LAQUAN MCDONALD: Sacrificed on the Altar of Liberalism

“The role of the family in shaping character and ability is so pervasive as to be easily overlooked. The family is the basic social unit of American life; it is the basic socializing unit. By and large, adult conduct in society is learned as a child.“– Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, 1965

As you would expect, the usual suspects in the Lame Stream Media and other enablers of the Black Grievance Industry, were all a twitter (and blowing up Twitter) about the release of a dash cam showing the October 20, 2014 shooting of 17 year old Laquan McDonald. Jason Van Dyke, a Chicago police officer was charged on November 24, 2015 with first-degree murder as a result of McDonald’s death. The tape does not appear to support the officer’s contention that he feared for his life. Even though McDonald was high on PCP at the time of the shooting, he was walking away from the officer when he was killed, and the officer continued to shoot him after he was on the ground. So, let justice be done. As you know, I am a supporter of law enforcement, and also of the rule of law. I hold no brief for this officer.  If Van Dyke is convicted, so be it. 

That’s not the interesting part of this story, at least not to those who are interested in preventing more of these incidents, which does not include the screeching mob that has spent the last two nights blocking Chicago city traffic and demanding the impeachment of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Ironically, they may have swerved into the truth by demanding the ouster of the liberal democrat mayor, Barack Obama’s former chief of staff. In an indirect, but very real way, left-wing politicians like Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama are responsible for Laquan’s death, and Trayvon’s, and that of millions of other black young people in the last 50 years. The policies they have aggressively promoted, and continue to promote, have destroyed the black family, and the social problems that have resulted were predicted back in 1965 by a liberal democrat named Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who as an assistant secretary of Labor, issued a report entitled, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.

Moynihan was distressed by data that showed that despite increases in the rate of employment of black men, something that he and other bureaucrats always assumed would result in a decline in women and children on public assistance, it was just the opposite. He noticed a disturbing increase in illegitimacy, absent fathers, and single-parent homes headed by females. He noted the connection between these factors, and what used to be called “juvenile delinquency.” 

From the report (footnotes to sources in the portion at the link):

Some of the research on the effects of broken homes on delinquent behavior recently surveyed by Thomas F. Pettigrew in A Profile of the Negro American is summarized below, along with several other studies of the question.
Mary Diggs found that three-fourths — twice the expected ratio — of Philadelphia’s Negro delinquents who came before the law during 1948 did not live with both their natural parents.

In predicting juvenile crime, Eleanor and Sheldon Glueck also found that a higher proportion of delinquent than nondelinquent boys came from broken homes. They identified five critical factors in the home environment that made a difference in whether boys would become delinquents: discipline of boy by father, supervision of boy by mother, affection of father for boy, affection of mother for boy, and cohesiveness of family.

In 1952, when the New York City Youth Board set out to test the validity of these five factors as predictors of delinquency, a problem quickly emerged. The Glueck sample consisted of white boys of mainly Irish, Italian, Lithuanian, and English descent. However, the Youth Board group was 44 percent Negro and 14 percent Puerto Rican, and the frequency of broken homes within these groups was out of proportion to the total number of delinquents in the population.

“In the majority of these cases, the father was usually never in the home at all, absent for the major proportion of the boy’s life, or was present only on occasion.”

(The final prediction table was reduced to three factors: supervision of boy by mother, discipline of boy by mother, and family cohesiveness within what family, in fact, existed, but was, nonetheless, 85 percent accurate in predicting delinquents and 96 percent accurate in predicting nondelinquents.)

Researchers who have focussed [sic] upon the “good” boy in high delinquency neighborhoods noted that they typically come from exceptionally stable, intact families.

Recent psychological research demonstrates the personality effects of being reared in a disorganized home without a father. One study showed that children from fatherless homes seek immediate gratification of their desires far more than children with fathers present. Others revealed that children who hunger for immediate gratification are more prone to delinquency, along with other less social behavior.Two psychologists, Pettigrew says, maintain that inability to delay gratification is a critical factor in immature, criminal, and neurotic behavior.

The inability to delay gratification resulting in criminal behavior? You mean like threatening a store clerk after stealing cigars?

President Lyndon Johnson seemed to take Moynihan’s report to heart. At a June, 1965 commencement address at Howard University, he seemed to understand that the civil rights movement wouldn’t mean much if people caught up in what Moynihan’s report had called a “tangle of pathology” were unable to take advantage of newly-available opportunities. Referring specifically to the black family, he said:

The family is the cornerstone of our society. More than any other force it shapes the attitude, the hopes, the ambitions, and the values of the child. And when the family collapses it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale the community itself is crippled.

So, unless we work to strengthen the family, to create conditions under which most parents will stay together–all the rest: schools, and playgrounds, and public assistance, and private concern, will never be enough to cut completely the circle of despair and deprivation.

Truer words were never spoken. Unfortunately, the truth has never appealed much to the Left, who had at that time been on an approximately 50-year mission to destroy the traditional family altogether. The predecessors of today’s race baiters immediately mischaracterized Mr. Moynihan’s research as “racist,” and “blaming the victim,” choosing instead to pour more gasoline on the social pathology fire by seeking more money to be thrown down the welfare rathole, and the gutless politicians dropped the subject of the black family’s issues.

What is the media not telling you in their orgy of wall-to-wall coverage about their latest example of RAAAACISM in evil America? How about this:

Twice, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services removed him from his mother’s care — once when he was 2 years old and again when he was 5 — because of abuse allegations leveled at the mother’s boyfriend. (emphasis mine) As is too often the case, McDonald was allegedly sexually molested in two different foster homes, according to a source familiar with his juvenile court record.

There’s more about the sad circumstances of McDonald’s short life at the link above. I think you get the point. It’s not a coincidence that it’s a 99% certainty that you will see the phrase “mother’s boyfriend” in stories involving many cases involving crime.

Laquan McDonald should not be lionized by the ridiculous and offensive “Black Lives Matter” movement as a victim of racist police. He is another sad sacrifice on the altar of liberal social policies.

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Image: Screen shot: http://www.msnbc.com/andrea-mitchell-reports/watch/question-surround-video-of-laquan-mcdonald-shooting-574171715727

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