"The Welfare State Did What Slavery Couldn't Do"
Wendy McElroy writes at Mises what people are afraid to say -- that intact families are vital to children's well-being, including black children's:

The black social theorist Thomas Sowell, who teaches at Stanford University, has written extensively on the decline of the black family. In his article "A Legacy of Liberalism," Sowell rejects the argument that current black impoverishment is the residue of slavery or due to inherent racism. He refers to "the legacy of slavery" argument as a reason not to think about the subject or rely on evidence, because it replaces research with an emotional reaction. "If we wanted to be serious about evidence," Sowell observed, "we might compare where blacks stood a hundred years after the end of slavery with where they stood after 30 years of the liberal welfare state....Despite the grand myth that black economic progress began or accelerated with the passage of the civil rights laws and 'war on poverty' programs of the 1960s, the cold fact is that the poverty rate among blacks fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent by 1960. This was before any of those programs began."

In his article "The Legacy of the Welfare State," Williams agreed. "The No. 1 problem among blacks is the effects stemming from a very weak family structure. Children from fatherless homes are likelier to drop out of high school, die by suicide, have behavioral disorders, join gangs, commit crimes and end up in prison. They are also likelier to live in poverty-stricken households. But is the weak black family a legacy of slavery?...Here's my question: Was the increase in single-parent black families after 1960 a legacy of slavery, or might it be a legacy of the welfare state ushered in by the War on Poverty?"

In another article Sowell answered, "A vastly expanded welfare state in the 1960s destroyed the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of racial oppression. In 1960, before this expansion of the welfare state, 22 percent of black children were raised with only one parent. By 1985, 67 percent of black children were raised with either one parent or no parent." The percentage has held fairly steady since then. And, statistically, the parent figure is usually a mother or a grandmother.

Being effectively fatherless can be devastating. The paper "What Can the Federal Government Do to Decrease Crime and Revitalize Communities?," issued by the US Department of Justice, offered statistics on children from fatherless homes. The children account for:

•Suicide: 63 percent of youth suicides

•Runaways: 90 percent of all homeless and runaway youths

•Behavioral disorders: 85 percent of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders

•High school dropouts: 71 percent of all high school dropouts

•Juvenile detention rates: 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions

•Substance abuse: 75 percent of adolescent patients in substance abuse centers

Lawmakers do black people no favor when they advance a narrative that dismisses the importance of the family structure and offers instead dependence on government rather than independence as human beings. As Williams stated, "The undeniable truth is that neither slavery nor Jim Crow nor the harshest racism has decimated the black family the way the welfare state has....The most damage done to black Americans is inflicted by those politicians, civil rights leaders and academics who assert that every problem confronting blacks is a result of a legacy of slavery and discrimination. That's a vision that guarantees perpetuity for the problems."