Don Pesci: The unmentionable 'F' word

VERNON, Conn.

Wander into the badlands of any large city in the U.S.,  shout out “Father” and nothing will stir. Fathers are rare in this environment; far rarer, shall we say, in the north end of Hartford than they are in posh New Canaan. What happened to them? Have they all fled to the Left Bank in Paris to become expatriate artists?

The problem is cultural, say most sociologists. Just as F. Scott Fitzgerald once said of the  very rich – “They are very different from you and me” – so is the underclass very different than the middle class or the upper class. No one pauses very long to entertain the question: Why are they different? That is one among many questions assiduously avoided whenever well intentioned liberals get together with equally well intentioned professors of raceology to discuss the equally absorbing question: Why can’t we have an honest discussion on race in America?

Answer: We can’t, among other reasons, because we shy from answering the all-important question posed two paragraphs above: Who killed fathers in the African-American community? Indeed, we refuse to acknowledge its importance. This question cannot be properly probed without mentioning the “U” word – underclass -- and its connection with households without fathers.

“Poverty” is the polite word most often used by polite liberals and more earnest progressives to describe the plight of the unmentionable underclass. And, no, people who discuss these things are not racist for having so brashly mentioned the unmentionable; namely, that there is an underclass under the noses of most well-intentioned liberals and that this underclass has become a permanent feature of modern day America.

Poverty in the United States has never been, with some rare exceptions, permanent; in fact the impermanence of poverty is what has driven the desperate poor to the United States since its founding. The boast engraved on the edestal of the Statute of Liberty -- “Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/ The  wretched refuse of your teeming shore./ Send these the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,/ I lift my lamp beside the golden door” – is a celebration of the impermanence of poverty. But an underclass has since become a permanent fixture of our social order; it is that very thing the huddled masses were hoping to escape in their desperate flight to America, where a steady advancement up the ladder of success was impeded by speed bumps rather than the fortress walls of a class system that in Europe kept the rich in splendor and the poor in rags, more or less permanently.

It seems ages ago that the late New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan  warned us all that the African-American family – dad, mom, kids -- was becoming an endangered species. Part of the problem was – and is – that the welfare system replaced Dad with a kind of sustenance that imprisoned people within the system; welfare clients were held in welfare cages on the periphery of poverty. The more they were helped, the more secure and inescapable their prisons became. A welfare state that was supposed to allow movement from temporary dependency to self-sufficiency became a more or less permanent holding cell, a purgatory whose doors, unlike the door mentioned in the Emma Lazarus poem, never opened upon more hopeful vistas.

How many fatherless children are there in our welfare system? Lots and lots and lots. For the most part, fatherlessness is a precondition for receiving welfare. And some of the younger “fathers” of children born out of wedlock – how ancient that word sounds – have never made it to the alter. Many of them are in prison. Brought up without fathers themselves, they drifted – like ships without rudders, blown here and there by every ill wind. Their children will drift also, unless they are made of very stern spiritual stuff.

Grandmothers and grandfathers, if they have been lucky enough to remain together, may help. Ministers, priests, rabbis, imams, social workers, other siblings and teachers may help. Still, the chance that a young African-American boy whose caretakers have relied on a social-welfare system that strives to “play father to the child” will be able to avoid the pitfalls that lead to gang affiliation, poor marks in school or a prison cell, is considerably more remote than would be the case if the boy were reared under the watchful eyes of a self-sufficient, responsible and employed father who would love and guide him down sure and well-marked paths.

Sons need fathers. And a society that cared for fathers and sons -- and its own welfare -- would not so perversely ignore the ruin at its door.

 

Don Pesci (donpesci@att.net) is a political writer who lives in Vernon, Conn.

Llewellyn King: The Hawks' Levenson and 'racial insensitivity'

By Llewellyn King Bruce Levenson, the embattled principal owner of the Atlanta Hawks, is that anomaly in business: a nice guy who has come in first. I have known Levenson since the 1970s, and have marveled at his acumen and how he and his publishing partners built their hugely successful publishing company, United Communications Group (UCG), into the Goliath of the newsletter publishers.

I published business newsletters for 33 years in Washington and was in awe of Levenson’s achievements. His capacity to understand markets and foresee trends put him way in front. UCG, for example, embraced computers when old-line news people like myself were wary of them.

As UCG grew, we, the other independent publishers, were humbled by its success. Yet we always talked of Levenson as a “sweet guy.”

He was also a philanthropist. We, his competitors, with our little businesses, were bowled over when UCG -- in the beginning of what I assume continued to be Levenson’s charity -- donated $300,000, as I recall, to a cause for African-American youth in Washington, D.C. I don’t believe any of us could have mustered a tenth of that then mighty sum. It spoke volumes about Levenson’s business success, but also about his concern for African-American youth. Later, as owner of the Hawks, he served on the advisory board of the Hoop Dreams Scholarship Fund, which provided more than 900 D.C. students with college scholarships.

When I read about Levenson’s “racially insensitive” internal memorandum, I wondered if his accusers -- that rump of the politically correct who wait to take umbrage at anything that might be construed as a racial slur – knew anything about the man and his works. They are those who would have us believe that careless words betray vile hearts, for which they must receive humiliating public opprobrium.

This comes at a time when the police shooting of an unarmed young black man in Ferguson, Mo., has led to a fresh call from people like Peniel Joseph, professor of history at Tufts University, for a new dialogue on race. But there will be no real dialogue on race while some of the participants are afraid of being branded “racist” if their speech drifts from the true north of political correctness.

This is tragic, as the changes in the work place make it harder and harder for African-American youth to find meaningful employment and when conditions in the schools, in housing, and in medical care for the African-American community are lamentable. Their plight is visible and moving to anyone who takes a bus or subway in any major city.

There should be a wake-up call for all of those with a concern with social welfare and justice from what has happened in Rotherham, in northern England, where systematic sexual abuse and gang rape of young, at-risk white girls, largely living in public-housing estates, was institutionalized by gangs of Pakistani men. Yet the social services and the police were reluctant to pursue complaints because, according to the official investigation, they were afraid of being called “racist.” A gargantuan 1,400 incidents are being investigated: the price of racial rectitude has been high.

It seems to me that Levenson’s memorandum, which dealt with the economic impact of a lack of white support for the Hawks, was the kind of memorandum we might have written in the publishing business -- like how could we attract more universities to subscribe, or why there weren’t enough law firms buying a particular title.

That doesn't mean that Atlanta doesn't have a severe racial divide and, as Levenson’s memo inadvertently points out, that the African-American community there is disproportionately impoverished.

Race and marketing are entwined, that's why there is a Black Entertainment Network and why certain liquors are marketed more to one race than another. At one level, professional sports is all about marketing.

Within a few days of Levenson’s purchase of the Hawks, I had occasion to meet with him, and he was boyishly enthusiastic. Particularly, he was happy because he was assured that the team would let him on the court during practice. He wanted, more than anything money could buy, to shoot hoops with the pros -- most of whom, of course, are African-American.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of “White House Chronicle” on PBS. His e-mail is lking@kingpublishing.com.