(Surrogate) Fatherhood For Young Black Men On A Street Corner: "You're Almost Men," Says The Man To The Two Brawling Boys He Comes Upon
Statistics suggest that more than 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock. Even Ta-Nehisi Coates can't massage that statistic away.
This means that they are more likely to grow up poor (with only a single mother to support the family), in bad neighborhoods, and approach life with a "fast life history strategy," a term from anthropology that reflects an adaptation to a risky environment.
The adaptive thing to do in an environment where you might die before mating is to (have a psychological orientation pushing you to) mate fast, take big risks, and act aggressively.
I'm reading a paper that evolutionary psychologist Daniel Kruger sent me on this now -- his 2008 paper, "Time Perspective as a Mechanism for Functional Developmental Adaptation." An excerpt from the abstract:
Evolutionary Life History Theory (LHT) is a powerful framework that can be used for understanding behavioral strategies as functional adaptations to environmental conditions. Some evolutionary theorists have described how developmental environments can shape behavioral strategies. Theorists and previous research suggest that individuals developing in relatively less certain environments will exhibit riskier, present oriented, behavioral strategies because of the low probability of reproductive success for more cautious approaches.... A survey study of urban middle school students (N=607) assessed the relationship between perceptions of local social conditions, time perspective, and risky behaviors. Structural equation model analyses indicated that present and future orientations completely mediated the relationship of positive and negative aspects of students' neighborhood social environment with reports of interpersonal aggression and illicit resource exploitation.
We only hear a bit about how one boy's father is doing life in jail in this video -- so it is possible they all have two parents in the home and very stable family life.
But, for me, this man -- Ibn Ali Miller, a 26-year-old from Atlantic City -- seems to stand in as a father in this video. In his intervention here, I see a powerful symbol for what's missing in the lives of boys who grow up without fathers.
And yes, of course, he could be stopping a fight between two boys of any color who are duking it out on the street corner -- but from what he says about the one boy's dad in prison, it leads me to see him as a symbol for the often-missing father in the black community.
The story: "You're almost men," says the man who comes by and breaks up a street fight between two teenage boys. Colby Itkowitz writes for the WaPo:
Two high school boys brawled in the middle of a residential street as their friends watched, some laughing, others encouraging and one recording.But ultimately what that video captured was not another ugly street fight. Instead, it showed a remarkable display of humanity from a stranger who intervened with something much more powerful than fists.
Ibn Ali Miller, a 26-year-old Muslim man from Atlantic City, had run an errand for his mother when he happened upon the group of teens gathered on the neighborhood street corner. In the video that has now been seen by millions, and has been praised by the likes of LeBron James and Snoop Dogg, Miller puts himself between the fighting boys and offers them some tough love.
"You're almost men, you're not kids no more," Miller tells them. "Start acting like it, yo. You're going to get nowhere like this, yo."
He condemned their friends for laughing and egging them on. He points to one teen off camera and says, "I know where you're from, humble beginnings. Your mom and dad worked hard to get where they're at, yo." He turns to another. "Your dad's doing life, you think it's a game out here? It's no game out here. It's real out here, little bro."
Then Miller tells the two fighting boys he won't leave until they shake hands. After some coaxing from Miller, they do.
I'd like somebody to study how being poor and Asian affects life history strategy. Just a guess, but I suspect the fact that Asian families tend to be families (often with Grandma living in the household, too) and not single parent households has a mediating effect on life history strategy and whether their children can rise up out of poverty and make something of their lives.
Step carefully: The feminine heart is readily entranced in a fantasy that masculinity is some kind of garlic powder, an incidental and impersonal boymagick which any buffoon on the street can sprinkle on their sons to nourish prosocial development, career clarity, and good grooming...
....Or which will, at least, excuse single mothers for the interpersonal incompetence which brought the boys into senescence without a loving father.
No. That's not how it works.
Crid at March 25, 2017 7:56 AM
I meant sentience not senescence, but autocorrect.
Crid at March 25, 2017 8:01 AM
Those blaming everything on "patriarchy" can not explain why black youth raised by single women (Mothers and Grandmothers) are not better off than they are.
Can. Not. It's impossible to do so.
Patriarchy is real but it's not to blame for the problems that SJWs try to do so. Mother Nature is a bitch and then you die.
Look up a study on juvenile elephants that were "acting up" such that bull elephants were brought in. They kicked ass and taught the juvenile elephants "manners". Mother. Nature.
Bob in Texas at March 25, 2017 8:37 AM
I cannot stress how important Grandma is in an Asian household, specially for single parents. Also, Grandma said Shut up, stop revealing family info to strangers on the internet.
Sixclaws at March 25, 2017 1:39 PM
My bet is, studies like this, on Asian and white families have already been done, but when the results show that culture, IQ, intact extended families and fathers all matter far more than actual wealth, they get deep sixed down the progrssive memory hole in a real hurry.
One of the worst perversions of science is that the hard left academics control 90 percent of the funding process for this sort of research. I dont expect to see another book like "The Bell Curve" in my lifetime.
As a bit of anectdotal evidence. Wealthy Japanese boys tend to be spoiled bullies. At some point the school of hard knocks and their culture civilizes most Japanese men, but a certain small percentage still end up in the Yakuza or other criminal enterprises. And yes, some of the girls end up as prostitutes , and large numbers of the adult Japanese population are functional and dysfunctional alcoholics with a high suicide rate.
These problems in general seem to be less bad for cultural cohesion than the welfare entitlement culture in the US.
There is a huge incentive in Japan both cultural and financial not to raise children in dysfunctional homes. They go to orphanages instead, even when one or both parents are living.
Sometimes I suspect that the death of American cultural cohesion was the end of universal conscription.
The American military at one time, was quite good at turning boys into men, even when their parents had failed at that task.
Isab at March 25, 2017 3:33 PM
> I dont expect to see another
> book like "The Bell Curve"
> in my lifetime.
That is a really interesting thought.
Crid at March 25, 2017 5:27 PM
> The American military at one
> time, was quite good at turning
> boys into men, even when their
> parents had failed at that task.
I have zero personal experience with such things, other than seeing a few formerly long-haired friends disappear at the end of high school's last summer, only to appear at Christmas with broader shoulders, straighter posture and better eye contact.
But I've heard the sentiment across a lifetime, almost as a trope: And I'm not sure it's true.
Anyone who's poured a beer into a former soldier or sailor will hear about fuckups who eventually land in the stockade or in discharge.
More to the point— A generation or two ago, certain between the Big Ones, American culture was a remarkably uniform thing. Miscreants may have come from troubled and broken families just as they do now, but I think those troublemakers were much more likely to know how respectful deportment and citizenship were supposed to work, even if their own lives hadn't been rewarded by those patterns. When the sergeant or platoon leader issued an order, they understood fairly readily what it meant to be given a command.
The more recent degradation of the family, both in the inner cities and the impoverished countryside, makes me wonder if that's still true.
I think it was the Colin Powell memoir that pointed out how burdensome it is for the services to be regarded as a reliable fix for social problems. I know he mentioned the horrors that drugs had brought to military operations... And I think he mentioned the ravages of divorce as well. Untold thousands of men arrive at boot camp with no experience of superior men in their lives, no fathers or grandfathers or loving uncles: With no experience of working life, they simply don't know what it means to be told what to do by another man. The result isn't just disobedience, but a presumption that the commanders should somehow be fatherly.
(I've seen this happen with children of divorce in corporate America, and it's chilling.)
Crid at March 26, 2017 7:07 AM
Anyone who's poured a beer into a former soldier or sailor will hear about fuckups who eventually land in the stockade or in discharge.
And they are FUCKUPS, getting in trouble for the MOST asinine things.
lujlp at March 26, 2017 12:02 PM
"I think it was the Colin Powell memoir that pointed out how burdensome it is for the services to be regarded as a reliable fix for social problems. "
Nothing is a fix for social problems, but every little bit helps.
I met a dozen kids like J.D. Vance almost every week when I was in the Army.
His book, Hillbilly Elegy should be required reading for just about everyone.
My own father was a really good fit for the military. High school drop out from a really bright Scots Irish southern family (and not a disfuctional one)
if you have some potential for leadership or technical skills, the military will discover it, and set you on a career path.
If you lack character or drive, it will expose that too.
The military can't totally pick up the slack for our failed education system, and failed parenting, but it does better than the police.
I agree with Luljp. Fuckups are going to happen everywhere, and the military in my opinion gives them more chances and more constructive punishment than the civilian criminal justice system.
I lost all respect for Colin Powell's opinion on anything when he became a puppet for Obama.
Isab at March 26, 2017 6:49 PM
> Nothing is a fix for social
> problems, but every little
> bit helps.
That's just an extremely weird thing to hear, especially from someone with special concern for the armed forces.
Crid at March 27, 2017 9:11 AM
"Anyone who's poured a beer into a former soldier or sailor will hear about fuckups who eventually land in the stockade or in discharge."
That's a point. It's like, how a few generations ago, the police were by and large regarded as being among the town's most upstanding citizens. It wasn't so much that policing made them better people; it was because the police academy kicked out all the bad apples. (They no longer do so, and that accounts for a lot of what's going on with our police forces today.)
"The more recent degradation of the family, both in the inner cities and the impoverished countryside, makes me wonder if that's still true."
In at least one respect, I can just about guarantee it's not. My wife works in a part of the medical industry where there are a lot of entry-level jobs. She gets a lot of applications from single mothers who have not held a regular job before. My dear spouse reports that, consistently, they lack the basic knowledge of what's involved in having a job. Stuff like you're going to be working to a schedule; you can't just show up whenever you want. You have to have a way to get to work; the employer isn't going to come pick up up every day. You need to wear underwear under your scrubs. (She's told me that a few women have told her that they don't own any underwear.) You need to take a shower before you come in. And it's a really bad idea, when you're dealing with needles and the bodily fluids of sick people, to come to work stoned.
Cousin Dave at March 27, 2017 9:13 AM
Oh ouch, Cousin Dave.
It puts me in mind of the whole immigration debate. On one hand, I can see making a greater effort to hire Americans before creating more H1B visas or importing legal (or illegal) immigrants. When it comes to the people-to-jobs ratio, let's get more jobs filled by existing people before we import more.
On the other hand, when we churn out so many useless dullards, how can we expect anyone to hire them? Just because a kid is born in the USA doesn't mean he or she is capable of doing anything. Who would YOU rather hire? One of these people you just described, or a sensible foreigner who could work circles around them?
Nobody wants to talk about it, but this:
the more recent degradation of the family, both in the inner cities and the impoverished countryside doesn't mean these people simply refrain from having children. On the contrary, they reproduce like rabbits.
I had to chuckle at an "AskReddit" post I read one time, where someone was chiding the educated and income-earning for not producing enough children. They asked, you smart people with good jobs, why aren't you having children.
Top response was a guy who said he and his wife fall into that category, and he said well in fact we DO have kids. We have one, and we stopped after one because we want to provide well for him and start him off in life with a good future. His brother, on the other hand, was a high school dropout with no money, but had four kids because he just wasn't too concerned about providing any resources for them.
I suppose a few of these misbegotten miscreants might escape the cycle and make something of themselves (J.D. Vance, as Isab points out) but they are few and far between, and I wouldn't exactly count on it. We're probably just screwed.
Pirate Jo at March 27, 2017 9:38 AM
> She gets a lot of applications
> from single mothers who have
> not held a regular job before.
I come from a college town in Indiana. For decades, county & city offices were populated by nice, middle-aged Republican ladies who quietly kept the pencils sharpened, the desks dusted and the books balanced.
In 2008, Obama's sexual allure brought the students, truly residents of other cities anyway, to the polls in droves... And they, of course, voted the party line straight down the ticket. So those nice Republican ladies were gone, and they won't be coming back.
Appearing in their stead were a bunch of sparky young Democratic bottle-brunettes who had presumably never been responsible, with access, to more than $50 worth of anyone else's money in their lives. (Credit cards, bank accounts, etc.)
The state AG was filing charges within months.
Crid at March 27, 2017 2:25 PM
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