Jackson Jambalaya

Just because they are unwed does not mean that the father is not present. I've known many couples that were forever engaged to be married. If they married the mother+children would loose Medicaid/CHIPS/TANF. If they lose benefits, the mom is usually too poorly educated to get a job that pays enough to cover day care costs so there's no incentive for the mother and father to get married, even though they live as married.

Point very well taken. I'm a BIG believer in the Bible and (no disrespect to single moms) but I have always felt the breakdown of the family unit has been THE most important factor as why the is so much rampant crime, miscreants, immorality and other problems in this world today.

You are comparing anecdotes to data. Nice, personal stories, but overall refuted by numerous studies.

it takes a village

Could this be posted for Madison and Rankin as well for comparison?

I know the vast majority of KFs readers will look at the 80% number and wag their fingers at the black community, meanwhile ignoring the 28% number in their own community, as if that number is something to celebrate.

Who in the white community is talking about and doing anything about this?

My personal opinion is that this is an American problem, not a black or white problem. The conversation doesn't need to be broken down by race.

I have been saying this for years. This is the single greatest problem we have in this country. It is certainly more prevalent in the back community but 28% in the white community is also way to high. There are so many social problems that stem from this one issue. This is something Michelle Obama could have affected like no one else in history but it was largely ignored.

@PittPanther

28% is nothing to celebrate, but it being almost 1/3 the rate of the black community leads me to believe that maybe white parents *are* telling their kids not to have children before marriage. In the 1950's, the out of wedlock birth rates were almost identical among the races. Something has obviously changed since then.

The one main reason for so many unwed mothers having babies is the govt. will give them more benefits. If this was capped at one child born out of wedlock you would see the numbers decreasing.
Birth control is free. If you look at the birth certificates on the children born out of wedlock in Jackson you will see the father is unknown. If there was a father listed the law would be able to make them pay. I agree some women do not even get the name of the men they have sex with. Many do know who is the father but it is much easier to qualify for benefits when there is no father to go after for support.

Comparing anecdotes to data is about as meaningless as coming up with a fleeting average of the two race based unwed figures and presenting it as an overall picture. Averages are meaningless. Crime is not averaged, why should we average unwed mothers?

If blacks commit 88% of the crimes, whites only 8% and the rest are assorted colors, what in the hell is the value of averaging those data. Let me help you. NONE!

Of course this won't reach print on this blog, but there is no way to know the number of white unwed mothers impregnated by black men. Or what percent of those guys will keep hanging around because baby-momma got a job.

11:40 No, it does not take a village. It takes a mother and a father who give a damn. Period.

PittPanther said... I know the vast majority of KFs readers will look at the 80% number and wag their fingers at the black community ...

Damn right, if Johnny Horhn won't wag his finger nobody else in the community should do so either:

Look who voted to protect child rapists

Get ready to get sick.... or mad. Most of the Black Caucus voted against HB #151. HB #151 is a step forward in the fight against child rape. Not statutory rape. Child rape.

1:02, you are right. Problem is most of the people breeding babies in Jackson do not give a damn. They do not have to raise the kids they have. Every time they have another they get a pay raise from the hard working people who do raise their own kids.
Looks like the people who work would demand something for the money they give to the bastards.

This issue has been discussed ad nauseum. Ta-Nehisi Coates' analysis shows that the real change over the years is that black people have decided to not marry.

And by the way, the black community in general is more at risk for pathologies, which is why bad things happen there first and higher numbers. But you will see the white rates slowly trend in the same direction. But feel free to wag your fingers at the Blacks.

A one-way choice driven by the paucity of suitable males. Not a conscious cultural decision by both black males and females collectively to skip marriage.

The decision to marry someone of a similar educational status is called assortative mating, and for black Americans—particularly black women—the ability to participate in such forms of marital selection are slimmer than they are for women of other races. For one, black women are much more likely than their male counterparts to obtain college degrees. They're also less likely to marry outside of their race, which can leave them with fewer choices when it comes to matching up with someone of a similar educational status. And that can have a ripple effect that impacts not only current earnings, but future economic mobility.
....
Bryant Marks, an associate professor at Morehouse College, suggests that looking at educational attainment doesn’t tell the entire story. According to Marks, even without a college degree, there are more black men who earn salaries of over $100,000 than black women who earn such salaries, which helps bridge the gap. But those figures are small and Marks concedes that income alone isn’t enough to bolster intergenerational mobility, which is especially tenuous within the black community. When it comes to what's more important to securing positive mobility for a family, money is helpful, but education wins out. “Income is not a guarantee, it gives you a leg up for sure but the education trumps that, education is critical,” he says.

Nailed it Kingfish....and I think we lost a lot of youngsters by making this a southern baptist or you go to hell argument. there is a lot of practicality from a two parent family versus one parent.

We, the working people, do not care if the black women do not want to marry a black man or a black man does not want to marry a black woman.
What we want is for them to stop having babies out of wedlock and depending on us to raise them. We are getting tired of it.
Marry who you want, stay single if you want. Just don't depend on us to raise your kids.

and a very high percentage of that 80% group will develop as feral youth: wild, dangerous, unpredictable and un-trainable to do anything productive.

There is a direct correlation between the rise of the welfare state and the rise of unwed mothers. It also nicely dovetails with the war on drugs. Fighting drugs has destroyed more lives and wasted more money than widespread legalization ever would have.

And the cycle never ends.

Fighting drugs is just a way for some people to become rich. Those who provide drugs can be caught and put in jail. Putting them in jail would cause the gravy train to come to a halt. Therefore the people providing drugs will remain loose and in business.

Welfare is not now and never was supposed to help the poor. Welfare was developed to help the wealthy. The govt. takes money from those who work and give it to those who do not work. They turn around and spend the money in the businesses of the wealthy. Since the money is given to them they have little care what they spend it on. They will get more free money next month. The business owner can sell their products at a higher profit.
The middle class is footing the bill. The non workers do not care as long as they continue to get benefits. The rich become richer from the business of these blood suckers. Even when the U.S. saw they could not collect enough money from the middle class they were not stopped. They just borrowed money putting our grand children in debt for the rest of their lives.

So can we please now teach young men an women how NOT to get pregnant and give them the tools?!

There are plenty of churches in Jackson and most are well attended.

Just say " no" is working for sex about as well as it has for drugs!

I'm white and upper middle class I guess. My daughter had a child and opted not to get married. She has a professional degree and a great job. It's not single parent families that are the problem. It's lack of opportunity for omen. Marriage is an anachronism. There's no upside if you are competent and able to support yourself.

I'm white and upper middle class I guess. My daughter had a child and opted not to get married. She has a professional degree and a great job. It's not single parent families that are the problem. It's lack of opportunity for omen. Marriage is an anachronism. There's no upside if you are competent and able to support yourself.

For every one of these personal feel-good stories, I can get ten from law enforcement and youth court judges that tell the opposite side.

I see only two categories listed: Black and White. Am I correct in assuming that Hispanics, and all other non-black groups, are placed in the 'White' column? That could skew the unwed white births upward.

And something I've noticed about Whites who remain in Hinds County, is that they tend, now, to be people in more desperate circumstances. They, I suppose, will be people who will settle for distressed properties, because someone is desperate to sell or rent those properties in 'transitioning neighborhoods' to people with bad credit. I would expect a higher percentage of unwed mothers in such a group.

Preach 1:02

For the most part "it takes a village" is something that parents being lazy probably say. Yes, the community influences a person, but it starts at home.

There are obviously people who are raised well and turn out fine that have parents that weren't married; but a lot of the time coming from a single parent household is a big time indicator that someone is going to have behavior issues, etc.

In Hinds County there is a huge amount of teenage males that think their macho, and in reality they're delusional wussies.

Gotta love (but laugh at) the apologists who come on here to say things like, "marriage is an anachronism" and "I know black couples who have been engaged to be married forever". What the hell does it mean to be engaged forever? It means shacking. It means lack of responsibility and accountability

And to the father who thinks his daughter views marriage as an anachronism, he might want to ask himself where he and his wife were when this girl was cavorting around not giving a second thought to consequences. But, it's an anachronism right? And where is the baby-daddy now. She can raise that baby just fine by herself. A child benefitting from having two parents is a meaningless myth anyway, right?

We excuse black youth crime by blaming it on society and saying 'they all gonna do it'.

We excuse lack of personal responsibility by saying 'oh, there are no jobs around here'.

We excuse infrastructure collapse by saying, "The white men who were in charge seventy years ago screwed it up".

We excuse empty church pews by saying, "I get my religion from the internet and television".

I believe it was the current president who promised to 'fundamentally change America'. And it's the current generation who are 40-60 who are in the wheel-house with him.

If they married the mother+children would loose Medicaid/CHIPS/TANF

Why is the mother getting those benefits anyway? You're excusing the declining in marriage by claiming mothers will lose their benefits?

Why doesn't the mother benefit from a job? How come she doesn't benefit from family values? Why are people satisfied to suck at the federal teat forever?

Wow. Somebody cited Ta-Neshi Coates as a source.

A genocidal racist from the Black Lives Matter shakedown crowd.

He (Coates) also called Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC "America's foremost intellectual."

Of course, I'd expect as much from someone excusing barbaric breeding behavior.

"Wow. Somebody cited Ta-Neshi Coates as a source."

5:50,

"Marriage is an anachronism." I couldn't agree more. What is the divorce rate in this state? Near 50%? How many of the commentators here are trapped in horrible marriages because they are trying to stay together for the children? If you are like me, the majority of your friends are all unhappy in their marriages.

We all saw the Ashley Madison list, right? It is all bliss, isnt it?

Would you invest your money in something that has a 50% failure rate? Everyone needs to recognize reality and accept that marriage does not work any longer.

As to the birth rate, in 2014 over half of U.S. births were to unmarried couples. Half. Is this because of balck people? That would be kind of tough for them to do considering they are only 11-12% of the total population.

So, now we are in the presence of a dunce who wants us to believe that the cranking out babies with multiple podnahs and having no notion of responsible parenting is just fine...since the divorce rate is high anyway.

Ain't it amazing how these people will rationalize poor behavior by citing some off the wall comparison. Here's the way these dunces think: It's fine to rob banks. Those places don't need that money anyway and besides, it's not theirs and it was gotten on the backs of those who rob the banks.

And they fuckin' vote!

What 10:11 is saying is that all HER friends mirror her feelings. I think we got it.

I think that point is that marriage does not work anymore, people are not going to stop having kids & everyone you know is having an affair, including yourself.

I have to say I tend to agree with that.

Having an affair, having sex, multiple partners, dual lives, etc. has nothing to do with popping out babies just to get a raise in benefits.
There is free birth control for anyone who wants it. FREE, that means it doesn't cost you a dime.
Why would any woman choose to have babies knowing she cannot support or raise them?

They placed "selected" in the title for a reason,how did they pick the sample population? 200,000+ residents in Hinds County yet the study and its results are based on only 3,400...makes me question the validity of such widespread inferences based on these results. One think I learned in Advanced Statistics class was research studys are shaped by those who fund it and the data will reflect their special interest. Remember the publicized correlation between icecream consumption/outdoor weather and increased crime/ violence