WILLIAMS: How Important Is Today’s Racial Discrimination?

There is discrimination of all sorts, and that includes racial discrimination. Thus, it’s somewhat foolhardy to debate the existence of racial discrimination yesteryear or today. From a policy point of view, a far more useful question to ask is, How much of the plight of many blacks can be explained by current racial discrimination? Let’s examine some of today’s most devastating problems of many black people with an eye toward addressing discrimination of the past and present.

At the root of most of the problems black people face is the breakdown of the family structure. Slightly over 70% of black children are raised in female-headed households. According to statistics regarding fatherless homes, 90% of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes, 71% of pregnant teenagers lack a father figure, 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes, 71% of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes, and 70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions have no father. Furthermore, fatherless boys and girls are twice as likely to drop out of high school and twice as likely to end up in jail.