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From John McWhorter, writing in TimesOnline:
...the most grievous result of the new consensus was black American history’s most under-reported event, the expansion of welfare. Until now, welfare had been a pittance intended for widows, unavailable as long as the father of one’s children was able-bodied and accounted for, and granted for as little time as possible.
In 1966, however, a group of white academics in New York developed a plan to bring as many people onto the welfare rolls as possible. Across the country, poor blacks especially were taught to apply for living on the dole even when they had been working for a living, and by 1970 there were 169% more people on welfare nationwide than in 1960.
This was the first time that whites or blacks had taught black people not to work as a form of civil rights. Politicians and bureaucrats jumped on the new opportunity for political patronage and votes, and welfare quickly became a programme that essentially paid young women to have children.
Only in 1996 was welfare limited to five years and focused on training for work. But by then generations of poor blacks had grown up in neighbourhoods where there was no requirement that fathers support their children. Few grew up watching their primary parent work for a living.
Read the whole thing.
(via LinkFilter).
