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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, SEPTEMBER 25, 1981
PAGE 15
Young boys growing up in a fatherless home to very young, financially
stressed mothers often do not acquire the right attitudes necessary to hold
a job. Growing up without a father's authority at home, they are unable to
adjust to an employer's authority in the workplace. Says Sowell: "There
is ••• a misconception of the whole role of jobs and particularly of early
jobs in one's career. What the worker learns on those jobs is how to get
along on a job, with employers, with fellow workers. He learns he should
not come to work with his portable radio blaring at top volume."
Government work programs such as CETA (being dropped under Mr. Reagan's
"cruel plan") do not alleviate this attitudinal problem. They attempt to
teach skills, but don't concentrate on the right job attitudes such as get
ting to work on time or other qualities of character an employer looks for.
Since government programs "must work," standards are lowered to make them
work. Youths fail to learn what the real marketplace is like.
Other governmental programs further aggravate the crisis within the minor
ity community. The welfare system actually allows a female-headed family
to 1ive reasonably comfortably without the husband. And since the man
knows he is dispensible, and not needed for the support of the family, he
often feels no long-term commitment to his family. So this breadwinner
role which would tend to authenticate his leadership to his family is re
moved.
In another perverse twist, both the women's lib and civil rights movements
have further eroded the confidence of the black male breadwinner.
The
civil rights movement has put a tremendous emphasis on paper credentials,
such as college degrees and test scores. More black women than men possess
these credentials. College-educated and professional black women are now
quite well off--so well, in fact, that they now earn one-quarter� than
similarly situated white women, according to economist Sowell. The result
is that, in light of the women's lib movement, black women enjoy a superior
economic position compared with black men.
This further injures the
male/female relationship and contributes to a man's feeling that he is
"dispensible" when it comes to his family.
Still, the government persists in treating the problem of poverty as merely
the consequence of past discrimination. The idea of individual merit is
being submerged in favor of group rights, whether by race or sex. In the
article "Racial Classification: Politics of the Future" (Summer 1981 issue
of POLICY REVIEW) authors L. H. Gann and Alvin Rabushka write: "Affirma
tive action programs have subtly begun to change the entire tenor of
America life••••Recent court actions, administrative decisions made by
powerful bureaucrats, and the changing climate of academic opinion have
helped to create a new concept of group rights of a kind familiar to coun
tries like Northern Ireland, Lebanon, and Cyprus." All three countries
are war-torn, incidentally.
The work that God's Church is doing to "turn the hearts of fathers to their
children and the hearts of children to their fathers" will accomplish more
to break the cycle of poverty and heal the rifts among peoples than any man
made governmental program ever devised.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau