Loving the City

An article I read on loving the city the other day is worth a read. It is a helpful exhortation and a critique of many movements currently happening. The author makes 6 basic points:

(1) Fighting for marriage.”The marriage rate for African Americans has been dropping since the 1960s, and today, we have the lowest marriage rate of any racial group in the United States. In 2001, according to the U.S. Census, 43.3 percent of black men and 41.9 percent of black women in America had never been married, in contrast to 27.4 percent and 20.7 percent respectively for whites. African American women are the least likely in our society to marry. In the period between 1970 and 2001, the overall marriage rate in the United States declined by 17 percent; but for blacks, it fell by 34 percent.”

(2) Fighting against abortion, foster care, and for adoption. “In New York, for example, In NYC, Black’s have a 59.8% abortion rate, Hispanics have a 41.3% abortion rate, Asians have a 22.7% abortion rate, and Whites have a 20.4% abortion rate “(prob b/c of the pill). One-third of all kids in foster care are black. There is real race bias in this system.

(3) Working against ethnic violence. “The alarming statistics about violence among African-American boys and men is so oft-cited that they have become cliches: for example, “black men are the leading cause of death among young blacks [male and female]”; “1 in 146 black males are at risk of violent death”; and though comprising only 13 percent of the U.S. population, 43 percent of all murder victims are black, compounded by the fact that 93 percent of them are killed by other blacks.”

(4) Rescuing urban children from substandard education. The Schott Foundation recently reported that only 47 percent of black males graduate from high school on time, compared to 78 percent of white male students.

(5) Helping hurting people to not self-medicate their pain with drugs and alcohol. “The 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health showed that the highest rate of current (past month) illicit drug use was among American Indian/Alaska Natives (13.7%), followed by blacks/African Americans (9.8%), persons reporting two or more races (8.9%), whites (8.5%), Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islanders (7.5%), and Hispanics (6.9%). The lowest rate of current illicit drug use was among Asians (3.6%)”

(6) Working to fight HIV/AIDS proliferation. “Blacks/African Americans accounted for 52% of new HIV diagnoses and 48% of AIDS diagnoses in 2008. Of the total number of people living with HIV in 2007 in the 37 U.S. states and 5 dependent areas, 46% were black/African American; 32% white; 20% Hispanic/Latino; 0.8% multiple races; 0.6% Asian; 0.4% American Indian/Alaska Native; and 0.04% Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander.

See the rest of the article for the discussion of these points and the critiques of the “hipster” vision.