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Though I grow weary of pointing it out, let's do it again. Let's examine some numbers readily available from the Census Bureau's 2004 Current Population Survey and ask some questions. There's one segment of the black population that suffers only a 9.9 percent poverty rate, and only 13.7 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor. There's another segment that suffers a 39.5 percent poverty rate, and 58.1 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor. Among whites, one segment suffers a 6 percent poverty rate, and only 9.9 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor. The other segment suffers a 26.4 percent poverty rate, and 52 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor. What do you think distinguishes the high and low poverty populations among blacks?

Would you buy an explanation that it's because white people practice discrimination against one segment of the black population and not the other or one segment had a history of slavery and not the other? You'd have to be a lunatic to buy such an explanation. The only distinction between both the black and white populations is marriage -- lower poverty in married-couple families.

In 1960, only 28 percent of black females ages 15 to 44 were never married and illegitimacy among blacks was 22 percent. Today, the never-married rate is 56 percent and illegitimacy stands at 70 percent. If today's black family structure were what it was in 1960, the overall black poverty rate would be in or near single digits. The weakening of the black family structure, and its devastating consequences, have nothing to do with the history of slavery or racial discrimination.

Dr. Charles Murray, an American Enterprise Institute scholar, argues in an article titled "Rediscovering the Underclass" in the Institute's On the Issues series (October 2005) that self-destructive behavior has become the hallmark of the underclass. He says that unemployment in the underclass is not caused by the lack of jobs but by the inability to get up every morning and go to work. In 1954, the percentage of black males, age 20 to 24, not looking for work was nine percent. In 1999, it rose to 30 percent, and that was at a time when employers were beating the bushes for employees. Murray adds that "the statistical reality is that people who get into the American job market and stay there seldom remain poor unless they do something self-destructive."

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