Susan B. Anthony and the Bad Dudes

by Leon J. Podles

The Washington Post has now said it, so the rest of mankind can repeat it without being disregarded as yahoos: the young black men of America are on the whole bad news (see “Young, Black Male, and Trapped” 9-24-89). The problem according to the Post, is not that they are black, but they are male.

A black male has a better chance of being murdered than of graduating from college. The disappearance of black men from campus has left educated black women in a quandary: shall they marry down socially, or marry an equal and settle for a white?

Urban public school systems have disintegrated under the anarchic chic behavior of black boys. Residential areas succumb to crime. Once in my braver and younger days I lived in a city neighborhood adjacent to a poor black area. Several times I was stopped on the street by young black women trailing children who were desperate to rent a house in a white neighborhood to escape the violence of young black males. But of course they had boys, and were bringing their problem with them.

Unlike liberals, I do not believe that blacks are genetically inferior to whites. I think that blacks are capable of living under the standards that White Anglo-Saxon Protestants have inflicted on the rest of us. Even if there are racial differences and black men are more aggressive than white men, I don't think that being male and aggressive is a Bad Thing.

Men have a hard time of it in a civilized society. It is not only black men who are trapped in America. White men end up in prison a lot more frequently than white women. In my professional capacity I have occasion to call upon the denizens of some of the finer institutions for the free spirits of our land. Women's prisons are like college campuses. They may have a fence or a single strand of barbed wire around them for old times' sake. However, the only precaution a visitor need take inside is to keep an eye on his briefcase in case a light-fingered Lola happens by. Men's prisons are built more on the model of the Siegfied Line: three thirty-foot high wire fences topped by concertina razor-ribbon wire. Inside the atmosphere is not cheery.

Most white men (and most black men too) manage to stay out of these precincts. However, aggressive men are increasingly a superfluous commodity in a society which was always designed for the benefit of women, and is now being reshaped by laws and regulations written by women who see no role for men in our society.

Society has always been de signed for the benefit of women, to keep them alive, to place the wealth men's labor creates at their disposal so that there will be another other generation and society will continue. Thus it ever was, and this is the way it has to be.

Because ours is a mammalian species, the central role in the biological continuity of mankind is occupied by women. Our society, with touching naiveté, gives the husband's name to the children his wife bears. But let's face it, men are largely extraneous.

All societies give male occupations higher status to fool men into thinking that what they do is more important than what women do in bearing and raising children. Women stay home while men go off to hunt the wooly mammoth, get killed in wars, sell vacuum cleaners, or get heart attacks building conglomerates. Whose work is more necessary to the species? If the father dies, the family may survive, but if the mother dies, the family is doomed, and the children often perish.

Society no longer exists among inner city blacks. If they were an isolated tribe, they would die out in a few years. The family, the basis of any society, has disappeared. Why?

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, before the Democratic feminists removed a certain part of his anatomy, recognized that black males had to be given the role of providers for the families, or else their aggressiveness would turn into a self-distructiveness that would tear America apart. But the feminists took over, and black male violence is (surprise!) tearing America apart.

Slavery is the usual whipping-boy, but I think that the social welfare system destroyed the black family. George Gilder is right. Welfare taught black women that they didn't have to put up with black men. The state would step in and support her and her children. The male is obnoxious: the welfare check is clean and convenient.

William Raspberry has shown an awareness of the difficult position that young black males are in. When he called for special treatment for black boys to help them grow up into decent men, he was bombarded with letters from black women. The gist of the letters was black men, who needs them? and if black men destroy themselves, good riddance! One expects such sentiments from the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, but it is unnatural and ominous to hear this coming from black women.

Occasional nods are made to the black church as a possible source of salvation. In the past religious revivals have had major impact on social order: the Methodists in industrializing England are the best example. But a glance at the active membership of black churches will show that women predominate, just as in the mainline liberal churches. Huckleberry Finn had no use for feminine Sunday Schools, nor does his modern black counterpart.

What black boys need to grow up to be civilized men is the same thing white boys need: appropriate discipline and role models (the mayor of Washington, D.C. doesn't count). In a recent experiment, black boys were assigned to two kindergartens. Both were single sex, and one was taught by a black male, the other by a white male. The black boys in these classes did fine, especially in comparison to the black boys in a coed class taught by a woman. Then the experiment was ended suddenly. Someone complained to the Feds about this sexist, discriminatory arrangement.

Boys lag behind girls in intellectual development and in the ability to sit still. Coed schools hurt boys. Schools are run by women for girls. Boys are allowed to stay if they will agree to behave like girls, and most white boys go along to some extent. Black boys don't.

Why should they? Why can't some schools be run for boys by men? A dozen military schools in each inner city, complete with uniforms, drill, and supervised study, staffed by retired black and white officers (without education degrees) would go far to making our cities livable, and giving black boys a shot at a decent life. The Army is the one major institution in our society in which black men have succeeded in great numbers and largely on their own merits. Aggressiveness, if disciplined, can be a valuable asset.

However, the feminists have won the day in America, and male aggressiveness is on a par with body odor. Affirmative action benefits black women, because employers can get two brownie points with the local EEOC. An employer would rather deal with a woman, who at worst will be insolent, rather than a man, who may turn violent. The Army, the Post trumpets on the front page of the same edition that ran the article on black males, must open up more slots for women. As usual, the losers will be black men.

The children in the abortion clinics are not the only bloody victims of feminism. There is a direct line between the emancipation of women from men (and their dependence on the government as a substitute husband) and the young men with their brains blown out on the streets of Washington, D.C.

Published by Fidelity, December, 1989.