Now that the semester is over, I’m back at the Barbershop. In this episode, me, Jimi Izrael, Reuben Navarette, and Roland Martin talk about among other things the increasing rate babies born to single mothers. It got pretty heated, as this is something I feel pretty strong about. Hopefully they’ll offer the extended version on the web, because we kicked this topic around for at least 20-25 minutes….
The Barbershop on Unwed Mothers et al
by admin | Dec 14, 2007 | Black Family, NPR, The Mass Media | 6 comments
Welcome back Doc,I’m old school, as far as I can remember unwed Motherhood was link to poverty,whether right or wrong there is a direct relationship.At present the scarcity of Black Men has raise an interesting point of choice, for Black Women.
You make a good point about the shift of black voter-ship towards supporting Obama. it’s amazing how (certain people in ) the media take issues and twist them… what a difference 9 months makes ( thank goodness that Is he black enough nonsense is fading).
but for the unwed mother thing, to what extent does personal responsibility come into play? I agree we should be thinking about ways to help, but at the same time, they can’t be completely absolved from the consequences of their choices? I guess I’m indirectly wondering how do we make the distinction between single motherhood as a well thought out choice vs. a brash decision. (then again, I guess this could be applied to parenthood in general)
here’s one way to think about it gazelle.
you’ve got one of two choices. you can either pay 35 grand per year to incarcerate someone, not only killing their chance to ever make a contribution to society, but killing their chance to ever indirectly make a contribution through a word, a deed, a child.
or you can pay 35 grand per year to educate someone so that when they become an adult they not only are able to contribute, but are able to make a real difference in the world.
these two options are our options as a society.
talking about what laquesha jackson should have done as a kid really misses the point. we’ve got to take ALL of these decisions that women are making as an AGGREGATE. what is the cost of leaving single mothers bereft of the resources they need to raise good children?
what is the benefit on the other hand of using the resources of government to aid?
which one weighs more?
I’m glad you guys talked about single mothers on the show. Usually in this type of discussion people act as if Black men leave children on Black Women’s doorstep. It takes two to tango, if a guy doesn’t have a job and spends his entire day on the corner with his friends, he might not be daddy material. I’m glad you guys placed some of the responsibility on the women who sleep with these guys.
Dumb question: Is there a way to download these programs as MP3 files? I’d like to listen to it while running on a treadmill or driving or something, rather than while sitting at my computer.
hm. there are programs for the mac and the pc that allow you to record things from computer. i recorded my essays off of npr and then stored them in my webspace. I believe I also ripped them to my Itunes.