Mass Confusion in East St. Louis.

[Bluefront]

Happy Father's Day.....It's a joke. It now happens to be true. Last I heard over eight out of ten births in East St. Louis and St. Louis were out-of-wedlock. That makes most of the kids bastards in the classical sense. Now before you say "everybody does it", in St. Louis county less than two out of ten births are out-of-wedlock.

Does this point to a lack of morality in the urban residents? Should we worry about it? Is it costing society anything? My answer is yes to all of the questions. And who gets hurt the worst? Of course it's the kids, being raised without a father, usually in poverty, relying on public welfare....pure hell for the kids.

What can be done to improve the situation? Many things...force the mother to reveal the identy of the father, or lose welfare benefits. Prove the father's identy using DNA testing. Make the father pay, pay, and pay. Right now very little is being done to recover costs related to out-of-wedlock births....perhaps if the fathers knew it would cost dearly to father children outside of marriage, they would think twice before screwing around.

 

[jjones]

While in essence I agree with much of what you're saying, I take issue with this:

"perhaps if the fathers knew it would cost dearly to father children outside of marriage, they would think twice before screwing around."

It takes two to have a child and the mother is not relieved of responsibility when it comes to "screwing around". You're referring to conditioning men to avoid irresponsible sex; I think it would do well to condition the women also.

 

[Lucky]

Originally posted by: jjones
While in essence I agree with much of what you're saying, I take issue with this:

"perhaps if the fathers knew it would cost dearly to father children outside of marriage, they would think twice before screwing around."

It takes two to have a child and the mother is not relieved of responsibility when it comes to "screwing around". You're referring to conditioning men to avoid irresponsible sex; I think it would do well to condition the women also.

I think we "condition" women enough in this society, and that our focus should be on pressuring men to take tha responsibility more. Around my area, all the billboard and TV ads that try and campaign against teenage pregnancy focus on the women, and most of them are surprisingly degrading and negative in tone.

 

[vi edit]

You make it sound so simple. But it is not.

East St. L. is predominently blacks. Black men between the ages of 14 and 30 have the highest imprisionment percentage of any racial/demographic group. To make matters worse, they also have the highest chances of being dead before the age of 25 out of any racial/demographic group out there. It's sort of hard to pay child support when you are behind bars or six feet under.

I don't have statistical evidence to back up my next claim - but I would venture to guess that the stats that I just mentioned are MUCH higher in ESL than say, Des Moines, Iowa or Omaha, Nebraska.

Yes, it's easy to make suggestions while sitting behind a computer in a nice cozy leather chair under the comforts of central air and a house with a mortgage payment higher than average income of a black in an inner city like ESL.

But, we must realize that this is a social culture thing, and our suggestions from a rather well to do culture do not apply to the rather, not well to do culture of your average black man/woman living in rather poor inner city setting.

The urban black culture needs to help itself. If it doesn't, it's just a matter of time before it self implodes.

 

[spazntwich1]

Yes, we need to get these people to stop having sex, but I think a decent stop-gap solution would be to subsidize abortions for these people.

Ultimately, it costs us more to put someone in jail for ~20 years than it does to have them never even make it into the world.

 

[Brutuskend]

This reminds me of that old joke.

Q: Why do african american males call each other "Brother"?

A: Because they don't know WHO their father is!


BTW: THIS IS A JOKE!! So please don't call me a racist....

 

[Bluefront]

vi_edit.....I refuse to believe that morality is posessed by well-to-do people exclusively. And I also refuse to believe that there is no solution to this problem except from the urban resident himself. This problem has been festering for years.....and it's quite evident the residents of urban cities are doing nothing to fix the problem. The people of the US have dumped billions of welfare dollars into these areas trying to fix the problem. It hasn't worked. I think it's time for a change in tactics.

My suggestion of somehow making the father pay is only one suggestion. There are other ways. Perhaps stronger measures. The point is...we aren't trying anything at all, letting the problem grow worse by the day.

 

[Brutuskend]

On the subject of people nursing from the Government teat.

A woman came in where I work yesterday to buy a new bike.

And sarted complaining about how the gov. just cut off the $$ for her "treatment".

I don't know if this was for physical treatment or MENTAL treatment, but she had the $$ to buy a NEW bike.

Then when she left, she got into a BRAND new Honda Passport!! (She said she'd had it for 3 days!)............ :disgust:

The woman by the way was WHITE, so it's not just the African American's that are abusing the system!