The State of the Black Family: Sixty Years of Tragedies and Failures—and New Initiatives Offering Hope

The State of the Black Family presents family, schooling, crime prevention, and housing policies that can transform failing Black neighborhoods and improve the lives of its youth.

Too many Black Americans live in neighborhoods that are filled with gun violence, dysfunctional and abusive families, and children with deficient academic and behavioral skills. Instead of engaging in an open-minded search for solutions, too many pundits and politicians are content to point their fingers at systemic racism, while dismissing individual effort and traditional measures of merit as part and parcel of a system that is irredeemably broken. In The State of the Black Family, the economist Robert Cherry presents a blueprint for a robust set of policies that can break the cycle of intergenerational poverty and move these families forward by providing direct family support, practical educational approaches, housing policies to reinvigorate neighborhoods, and on-ramps to higher-paying jobs—an approach that enjoyed a broad consensus before leftwing social justice themes hijacked the conversation.