On Black Families, Bachmann, and Blackman et al.

So today the big news was that Tea Party leader and candidate for the Republican presidential primary Michele Bachmann signed The Family Leader’s pledge, “The Marriage Vow: A Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family.” And what I found was a citation fumble so ridiculous that it makes me wish school was still in session so I could show my students…Well, almost wish.

Anyway, the part that triggered the most online controversy was this:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.³

Notice the footnote number? Well, not too unsurprisingly, the study put out by the Institute for American Values – “The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans: A Comprehensive Literature Review” by Lorraine Blackman, Obie Clayton, Norval Glenn, Linda Malone-Colon, and Alex Roberts – doesn’t support the claim in the pledge. (Really, please show me where it does!)

The study is pretty straightforward and reiterates much of what the public has already heard: Marriage benefits blacks differently than whites. Marriage benefits black men differently than black women. Marriage is important for black kids. Nothing new. It also mentions typical arguments for why black families have failed today, most notably “father absenteeism,” the redefining of male-female relationships, and other structural problems related to a history of slavery, discrimination, and poverty. In other words, slavery is cited as a possible cause for our baby-daddy problems today, not as “the good ol’ days” as some might interpret from the statement in the pledge.

Getting back to the pledge, there’s no support in the study (or anywhere else I’ve looked) for the claim that two-parent households were more common in 1860. It’s true that two-parent and intact families were more common right after emancipation. (The study cites data findings from 1880, 1890, 1900, and 1910 as examples.) Elsewhere, scholars have attributed this to blacks’ desire to reunite with loved ones, enter mutually-consensual relationships, and improve the race by following the nuclear family pattern. But, again, no praise for African American families under the slave system.

The lesson to be learned here? Simple: Don’t misrepresent other people’s research, especially when it’s so politically charged.

Putting the Elephant on TV

This morning something occurred to me…sort of the type of thing that knocks you right off your feet. It’s difficult to explain its significance without providing context. Yesterday, I finished rereading Dirty Girls Come Clean, a book written to help women cope with their pornography addictions. Although I think the author, Crystal Renaud of Dirty Girls Ministries, is weak on a number of key points, I admire her courage and insistence on waking up the Christian community to an ever-mounting problem.

Crystal spends a lot of space discussing confession and being honest about your failures as a major step towards healing. This will probably always be something that Christian leaders promote but people find difficult to do. From my own experience, I can say that admitting sin and asking others for forgiveness is probably the most scary thing ever…Okay, second to actual brushes with death.

Anyway, that idea was probably floating around in my head when I was reviewing some documentaries, hoping to incorporate them into my history class. When lecturing on World War II, I usually don’t discuss pro-Nazi sentiment in America – since someone will invariably mention it in the class discussion anyway – but I was in the mood for a change. The Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley has a nice little documentary that includes a short segment on pro-Nazi activities in the area north of Los Angeles. This would be my opportunity to use it.

However, the German American Bund is best known for its Madison Square Garden rally in 1939, an event mentioned in passing in other documentaries. In addition, it was an organization that had been bred and spent its best years in New York, so I turned to Ric Burns’ monolithic New York: A Documentary Film (site), wondering why I didn’t remember anything about the World War II episode. I soon discovered why: There is no World War II episode.

Since my parents had once been involved in the John Birch Society, conspiracy theories must be in my genes. I immediately suspected a PBS cover-up. How can a seventeen and a half-hour documentary that delves head first into a not-so-clean past fail to mention such a famous event? It’s not like this is the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened in Manhattan. The eight episode series covers the Dutch slave trade, the Civil War draft riots, and enough political corruption to make a Latin American dictator uneasy. These events I’d consider more problematic precisely because of the large percentage of people who believed them to be acceptable. Having garnered limited interest among German Americans and failed to receive Nazi Party recognition, the German American Bund seems to be causing more controversy than would be expected from any other short-lived fringe political movement.

This brings me to my main point: Are the filmmakers behind Rancho La Cañada, Then & Now: The History of the Crescenta-Cañada Valley (site) courageous for being honest about the community’s history? Or are Ric Burns and everyone else involved in the PBS New York documentary cowards for sweeping something out of the textbooks and under the rug? After all, the majority of those likely to see Cañada were probably elderly people who might wish to forget the rallies. It’s not as if many people know about, or care, what went on at Hindenburg Park, sad as it may be. Everyone has heard about New York though, and there were some top historians interviewed in the latter.

Now, suppose there’s a really, really good reason for playing dumb about the Madison Square Garden episode. That still doesn’t explain why World War II is for all practical purposes skipped. I’m sure they could’ve edited out a few minutes about building bridges and skyscrapers to talk about the wartime industrial boom or Italian Americans facing discrimination or one of a billion other things. The fact remains that someone purposely erased an important chapter of New York history.

Ayn Rand the Hypocrite

Today, Tax Day, a remake of Ayn Rand’s best seller opens here in Orange County. As might be expected, there’s been a lot of excitement among the local Objectivists, libertarians, and other pro-capitalists, who cherish having a feature film to call their own. I, on the other hand, am not exactly jumping up and down for joy.

Although I’ve self-identified as a libertarian for a nearly a decade now, my opinion of Ayn Rand has not improved as I’ve gotten to know more about her. Her position on religion was blasphemous, making man into God. Her tyrannical nature was antithetical to principles of liberty. And her greatest legacy is a Stalinistic personality cult that can only be described as laughable.

But most people prefer to focus on Ayn Rand’s libertarian ideas rather than her more embarrassing views. Whenever I met a faithful follower or passing admirer, I avoided conversation because a critique against her was always twisted into a rejection of laissez-faire economics and individual rights. But something changed this past January.

The Boston snow prevented me from doing a lot of sightseeing, so I spent time off work browsing at Borders and cooped up in the hotel reading my purchases. One was Ayn Rand and the World She Made. The author, Anne C. Heller, although confessing to be a non-Objectivist, is clearly an admirer and at times even an apologist for the literary icon. I expected to get a better understanding of Rand’s life, but I found more. Ayn Rand was no supporter of free markets.

Heller tirelessly recounts Ayn Rand’s unsuccessful career in Hollywood, editing others’ screenplays and trying to promote her own work. It’s not surprising that her books and screenplays were often not well received. She unabashedly wrote propaganda for her own views when audiences wanted to feel good about themselves. Her characters lacked proper development, primarily because she – like many female romance novelists – shied away from tarnishing her precious flawless heroes. And just like B-moviemakers today resort to tasteless jokes for cheap laughs, Rand fell back on an age-old promotional ploy: exciting “non-rape” rape scenes, the only reason why highschoolers ever read her books now.

Now, were many unfavorable reviews of her work a liberal media plot? Possibly. Was the mockery she received by the critics justified? Maybe not. But it still stands that the literary and film industries were unimpressed with her talents, and she was just too stubborn (or perhaps too perfect in her own eyes) to improve.

Any free-market economist worth his salt would say that the producer (Rand) should change to meet the wants of the consumers, find new consumers, or go out of business. Instead, Rand used the strong arm of the law to eliminate the competition and essentially force studios to purchase her work. How? By testifying for the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Heller makes it clear that Rand’s stance towards real and imagined members of the Communist Party was unfair and inconsistent with her own political views. However, Rand did her best to discredit her opponents so that Hollywood was rid of screenwriters and screenplays that promoted ideas different from hers. And in the aftermath, when studios were frantically searching for “pro-capitalist, anti-Communist screen material,” Heller tells us that Rand was only too happy to comply.

So why even argue? Ayn Rand was not a champion of free markets. She actively used the state to gain monopolistic control when few people were interested in consuming her product. I’m not naïve enough to imagine that her many followers will ever come to terms with this fact, just as they choose to be blind about her deception and disregard for others’ individual rights. But perhaps from their perspective, the Objectivist she-god is not subject to her own laws.