"Hurricane Illegitimacy"

[Hilltopper]

I know this is a fairly old article, but I think it says a lot about why some young athletes have trouble following the rules. I don't agree with everything the author Jason Whitlock says but the basic premise is right on target. Until we as a society put more value on preserving the family structure there will be further erosion and more misery. Whitlock argues that it is primarily the minority communities that suffer from this problem but I think it is a universal problem for all the poorer classes.

"Hurricane Illegitimacy"

Let's call it "Hurricane Illegitimacy."

Its victims are primarily black and brown, but Hurricane Illegitimacy is not a black or brown problem. It's an American problem that is denied and exacerbated on the left and mischaracterized and exploited on the right.

Like climate change, Hurricane Illegitimacy is powered by man-made factors:

1. A lack of proper restraints on welfare entitlement programs for single mothers and fathers.

2. America's bogus war on poor people who use and sell drugs.

3. Turning incarceration into a for-profit business model.

4. A refusal to recognize that investment in the education of our poorest and weakest citizens could strengthen our entire society.

5. Our collective lack of courage and resolve to combat popular-culture forces that celebrate, normalize and profit from baby-mama and criminal culture.

Because of this melting-pot-country's history, we've been conditioned to identify the race of a person misbehaving and examine the racial implications. We would be far better served looking at the family history.

Statistics prove beyond all reasonable doubt that married parents raise more well-balanced, stable, highly achieving kids than unmarried parents. The same is true for two involved parents as opposed to a single parent. The stats are far more stark when we add in risks factors such as teenage babies having multiple babies (Dez's mom had 3 kids by age 18) and incarcerated parents. Healthy two-parent families (not all two-parent families) do a superior job of raising and developing kids.

Let's don't waste time pointing to the lucky outliers. President Obama, President Clinton, LeBron James and countless others are simply notable aberrations, symbols of why we should invest in every child. But if this country wants to really invest in young people, we must first invest in restoring the traditional family unit. As long as 68 percent of black women who have children are unwed, there are no cures for the social maladies preventing black progress.

The normalization of illegitimacy is so pervasive in black America that people are afraid to publicly address its dangers and consequences out of fear of being labeled a sellout or a racist. It's been so normalized that some people honestly don't believe it's a problem.

Ignorance is blissful and deadly. Ignorance is why we see Dez Bryant misbehave and automatically think race rather than family.

Ignorance is why we don't understand that the black family structure thrived and survived until our lawmakers launched a drug war, mass incarceration and shortsighted welfare policies.

Ignorance is why we've failed to object forcefully to pop-culture forces using their unprecedented power to promote hedonism as the ultimate high over family evolution.

I found this article while reading Whitlocks piece on the culture of the locker room of the MIami Dolphins and the Martin investigation.

Martin walked into twisted world

I'm black. And I totally understand the genesis of this particular brand of stupidity and self-hatred. Mass Incarceration, its bastard child, Hurricane Illegitimacy, and their marketing firm, commercial hip-hop music, have created a culture that perpetrates the idea that authentic blackness is criminal, savage, uneducated and irresponsible. The tenets of white supremacy and bigotry have been injected into popular youth culture. The blackest things a black man can do are loudly spew the N-word publicly and react violently to the slightest sign of disrespect or disagreement.

Yeah, Richie Incognito is an honorary black. And Jonathan Martin is a sellout.

[Sergeant Zip]

@WhitlockJason defines Hurricane Illegitmacy as

Standards so low that people want to be praised for not committing crimes.

I put "Hurricane Illegitimacy" in Twitter and it told me to read @grahamscharf's blog post on Hurricane Illegitimacy and Institutional Illegitimacy He states that:

this is fundamentally a moral issue. It has to do with the nature of relations among human persons [...]

It is impossible to attempt a moral argument to care for the poor and weak without an honest conversation about the morality of the actions of those to whom care and help is to be offered.

institutional illegitimacy will require more than articles, essays and blog posts.