https:/.../2019-04-15_afr303_pt2.mp4

I know automation is something that has
been happening relatively steadily now,

and you think about things like
self checkout lines,

when you travel, you're doing all
of your check-in online

or through machines.

And then someone on the chat
spoke about these service jobs

being very prevalent now, when
you think about the gig economy.

People are doing Uber or Favor,
that kind of thing,

and even Uber is now moving
towards driverless cars,

or is doing some experiments
in that kind of arena, so...

>> Mm-hmm.

So let's get my slide up here
just briefly.

So mechanization of higher
paying skilled labor,

lots of folks lost their jobs that way.

The U.S. economy moves from industrial
production to financial services

and high tech production of services.

We talked about that. Jobs move to
the service sector into the suburbs,

blacks who are the last hired
are then the first fired,

and for the service jobs that are
left available to people,

they don't pay a living wage.

What's a living wage, panel?

>> Enough to live on.

>> Enough to live on.
(laughter)

I'm just tossing softballs all day today.

Enough to live on for a
family and things like that, right?

The other thing that happened,
thankfully some of the gendered

aspects of the U.S. economy, all that
changed also in the '60s and '70s.

And so there were -- two things happened.

One was as the economy slowed
down and high paying jobs became

less available even for white folks,

and as middle-class salaries
and wages stagnated,

you had to have how many people
from a family working

in order to be able to maintain
a middle-class standing?

>> Two.
>> Two.

All right? So women came into
the wage market -- wage market?

>> Work force.
>> Work force, thank you very much.

I need a little help from
my friends today, clearly.

Through the work force.

Wage market...
Yeah, work force.

And, do women earn as much as men do?

>> No.
>> Absolutely not.

So one of the things that was good
for the state and for capitalism

was that you had these very
competent people who could come

into the work market, the wage --
the workplace -- work force.

To the work force, right?

And be paid less, and so a lot of the
lower -- let's get to my next slide here.

The lower service-type jobs like teaching
-- I don't know which one you're on --

this is our teacher, teaching and nurses
and et cetera, went to white women.

This was particularly true because
at the same time with the end

of de jure racism --

So, let me as you this in terms
of Austin, Texas.

Austin, Texas used to have
a black high school.

Anybody remember what the name
of the black high school was?

>> LBJ?

>> No, LBJ is the black high
school now, but that's not

a segregated black high school.

But that's a good guess.

>> Is it?

>> You could --
(cross talk)

About 35% of the population
of LBJ is black.

The rest is Latino.
It's segregated, right?

But the real black high school in
Austin, Texas was Anderson High

over here on the east side,

which got closed down during integration.

And they sent the black kids -- they bused
them all over the place and all that.

What was the racial identity of the
teachers at Anderson High?

>> (inaudible)
>> Absolutely, they're black.

And now, what's the percentage of
black teachers in AISD?

Minimal. Right?

So a lot of black professional
workers got swept out

in this whole integration thing,

and particularly when white women
entered the wage force,

working in low -- relatively low paid
professional positions, right?

So there's all this stuff going on,
which leaves for

some of the rest of us,
these kind of jobs.

Nothing wrong with working
a job like this.

The only thing that's wrong with it,
does it pay a living wage?

>> No.

>> So you can work your behind off,
and still -- excuse me?

>> You're gonna need a second job.

>> You're gonna need a second,
or a third, or a fourth job.

Fourth is probably too many,
but a second or third job.

Right? Absolutely.

So this is what happened.
So what do you end up with?

Well, economic change
equals social change.

The real salaries for poor middle-class
either dropped or remained stagnant.

What I said before, middle class becomes
dependent on two workers.

The white middle-class women
are cheap labor.

They enter the labor force en masse,
and black men lose their jobs

or are working jobs insufficient
to support families.

Now this is both demonstrably true,
but it's also what William Julius Wilson

is focusing on.

Because there's other stuff going on,
as Traci and I and Beth and all that

will attest to (inaudible)

but this is the heart of what William
Julius Wilson is arguing.

And he's right, but it's not the total
reality, as we'll see sometime soon.

So black men lose their jobs.

So African American teen
unemployment by 2003 is at 45%,

while white teen
unemployment is at 19%.

Black male joblessness was near
50% in some urban areas.

Here's my graphs.

As you can see here, the blue is the
black unemployment rate,

and the red is the white
unemployment rate.

And you can see the huge gap,
but you can also see what happens

from the 1970s onwards through
the 1980s and all that kind of thing.

The only thing that brings
everything down for everybody

and widens the gap between black
and white to a certain extent

is the boom years of the 1990s.

Those were Clinton's boom years.

But you can see that the black
unemployment rate is --

really just gets completely out of hand
in this whole transformation.

All right, don't show my next slide.
Thank you.

So, let me ask you a question.

Here we are, we're in the teeth
of this disaster here.

People losing their jobs left and right.

Black folks are more seriously affected
by this than white folks are.

Black men in particular, because
it's a patriarchal society.

When black families moved up to
the North in the '20s and '30s,

largely they're moving up to the North
on the strength of women --

black women's working outside
of the household.

In the '20s, '30s, and '40s,
what were black women doing?

What kind of work were they doing
outside of the household?

(cross talk)

>> Domestic work, absolutely.

But by the time we get to the '50s
and '60s, if you're moving to the North,

a large part of what's going on is
you're going to be employed in industry,

and those jobs go to who?

>> Men.

>> Men. Black men.

So black men then become the
people who are --

not that black women didn't continue
to work outside the house,

but black men now become, to a
certain extent, the economic providers

for families, et cetera, and that
kind of circumstance.

So now black men lose their jobs,
there's no more employment left,

the best you can do is a
McDonald's job and all that.

Which is an exaggeration,
but nevertheless largely true.

And so what does that do in terms of
marriage rates in the black community?

>> They go down.

>> Why?

>> Because a lot of what marriage is,
is based through capital

and based off of the prospect
of the person that you're marrying.

>> Yeah. And in other words,
marriage is about love,

and it's about companionship,
and it's about all that kind of stuff,

but it's also an economic contract.
>> (inaudible)

Yeah, somebody's got to pay the bills,
there you have it.

And particularly in a patriarchal society,

men are supposed to do what
in a patriarchal society?

(cross talk)

>> Yeah, provide, protect
and provide and all that,

in the ideal middle-class notion of it.

And if you can't find
a man who can provide,

supposing all the men your age
and all that kind of stuff

are out of work, out of a job,
and on the corner.

Are those marriageable prospects?

>> No.

>> Now love is a beautiful thing, and
love can conquer everything and all that.

But if you got a choice between
marrying somebody who got a job

and someone who don't,

then you're probably gonna go for
someone who has a job.

But even beyond that, sometimes marrying
someone who don't have a job

and is totally in debt and all that --

So for example, if I'm a man
and I'm in debt,

and I marry somebody who is a
school teacher and has got a job,

and is not in debt, what happens
to that debt when we get married?

>> You share it.
>> We share that debt.

That sounds like a bad deal.

So what William Julius Wilson says
is -- give me my slide here --

There are few economically
-- or fewer, I should say.

Fewer economically marriageable men.

The lack of men with family-supporting
wages greatly reduces

the pool of men fit to marriage.

Fit to marriage?
Fit for marriage.

Now, there are -- this is all I think
demonstrably true.

But William Julius Wilson
is a brilliant guy.

But he takes things, you know,
in a -- he takes them pretty far here.

Because what he says now is that
this is the birth of the under class.

So because there are fewer marriageable
men, he says the female-headed

households increase, and the percentage
of out of wedlock children increases.

So if black women aren't getting married,
but they're still having sex, because

you know... that's what we do,

then the number of out of wedlock
children increase. All right?

And then this next thing that you see
on this slide we're gonna talk about

in a little bit more detail.

Before you also have a declining birth
rate of married middle-class black women.

And that we're gonna talk about
a little bit more, but for right now

we're not gonna focus on that.

There's a higher proportion
of young black women in the inner city,

basically because the fertility rate
of the folks who are living --

black people who are living in the
inner city is higher than

these middle class folks here.

And then the conditions, these conditions
that are right here behind me...

Let's change that background slide
just to get a little variety here.

That condition,
and let's get another one...

that condition, and let's
get another one...

that condition there, and
let's keep it with that one,

those kinds of conditions mean that
if you got any money and any sense

and you're black, according to William
Julius Wilson, what are you gonna do?

Move.

Get out of town.

Go where there's more jobs.

Go where there's less crime.

Go where there's less decay.

These kinds of places are not
particularly nice places to live.

You all are way too young, but maybe
you remember pictures of the Bronx

burning, and things like this were
complete destruction and decay.

You're also way too young,
and I got to Austin too late,

but even today if you go over
to East Austin,

you'll see a lot of blank
grassy spaces out there.

Those used to be homes
and businesses.

But after the economy went down
and people abandoned them,

the city came in and bulldozed them.

So you don't see this kind of stuff
over there in East Austin,

but that's what East Austin looked
like in the late '60s and early '70s,

right through the '70s.

All right?

So the middle class leaves.
They get out.

And so according to William Julius
Wilson, the folks who can get out

are the middle class folks.

They leave behind the poor black folks,
and he calls those poor black folks --

what does he call them?

If you were astute and saw the slide
before when we started out

talking about his theory,
he calls them the...

Under class.

So according to William Julius Wilson,
the loss of marriageable men

means single-parent households
in the black community.

This leads to cultural pathology and
the solution is to provide jobs

to men and women.

Now, I said that his first book
was the declining significance of race.

Why does he name his book
that has this theory in it

"The Declining Significance of Race"?

Is he blaming this problem
on anti-black racism?

>> No.

>> What's he blaming it on?

>> The economy.
>> The economy.

So he is basically saying that one,

racism has been reduced, right?

There's now a black middle class.

That black middle class
is doing all right.

In fact they get out of Dodge because
they're doing so all right.

And according to him they're doing fine.

And the under class that stays trapped
in these kinds of circumstances here

are trapped in these kinds
of circumstances here;

the lack of jobs and employment means
that there's no marriageable men,

so nobody gets married, and you get
single-parent female-headed families

under the basis of that.

And then he slips in to the Moynihanian
paradigm which says that

there's a direct relationship between
single-parent...

female-headed single-parent families
and cultural pathology.

And why is there a direct relationship
according to Moynihan,

between female-headed single-parent
families and cultural pathology?

Can somebody explain to me how
those things hook together?

You might as well practice up, because
we're gonna ask you the question.

Uh huh.
>> Just because it says

that you basically need a man
in your life, like a masculine role

in the household.

>> You need a man to play a masculine
role in the household.

Why is that?

>> Because they're meant to be the
providers and teach the children

how to act and all that stuff.
>> Okay, to they're meant

to be providers and teach
the children how to act.

And if there's not a man in the household
to teach the boys in the household

to be providers and take on
the patriarchal role,

then when that boy grows up,
what's he gonna do?

>> Be lazy and --
>> Be lazy and hypersexual,

have sex with a bunch of women and
not play the patriarchal role.

But also having a man in the house,
what does that do for young girls?

>> Show them how like a man
should treat you.

>> Show them how a man should
support you and dominate, right?

If you read that Moynihan report
closely, and hopefully you all will,

doesn't he talk something about a rooster?

Go back through your PDF
and look for "rooster".

Because he's basically saying that
in a patriarchal society,

men are supposed to play
a particular kind of role.

And if they don't play that role in
a patriarchal society,

then the culture will be pathological.

And one of the things he says is that
it's not just that men have to

play that patricarchal role,

women also have to support the
patriarchal role of the men

in order for it to be
a healthy culture.

That's what he says.

Now Traci and Beth and I, and probably
La'Kayla, and I'm sure Daniela,

do not agree with that.

But that's what he says.

And that also is as of common
sense to many of us.

Especially the many black folks who
feel like the problem of slavery

and the problem of segregation
was that the man couldn't properly

play the patriarchal role,
and that that we need to do

when we come out is play that role.

I don't agree with that.

Moynihan does.

And Moynihan is saying that not only
in a female-headed single-parent family

do black boys not get the proper
kind of socialization to play that role,

black girls don't get the proper kind of
socialization to play the role of being

subordinate to male patriarchy, and so
therefore you have a pathological culture

which reproduces itself
over and over again.

>> Because fathers police
the sexuality of their daughters.

>> And their wives, for that matter.

All right. Now, let's go back
to my slide that I got up here.

Because that last thing is
very important.

I announced this earlier, but for your
essays and all that,

the difference between Moynihan and
William Julius Wilson

is that one, William Julius Wilson is
much more explicit about the

economic transformations that create
this crisis of the under class,

but he also doesn't believe -- he doesn't
have as stagnant a notion of culture.

So he doesn't believe that all is lost.

That even if you offer jobs to these
people, nothing can be changed.

He thinks that the problem is to
provide jobs to both men and women.

And that when you do that, then
you reverse this trend

and you can revive both the econonmy,
but also the cultural processes

of the black community.

All right?

Okay, that's William Julius Wilson.

Remember this stuff.

This is going to be -- we're going to --
you know, it's just -- right.

Because we do not agree with --

you may, but we do not
agree with Moynihan,

and William Julius Wilson gives --

William Julius Wilson gives us at least
some basis for making a critique

of Moynihan, right?

Now what other critiques out there
do you think there are?

Remember -- let's see if we can
go back to...

What should we go back to here, Chad?

I know I'm making life miserable
for you all back there.

But let's go back to this slide here.

So this is what -- how white folks
in this survey

explained the gaps in wealth

and other kinds of gaps between white
and black families in this country.

And again, the blue line is that it's
about personal responsibility,

which is about cultural
deficiency and poverty.

The green line is something else.

So what other explanations would
you all come up with,

give we've been -- how long have we
been in this course here now?

>> Three months.
>> Three months. All right.

So we've been up and down and all around,
you've learned a whole bunch of stuff.

What do you think Traci would say
is the basic problem,

or are the basic problems in terms
of why it is that we've got

a wealth gap between black and white,
we've got an income gap

between black and white, we've got
a life expectancy gap between

black and white, we've got a
racial -- social justice system,

we've got all kind of gaps between --

What would Raci --
What would Raci?

What would Traci say?

(laughter)

I should have stayed home today.

What would Traci say?

What would Miss Wint-Hayles say?

>> I say this all the time.

>> Structural race and
class discrimination.

>> Thank you.

That should have been a
no-no-no-brainer in this class.

What do we talk about all the time?

Racism, racism, anti-black--
>> White (inaudible) imperialist,

capitalist patriarchy.
>> That's right.

In fact, Beth led off our whole
operation with that.

Yeah okay, so for example,
are there other reasons

why there might not be black men who
are marriageable in a black community?

Yes?

>> They're locked up.

>> They're locked up, thank you.
Where can we get to that slide?

We're gonna get there.

The incarceration of black men.

As some of y'all have heard this
ad nauseam, it does get kind of

disgusting to go over and over again, but
it's a disaster for the black community.

You may think it's just a problem
for black men to be in jail

at the rates we are, but it's a problem
for the whole community.

We're not around, right?

Let's see, between 1999 and 2000,
more African American men in prison

and jail than were in higher education.
Bleh.

Between 1980 and 2000, three times as
many African American men

were added to the prison system than
were added to the nation's

colleges and universities.
Bleh.

30% of black men between 16 and 34
are ex-offenders. Ehh.

Look at this.

There's 1.5 million missing black men
from the black communities.

Gone. Early death, our life expectancies
are the same as, I don't know,

Bangladesh or some place.

We're all in jail.

You know.

What does this thing say?

So for every 100 black women not
in jail, there are only 83 black men.

The remaining men, 1.5 million of them,
are in a sense missing.

So let's see, amongst sizable black
populations, the largest single gap

is in, surprise, surprise,
Ferguson Missouri.

What's in Ferguson Missouri known for?

(cross talk)
Oh my goodness.

Ferguson, Missouri. Ferguson.

>> Michael Brown.

>> Michael Brown, there.
It just took them a while, that's all.

Okay, good. Michael Brown.

It's a pretty segregated,
problematic place.

There are 40 missing black men for every
100 black women in Ferguson Missouri.

North Charleston, South Carolina,
25 missing for each 100,

et cetera, et cetera.

This, the bottom part says that this
kind of gap barely exists amongst whites.

Does this kind of gap exist
at a place like UT?

>> Probably.

>> Absolutely.

The ratio of black women to men
is three to two.

And of those two, 25% are athletes.

And with them, we've got a problem here.

>> (inaudible)

>> Excuse me?

>> Yikes.
(laughter)

>> In other words, not only are there
fewer black men,

black men are much more likely -- twice
as likely to be with people

from another race than black women are.

Now if this was another kind --
in fact I used to teach

gender in the black community
and various other kind --

we would go into this ad nauseum and
take it apart and all that.

We don't got time for that today,
but it's a reality.

Why'd I talk about
the football players? Well...

(laughter)

(cross talk)

All right. And so...

Sorry for you all out there, you know...

There's also a black educational gender
gap, and this is hot of the presses.

Look at this, 23.2% of black men over
25 earned at least a bachelor's degree,

black women over 26.9%.

But here in this next one
is the real issue.

18.6% of black men 25 to 29 held
a bachelor's degree or higher,

and 25.7% of black women 25 to 29.

1,185,000 black women have MA's,
708,000 black men.

115,000 black women with professional
degrees, 73,000 black men.

187,000 PhD's, 139,000 black men.

See a pattern there?

What does this have to do with marriage?

>> Well don't people typically marry
people with their --

on the same like,
intellectual level as them?

>> Well, not really -- You want to
say something about that?

>> Oh, not about that.

>> That's true, but if in a --
This is a patriarchy, right?

And so if people are going to
marry someone who is slightly

lower than them on any level of prestige,
education being one of them,

what's the gendered --
in a heteronormive society,

what's the gendered expectation
in terms of that?

>> (cross talk)

>> That a woman has less.

Money, education, prestige, et cetera.

The only thing that the woman would
have more of if she's marrying

someone who's higher in all these kind
of things, probably be lighter skinned.

And that's the perverse nature of these
whole operations here, right?

So it's not just about marriageable
men and economics,

there's a whole series of things here
that are creating problems.

>> (inaudible) actual numbers, there was
a Pew study done I think a few years ago

that says that black women
who marry less educated men

end up with a household deficit
of $25,000 per year

in comparison to women
of other races.

>> I would also like to add to that that
it's generally understood that

black women are several times more
likely to marry men who have been

incarcerated before, who have been
convicted of felonies,

and make significantly less than
them, than any other race of women.

Well, well, well.

So you know, now might be an
interesting time to show our Moyers clip.

Can we slip that in here now, Chad?
Is that going to be possible?

Okay, we're going to show a clip now.

This is a clip of a show put on
by -- actually it's now old,

because it was done in the mid-80s
by -- what's Moyers' first name?

>> Bill Moyers.
>> Bill Moyers, who was the press...

Whatever it is. Press person for LBJ
at the same time that Moynihan

was in the Lyndon Baines
Johnson regime.

It's not a regime. What is it called?
Presidential... whatever.

(laughter)

It's called a regime, right?
Absolutely.

I want you to look at this and think about
what you read in relationship to Moynihan,

and then we can talk
about it a little bit.

This whole thing is already up
for you to look at,

and you're going to be asked questions
about Moyers and Moynihan

on this next essay.

So let's take a three or four-minute
look at this clip.

>> This is Newark, New Jersey, one of
America's inner cities.

Inner city is a polite name for ghetto,
as in black ghetto.

Those of us who don't live in the
ghetto are brought here usually

by television, and usually only when there
are violent pictures to show.

But we have to come here if you want
to understand those fearsome statistics

about the vanishing black family.

Now a lot of white families
are in trouble too.

Single-parent families are twice as
common in America today

as they were 20 years ago.

But for the majority of white children,
family still means a mother and a father.

This is not true for most black children.

For them, things are getting worse.

Today, black teenagers have the highest
pregnancy rate in the industrial world.

And in the black inner city, practically
no teenage mother gets married.

That's no racist comment.

What's happening goes far beyond race.

Why then do so many teenage girls
get pregnant and have children?

Why do so many fathers abandon
their families?

The answers begin with the people here.

They told us what happens to family
when mothers are children,

fathers don't count, and the street
is the strongest school.

(radio playing in background)

>> Okay. Okay, bye-bye.

>> It is the beginning of another school
day in Newark, New Jersey.

Another day of class
for Clarinda Henderson.

She is 17, and had hoped to graduate
from high school next year.

But that was before the birth
of her baby.

I dreamed that having a little baby
you could just cuddle in your arms,

just hug all the time, kiss on it,
smell it, 'cause it's so sweet.

I thought it would be fun,
until I had her.

>> The reality's different?

>> The reality just punched me
right in the eye.

I like had to pinch myself to see if
I was here, because I was like,

this is too much.

>> Clarinda was only 15 when she got
pregnant with her daughter Shaquana.

She is not unusual.

Half of all black teenagers
become pregnant.

Clarinda has never been married.

She's still living with her mother at home
where she's raising her baby daughter.

Clarinda goes to a special
school for dropouts

after she takes her daughter
to a daycare center.

She has 5th grade math skills,
and reads at a 6th grade level.

>> When I got pregnant, I said well
I'm gonna have this baby,

and she's not going to stand
in the way of my education.

I'm not going to let no one stand
in the way of my education.

I ain't going to be like these other
girls, just drop out, can't get no job,

no money, have to be on welfare.

>> Under vocabulary. Bingo.

>> Clarinda learned about birth control
in sex education courses.

But she still became pregnant.

Do you think it was a mistake?

>> I'll say... no.

Because I wasn't on any birth
control methods.

Neither was he.

And you know, we were sexually active,
and when it happened it just happened.

>> When you think back to that day
when you learned you were pregnant,

what went through your mind?

>> Oh gosh, I'ma tell my mother.
And when I tell my mother,

she gonna make me get an abortion.

I was really scared, I think.

>> Why didn't you want to get an abortion?

>> Because I wanted this baby.

>> What did you like about him?

>> His legs.

>> His legs?

>> I got kind of a thing
for bow-legged boys.

>> Bow-legged boys.

>> I love 'em.

He has some gorgeous legs,
I just don't know.

>> Daron Lyle is the father
of Clarinda's baby.

He is 18, and lives in central Newark.

He dropped out of high school
when he was 16.

He has never held a steady job.

>> I spend most of my time
listening to the radio.

I don't go to school, I don't
work, I don't do nothing.

I'm just like this killing time.

>> Did you want to have a baby?

>> No, I -- No, not really,
it just happened.

She just (inaudible) pregnant,
and (inaudible)

>> Were your friends impressed?

>> You know, anybody who's telling me
that you know, she look just like me,

and you know, she looks,
you know kind of cute, kind of pretty.

And that's like, you know,
making me feel good.

>> Sure.

Do many of them have babies?

>> It seems like that's all they be
doing around here, is making babies.

>> Daron told us that in this neighborhood
it's easy to get involved with girls,

and easy to get into trouble.

Daron has been arrested five times
for stealing, suspicion of homicide,

and for possession of a deadly weapon.

>> When you were arrested for carrying
a dangerous weapon, what was it?

>> You know those big machetes?

>> Machete?

>> Knives, big knives.

>> You mean you just
carried around with you?

>> I used to bring it to school with me.

>> That's -- Hard to
conceal that, isn't it?

>> Nah, because I had like this blue coat.
It was like a blue (inaudible)

I poked a hole in the pocket of it,
and I just put it right in there.

>> Isn't that dangerous?

>> That's the way stuff was going.

You know. Like, that's the way the people
was acting towards me.

So I felt like I needed a weapon,
because you know,