The black family is in crisis, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the agendas of the nation’s leading black organizations. That’s the argument author Delano Squires made on “Cite Your Source” with feminist influencer Angela Rye — but she and her panel weren’t having it.
Squires pointed out to the panel that “every time the NAACP has a national conference, the National Urban League has a national conference, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies has a national conference, the Congressional Black Caucus has a national conference … I either go to the agenda or I show up, and I look to see state of the black family, decline in black marriage rates — nothing.”
“I was at CBC last month. Nothing about marriage,” he added.
“I think that we all care about the preservation of the family,” Rye argued. “I think what’s tough here is there were still some illogical leaps that were made around the content of those conversations. For example, I was at the NAACP, so this is a primary source talking.”
Rye went on to use the family of Nolan Wells as an example of why family is talked about in the black community.
“So, there are conversations we have around family, but they are intersectional conversations, a term that was coined by the amazing Kimberlé Crenshaw. And intersectionality has a lot to do with why you may not see marriage or family on a panel by itself, but it’s absolutely discussed,” she continued.
Squires fired back that “in this country, 70% of black children are born to unmarried parents.”
“In New York City, it’s 75%. In D.C., it’s 77%. In Baltimore, it’s 83%. In Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas, it’s 82%. The idea that we would be,” he said, before Rye interrupted and said, “Delano, cite your source.”
Squires laughed and responded, “the Center for Disease Control. Look up final birth data.”
“I’m not talking about whether we discuss issues facing black families. I’m talking about the decline of the married, two-parent household. Let me be very specific with my language. And what I’m saying is that marriage and family structure policy is not a priority on the institutions that claim to represent black people,” he continued.
“What is marriage and family structure policy? What does that even mean? Is it having a fair job that pays a fair wage? Is it health care access? Is it quality education?” one panelist interrupted.
“It’s having access to your dad on an everyday basis because he’s married to your mom,” Squires said.
“Black people don’t seem to value marriage the way we used to,” BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock tells Squires after watching the clip. “Can we just talk about why that is and how we can correct that without connecting it to, ‘Well, if we had more jobs, if people weren’t locked up’?”
Squires tells Whitlock that he was not “shocked or surprised in the least” by the panel’s responses to him.
“Black leaders deny the problem,” he says, explaining that there’s “dismissal, defensiveness, deflection.”
“So, it didn’t surprise me in the least bit, and it was actually instructive and helpful because I think what it did, it exposed the type of thinking that is prevalent in our community,” Squires added. “It’s a complete refusal to take responsibility for anything that we have agency and control over and always pivoting to some other secondary or tertiary issue.”
“It was clear that, by their response, that they weren’t willing to actually engage that point,” he adds.
Want more from Jason Whitlock?
To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
Black family crisis, Delano squires, Jason whitlock, Blazetv show, Angela rye
