Husband Murder in Black America

There are differences between Blacks and Whites. Blacks dominate the NBA and Whites do better on IQ tests. These differences must be due to something. It must either be nature or nurture, environment or genetics. Environment can be divided into two parts, Black culture, and White culture. Over the past 60 years the White cultural attitude toward Blacks has undergone radical changes. During that same period, Black IQ scores compared to White IQ scores have not shown such a change. It follows that Whites today cannot be blamed for the persistence of the difference. It is possible that Whites imposed a culture on Blacks during slavery and segregation which was hostile to IQ development. It is possible that the persistence of this culture among Blacks is responsible for the difference in IQ scores. If it’s not Black Culture then it’s Black Genes. If it’s not Black Genes then it’s Black Culture.

Blacks consider criticism of Black culture just as racist as suggesting that Blacks are genetically inferior to Whites. They insist on taking pride in Black Culture. Black Culture is the Culture of Black people in the US who spent centuries under slavery and segregation. Segregation allowed the Black Slave Culture to survive unchanged in cultural enclaves called Ghettos after the abolition of Slavery. If Blacks are indeed suffering the effects of Slavery and Segregation today it must be because they are keeping Slave culture alive and well in the US today. That cultural heritage is keeping the Black Man down. In the name of Black Pride, Blacks insist on taking pride in a culture which teaches them how to behave like Slaves. Anybody who criticizes this peculiar idea is condemned by Blacks as a Racist.

There are some stats that strike the mind as interesting, and they sit quietly in the background of your daily thought until a pattern emerges. The statistic that black women are the most likely group in the US to kill their spouses is one of those stats. As I considered this and thought of ways of describing the pattern that I was perceiving, the label, Peter Pan Syndrome struck me as being a useful label in this instance.

The Peter Pan Syndrome, the eternally immature male, was the subject of a book some years ago, I never read the book, but the idea of perpetual immaturity is fundamental to this discussion. In this sense, the Peter Pan Syndrome is fundamental to all systems of perpetual slavery. A circular pattern emerges, the slave is forced to remain immature and childlike by the authority of the master. The master then points to the childlike behavior of the slave as proof that the slave could not survive without the beneficial care of the master. In America this produced the infamous Sambo stereotype, but the pattern is common through out the world. People working to free slaves today find that freeing their minds is much more difficult than freeing their bodies.

The degree of immaturity enforced on the slaves appears to be related to the sex of the slave. A mature confident male is more threatening to the master than a mature confident woman. A woman who assumes control of her home and family is not doing anything threatening to a male master. A man who assumes such authority is behaving in a threatening manner. You will remember that the Sambo stereotype is primarily male. While female slaves suffer from an imposed Peter Pan Syndrome, it is not as severe as that enforced on the male.

The idea that the black man had his role as head of family destroyed by slavery is so accepted as to be almost trite. Let us rehearse some premisses so politically correct that I am almost ashamed to use them.

The problems facing blacks in the US today are the result of slavery. The problem of single mother homes in black culture is the result of the destruction of the male role as a responsible head of household. Domestic abuse is the result of a patriarchal authority system.

None of the above are completely true. All of the above are partial explanations of the problems observed in America today.

Now, if domestic abuse of women by men is the result of a patriarchal authority pattern, then spouse murder of men by women in a culture where the mans role as an authority figure has been destroyed is obviously the result of a matriarchal authority pattern.

This should be the first thought to pass the mind of any unbiased observer of the phenomenon. If this is true, there should be other paralels in behavior between the matriarchal system in black America and patriarchal authority systems.

In patriarchal authority systems, women are not just considered inferior in marriage, their status as inferior begins at birth, and generally infanticide is more commonly practiced on daughters than on sons.

This url includes a typical it is always the mans fault discussion of the phenomenon, but it is useful because it includes a number of salient facts. The article is based on research by Dr. Margaret Plass of James Madison University. http://www.vix.com/pub/men/battery/dead-black-husband.html

I quote, "She said young children, from birth to four years old, are the most likely to be murdered by their parents. Boys are murdered at approximately one-and-a-half times more frequently than girls of that age." This is the reverse of the patriarchal pattern and what would be expected in the matriarchal pattern. I quote again, "In examining data on parent homicides, Plass found that children in black families are more likely to kill their fathers than their mothers. She found that 61 percent of black parents killed by their children were fathers. "This is a remarkable finding when you consider that a large percentage of black children grow up in single-parent, female-headed households.""

It is really remarkable to explain unless you postulate a culture where women are valued more highly than men, and men are seen as more disposable than women. In a pecking order system, those lower on the pecking order get pecked more than those higher on the pecking order. In a patriarchal system it is women, in a matriarchal system it is men.

One of the fundamentals of authority is money. Money talks. Patriarchal systems commit infanticide on girls because they are seen as a financial burden. It is rare to find a matriarchal system in history. The one I am postulating in black America is artificial, an artifact of slave culture surviving in the inner city.

Matrilineal cultures are not that rare. In Egypt, property and social rank, descended in the female line. Egypt is noted by historians as the classical society where women had the highest rank. Among the Zuni Indians of the Southwest, property is vested in the woman. All the work that a man does while he is married belongs to his wife, if he builds a house, it is hers. He goes home to Mom if she gets tired of him.

In Black America, the woman is the head of family and provider. As such, she is the most economically important person in the family. Economic importance is a major determiner of status.

It is worth noting that in a study of affirmative action done for President Clinton it was found that once experience and education were accounted for, there was no difference between black and white women in pay and employment. This report can be accessed online at http://clinton2.nara.gov/WH/EOP/OP/html/aa/aa-index.html.

Another stat of interest is suicide rates. Suicide in the elderly is a growing problem in America. It is highest among white males, more than 2000 per hundred thousand (if I recall correctly) and lowest among elderly black women. Less than 20 per hundred thousand. It is likely that suicide rates are inversely proportional to perceived or felt social status. Elderly Black women have more respect from their families. Elderly white men, on the other hand, have grown old in a world that does not have much use for them. (How the mighty have fallen.) Statistics on suicide rates among the elderly may be accessed here http://hospice.hypermart.net/elderly.html.

Authority and responsibility are intimately related. It is true that people are always attempting to exercise authority and avoid responsibility for their actions, but in a functional culture, the relationship between these two things cannot be voided. If a person does not have sufficient authority to accomplish those things the person is responsible for, the accomplishment of those tasks will, in the long term, become impossible. Thus, the person who assumes responsibility becomes the authority in the long run.

The Peter Pan Syndrome is seductive. People who are never expected to grow up have lower expectations placed on them. Black men are seduced by this indulgence into a perpetual lack of responsibility, some failure of impulse control, and thus get into lots of trouble.

It is probable that this pattern of behavior was protective of black men under slavery. Black women knew that if their sons acted too strong they might be perceived as a threat by the masters and punished or killed. Keeping their sons perpetually young was protective.

On page 188 of his book “Race, IQ and Jensen” Dr. Flynn begins a discussion of sex related differences in the black community. Thomas Sowell began this debate in 1972 by bringing the fact that black women with IQ’s above 120 outnumber black men with such IQ’s two to one. Dr. Flynn makes a very important point on page 199,

Keeping black men down removes the intellectual stimulus which men provide to women and impoverishes the intellectual environment of black culture as a whole. Thus black women suffer as a result as well. Thomas Sowell makes a point of the lack of intellectual culture in the Black Community. On page 200 Dr. Flynn discusses a study by Martin Deutsch on self image in the black community. Black boys have lower self images in a large degree than Black girls. To quote Dr. Flynn again,

The difference in performance between black boys and girls is negatively correlated with IQ shows up most strongly in academic achievement, strongly in evaluation of family environment and noticeably in self-image. This clearly reflects a culture where black men are discouraged from academic achievement and responsibility and are relegated to a second class status.

On the last page of this chapter Dr. Flynn says this,

Looking at IQ studies and studies of SES, self image and evaluations of family environment, Dr. Flynn appears to have reached much the same conclusion that I reached looking at murder and suicide rates. Murder and Suicide rates are more dramatic and obvious and less debatable than IQ scores and evaluations of self-image. There is little doubt that Slave Culture surviving in the Black Community is creating an environment which is destructive of the intellectual and academic potential of Blacks in general but especially of Black Men.

Behaviors that are protective in one environment become destructive in another. This pattern of behavior is soft and indulgent in one sense, and literally murderous in another. In order to counter it, black women need to have higher expectations and set higher standards for their male children. When those men grow up, they need to allow those men the authority that goes with the greater responsibility they are expected to assume.

“The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Rules the World” is a saying by William Ross Wallace. It has caught the imagination of the world. S. R. Vidhya quotes the line in one of his Poems. Glen Campbell sang a song where it was quoted. Hollywood made a movie with the title. It summarizes the extreme influence which mothers have on the early development of their children. Daughters grow up and become their Mothers and raise their children the way they saw Mother do it. So culture and behavior are passed from generation to generation, and so Black Women raise their sons today as they raised them in Slave days.

Unfortunately for a great many young black men, this means a cultural inheritance which prepares them only for Slavery or Prison. For Slavery is a condemnation to a life in chains or imprisonment.

It seems unfair to blame Black women for much that is wrong in Black Culture today, but this is not about blame. Blame is about finding wrongdoers and punishing them. This is not about punishing people but about solving problems. It is clear that Black Culture must change and that Black women are keeping that Culture alive. If you do not describe the problem accurately, you cannot correct it.

Blaming White people will never correct a single problem which Black People face in the world today. White people cannot fix problems embedded in Black Culture. Only Blacks can do that. In order to do that they must admit the problems exist. This means that they must accept constructive criticism of Black Culture and accept the need to change.