This situation has led to a devalued fatherhood as the new economy fails to provide the entire web of securities, such as health insurance and a pension, that were formerly generally linked to full-time employment. The authors seem somewhat naive when they write, The fact is, in recent decades the political establishment has not come through for husbands and fathers. This seems an understatement given the set of facts and realities of the decades of the 1980s and 1990s that the authors themselves recite. The rules of the welfare system have discouraged fathers remaining with their families when they fall into poverty are cited as a principal contributor to the present crisis. Now deadbeat dads are demonized and used by politicians to drum up support.
Black males are thus especially susceptible to the belief that they are disposable and dispensable.
Black boys growing up are used to hearing that black men ain t shit, they ain t never going to be shit, and you are just like your daddy. Without denying the existence of self-hate among African Americans, the national black community is hardly monolithic and cannot be so neatly, and negatively, characterized. Unfortunately, the authors continue to force an ill-drawn analogy between contemporary public assistance and antebellum slavery displaying a lack of familiarity with recent research on the black family in slavery. Males, however, were completely stripped of their identity as men. One of their basic roles to provide was assumed by the white master.