Casual Killings: A Response
Dr. McWhorter's analysis (http://www.nysun.com/opinion/casual-killings/60671/) put a shaky finger on one aspect of a serious pathology with-in a segment of the black community. However, he neglects to fully develop this thesis, the limitations of print media notwithstanding. Moreover, and more troubling, he adopts a blame-the-victim approach, which so many African American intelligentsia and conservatives embrace, broad-stroking a huge swath of the black community in the process, letting what family these kids had off the hook altogether for their failed parenting skill sets. Fact of the matter is that a small, vocal group of black women exerted an inordinate amount of influence on the War on Poverty programs spearheaded by the Johnson administration during the late 1960s. This was at the very height of the social turmoil characterized by the civil rights and anti-war movements, respectively. Although their numbers were small relative to the total census of recipients receiving Aid...