More than three quarters of African American births are to unmarried women, nearly double the illegitimacy rate of all other births, according to new federal data.
The National Center for Health Statistics said that in 2015, 77.3 percent of non-immigrant black births were illegitimate. The national non-immigrant average is 42 percent, and it was 30 percent for whites.
It is tempting to say that is due to race. There is probably a racial predisposition, but if you go back to the early 1900’s, black single motherhood was very low, as it was with all other races. It takes free resources to unleash the r-selected reproductive strategy. This is really a result of the welfare state’s targeting of the black community for free resource infusions.
If criminality is an expression of the r-selected psychology’s desire for free resources, and as research indicates, kids are partly programmed r or K by their rearing experiences, you can see how black youths would be responsible for such a high proportion of crime in the nation. They are literally being programmed to commit crime and be imprisoned by the welfare state’s helicoptering of free resources into the low-income black communities.
If left to nature, it is almost a self-regulating system. Low income and hardship would produce K, which would in turn foster hard work and two-parent rearing, which would reduce crime and raise incomes. Try to short circuit that process, and you not only break up families, but you also sentence young blacks to increased rates of criminality and imprisonment.
It also points to how government fostering K can both improve children’s childhoods, and act as a crime prevention tool. Ironically, that would also reduce the costs of welfare, judicial costs, and policing, as well as increase national productivity.
I don’t know, it seems like Africa has pretty serious shortages of everything, and “families” there are less stable than here, to the extent that they exist at all.
The alternative explanation that I’ve found more convincing over time is that there was pressure during the slavery and immediate post-slavery era to act in a way that was acceptable to the majority, which caused different behavior than would normally be observed (i.e. acting more like the majority population). Over time as that pressure has been lifted, that separate population has tended back towards its normal behavior patterns as observed in Africa.
To me the whole population is simply heavily r-selected in general, as befits a group that until very recently was nomadic and tribal. More offspring would be required in order to keep genetic lines going due to tribal warfare and harsh conditions.
Unfortunately I haven’t read your book yet; would you expect a close-knit tribe like an Indian tribe or African tribe to be more r or K? My limited understanding would indicate K, but as far as I understand it I don’t see a lot of K behaviors in African nations. Maybe that’s as K as that population group can be given its characteristics?
It is possible disease is a factor. If you have a non-selective mortality, which does not select through competition, but just kills back randomly, be it predation or disease, that can drive things r.
I Just think of Africa as a Warren.
[…] 77% Of Black Births To Single Parents, 49% Of Hispanics […]
It wouldn’t surprise me if there are huge roadblocks in human development that manifest themselves under r-selection. I would suspect that women who live under r-selection will actually select dumber males as mates, not just for control, but because throughout humanity’s past we had smaller heads. These smaller cranial genes will manifest in offspring and they will fit through a birth canal easier, allowing more offspring to be born. The onset of K may not halt this process, as r-selected people detect shortage coming and “go for broke” and breeding increases. Troubles during childbirth have been one of the limiting factors in human growth rates and infant/maternal mortality. In selecting low-IQ mates, women are spreading their bets and trying to raise the probability that some of their genes pass on. A similar effect is occurring in the USA right now, as we are disproportionately selecting women with IQ’s so low they won’t be bothered with birth control at all, and of course absent fathers with strangely small noggins. Only absolute shortage, with no sharing/welfare and a dose of heavy competition will halt this phenomena.
Man, when resources are cut off to this part of our society is it going to get ugly or what?