Jason Whitlock on Illegitimacy and Society

This column is among the best I have read on any social issue in a long time. It is concise, precise, direct and entirely free from nonsensical party affiliation. I hope it gets a lot of attention.

The highlights:

"Dez Bryant's inability to control his emotions is not a racial issue. It's a family dysfunction issue...

"But the reality is, Dez Bryant is swirling in a cultural tsunami every bit as destructive and powerful as climate change.

Let's call it 'Hurricane Illegitimacy.'

Its victims are primarily black and brown, but Hurricane Illegitimacy is a not black or brown problem. It's an American problem that is denied and exacerbated on the left and mischaracterized and exploited on the right.

Like climate change, Hurricane Illegitimacy is powered by man-made factors:

1. A lack of proper restraints on welfare entitlement programs for single mothers and fathers.

2. America's bogus war on poor people who use and sell drugs.

3. Turning incarceration into a for-profit business model.

4. A refusal to recognize that investment in the education of our poorest and weakest citizens could strengthen our entire society.

5. Our collective lack of courage and resolve to combat popular-culture forces that celebrate, normalize and profit from baby-mama and criminal culture...

"The seeds for Hurricane Illegitimacy were planted in the late 1960s as backlash for the civil rights advances won by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Too much of this current generation of young people are the unwitting victims of America's unwillingness to protect the sanctity of family. The people who deny this obvious reality are every bit as delusional as climate-change deniers...

"The normalization of illegitimacy is so pervasive in black America that people are afraid to publicly address its dangers and consequences out of fear of being labeled a sellout or a racist. It's been so normalized that some people honestly don't believe it's a problem.

Ignorance is blissful and deadly. Ignorance is why we see Dez Bryant misbehave and automatically think race rather than family.

Ignorance is why we don't understand that the black family structure thrived and survived until our lawmakers launched a drug war, mass incarceration and shortsighted welfare policies.

Ignorance is why we've failed to object forcefully to pop-culture forces using their unprecedented power to promote hedonism as the ultimate high over family evolution.

Dez Bryant's behavior and our reaction to it are just symptoms of a much bigger problem."

I don't ordinarily quote at such length, and I hope this does not come as outright theft. Whitlock's words need wide circulation.