The left-wing version of libertarians. So Anarchists oppose Socialists, Communists, and Liberals (today's Democrats & Republicans) equally.
I couldn't say if Occupy or BLM are Marxist, Socialist, or whatever. Or since everyone uses their own definitions, what that could possibly mean. Things get nutty when people try to use 100 year old terms to talk about contemporary stuff.
It's on my to do list to find similar write-ups about BLM. Please share if you found any.
You can say, at least regarding the founders of BLM: https://therealnews.com/pcullors0722blacklives
"BALL: ...he was concerned or is concerned that there’s a lack of perhaps ideological direction in Black Lives Matter that would allow it to be, to fizzle out in, as he said, in comparison to Occupy Wall Street. As you advance in your own organization, as you all are headed to Cleveland to participate in this Black Lives Movement conference, how do you respond to that particular critique?... CULLORS: Um, I think that the criticism is helpful. I also think that it might–. I think of a lot of things. The first thing, I think, is that we actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories. And I think that what we really tried to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many black folk. We don’t necessarily want to be the vanguard of this movement. I think we’ve tried to put out a political frame that’s about centering who we think are the most vulnerable amongst the black community, to really fight for all of our lives. And I do think that we have some clear direction around where we want to take this movement. I don’t believe it’s going to fizzle out. It just gets stronger, and we see it, right. We’ve seen after Sandra Bland. We’re seeing it now with the interruption of the Netroots Nation presidential forum. What I do think, though, is folks–especially folks who have been trained in a particular way want to hear certain things from us, that we’re not sort of framing it in the same ways that maybe another generation have, has. But I think it’s important that people know that we are, the Black Lives Matter movement doesn’t just live online, although there’s many people who utilize it online. We’re in a different set of circumstances, a different generation that–social media may feel like it’s diluting the larger ideological frame. But I argue that it’s not. "
This is exactly backward for how to elevate poor and minority interests. Strong ("nuclear") families, education (not indoctrination), and _more_ private property from which those families can build security is what's needed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_the_Family,_Priv...
That’s not a stab at fathers. It’s a stab at the societal norms that force single mothers to work double shifts just to support their family. They are purporting that this is due to the fact that our society is patriarchal (run by men - which it is). Whether they’re right or wrong it’s not a dig at traditional dads.
They’re attacking the societal norms that a straight cis mom and straight cis dad are the only foundational units for a legitimate family.
What's a "traditional family"?
Increasingly, lots of different kinds of families are being recognized as good, and they're pushing back against people who insist that only one kind of family is acceptable.