White family

“ Today, the average black family has just one tenth the wealth of the average white family, while the gap between the white and black — between white and black in homeownership is now larger than it was in 1960. ”

“ One child of this generation emigrated to what was then the Far West, married a white woman and reared a large family, whose descendants, now in the fourth or fifth remove from the Negro, are in all probability wholly unaware of their origin. A sister of this pioneer emigrant remained in the place of her birth and formed an irregular union with a white man of means, with whom she lived for many years and for whom she bore a large number of children, who became about evenly divided between white and colored, fixing their status by the marriages they made. ”

“ They are so affectionate, true, and grateful, that many a time they grow old in the service [190] of one family, and if this family meets with misfortune and perhaps becomes impoverished, they will go to work outside to help support them, of which I could mention many cases. Just the opposite happens with the men, who, although they were educated in a white family from early childhood, and many a time with the same care as the white children, the cases are rare that they do not gradually drift apart, become estranged, give themselves up to vice, and finally forget their benefactors entirely. ”

“ In overall terms, median family income is lower for large families than for small families. Families of six or more children have median incomes 24 percent below families with three. (It may be added that 47 percent of young men who fail the Selective Service education test come from families of six or more.)
During the 1950-60 decade of heavy Negro migration to the cities of the North and West, the ratio of nonwhite to white family income in cities increased from 57 to 63 percent. ”

“ With us they are neither so numerous nor kept so entirely separate, but constitute a part of our households, and are daily either with their masters or some member of the white family. From this circumstance they feel themselves more identified with their owners than they can with you. ”

“ No doubt the pressure of economic conditions is not responsible for small families in some elements of the native white population in the United States, for oftentimes the smallest families are found among the wealthy, among whom there could be no danger of a large family lowering the standards of living or pressing upon other economic needs. ”

“ But between 1960 and 1963, median nonwhite family income slipped from 55 percent to 53 percent of white income. The drop occurred in three regions, with only the South, where a larger proportion of Negro families have more than one earner, showing a slight improvement.
Because in general terms Negro families have the largest number of children and the lowest incomes, many Negro fathers literally cannot support their families. Because the father is either not present, is unemployed, or makes such a low wage, the Negro woman goes to work. ”

“ There is scarcely a negro mother in the country who does not live in dread and fear that her husband or son may come in unfriendly contact with some white person so as to bring the lynchers or the arresting officers to her door, which may result in the wiping out of her entire family. ”

“ There is much evidence that a considerable number of Negro families have managed to break out of the tangle of pathology and to establish themselves as stable, effective units, living according to patterns of American society in general. E. Franklin Frazier has suggested that the middle-class Negro American family is, if anything, more patriarchal and protective of its children than the general run of such families.27 Given equal opportunities, the children of these families will perform as well better than their white peers. They need no help from anyone, and ask none. ”

“ While the percentage of such families among whites has been dropping since 1940, it has been rising among Negroes.
The percent of nonwhite families headed by a female is more than double the percent for whites. Fatherless nonwhite families increased by a sixth between 1950 and 1960, but held constant for white families.
It has been estimated that only a minority of Negro children reach the age of 18 having lived all their lives with both of their parents.
Once again, this measure of family disorganization is found to be diminishing among white families and increasing among Negro families. ”

“ In conclusion, from the history of the family of man, we may all know that the descendants of Japheth and Shem, when free from amalgamation with the black tribes, are white people. Unless then the descendants of Ham were black, how are we to account for the phenomena of the existence of that colour among men? ”

“ In his section of the city few or no white people live, consequently his children grow up with colored companions; in his home a white person seldom if ever enters; all the family meals, amusements and ceremonies are among his own people. Now such a situation means more than mere separation from white people; it means, as I have intimated before, not simply separation but organized provision for the service of this colored group. ”

“ The promise of the city has so far been denied the majority of the Negro migrants, and most particularly the Negro family.
Negroes are now more urbanized than Whites.
Negro families in the cities are more frequently headed by a woman than those in the country. The difference between the white and Negro proportions of families headed by woman is greater in the city than in the country. ”

“ Average family size changed little among white families, with a slight increase in the size of husband-wife families balanced by a decline in the size of families without fathers.
Negro women not only have more children, but have them earlier. Thus in 1960, there were 1,247 children ever born per thousand ever-married nonwhite women 15 to 19 years of age, as against only 725 among white women, a ratio of 1.7:1. The Negro fertility rate overall is now 1.4 times the white, but what might be called the generation rate is 1.7 times the white. ”

“ However poor, a family would make room for orphaned children, and there was no distinction in their usage. It is a primitive virtue, a heritage from the days when white folk were few in numbers: a little family in the heart of savagery, bound together by a common origin and a common fear. ”

“ In the cities the Negroes live for the most part in settlements by themselves, in which there are miserable tenements, usually owned by white people and no better than the one-room country house. Of course, thrifty colored people in country or city are able to build comfortable houses for themselves.
Inasmuch as both father and mother work either in the fields or in domestic service, there is little family life either in country or city. ”

“ The phrase, white Negroes, though a literal contradiction, exactly expresses the physical fact—a white individual of a black stock. In some instances, pure white and black children have mingled in the same family, the offspring of black parents. ”

“ In 1920, 38.9% of colored women were at work as contrasted with 17.2% of native white women. Of the colored women 39% were farming and 50% in service.
The family group, however, which is the ideal of the culture into which these folk have been born, is not based on the idea of an economically independent working mother. Rather its ideal harks back to the sheltered harem with the mother emerging at first as nurse and homemaker, while the man remains the sole breadwinner. ”

“ Only 57 percent of Negro adults reported themselves as married—spouse present, as compared with 78 percent of native white American gentiles, 91 percent of Italian-American, and 96 percent of Jewish informants. Of the 93 unmarried Negro youths interviewed, 22 percent did not have their mother living in the home with them, and 42 percent reported that their father was not living in their home. One-third of the youths did not know their father's present occupation, and two-thirds of a sample of 150 Negro adults did not know what the occupation of their father’s father had been. ”

“ There are many, doubtless, who have not yet got farther in love than their own family; but there are others who have learned that for the true heart there is neither Frenchman nor Englishman, neither Jew nor Greek, neither white nor black—only the sons and daughters of God, only the brothers and sisters of the one elder brother. ”

“ While this phenomenon is not easily measured, one index is that middle-class Negroes have even fewer children than middle-class whites, indicating a desire to conserve the advances they have made and to insure that their children do as well or better. Negro women who marry early to uneducated laborers have more children than white women in the same situation ”

“ The children of middle-class Negroes often as not must grow up in, or next to the slums, an experience almost unknown to white middle-class children. They are therefore constantly exposed to the pathology of the disturbed group and constantly
in danger of being drawn into it. ”

“ A wise man might well suspect the soundness of any system of morals which did not take into careful consideration the conjugial relation. Marriage—the most important event in life, the relation which occupies the whole thought of one sex, and the most serious regards of the other, the institution around which all that is highest find holiest in life groups itself, family, home, all that human hearts hold dear—must ever hold a prominent place in a true code of moral and spiritual laws. How then could the subject be omitted from the heavenly writings of the New Jerusalem? ”

“ At last Quality had heard the thrill of emotion in her voice. Looking up, he detected a bead of moisture in her eyes. The sight of her sorrow only added to the horror. On top of her calm recital of the crime, such sympathy for the juvenile monster was nauseating.
“Your young brother must be a unique specimen,” he said stiffly, speaking with an effort.
“Not at all. Like all the rest of us. Like you, perhaps. Certainly, like me!”
A pleasant family history. To steady his nerves. Quality fingered his papers feverishly, repeating the while his magic formula: “Tomorrow, I go home.” ”

“ And the children around these houses were usually lighter in colour than in other parts of “Darktown.”
Negro fathers and mothers of comely daughters never allowed them to go out unaccompanied after dark. There were too many dangers from men of their own race. And even greater ones from men of the other race. There had been too many disastrous consequences from relaxation of vigil by certain bowed and heart-broken coloured parents. And they had no redress at law. The laws of the State against intermarriage saw to it that there should be none. [41] Central City inhabitants knew all these things. ”

“ But the weakness of the Negro which is most frequently held up to the public [Pg 169] gaze is that of his moral character. No one who wants to be honest and at the same time benefit the race will deny that here is where the strengthening is to be done. It has become universally accepted that the family is the foundation, the bulwark, of any race. It should be remembered, sorrowfully withal, that it was the constant tendency of slavery to destroy the family life. All through two hundred and fifty years of slavery, one of the chief objects was to increase the number of slaves ”

“ As far as is known, there is no way of obtaining even the approximate proportion of white mothers to white fathers, but because of the overwhelming evidence by personal testimony of ex-slaves as to the relations of the masters and overseers of plantations to the slave women, and the corresponding power of the dominant race to prevent, at least in large degree, similar physical marriages between Negroes and the women of their race, we may be said rightly to infer that the proportion of white mothers of colored offspring to white fathers was then, as it has always been, very small. ”

“ Will they drag down the assumed superior race, while they tend to build up the other race? Will such marriages offend the race prejudices alike of the black and white races? Or will such marriages be pleasing to the one race and displeasing to the other? Will not the violation of race prejudices by such marriages occasion unhappiness, and is there any advantage to the State to compensate the misery? What has been the result of the marriages of white women with negro men on the happiness of the wives and their offspring? ”

“ Within the black lower-class it has been quite common for several generations, or parts of the kin, to live together under one roof. Often a maternal grandmother is the acknowledged head of this type of household which has given rise to the term 'matrifocal' to describe lower-class black family patterns. ”

“ Far more than this, however, even if only very superior Negroes formed unions with non-superior Whites, the case would not be altered; for it is a grievous error to suppose that the child is born of its proximate parents only; it is born of all its ancestry; it is the child of its race. The eternal past lays hand upon it and upon all its descendants. However weak the White, behind him stands Europe; however strong the Black, behind lies Africa. ”

“ It is permitted to white men to beget children by dark-skinned mothers, provided they do not marry these mothers of their copper-colored children. The nobler of two ignoble white men—the one who marries the black mother of his children—should be left in peace until we can invent some means of punishing the ignoble wretch who does not marry her. ”