Figure 1.--This William Bullard portrait of Raymond Schuyler and his children, Ethel, Stephen, Beatrice, and Dorothea. A native of Troy, New York, Schuyler moved to Worcester to work for the Worcester Wire Works (1887). He later worked for the Boston and Maine Railroad. Active in All Saints Episcopal Church, the Masons, and Knights of Pythias, Schuyler was the oldest member of the Worcester Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People when he died in 1956. Notice the role he is plying in family life. One rarely dicussed aspect of race relations in Ameriuca is th decline of the African-American family with the huge increase in un-wed mothers befinning in the 1950s.

President Obama's election as the first African American president was heralded as foreshadowing a new era of race relations in America. We note many liberal Americans and black Americans insisting on a honest discussion of race in America. What they usually mean by this is for white people to sit silent while liberals and blacks recount a steady litany of white racial bigotry. Now a generation ago this might well have been appropriate. There is absolutely no doubt that America has a history of racial oppression and bigotry beginning with some two centuries of slavery. But America has changed, perhaps not completely, but certainly there have been huge changes. And now what is needed is a real discussion. We have no problem with a discussion of past history and actually we think it is vital. But what is needed is an honest assessment of why large numbers of blacks have not entered the American main stream. And why very large numbers have are involved in violence and crime. The numbers are much larger than white Americans and significantly larger than Hispanic Americans. President Obama is correct when he criticizes White Americans for concern about blacks in public. He is failing in his responsibilities, however, when he avoids mentioning that black Americans have are engaged in very real high levels of violence and criminality. Or the consequences of the extraordinarily high level of unwed mothers in the African-American community. And this is not a consequence of slavery. The incidence of unwed mothers did not begin to rise to alarmingly high numbers until the 1950s. We see strong African-American families with the father present in the photographic record of the early-20th century. The extraordinary photography of William Bullard provides images of these families. And this was the high-point of post-slavery oppression. A good example. Notice that the same people who keep saying they want a national discussion on race are the same people who are intent on keeping these matters out of the discussion. And President Biden has continued this approach. He first ignored the rising crime rate and participated in the defund the police rhetoric. And when finally forced to admit the fact that American cities have become open air shooting galleries, wants to blame it all on guns, ignoring the fact that guns were available when crime rates were relatively low before the rise of the defund the police movement.

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Created: 4:54 AM 9/1/2022
Last updated: 4:54 AM 9/1/2022