The Black Family in America
Willie, Charles V.
THE PREVAILING PATTERN of family life among Negro people is the conjugal unit or the nuclear household consisting of husband, wife, and children. Both spouses are present in nearly 70...
...My Washington, D.C., studies of juvenile delinquency form a partial basis for the hypothesis about poverty among black people.l 2 I discovered that reducing family instability would probably contribute to a greater reduction in delinquency among whites than among blacks and that increasing economic opportunities would very likely contribute to a greater reduction in delinquency among blacks than among whites...
...the second fact frequently forgotten...
...The time came when I must go...
...NOTEBOOK omy, Negroes require deliberate institutionalchanges which will prevent racial discrimination...
...By the age of 21, he had escaped from slavery...
...second, former slaves were nevertheless capable of forming enduring family unions...
...By understanding how the Negro family has transcended overwhelming obstacles, Americans might learn how to strengthen all families in this nation and even the family of man...
...Until these are put into effect, we cannotknow how large the residual proportion of[black] poor people might be who need suchindividualized attention as the 13 percent of poor whites may now require...
...Department of Labor, op...
...Census Bureau, "Negro Population: March, 1967," Current Population Reports, Washington: U.S...
...5 percent of the white families in this higher income category are headed by females and 6 percent of the black families have female heads...
...THE PREVAILING PATTERN of family life among Negro people is the conjugal unit or the nuclear household consisting of husband, wife, and children...
...15 Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here...
...More than 90 percent of the adult black men in the labor force are working to * Ibid., 204-205...
...Government Printing Office, 1968, p. 3. 8 U.S...
...Indeed, race, family status, and economic circumstances are interrelated in a complex way...
...15 In these statements are manifested the significant black heritage—endurance and transcendence —which have helped the black population to come to its present level of family stability...
...1 The miracle of the Negro family is that it has survived and grown stronger over the years...
...Harold Wilson...
...Of black children who integrated white schools in the South, Robert Coles has said: I was constantly surprised at the endurance shown by children we would call poor or .. . culturally disadvantaged...
...Since the black family has been quickly catching up in family stability (defined as a twoparent household) it seems probable that most of the family instability among blacks is more a function of contemporary economic circumstances and racial discrimination than of historical circumstances such as slavery...
...5 Andrew Billingsley, Black Families in White America, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968, pp...
...The nation should study intensively the strengths of the black family...
...only allowed the little children to Iive with grandmother for a limited time...
...B. Eerd mans Publishing Company...
...3 Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, New York: Macmillian, 1962...
...New Statesman, November 13, 1970 is almost twice as great as the proportion headed by females among whites (36 percent) •8 Why the proportions of one-parent families among white and black affluent households are similar while the proportions differ greatly among black and white poor is a problem worth investigation...
...5 Daniel Patrick Moynihan attempts to specify the consequences: "In essence, the Negro community has been forced into a matriarchal structure which, because it is so out of line with the rest of the American society, seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole...
...NOTEBOOK support their households...
...Courage, endurance, and ingenuity have contributed to its survival...
...He called this alleged matriarchal structure and its limitations the "fearful price" the Negro American community has paid "for the incredible mistreatment to which it has been subjected over the past three centuries...
...Reprinted from the Washington Post, October 10, 1965, p. E. 1. 2 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944, p. 931...
...Department of Labor, The Negro Family, Washington: U.S...
...Indeed, "the internal slave trade broke up many slave families...
...68-69...
...Gunnar Myrdal, relying heavily on the research of the late E. Franklin Frazier of Howard University, wrote in The American Dilemma, that "Most slave owners...
...14 Frederick Douglass, op...
...began in the family ofmy grandmother and grandfather...
...It is not concluded that poverty among whitescannot be further reduced by more changes inthe institutional systems of society...
...first published in 1892, pp...
...Yet in 1967, for example, 70-71 percent of all Negro families in the United States were husband-wife units compared with 89 percent of all-white families...
...Our task is not to discover ways of overhauling the black family so that it may be re-fashioned in the image of whites...
...9 U.S...
...Boston: Beacon Press, 1967...
...More than 90 percent of adult black men who are in the labor force are employed...
...The consequences for succeeding and even modern generations of Negroes are, perhaps, less direct, but no less insidious...
...said: "Historians in the future years will have to say there lived a great people...
...In general, black families are forced to make do with a median income that is approximately 40 percent lower than the median for whites...
...An indirect association, we know, exists between family income and family instability: as the family income decreases, the proportion of families headed by one parent increases...
...2s The survival of the Negro family in America is significant...
...then and only then can it be determined if family instability rather than an unequal opportunity system is the chief cause of their poverty...
...The proportion of poor Negroes, however, remains at a high level [approximately 30 percent] and may still be amenableto ameliorative mass efforts...
...10 Charles V. Willie, "Intergenerational Poverty," Poverty and Human Resources Abstract$, February 1969, pp...
...Just a throne...
...Old master...
...In disguise, he traveled from Maryland to New York and immediately sent for his fiance, Anna Murray, who was a free woman...
...see also p. 20 of the Introduction...
...And a prayer mat...
...6 But the facts do not jibe with the assertions...
...call to the field in the early morning...
...background paper for White House Conference on Civil Rights, Washington, D. C., November 1965...
...To avoid the charge of chauvinism, let me offer some historical data...
...They were married and lived together as man and wife 44 years until Mrs...
...My first experience of life, asI now remember it...
...This holds true for both blacks and whites...
...The first fact is usually remembered...
...a black people .. . who bore their burdens of oppression in the heat of many days and who, through tenacity and creative commitment, injected new meaning into the veins of American life...
...We call attention to this fact to underscore the danger of arriving at simplistic conclusions about the correlation among these three factors, such as were arrived at in the U.S...
...External changes in social organization haveupgraded 87 percent of the white populationbeyond the poverty level...
...Institutional arrangements and patterns of social organization are likely to be more powerful explanations of poverty among blacks thanamong whites.10 My hypothesis about poverty among whites is the one usually offered to account for poverty among blacks...
...Reflecting upon his experiences as a slave, Frederick Douglass said: "A man's troubles are always half disposed of when he finds endurance the only alternative...
...Labor Department report on "The Negro Family...
...9 In an article entitled "Intergenerational Poverty," I offered two hypotheses about the relationship between race, poverty, and family instability: Personal and family connected circumstancesare likely to be more powerful explanations ofpoverty among whites than among [blacks...
...manipulations of social institutions will probably net a small rate of changein the proportion of poor whites, since mostwhites who could benefit from these major institutional changes have already taken advan tage of them...
...In households with an income of more than $10,000 a year, there is no difference by race in the proportion of one-parent families...
...cit., p. 39...
...2 These facts were confirmed by Frederick Douglass, who was born in slavery in 1817 and who wrote in his great autobiography: The reader must not expect me to say much ofmy family...
...did not care about the marital state of their slaves...
...As the psychiatrist Robert Coles says, "there's sinew in the Negro family...
...Government Printing Office, 1965, p. 29...
...More important is understanding the contribution of the Negro family and how it has accomplished a remarkable stability in one century of partial freedom...
...12-13...
...This is a condensed version of an essay entitled"Family Structure, Poverty, and Race," whichappears in a volume entitled The Poor: A Culture of Poverty or a Poverty of Culture, edited by 1. Alan Winter and to be published by Wm...
...Hence all forms of racial discrimination must be prohibited so that the opportunities of an expanding economy become available to blacks...
...The consequences these conditions wrought for Negroes under the slave system were direct and insidious...
...Rather, it issuggested that new...
...His room is very modestly furnished...
...Nearly one-third of the black families have incomes of less than $3,000 a year and only about half of these poor families receive public welfare...
...What enabled such children from such families to survive emotional and educational ordeals that many white middle-class boys and girls would find impossible...
...After slavery, black people continued to experience severe handicaps...
...It had nointerest in recognizing or preserving any of theties that bind families together or to theirhomes...
...and 60 percent of all black children grow up in households in which a mother and father are present...
...13 Robert Coles, Children of Crisis, New York: Dell, 1967...
...The institutional changes that have rescued nearly nine out of every ten whites from poverty have not yet run their full course for blacks...
...12 Charles V. Willie, "The Relative Contribution of Family Status and Economic Status to JuvenileDelinquency," Social Problems, Winter 1967, p. 331...
...27-33...
...11 Loc...
...Meanwhile, I would suggest another approach...
...1 Robert Coles, "There's Sinew in the Negro Family...
...In addition to deliberate institutional changes which mayincrease opportunities in an expanding econ 7 U.S...
...Thus I concluded that one might be successful in reducing family instability if one first dealt with economic insecurity...
...Indeed, the history of the Negro family must be viewed as a miraculous movement from more or less nothing to something...
...Government Printing Office, 1969...
...as soon as they were big enough they were promptly taken away...
...Among extremely poor families with incomes under $2,000 a year, the proportion headed by females among blacks (61 percent) The Higher Worship "A very unassuming man, the Prime Minister," said Richard Marsh [a Labour MP] on one occasion, referring to Mr...
...The Negro family is not basically a matriarchal system...
...Some social scientists have tried to explain the higher proportion of broken families among blacks than among whites as a direct outgrowth of the slave experience...
...My grandmother's five daughters [one of whom was my mother] were hired out in this way, and my only recollection of my own mother are of a few hasty visits made in the night on foot, after the daily tasks were over, and when she was under the necessity of re turning in time to respond to the...
...Moreover, approximately 70 percent of the black families are two-parent families...
...Census Bureau, Trends in Social and Economic Conditions in Metropolitan Areas, Series P-23, No...
...Further discussion indicates why these hypotheses were formulated: Institutional changes [particularly in the expanding economy] during the past three or fourdecades have resulted in a substantial reduction in the proportion of whites who are poor...
...27, Washington: U.S...
...14 During the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr...
...B. Eerdmans, copyright © 1970 by the Wm...
...The hypothesis that the slavery heritage has contributed to both a high rate of family instability and a matriarchal system fails to recognize that among intact families (the prevailing pattern) many blacks have had grandparents or great-grandparents who were born as slaves...
...Douglass died in 1882.* These excerpts from The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass tell us two things: first, there was little opportunity for experiencing family life among black slaves...
...This crippled the development not only of individual slaves, but of families, and hence of the whole society of Negro peo ple...
...These facts indicate that the Negro family NOTEBOOK is still around, it has not broken down...
...And these facts also indicate a prevailing pattern of family stability among black people, a family that has persevered in spite of limited resources...
...I was seven years old .3 Frederick Douglass was an ingenious man...
...e U.S...
...For example, Andrew Billingsley has said, the slave system had a crippling effect on the establishment, maintenance, and growth of normal patterns of family life among Negro people...
...Both spouses are present in nearly 70 percent of all Negro families...
...The 13 percent whoremain poor probably have problems which aremore personal and less susceptible to massamelioration through institutional manipulations...
...Most Negro households are supported by the work of a man...
...Thepractice of separating mothers from their children and hiring them out at distances too greatto admit of their meeting, save at long intervals, was a marked feature of the cruelty andbarbarity of the slave system...
...Slavery had no recognition of fathers...
...While a good deal of family instability existed in the Negro community (although the two-parent family was the norm), economic insecurity was overwhelming...
...Of my father I know nothing...
...Based on this analysis, I assert that the Moynihan proposition that stabilizing the black family is the best way of upgrading it economically projects a solution upon the black poor that would be more appropriate for the white poor...
...These twoparent households are stable, although their ancestors were not free or able to form enduring marriages...
Vol. 18 • February 1971 • No. 1
