WisPolitics Budget Blog

I like to think that the better angels of my soul would have led me to march with Dr. and Mrs. King. But the cruelties of being born too late, and of a death too soon, prevented such a divine encounter with a giant of humanity.

When I look at this photo, I don't see a black family, I see an American family, which was just one Dream that King longed to achieve.

With the passing of Coretta Scott King, who among the Black community will carry the torch that this photo represents - the Family; the foundation of hope, security, creativity, safety, knowledge and wisdom, faith, ambition, generousity, tolerance, and love?

Black children are only half as likely as white children to be living in a two-parent household and are eight times more likely than white children to live with an unwed mother. For black children under six, the most common arrangement applying to 42 percent of them was to live with a never married mother.
Maggie Gallagher, The Abolition of Marriage

Seventy-five percent of all black children born in the last two decades are likely to live for some portion of their childhood with only their mothers.
Bumpass, L.L. and J.A. Sweet, “Children Experience in Single-Parent Families: Implications of Cohabitation and Marital Transitions.”

“African Americans are the most unpartnered group in America. Census figures show that 35% of Americans between 24 and 34 have never married. For African Americans, that figure is 54%.”
Audrey Chapman, Marital Therapist

And here at home, from the Manhattan Institute

Wisconsin had the lowest graduation rate among African-American students with 40%, followed by Minnesota, Georgia, and Tennessee.

Cleveland City had the lowest graduation rate among African-American students with 29%, followed by Milwaukee, Memphis, and Gwinett County, Georgia

One thing I am sure of, the African-American community doesn't much care what a white kid from Janesville, Wisconsin thinks about black families, but the Black Alliance for Educational Opions may enlighten the skeptics.