Good Boys and Bad Dudes

by Leon J. Podles

The young black men of America are, the WASHINGTON POST has concluded, bad news (Young, Black, Male and Trapped. 9-24-89). The problem is, the POST has realized, not that they are black, but that they are male.

A black male has a better chance of being murdered than of graduating from college. Educated black women have a dilemma: shall they marry a lower status black, or settle for an educated white?

Urban school systems are disintegrating under the anarchic behavior of black boys. Neighborhoods also suffer. When I lived in the city next to a poor black area, I was stopped on the street by young black mothers desperate to rent in a safer white neighborhood. But they were trailing young boys, and bringing their problems with them.

Unlike liberals, I do not believe that blacks are genetically inferior to whites. I think that blacks are capable of living under the standards that WASPS have inflicted on the rest of us. Even if blacks are more aggressive than whites, I don't think that being male and aggressive is a Bad Thing.

Men have a hard time of it in civilized lands. It is not only black men who are trapped. Consider the finer institutions for the free spirits of our land. Women's prisons are like college campuses. They may have a fence around them for old time's sake, but the only precaution necessary inside is to keep a sharp eye on your briefcase in case light-fingered Lola happens by. Men's prisons are built on the model of the Siegfried Line: thirty foot high fences topped by razor-ribbon wire. Inside the atmosphere is not cheery.

Most men, black and white, stay out of these precincts. But aggressive men are superfluous in a society designed for the benefit of women, and reshaped by laws and regulations that envision no place for men in our society.

Society has always been designed for the benefit of women. We are a mammalian species, and women are far more central to reproduction than men are. Men's work has higher status because it is less important. Men may win fame by hunting the wooly mammoth or building a dog-food conglomerate, but they can be easily replaced. If the mother dies, the family is doomed, and the children perish.

The family has disappeared among poor blacks in neighborhoods that have 90 percent illegitimacy rates. Daniel Patrick Moynihan recognized twenty years ago that black males must be given the role of provider, or their aggressiveness would turn into destructiveness. But the feminists took over, and black male violence is tearing America apart.

Men, as any woman will inform you, arc hard to put up with. Welfare offered women an alternative provider. When William Rasberry called for special treatment for black boys to help them grow into responsible men, he was bombarded with letters that came from black women but that could have been written [by] the Grand Wizard of the KKK. The gist was: black men good riddance.

Religion can help disintegrating societies, as Methodism did in industrializing England. But the black churches are as dominated by women as the mainline churches. The black boy, like Huckleberry Finn, has no use for Sunday School.

What black boys, like all boys, need is suitable discipline and male role models. Instead they are put in schools run by women for girls. They rebel. In a recent experiment, black boys were put in single-sex kindergartens, one taught by a black man, the other by a white. All the boys did fine, especially when compared to a coed kindergarten taught by a woman. Someone complained to the Feds, then [and] this sexist experiment was ended. Black boys, who needs them?

What black boys need is schools for boys taught by men. A military school, staffed by retired black and white officers, would give black boys a decent shot at life. A dozen such schools in a city would be worth a hundred convention centers in making the city safe and livable. The Army, more than any other American institution, has seen black men succeed in great numbers. Disciplined aggressiveness can be a valuable asset.

However, the feminists have won the day, and male aggressiveness has as much social cachet as body odor. Affirmative action benefits black women, because employers get two brownie points with the EEOC for hiring a black and a woman. Even the Army has become the-arena for women's careers rather than a fighting force. The Army, the POST trumpets in the same edition that carried the story on black men, must open up more slots for women. As usual, the losers will be black men. There is a direct line between the emancipation of women and the young men with their brains blown out on the streets of Washington DC.

Published by WASHINGTON DATELINE, VOL. XII: No. 52 891252.