Femi Awodele, a friend who serves as the Executive Director of Christian Couples Fellowship International, points out these two graphs from American Values which show (simply but dramatically) the most relevant source of the problems experienced among African-Americans.Whether one is looking at education, employment, earning power, mortality rates, crime, incarceration rates, abortion, drug use, STDs, self-esteem or any of several other critical other issues, the destruction of the nuclear family is at the core.
The decline of the family isn't merely a problem among black Americans, of course, but the trends are much steeper.
Here's just a few of the examples from the AV findings:
* American spouses who are “very happy” with their marriage -- 62%
* Births to married parents (American average) -- 60.3%
* First marriages intact (American average, ages 20-59) -- 61.2%
* The African-American "Marriage Index" (a combination of 5 different factors) -- 64% in 1970 but 39.6% in 1978.
* Births to married parents (African-Americans) -- 28.4%
It looks like those of us who are working to strengthen the family have quite a job ahead of us. And the stakes couldn't be higher.
