Black conservative House Rep from Utah, Burgess Owens, got into a heated debate about black fathers during a House Judiciary hearing. The hearing was not necessarily about black fathers at all, but the subject was bound to come up. Jerry Nadler wanted to debate the idea of legalizing marijuana then taking tax money generated from that to invest into grants for low-income (read, black) communities. Burgess Owens rejected the idea of more Government help being the answer for these communities. Owens says the better idea would be to get black fathers in the home to solve obvious problems that exist there. This line of reasoning did not go over too well with other Democrats present during the hearing, Sheila Jackson-Lee being one of them.
Burgess Owens made the point that black fathers abandon their responsibilities around 75% of the time. This statement is not totally true but the general point is made. A decline in the nuclear family structure has caused an underestimated amount of harm. The correct statistic is that black children are born outside of wedlock at a 75% rate. This dynamic creates an environment where responsibility to children is secondary to personal happiness. Ironically enough, everyone involved ends up being less happy. Children are often deprived of a proper mother and father. Mothers wind up with multiple children by multiple men. Same thing for the men, multiple children by multiple women. Then there are those left on the outside with no children or significant others at all.
The current state of the black family can be simply described as chaotic. And this chaos produces violent and dangerous people who go on to create more people just like them. The cycle is endless. Liberal Democrats like Sheila Jackson-Lee and Jerrold Nadler would like to blame poverty and the rich for not “paying their fair share”. The reality is that this is not a rich or poor problem. Nor is it a man or woman problem. It is a cultural problem that affects everyone. Some people are able to rise above it and some aren’t. The current (and expanding) welfare state subsidizes all of this. What is the incentive for people to improve themselves for their families if there is always a safety net to fall back on? This is especially true for the women, not so much for the men. Nevertheless, this remains a problem that affects everyone. So when people press Burgess Owens for “solutions” to these obvious issues, it doesn’t make sense to expect him to lean on what helps cause the problems in the first place.
SOURCES:V
House Judiciary GOP on Twitter: “Just watch. @RepBurgessOwens https://t.co/2nqaMXv8h9” / Twitter
‘The Rundown’: Burgess Owens tangles with Democrats over race and the role of fathers
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