A melancholy little story attracted almost no attention when a wire service sent it out a few days ago. But its implications are too grim and too important for it to be tossed away unnoticed.
There are so few marriageable black men between 20 and 35 years old that black women may have to resort to alternate family styles such as polygamy, the story said. It was quoting Hortense Canady, president of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., in a recent speech to 800 of the group`s black professional women members.
There are only 59 single, employed black men for every 100 black women between the ages of 25 and 34, Canady pointed out. The ratio is even lower in the 20- to 24-year-old group. With such a big shortage of eligible males, many black women must develop alternatives to the traditional family to protect their children, she said.
More than half of all black children are now born without a legal father. Single-parent families headed by women fill the nation`s housing projects, pad the poverty statistics and soak up public aid. Women in growing numbers are becoming resigned to going it alone and so, unhappily, are their children.
But many black males are victims, too, of social pathology that they didn`t create but will perpetuate unless they are helped to change. A majority of black boys now grow up in a fatherless home. They are more likely to be pressured into dangerous gang activity and lured into truancy, drug abuse and delinquency than whites (although this pattern of problems affects many whites, too).
With an absent father and an overburdened mother, it is easy for such endangered boys to slip into school failure and to let go of their best lifeline out of poverty. Without a high school diploma, they can`t take advantage of widening opportunities in college and in the job market. The longer they are out of school and out of a job, the more likely they will be mired permanently in the hard-core underclass.
That may make these young black men unsuitable for marriage, in the minds of many black women. But it usually doesn`t stop them from begetting a new generation of fatherless children. And the fact that the mothers of their youngsters must look to public aid makes these men feel even more futile.
Even if many women can find alternates to traditional family life, that isn`t the answer. Whatever the strengths of caring, hard-working black women, it`s no solution to write off 40 percent of young black men. However capable their mother, children benefit greatly from a supportive, in-house father.
All the public and private efforts of the last-quarter century to end racism and poverty have helped millions of blacks to make it through school and into good jobs, leadership, community respect and stable lives. The hard- core underclass that remains apparently needs something more or something different.
Several approaches might help: High-quality early learning programs, preferably involving parents, should avert many school failures; intensified support systems in school may be able to nip problem behavior quickly and lead youngsters toward college or jobs.
Communities must provide protection for all youngsters from gangs, drug pushers and death at an early age. Every possible effort–moral as well as medical–to avert teen pregnancy must be made. Community leaders, preferably black, must serve increasingly as role models and guides for the vulnerable young.
It`s encouraging that the number of successful black men who can be sterling role models is growing rapidly. They–more than whites or government bureaucrats–have the power to influence endangered black youngsters.
That an organization for successful black women is willing to talk publicly about the problems of the hard-core underclass can also be read as a sign of hope. The subject has been taboo too long. It won`t be easy to break the cycle of troubles imposed by too-early pregnancy, by poverty and by past failures. But we can`t settle for polygamy. We have to keep trying.
