Why didn’t the forward-looking jobs initiatives for African Americans in the 1960s bring long lasting success? And what can be learned as those same challenges are faced today?
Why didn’t the forward-looking jobs initiatives for African Americans in the 1960s bring long lasting success? And what can be learned as those same challenges are faced today?
One of the great tragedies of the 60s was that the civil rights revolution coincided with the sex revolution, the drug revolution, and the decline of American education. The benefits that should have occurred because of the civil rights revolution were cancelled-out by those other factors. The sex revolution destroyed the black family, the drug revolution helped destroy black communities, and the decline of American education kept blacks from receiving a quality education.
All of these together formed a cultural revolution which initially hurt the most vulnerable the hardest, but which has now spread to all levels of society. Popular music and entertainment – particularly those directed at the black community – seem almost deliberately intended to lead to a catastrophic erosion of the values needed for stable families, productive employment, and upward mobility.
^ You left out the welfare system.
Yeah, I thought of that. LBJ’s “Great Society” began the shift from the family unit to government-as-daddy and subsidized self-destructive behavior.