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Absence of stable families correlates strongly with all this awful stuff. Stable families correlate with the opposite of all this awful stuff. We know a considerable amount of the variance in family stability is cultural, because we've seen the rates change dramatically within living memory due to cultural changes.
Ditto for the crime rate generally; We've had it lower, and we've had it higher. What we have is what we've collectively chosen.
You made me curious, and I did a search for: "What happened to black family stability?"
"The original, often controversial, research presented in this book links marital decline to a pivotal drop in the pool of marriageable black males. Increased joblessness has robbed many black men of their economic viability, rendering them not only less desirable as mates, but also less inclined to take on the responsibility of marriage. Higher death rates resulting from disease, poor health care, and violent crime, as well as evergrowing incarceration rates, have further depleted the male population."
From the abstract of a 1995 book, The Decline in Marriage Among African Americans.
https://www.russellsage.org/publications/decline-marriage-among-african-americans-1
Is there a way to Make Black Men Economically Viable Again?
Eliminate the minimum wage so that they can find work at their natural wage, eliminate zoning and build more housing so that they can afford to live at below minimum wage salaries, and eliminate welfare so that they don't have to compete with the government for the role of husbands to black women would be a good start.
I'm going to invoke Chesterton's fence on this one (although there are some possibilities for different fences).
Does Chesterton's Fence apply here? We know why the minimum wage and welfare are there (provide a floor on labor prices and give assistance to help the needy). Eliminating them might have consequences we don't foresee, but that isn't exactly what Chesterton's Fence is about. It's about not eliminating something unless you know why it was put there.
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the argument can be drawn at least three decades earlier.
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