Whtpplbtrppn
Michele Bachmann signed a conservative pledge called “The Marriage Vow – A Declaration of Dependence upon Marriage and Family.” That pledge contained the following dumbass-edness:
Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.
Yep. WTF, is right.
From Jack and Jill Politics:
Given that families were broken up regularly for sales during slavery and that rape by masters was pretty common, this could not be more offensive. I mean, putting aside the statistics on this, which are likely off-base, I could not be more angry. When will Republicans inquire with actual Black people whether or not we’re ok with invoking slavery to score cheap political points? It has to stop. It is the opposite of persuasive and is another reason Republicans repel us. It’s hard to believe that Michele Bachmann would be foolish enough to sign this pledge.
Agreed… except for one bit. It’s not really at all hard to believe that Michele Bachmann would be foolish enough to sign the pledge. That’s what she thinks. That’s what her evangelical Freedom Jesus constituency thinks. They are dangerous idiots who think that science is just an opinion and that schools should be required to teach fantasy as fact. These people are scary, is what I’m saying.
As for the rest of it?
Whatevs. I can’t even muster up any anger. It’s too early in the process. Teabillies and Republicans are asshat. That’s been apparent for quite a while. This is just another brick in the asshat wall. I’m just going to let the crazy — like a two year old throwing a tantrum — tire itself out.
“You couldn’t find anybody in the world more pro-education than me. But the education I went through in boys’ grammar school in the ’50s was very controlling and demanded rebellion. The teachers were weak and therefore easy targets. The song is meant to be a rebellion against errant government, against people who have power over you, who are wrong. Then it absolutely demanded that you rebel against that.” – Roger Waters, Mojo Magazine December 2009.
[via Jack and Jill Politics]
[cross-posted]
Citizen Alan
I wonder if Libby’s not-boyfriend and all of the nice people they hang out with at the steak house are going to vote for Michele Bachmann.
Spaghetti Lee
And the wingnuts care so much about these poor, single-parent kids that they want to take away their schools, their food, their homes, and their parents’ jobs and retirement savings. Tough love and all that.
I think, like abortion and contraception, this single-parent business is a proxy for their outrage that someone, somewhere, had extramarital sex and was not punished for it, which is of course unacceptable.
J
Hmm! I’m not sure the title of this post is right. Isn’t the real message somethings like: “some people (you know who I mean, those people) were better off being slaves”?
NamelessGenXer
Another Waters lyric comes to mind whenever I see Batshit’s botoxed face or hear her chalkdust torture of a voice…
you fucked up old hag, ha ha, charade you are
Quicksand
Did you know that kids played a lot less videogames in Hitler’s Germany? It’s true.
Stillwater
Can I defend Bachmann here? that she meant that black communities are fractured and the most stabilizing, healthy influence in a young persons life after Freedom Jesus is his/her father, so black kids are missing out on old timey trad.fam. Christian goodness that has worked so well for so long for so many?
Nah. She’s whacked. But she does play to her audience well.
ETA: By that last comment I mean there is real genius in expressing incredible racism under cover of care and concern. She’s taking conservasense and conservexpression to a new level.
David Hunt
It is entirely unsurprising that she would sign that pledge. Anybody with enough of a soul to be upset by it will never vote for her anyway (I hope).
staffwriter
WaPo did a series of articles about being black in America where they covered this very item.
[email protected]
bemused
Of course she signed it. Marcus probably told her to do it and husbands always know best.
buckyblue
Not to ever agree, or seem to agree with Bachmud, and there aren’t any statistics on two parent slavery families. But in the 1960’s, a black kid was as likely as a white kid to be raised with both parents in the house. That has completely changed so that only 1 in 4 black kids are raised with both parents in da house these days. Most of which is put right at right wing policies that charge double secret life sentences for an ounce of crack while letting the dear bond market asshole get off with treatment for an ounce of powder.
Warren Terra
If anything, you’re underselling it. This isn’t just something they mention – it’s the first bullet point in the document. The very first thing they want to do is to moan about the parlous state of the Black family, to say that Those People were better off as chattel, and to swipe at Obama for not having magically changed all of Black society (to match their prescription, naturally) despite being President for the last two-and-a-half years. Even if your obsession is the decline in the phenomenon of the Beaver Cleaver nuclear family, and you feel that the statistics about the Black family are the most striking ones available, when you hark back to the halcyon days of slavery and you make the Black family the subject of your first two bullet points in a document that’s not really specifically about Black folks, you kind-of give the game away: you’re targeting your appeal to the prejudices of racists.
Other things in the document are equally nutty. They obsessively craft a fantasy of the lurid fates awaiting those flowers of American womanhood who serve too close to combat – and demand not only that this be banned but that all officers who permitted it be sacked, as well. They give advice about better sex – or, more precisely, since this is a pledge for politicians to sign, they demands that politicians agree with their advice about better sex. And they seem extremely concerned about the sex trafficking of American children, leaving me to wonder whether I should be more worried that they’re convinced this is a controversial issue, that they think this is some epidemic sweeping the nation, or that they restrict their protective impulses to American children.
Also amusing is the very last part of the pledge: signers commit themselves not to provide endorsements, channel funds, or even offer “affirmation” to any politician who doesn’t sign the pledge. Bachmann has apparently signed it, and there’s no way in hell she can honor that commitment. Which should be fun.
arguingwithsignposts
I’m thinking Bachmann didn’t even read past the headline of the pledge. Or think about that particular “plank.” The real question is WTF put that in there anyway? Besides the obvious racist overtones, it’s not necessary for the rest of their batshit platform.
eemom
this shit. It cannot be made up.
We are through the looking glass, ladies and gentlemen. There is nowhere to go but crazier.
khead
Solid.
But I think the phrase you are looking for here is “Libby’s companion of convenience”.
“Companion of convenience” is full of awesome and should become an Internet tradition everyone is aware of.
buckyblue
So when they pass marriage equality in Minnesota does Marcus get the normal benefits of a
married couplelive-in??Stillwater
@Citizen Alan: I wonder if Libby’s not-boyfriend and all of the nice people they hang out with at the steak house are going to vote for Michele Bachmann.
Hah! If so, it’s only because they’re scared of rapid social change.
ed drone
Since in many cases, slaves weren’t allowed to marry (and even if allowed, it wasn’t encouraged), and either parent (or the “increase” — the kids) could be “sold away” at a moment’s notice, I don’t think you could call slave families “families” in the normal sense of the word anyway.
I know there were slave families, yes. I don’t want to give the impression there weren’t. But the fragmentation of the African American family didn’t start with the New Deal or Aid to Dependent Children, for sure. And her metaphor is about as clumsy as you could get, unless you’re blowing that dog whistle as loud as ever you can.
Ed
DonkeyKong
namelessgenXer you forgot the best part….
“What do you get for pretending the danger’s not real.
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel.
What a surprise!
A look of terminal shock in your eyes.
Now things are really what they seem.
No, this is no bad dream.”
MoeLarryAndJesus
They will if Rush tells them to. But since they’re so nice they’ll smile at any young bucks they pass on the way to the polls. Unless one of them is that Kenyan commie hisself.
PhoenixRising
1960’s, a black kid was as likely as a white kid to be raised with both parents in the house.
What’s changed I wonder…?
Whoops, it’s right there–if it had been disparate sentencing, it would have bit me! Most of which is put right at right wing policies that charge double secret life sentences for an ounce of crack while letting the dear bond market asshole get off with treatment for an ounce of powder.
You win the thread, though sadly a post-racial America will not be shrinkwrapped with your prize.
JWL
Quick! Someone ask her where she thinks the term “sold down the river” originated.
PhoenixRising
Ed, I’m pretty sure that someone wiser than I has already noted: Dog whistles can’t typically be heard from low earth orbit.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Given how the current crop of GOP hopefuls operate, they should be worried that GOP politicians might be involved in the sex trafficking of American children.
jl
The most horrifying thing I have read about slavery is in the go to book on U.S. Economic history (which I think would be especially interesting to lawyers, since it pays a lot of attention to economic legal history) is:
American Economic History (8th Edition) (Pearson Series in Economics) by Jonathan RT Hughes and Louis Cain
The most publicized economic research on U.S. chattel slavery was the rather unfortunate work that said working age African American slaves weighed more on average than people in Africa, so they must have been better off, maybe, sort of, kind of.. or something. Anyway, just maybe tighty whiteys like me shouldn’t feel so all sad face about it.
The book reports the whole spectrum of historical research on the welfare of slaves. The book documents research showing that slave families were often broken up, and only the favors of more decent than average slave owners prevented routine breakups.
The book also reports research that for some reason is not so popular to report in the popular press. Researchers looked at shipping manifests for slave transport ships, and rafts and railroad shipments. Somebody had to record the number of slave transported and their weight.
Turns out only working age slaves were well fed or in any way shape or form could be considered anywhere near average weight. Kids and old people, and even pregnant women, apparently were extremely small, and apparently very seriously malnourished. Like damn near starved to death malnourished.
The book reports the economic analysis of why doing such a thing might have been profitable for slave owners.
Reading it made my skin crawl, just as much as all the maiming and killing that was done.
The people peddling this stuff are monsters or complete fools. Either way they are enabling monstrous attitudes, and encouraging future evil. Need to call them out.
Martin
I love this game!
Low taxes are destroying the American family!
Warren Terra
One other, less ludicrous but still irritating thing: they complain, in passing, about tax policies that penalize marriage. I’m far from an expert, but I’m only really aware of one such: the so-called “marriage penalty” in income taxes.
Of course, the “marriage penalty” was created as a “marriage incentive”, in an era when most married households had a single breadwinner. The household’s sole income would then be taxed at a lower rate than the same income for a single person. It’s only when you have a couple in which both people earn comparable incomes that this plan falls apart, and the same policy becomes a “marriage penalty”.
But, of course, these people all want to go back to the single-income, Beaver Cleaver household (heck, who wouldn’t want this to be a viable option, so long as the single income was ample and the unemployed partner had ways other than paid work to lead a fulfilling life?). So we can’t “kill the marriage penalty” by penalizing households with greatly unequal incomes. There is no solution that would make them happy; the just want to moan.
arguingwithsignposts
@PhoenixRising: IANASociologist, but I can’t believe all of the change (or even a majority) is due to disparate sentencing (although that’s clearly a problem). Are there other reasons as well?
Lisa
Stop picking on Libby. Jesus. Do you people run over old ladies if you find out they voted for Bush? Push grampa down the stairs because he watches Hannity?
NamelessGenXer
@DonkeyKong
And we can go “Sheep” for the 27%ers.
Suffern ACE
@Warren Terra – anything that makes bastardy at all an acceptable condition is a tax policy that penalizes families. Hence children without fathers shouldn’t be considered “dependents” for tax purposes and children in two-parent households should be granted a $100,000 tax refund per child. As long as both parents aren’t of the same sex, which goes without saying.
Brachiator
Stillwater:
Well, almost OK. But here’s the problem:
This is just fucking nuts. And a lie. It’s just weird how Republicans want to try to re-invent slavery as some benign institution. It’s vile. And it certainly seeks to avoid the elephant in the room, which is the fucking evil of slavery, which would have reduced the father, the mother and all the children here to mere property. It’s not as though slave parents could raise their children independent of the desires of the people who owned them, so to talk about a black household is insane.
This is not quite true. Even a deeply flawed work like Eugene D. Genovese’ Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made has a great deal on the material life of enslaved African Americans.
But again, the bottom line is that Bachmann’s crap is both wrong and irrelevant. All kinds of impacted stupidity.
Martin
It’s like the homophobia thing. They simply assume that everyone has those impulses, but because the rest of us aren’t marinating in scripture, we’re certain to give into them. Doesn’t even dawn on them that not everyone has those impulses.
Shorter: don’t take your kids to their daycare, mkay?
RalfW
@Lisa “Stop picking on Libby.”
+1
Pick on the evil racists pleeze.
K,thanks.
jl
Time for me to go retro a little, but with an anti GOP Xtianist twist.
Growing up on a farm, I damn well think life is more fun when some one can stay home if they want (either man or woman, whoever feels like it). I am all for single family breadwinner homes, whenever a family wants that.
That would require a living wage, higher incomes for most people to make that a good choice. Nordic countries have shown how to do this. Too bad their way is godless communism that will enslave people, sentencing them to a life without Freedom.
Better to have subsistence wages, and force women to stay home, waiting for abortion and miscarriage police to come for the monthly examination. That is the American Way.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
Lisa at 27: Yes.
They have made this an existential war. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
If this “pledge” doesn’t make people understand just how deep their enmity is for non-white people in general and black people in particular… well, to quote Reuben Cogburn, “I can’t help ya, son.”
RalfW
Fixt.
WyldPirate
Michelle Bachmann is a fucking whackalooon, but the statement appears to be factually correct even though the implication that “they were better off being slaves is bullshit:
why do I say this? Data exists.
from the link:
“Fragmentary” black families:
1880 20.3%
1910 20.2%
1940 24.1%
1960 27.5%
1980 47.2%
And from this link:
Single-parent black families in 2009– 67%
There are probably a myriad of causes for this ranging from the effects of the Drug War on black communities, eligibility for WIC and other programs and simple sociological changes.
The facts are, though, that there has been a huge increase in the number of black children raised in single-parent families and that increase has happened in the last 50 years.
Tsulagi
Hard to believe? Seriously? Wouldn’t be surprised if she actually wrote it for that socon group. You know, her being a really smart attorney plus all up on slavery history and all, she’d be good at writin’ stuff.
Actually wouldn’t be surprised she wrote it. Strategery. Try to force the other R-bagger cands to sign joining her in the crazy pool. Then she doesn’t stand out crazy, and none of the others can swim as fast or as well in that pool as her. Victory!
RalfW
@35 In 1880 there was most likely a huge reporting bias, as mentioned up thread. Add in that daddy and mommy were chattel forced to work inhumane hours for no pay, and indeed “they were better off being slaves” is bullshit.
The whole notion is stunningly vile to trot out in a pledge.
But mark my words, Michele will play the victim card as the backlash forms.
Citizen_X
American children. Whew! That leaves Rush alone to enjoy his Dominican rentboys.
Morbo
In the United States, the percentage of children living with an unmarried mother has tripled since 1960.
It’s up across the board. The statement is defensible as a matter of pure numbers. It’s possibly true for white families, too, but I’m going to pull a McArdle and not bother to look that up. It’s also irrelevant. Why would Michele single out the rate for blacks? gee, I wonder.
jl
@35 WyldPirate
I can’t find any data in the linked article that goes back to 1860 (though the pdf is not searchable, so I might have missed it). There were no slaves in the US in 1880.
So, what are you talking about?
jacy
@wyldpirate
Has there been a huge increase in children raised in white single parent families in the last 50 years? Let’s see, the rise in divorce rates, the sexual revolution, the loss of “bastard” stigma, artificial insemination. My older kids at one time were from a “single parent family.” You can pick any data point to infer anything in the world. Using some totally out-of-context data point to try to give any legitimacy to something that is a)patently false, b) vilely racist, and c)batshit crazy just reeks of contrarianism for contrarianism’s sake.
rob in dc
That ladies our next president. Time to start making emigration plans.
PIGL
Because the worst thing about chattel slavery was it’s impact on the families of the enslaved.
It’s almost brilliant how much evil they can pack into a few short words.
In a public forum, I can not say what I wish would happen to her and every single mutherfcuker who sails in her. But you can probably figure it out.
Joel
You could make the Bachmann argument in so many contexts. We could even make this a game…
Debtors prison was bad and all, but at least Britain didn’t run deficits!
PurpleGirl
In the 1950s and before, anyone woman applied for welfare (aid for families with dependent children) had to single — i.e. the husband had to have left the household and abandoned the family. Or else no assistance, cash or otherwise. It became the standard state of affairs. If there was a man in the household, it was felt he should have been working to support the family, whether or not it was possible for him to do so. That’s also why so many states do not offer cash assistance to single childless adults — we are supposed to support ourselves however we can.
Whi9le there have always been some black men who worked, there also have been many who due to educational difficulties and other factors found it increasingly harder to find and keep jobs.
Midnight Marauder
The end of that post was fucking absurd. She is an adult. Let that woman fight her own battles over her nonsensical statements.
Mattminus
Completely OT, but what the fuck is wrong with people that can’t handle a frontpager hanging out with a Republican?
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, half of y’all are just freepers with a different color jersey.
Elie
jl@ 40 —
Heh, heh, heh….
Just had to ask old Wyldie about facts, now didnt you?
Also, jacy@41
I have so many questions about even what the definition of two parent household would be identified as such during slavery. Does wyldie or others think that the slaveholders kept records of their slaves in family units?
And tell me Wyldie, why do you spout off so much bullshit all the effing time? And btw, as several have pointed out, white kids are more likely to be in single parent homes these days. So what?
WyldPirate
@RalfW:
I don’t disagree that it is an abhorrent notion–but it is a notion that is unstated by Bachmann. You folks are the one making the leap with ABL who, as usual is egging things on with hyperbolic statements which insinuate Bachmann said “black families were better off as slaves”.
Bachmann didn’t say that–ABL did. Bachmann’s statement appears to be factually correct while ABL’s is angry, ill-thought out hyperbole as usual.
The data support the fact that the rate of single-parent black families have increased nearly 3-fold since 1960. The numbers have increased for all families regardless of race.
The data also support the fact that children in single-parent families are far more likely to live in poverty than those that have both parents at home. I’m too lazy to look it up, but I expect that this holds true across the races as well.
Michele Bachmann is definitely a whackaloon piece of psychotic shit. But ABL is playing her typical blame “Whitey the Cracker” horseshit and stirring the shitpot of guilt here.
Hyperbole and horseshit is the same thing no matter what side of the political spectrum it comes from. And frankly, ABLs sucks worse in this case because she made shit up out of whole cloth and didn’t check the facts.
But hey, ill-researched posts are ABL’s forte…sad for a lawyer.
RalfW
Not that any member of the racist, anti-science, anti-fact party gives a rats ass, but:
via @MinnPost Study: New light bulb standards opposed by Bachmann actually save money http://t.co/uZnBK5y
RalfW
@Wylde
I did not need ABL to tell me this was batshit racist crap. I didn’t know it was in the pledge, but once I did, I really, truly could have made the tiny, itty bitty leap of logic by my widdle selfie to understand the abhorrent undertone of that bullet point.
Just like I could hear the dogwhistle about constitutional conservative in the pledge item about judges.
Just because ABL blew up on this doesn’t mean its a figment of her imagination.
kdaug
“Declaration of Dependence“. Srsly.
Probably best that she wait until after the fourth to roll that one out, but that’s gonna be a real damn hard sell even among my Republican friends.
Elie
Wyldpirate, you didnt answer jl’s question @ 40.
Did you do all your little data table to make a point about ABL’s unfairness to Bachman — that Bachman must be completely right in her assertion that black folks lived in more two parent families during slavery… even though your table was based on at least some questionnable statistics. All this to “show up” ABL — something that is higher on your priority list than refuting the very questionnable statistics supporting her and apparently your assertion…
Midnight Marauder
What?! I mean…just what the fuck are you talking about?! This is the statement in question:
You know what a child born into slavery in 1860 was also more likely to experience? Being sold to another master and getting separated from their parents forever.
So the real question is why are you working so hard to defend and fluff a statement that is premised on an entirely flawed, white-washed perspective of history? What is the point of your efforts here? Because it is pretty fucking obvious that life for children born into slavery in 1860 was abysmal in every capacity. So what is even the point of your asinine “defense” of this grossly transparent racism…except to take another gratuitous shot at ABL?
Oh. I get it now…
Yutsano
The horse is now at the water.
Michelle
@WyldPirate:
It wasn’t Bachmann’s statement — it’s from the first point of the pledge she signed.
And btw — the reference that they give in the pledge to support their point — doesn’t actually support their point.
Surprise surprise — it’s the pledge writers who made the comparison about the time of slavery and now out of whole cloth — just to insult blacks and Obama.
jacy
@wyldpirate:
Not familiar with the whole “shorter” concept, are you. Mayhaps you should familiarize yourself with all internet traditions. There’s a guide you can buy if you’ll just subscribe to my newsletter.
ruemara
Damn, man. You are quite the bigot. And, yeah, ABL is blaming Whitey the Cracker. I totes get that from her post. And you are so anti-hyperbole. It’s about time for you to post something homophobic and misogynistic, so go on ahead. I don’t feel the need to engage you, but I am going on the record. You have some serious, not too very well hidden issues with black people.
Peggy
OT- Driving while Black is upstaged by Banking while Black.
A black man was jailed, lost his job, and lost his car, all for trying to cash his certified Chase check at a Chase Bank.
It took days for him to be released without an apology.
WyldPirate
@RalfW:
Bullshit. Facts are facts. Kids in single-parent families are not as well off financially as those in two-parent families.
Bachmann may be loon, but she didn’t make shit up here and there doesn’t appear to be anything made up in the TheMArriage Vow Bachmann signed.
ABL routinely plays fast and loose with the facts–if not making shit up out of thin air. She has done so since day one here on BJ. It’s fucking sloppy as fuck and a poor standard when compared to the rest of the front pagers who at least have the humility to admit when they are wrong and correct themselves. ABL–not so much.
You can hear all of the “dog whistles” you want, but there is nothing that appears to be factually inaccurate in what Bachmann said. Neither did Bachmann imply that “blacks were better off during slavery”. That is ABL’s construct.
You are quite welcome to drive on with your guilt trip, however.
Dweeze
The main point of the pledge is to get all candidates on record supporting the effort to ban marriage equality. The creator of the pledge, multi-time failed Iowa gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Platts, is the man who led the barely-successful effort to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices last fall and who has been pushing to have the rest of the court impeached for their role in making gay marriage legal in Iowa. Not that he’s not racist too, but it’s his hatred of the ghey that drives everything he does, including the pledge. Given that, it should be no surprise that Bachman, whose husband has an equally-suspicious hatred of the ghey, would sign the pledge.
WyldPirate
@ruemara:
You care to refute the facts I posted?
No, I didn’t think so.
There is nothing bigoted about pointing out the truth.
patrick II
@ arguingwithsignposts
From: Is the War on Drugs Being Waged as a War Against People of Color?
Disparate sentencing is not the sole problem. Disparate arrests, disparate convictions and disparate sentencing combined lead to bigger numbers than one might think.
Chyron HR
Yes, WyldPirate. There’s nothing bigoted about habitually calling the President things like “Black-Black Blackity Black Nigger Jesus” because it’s the TRUTH!
Even though you’re saying it sarcastically.
jl
Actually, thanks to WyldP for that link. Some interesting stuff in that article, but I do not think it indicates what WyldP thinks it does.
The usual assumption is wild men leaving the mother at home. For men now, it would be ability for leave burden of supporting woman and child for easy welfare money. Back in the day when Men Were Free, it was leaving them to light out for the territories (harder to trace people back then. You needed no drivers license for a horse, no income tax).
Not sure why WyldP picked fragmentary families, but that is not appropriate for that story. The article defines fragmentary family as either single (primary) individual or single parent. But if families are breaking up or never formed, many men who left their woman and kids would be counted as single families. Getting to the nub, let’s look at single parent households. I calculate the ratio of an Af Am family being single parent compared to W (since there are strong increasing trends in both groups over time) get the following from table 1.
Ratio of single parent Af Am to W single parent
1880: 1.4
1910: 1.3
1940: 1.2
1960: 1.9
1980: 2.9
So, yes, a trend but no nearly as pronounced as indicated by WyldP above.
Getting closer to single mother families with children under 10, shown in Table 2, the ratio of Af Am to W has stayed around 3 from 1880 to 1980. Edging up to a little under 3.5 in 1980. The proportion of single mother families drop in both groups drops when kids 10 to 14, with ratio a little under 3, about constant across time.
Final thought: I await the bold statement on racial bias in law enforcement and criminal sentencing from the GOP, what with a substantial number of African Americans being in prison for long periods for drug crimes, even though evidence shows drug use about the same in the two groups.
Elie
Wyld@63.
You never answered the questions jl had about your “data” back up at #40, did you?
You first. jl asked you and then I asked you, but how is there slavery in 1860, how reliable are these data about family units during slavery???
You are really putting yourself in a very unflattering light (ha — SURPRISE!). You argue that Bachmann’s stats are correct and certainly the trend she cites is correct. But you completely ignore that this is also happening to white families and the broader society as a whole. It is pretty likely that Bachmann makes a point of this to highlight BLACK people and put out the tired dog whistle racism — once more.
WyldPirate
@jacy:
I put up data from a specific period from a peer=reviewed journal in one case.
The data shows that there has been an explosive increase in the number of single-parent black families in the past 50 years. I am sure that there has been an increase in white single parent families as well, but if you compare the date from my two sources (apples and oranges I know), the increase has not been nearly as steep in white families.
That gets down to the real issue at hand that SHOULD BE important–what happens to those kids in single-parent families? Not some race-baiting made up title by ABL implying that Michelle Bachmann thinks that slavery was a better state of affairs for African-Americans than the current situation.
If Bachmann was blowing on the race-baiting “dog whistle”, ABL whipped out the “race-baiting” air-raid siren
That is not the issue, though. The issue is that ABL just makes shit up out of whole cloth. Not just in this post, but in post after post after post. Shit, Cole took one down just a few days ago because she was so loose with the facts.
delosgatos
Wyld:
That statement is statistically correct, but don’t you think you shouldn’t brush off the fact that the pledge seems to compare single parent families in 2011 to two parent families of slaves?
Well, I don’t know where they got their stats on how often slave families were broken up by sale of a family member, so I’m not willing to grant that.
But what’s really irritating is that you seem to be asserting that there’s no such thing as insinuation by choice of words; that the factual veracity of a statement is the only thing it communicates.
You masturbated after you looked at your mother. I’m sure that’s a true statement of fact.
Midnight Marauder
Good thing you missed the truth entirely, you fucking bigot.
WyldPirate
@Elie:
I didn’t know that I was required to write an entire sociological discourse in response to more of ABLs screeching, bullshit hyperbole.
I’ve went one better than ABL already–I got off my ass and looked up some real data instead of spouting out my digital cakehole ala ABL typical MO.
Look what the fuck you want to know up yourself.
middlewest
So Wyldpirate has no problem telling black people that they had stronger family units during slavery, but he’s not a racist or anything, no siree.
Here’s another totally not-racist, factually-true statment for Wyldpirate to endorse:
“Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American citizens, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more free from burdensome taxation than an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”
or how about:
“Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American children, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to live without diabetes than an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”
They’re factually true (which I know without looking up, of course), so they can’t be racist, right?
PhoenixRising
It’s even worse than you think: couples cohabiting are worse off than married couples regardless of whether they have kids.
Some interpret this fact to mean, Get more couples married and they’ll have more money, so their kids will have better outcomes. (The causal relationship between household poverty and other poor outcomes is widely agreed on.)
Other people observe that the causal explanation for the correlation could as easily be the other direction–marriage has become a middle class thing to do, and increased poverty causes decreased marriage rates.
Those are the facts. Nothing bigoted about them. Now, the assumption that bastardy causes flunking the 4th grade…that’s not a fact, it’s a conclusion.
jl
increasing gap between two parent Af Am and W families seems mainly due to single fathers and no parents. High water mark for two parent Af Am families seems to be 1940, for W 1960.
Anyway, I don’t think whatever is going in is what pledge or Bachmann are talking about.
PurpleGirl
Hey, maybe we need to remember that in most slave states, slaves could not marry. It’s one of the origins of the “jumping the broom” tradition. The slaves developed their own ways of noting a relationship because they could not partake of the usually way, i.e., a marriage. A woman/wife may have been owned by one plantation and her man/husband was owned by another plantation and they saw each other when they could but they didn’t live together.
And note that the writer of the pledge used 1860, just before the start of the Civil War instead of, say, 1820 or 1848.
WyldPirate
@middlewest:
Nice ABL imitation. I said no such thing. In fact I said this in @37:
PhoenixRising
So there is some social or economic factor causing more black than white women to be single parents of their kids…across time…whatever could that be? (Show your work and don’t use the R word.)
My point about disparate effects in criminal justice was that, despite other changes reducing racism as a whole across that time period, there is such a forceful disparity for young black males that it would be surprising if more of them were married to their kids’ mothers. (My cousin checked her baby’s daddy at the door to the church and decided against tying her credit to his. Not uncommon.)
TooManyJens
@WyldPirate: I think there may be a teensy difference between the state of the Black family in 1880 (for which you have statistics) and in 1860 (for which you do not). Don’t you?
Brachiator
WyldPirate:
Goddam it. I wish the fuck that people would stop using data starting from 1880, decades after Emancipation, and saying any fucking thing about slavery.
Just stop it.
Did any of you bastards go to school and take any history classes?
Do you have this simplistic notion that slavery didn’t end until 1965 when the Civil Rights Act was passed?
And lay off this reductive bullshit that looking at numbers tells you a goddam thing about the quality of life for any of the peoples who lived through the years before and after Emancipation.
And Wyld, I am not just singling you out here. And some of the other points you raise are interesting. But just barely.
harlana
I keep hearing how the underground buzz says this women really is “very smart.” This is an ignorant, ignorant woman.
myiq2xu
Once again Buffoon Juice sets the standard for misogyny
Citizen_X
Hey WyldPirate, I’m really appreciating your anti-hyperbole crusade here. What’s with people and their crazy unsubstantiated assertions, huh? So perhaps you could point out to me where ABL, as you put it, is
Or, for that matter, where she
Because even the statement in her title, “Sure slavery sucked, but at least black kids had two parents back then,” is pretty much a straight paraphrasing
of the statement Bachmann signed.
So does ABL have some hidden text there that only you are seeing? Please point it out to us, so we can share the outrage. Thanks for your help!
Elie
Naw Wyld, I aint looking up anything with the data issues that would be present in identifying single parent “households” during slavery. Its just too unclear about what is being counted in a society where there was no reason for slaveholders to track their slaves that way and for many other reasons including the inability of slaves to marry and the frequency of enforced splits to families through sales.
Why are you supporting Bachman in this way on this issue? Can you not even remotely accept that their might be a racial motive for even bringing stuff up like this and promoting it as some sort of pledge?
You think that you are offending or insulting ABL, but you are offending a lot of other people here as well. Your angle is malicious and intended to injure ABL as well as the sensibilities of many black people (like me), who post comments here. What is your point, really?
HyperIon
khead wrote:
I suggest “Libby’s PAYING companion of convenience”
And when is the reply function coming back?
HyperIon
From Jack and Jill Politics:
Why is this hard to believe?
It seems to fit perfectly with her other crazy/foolish ideas.
Stillwater
@ruemara: And you are so anti-hyperbole. It’s about time for you to post something homophobic and misogynistic,
And well researched!
WyldPirate
@delosgatos:
This is a good point. I simply found the best data I could in a limited amount of time. The data I found went back to 1880. The link to that data is in the first post I made @37. I thought that, in the light of the facts, Bachmann’s “pledge” made a semi-relevant point despite the bullshit nature of the implication by taking it back to 1860.
The rest of my post isn’t directed at you, BTW, but at the rest of the people calling me a bigot.
I pick on ABL for a reason–her posts are ill-reasoned, ill-supported hyperbolic horseshit that are typically loaded with half-truths or outright lies. She has, by far, the least amount of integrity of any front-pager here, IMO.
I think it is fucking stupid to fight this shit out about the Civil War over and over again. The real problem is that there has been an explosion of single parent families–both black and white. Data suggests that kids from these families are far more likely to live in poverty. That is happening today. NOW. These kids are far more likely to have health issues, drop out of school, have children of their own that live in poverty–practically every negative thing that can happen from a sociological perspective affects kids from single-parent families than it does kids from intact families.
I’m not going to sit around, put on fucking sack-cloth and ashes and go around flagellating myself over shit that happened 100 years before I was born. I can’t change that shit. If the ABL “fan club” want’s to do that then fine–knock yourselves right the fuck on out. Whip yourselves until the blood runs down your back and wallow in the guilt until you get your fill. ABL loves it, I’m sure.
Good-bye. This is uncalled for and offensive to not just me. (i had you pied.) enough is enough. and stop dropping your loads at my blog. you’re not welcome there. -ABL
Brachiator
By the way, as with everything else, black people had a hard time getting their marriages recognized by the rest of society. So, from The “chords of love”: legalizing black marital and family rights in postwar Texas, by Barry A. Crouch we have this:
The bottom line is that black people, particularly in the South, had to fight to get American society to acknowledge the existence and legality of a black family, and black marital ties. The situation of free blacks in the North was better, but still complicated.
Anybody trying to make easy judgments about black life during slavery, after Reconstruction or in contemporary America is a moron. And this includes any Balloon Juicers who clearly have a weak understanding of American history.
IrishGirl
@buckyblue: I think you’re missing several important points that ABL is making. First, you can’t compare the stats in the two populations. The slaves weren’t free people making free decisions compared to the freedoms of African Americans today. Second, the fathers to many second generation children were their owners and the families were split up all the time both from the white fathers but also their titular black fathers when people were sold off or inherited, etc. So discussing the nuclear family as we understand it today is NOT even remotely the same as talking about the slave family of two hundred years ago. Third, stats weren’t kept all that well back then. Fourth, the stat when taken out of context sounds reasonable until you realize the context is SLAVERY. Then it becomes absurd.
Finally, (am a lily white person and even I think this) who does this lily white asshole think she is trying to use the African American experience as a means of scoring points while at the same time implying (quite paternally I might add) they they were in any way shape or form better off under slavery than now??????
harlana
If the document didn’t already exist, she would have written it herself and asked all other republican contenders to sign it.
Warren Terra
My gawd, who knew myiq0.5xu was even still around the internets? I assumed they’d committed ritual suicide to ameliorate the humiliation they inflicted on themself in the 2008 campaign, or at least gone to live computerless in a trappist monastery …
And as to Wyld’s nonsense: the question isn’t whether the statistics are true. The question is whether, when an Iowa-based organization that purportedly concerns itself not primarily with Black America but with the families of all America decides to lead off their entire manifesto with a paragraph about what a terrible time it is for the Black family, including that things were better under slavery, and including a swipe at Obama, their motives rather become suspect. They’re crying to the heavens that Those People and Their Problems are destroying America – as their lead-off argument, their first and most important grab for attention. The accuracy of the statistics used just is not the point.
Citizen_X
Hey Pirate, fuck her posts, what about this post? Back up the assertions you’ve made in this thread. Quote what ABL said, and tell us why it justifies all your screaming. Otherwise, nobody gives a shit about your little obsession.
NamelessGenXer
@myiq2xu
It’s Ms. NamelessGenXer to you, genius.
Midnight Marauder
You can respond directly to me just like you did everyone else, you bigoted coward.
Brachiator
WyldPirate:
Now you’re being a disingenuous weasel. Your beginning data point, 1880, can’t tell you a damn thing about the lives of enslaved peoples. And data from earlier periods are harder to understand and even less meaningful since the unions of enslaved people often were not recognized as legal marriages.
Comrade Kevin
@myiq2xu:
That’s hilarious, coming from you, you sack of shit.
Comrade Dread
If they really gave a damn about black families, they might consider investigating why a disproportionate number of young black males seem to be sent through our penal system, and perhaps do something about that.
And, really, people, if you’re trying to reach out to minorities, it’s probably not a great idea to tell them that they were better off being owned and managed by white people.
Idiots.
jl
Item from the pledge:
Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended “second chance” or “cooling-off” periods for those seeking a “quickie divorce.”
From a good historical review of family structure and welfare policy:
Figure 4 shows fraction of African American births to single women falling by 50% (from about 0.04 in 1910 to about 0.02 in 1940). Doubles to 0.04 between 1940 and 1950. Doubles again (to about 0.08) between 1950 and 1960. for Whites was approx stable between 1910 and 1940 (about 0.75 percent) then more than doubles (to about 2.5 percent) between 1940 and 1950. Declines in African Americans and poor Whites groups from 1960 to 2000.
Figure 2 shows that single motherhood (as opposed to births to single women) shows similar pattern, except was constant for both groups until 1950, with ratio of Af Am to W about 3 (same as other article). Increase started between 1950 and 1960. This article does show a much more pronounced increase in Af Am than W between 1960 and 1980.
From conclusion in abstract:
“The correlation between [state level] welfare benefits and family structure only appears in 1970 and then only for whites.”
CM Moehling. The American welfare system and family structure: An historical perspective. The Journal of Human Resources XLII(1) 2007 pp 117 to 154.
Looks like them 1940s and 1950s were a bad bad time that corrupted society.
Anyway, the pledge peddles misleading conservative myths, with some racist dog whistles thrown in.
Edit: must be some difference in methods or data between this article and WyldP’s, since results here do so big differential increase in single motherhood between 1960 and 1980. But white single motherhood still rising gradually as of 2000, while Af Am was decreasing.
My opinion, is that the historical patterns of single motherhood and single mother families more reflects changes in economic climate than bad morals, welfare policies, or single sex marriage policy.
Cain
@myiq2xu:
Nice of you to stop by for another drive by crack, GoatBoy
Brian
Ketchup is a vegetable. A plantation is a household. War is peace. Sick, sick, sick.
rikyrah
very much on point.
phoebesmother
Warren Terra at #93 has succinctly identified why this Pledge seems patently offensive and racist. Wyld (considering all the ugly things you’ve had to say about women), it’s the gratuitousness of that first paragraph in the Pledge that whistles its racist origins — doesn’t matter whether what they said has any statistical accuracy, really doesn’t. Did they mention anything about white, Asian, hispanic, anybody-else’s family structure? Nope. ABL has reasons to be sensitive to anti-black intimations; you don’t.
And ain’t it peculiar that the same thread that includes attacks on ABL by the usual suspects has attacks on Libby? What might they have in common? There’s far too much testosterone in these attacks. Kinda like how Richard Dawkins was outed at Pharyngula. It’s pissing me off.
Anya
WyldPirate is a racist asshole. I feel ill reading a supposed liberal defend a statement like the one in the so called pledge. What don’t you understand about slavery, you racist buffoon? Do you really want to go there with the “raised by two parents in slavery” insanity? You’re lack of awareness is staggering. Fuck off, you racist piece of shit.
MomSense
No words. This is just disgusting.
No one of Importance
Well, they figure you have the ignorant racist demographic all sewn up, so they go for what they can.
I was particularly impressed by your first commenter (frequent player at your blog, are they?) who said “[Ta-Nehisi] Coates is a vicious fucking race baiter and has been for some time”. I mean, of course a intelligent, widely admired black man who fearlessly points out racism in public discourse, society and government is just a *vicious* race baiter.
I don’t like a good many of the commenters on this blog because they’re unrecontructed bigots and sexists. But you’re a pathetic sack of cow poo all on your own.
EDIT: Oh, it’s a ‘male feminist’. How very like one to be so righteous about a sexist insult while blaming black women and girls for being single mothers.
No one of Importance
I don’t supposed the edit I made to my last comment will make it out of moderation (ABL, why do you hate my comments so much?) so here it is:
EDIT: Oh, it’s a ‘male feminist’. How very like one to be so righteous about a sexist insult while blaming black women and girls for being single mothers.
No one of Importance
I wonder if it’s the words ‘male feminist’ which have my previous two comments in moderation. Not suprised if it does – they tend to be toxic creatures.
Mr Stagger Lee
My eyeballs just fell out of my head, can someone help me?
Sly
The purpose of the statement is twofold: the overt purpose is to get black folks to “wake up” to the “fact” that they have become dependent upon the state (a rather transparent lie), while the more covert purpose is to say to the larger white audience that the Federal government is spending too much money on black people and getting nothing in return. Basic white resentment politics, the kind that appeals to people who think that guys like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are the biggest problems with the Democratic Party.
@myiq2xu:
Clearly what we all need is a trainer with a “meatprod.”
Steve
patrickII identifies the important fact that Bachmann (and too many other people) ignore: The so-called War on Drugs is the primary reason for the high incidence of single-parent black families.
That “war” WAS originated and led by whites like me. I, Whitey the cracker, (along with numerous black morons who have been fooled into supporting the drug war) deserve the blame until we succeed in shutting the damn war down. We also deserve to keep on paying the $70 billion per year (in the US) or $2.5 billion per year (in Canada) that the drug war sucks out of our tax payments – until we succeed in shutting the damn war down.
Lurleen
This pledge isn’t about marriage. It’s about the same old shit.
Please white people, own up to the problems in your own community before pointing fingers at others. There are more poor whites than any other group because whites make up a larger group. There are more white teen mothers than in any other group. There are more divorced white people.
It’s the problem with percentages. If you have zero flag burnings and then you have one, that’s a 100% increase.
At least the minority communities recognize the problems they have. The white community is in complete denial.
OzarkHillbilly
I am still a little bit proud that they would never again play the Lou…. because we were too rude…
ABL
aw, man. and here i was chugging along reading this thread, oblivious to wyldpirate’s racist bullshit, and then somebody had to go and blockquote him.
WP is just pissed that cole banned him for calling obama a nigger.
true story.
he’s an idiot.
ABL
he’s not even offending or insulting me. he fails at most things in life, including his latest endeavor:
WyldPirate – July 8, 2011 | 4:31 pm · Link
The sad part is that this entire controversy could end right here, if we could all sit down and share some pie!
Karen S.
I find that particular plank of the pledge Bachmann signed to be insulting for a very personal reason. Way back in the mists of time, my mother’s side of the family was enslaved in Virginia, the southwestern part of that state. One of my male antecedents had several children with a fellow slave on a plantation there. They were not legally allowed to marry, but probably considered each other husband and wife. But then he was sold to a plantation in Louisiana and no one in my mother’s family ever heard anything about him after that. So much for that two-parent household. This was not uncommon, the breaking up of the families of African slaves. Beyond sharing that bit of my family’s history, I can’t write anything more because I find it difficult to articulate the sorrow that story has made me feel since I first heard it several years ago.
Tehanu
PurpleGirl @76:
Sure — why, if the master wanted to break up the family, he only had 5 years to do it in 1860! And he probably couldn’t have made a profit selling a toddler. Yep, those kids were sure better off. [I’d put in a “/snark” tag here but it’s more like “/outrage at the friggin’ racism”.]
karen marie
My question for Wyld is, if the whole “ain’t it a shame that black families are so fucked up” isn’t dog-whistle concern trolling, why isn’t the concern for Americans in general? Why are Bachmann and her cronies singling out black Americans?
Black Americans are more than twice as likely to be living in poverty than white Americans, so how can anyone be surprised that there are more than twice as many single-parent families among blacks than whites?
Shouldn’t the concern here be about people living in poverty rather than pretending that one group of people is morally inferior to another?
dogwood
What’s disturbing about Wyld’s defense of Bachmann and her factual accuracy Is that he expects people to to divorce intent from this tripe. The statement in the pledge wasn’t intended to impart knowledge; it was intended to create a feeling. If they were interested in informing they would have stopped with their statistics. Adding Obama to this makes it a non- sequitur. The fact that anyone would defend something so clumsy and obvious is also clumsy and obvious.
gocart mozart
Boy, the way the help would bray,
Sounds that the whiplash makes,
Guys like us, we had it made.
Those were the days.
Didn’t need no abolitionist States.
Every slave pulled his weight.
Gee, our old estate ran great.
Those were the days.
And you knew who you were then,
They were chattel and we were men.
Mister, we could use a man like Stephen Douglas again.
gocart mozart
In case its not clear to everyone, I mean the above to be a satire of where the Republican party is heading if it stays on the road its on.
Citizen Alan
Lisa @ 28
I’m very grateful for the fact that my own mom and dad (aged 77 and 81, respectively) voted for Obama. I’m also deeply saddened that they have lost friendships going back decades over the fact that they are not reactionary Republicans like most of their peers. In particular, I remember the nearly homicidal rage I felt when I learned that my father had been told to his face that he wasn’t a good Christian because he voted for Kerry. Since nearly every Republican I have ever dealt with for any length of time over the last ten years has evinced some degree of revulsion over my political views even as their own party was reigning destruction on this once great nation, I no longer feel any particular reticence to respond in kind or even preemptively. But I certainly wouldn’t push an old person down the stairs for being a Republican! I’d just tell him that I hope he died soon for the good of the country.
As for Libby, I’m not picking on her and begrudge her nothing. Living in a red state, I can hardly avoid interacting with Republicans, and I’m perfectly willing to let one buy me dinner if I don’t have to listen to a bunch of bigoted or ignorant crap as the price of attendance. But I also don’t offer blog posts in which I argue that they’re really nice people once you get to know them and we should all hold their hands and reassure them because they’re really only upset because of how the mud people are getting so uppity these days.
On this point, I agree with Cole: Anyone who chooses in 2011 to be a Republican is just an asshole. There is no other explanation or description that is appropriate. And nothing will change that asshole until the party he worships fucks him just like it has everyone else and in exactly the way that all us dirty hippie liberals warned him about. In the meantime, he is the enemy, and to the extent practical in a civilized society, you can expect me to treat him as such. I certainly don’t expect him to treat me any better.
here4tehbeer
So the safest place for an African-American baby is Marcus Bachmann’s womb?
I’m so confused.
AAA Bonds
Jesus Christ
AAA Bonds
Still smartin’ from this. . .
Jimperson Zibb (formerly Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I’m really pulling for Bachmann to win the nomination. I think that’s the only way the Serious People are going to wake up and see that the Republicans have utterly lost their shit. They can excuse anybody else. They can explain away anybody else’s craziness–well, maybe anybody else but Santorum; but he has no shot–or shut their eyes to it and make believe it isn’t there. Anyway, if there’s anybody who can make even George Will and David Brooks to wake up and ask themselves, “Jesus Christ, what have I done?” it’s Bachmann. Even Krauthammer might begin to ask himself if he’s been on the right track for the last 25 years if Bachmann gets nominated.