Too Many Trayvons

One of the most dangerous things to be in America today is a young black male. Contrary to what the race pimps and publicity prostitutes (Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et al) would have you to believe, this has very little (if anything at all) to do with racism. Permit me an informative illustration.

As I similarly noted years ago, between the years 1882 and 1968 the Tuskegee Institute reports that 3,446 blacks were lynched in the United States. According to FBI data, in 2010 alone there were 6,470 blacks murdered in the U.S. According to the same data, when the race of the homicidal offender is known, over 90% of the time, blacks are victims of blacks.

The vast majority of these victims are young black males. Shockingly, the CDC reveals that, for U.S. black males ages 15 to 34 the leading cause of death is homicide. What’s more, for American black males who die between the ages of 15 and 19, over half of such deaths are the result of homicide. Only 11% of whites in the same age group die due to homicide.

In April of 2012, writing about “black-on-black violence,” liberal black columnist DeWayne Wickham rightly asked, “Where’s the outrage?” He noted that, “More blacks were murdered in the USA in 2009 alone than all the U.S. troops killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to date.”

Wickham concludes, “But this painful truth hasn't produced the kind of sustained national outrage that [Trayvon] Martin's death at the hands of a white Hispanic [oh well, as I said, Wickham is a liberal] has generated. Why such a parsing of contempt? Maybe the people who've taken to the streets to protest Martin's killing don't care as much about the loss of other black lives because those killings don't register on the racial conflict meter.” Exactly.

Too many in America are (literally) invested in keeping the American “racial conflict meter” in perpetual distressed mode. Since Trayvon Martin’s tragic death, nearly 500 blacks have been murdered in Chicago alone. Have you heard the calls for action or justice? Where is the media?

The sad truth is, when one examines the real causes for the dreadful plight of so many young blacks in America, the conclusions don’t fit the preferred liberal narratives (along with racism, it’s guns). When it comes to Chicago, Lee Habeeb of National Review and I almost agree: Chicago doesn’t have a gun problem or a racism problem; it has a father problem.

Of course, the problem of absent fathers is not Chicago’s alone. It is played out all across America. You almost certainly know the numbers by now (I myself have told you several times before.), but here they are again: over 70% of all births among black Americans are out of wedlock. It should be needless to say, but evidently it can’t be said enough: this is a disaster, not only for the black community, but for America itself.

Of course, significant numbers of out of wedlock births among any group of people is a disaster for any community. But given the extremely high rates of homicide and out of wedlock births in the American black community, the relationship between the two dirty deeds goes beyond mere correlation.

What’s worse, the rampant sexuality and violence that has led to such tragic outcomes is not only frequently ignored, but often celebrated. The entertainment industry, peddling misogyny, violence, and crime, has been all too willing to pick up where absent fathers have left off. Thus, many young black males who are without their most significant role model look to emulate the attitudes and actions of those most pleasing to their eyes.

It is noteworthy that Trayvon Martin’s parents had long been divorced. While many accounts point out that Mr. Martin was a significant part of his son’s life and that Trayvon’s mother is a serious follower of Jesus Christ, the statistics bear out what good moral sense already tells us: teenage children without a father at home are, among other things, much more likely to participate in violent activity, and much more likely (4 times) to be victims of violence.

The truth is for children of any skin color, the presence of a loving biological mother and father in the home does more than anything else in the earthly realm to reduce poverty, crime, violence, and sexual promiscuity, along with improving education outcomes.

Until the race pimps decide that the breakdown of the family is a much more serious problem in America than is racism, I’m afraid that the tragedy that befell the Martin family will continue to play out at alarming rates.

P.S. This column was completed prior to President Obama’s July 19 speech on the Martin/Zimmerman case. In his entire speech, in which he often spoke of race, laws, and “programs” (government solutions of course), there was not one mention of the tragic breakdown of the family as the “context” for why “Trayvon Martin was probably statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else.”

Copyright 2013, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason

Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World

tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com