Black America: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

Orlando Patterson, historical sociologist at Harvard is a genius on slavery and on neoslavery (segregation).  He has written two classic books; first, The Ordeal of Integration in which he argues for some blacks, since the civil rights movement, this has been the best of times.  In his next book titled Rituals of Blood, Patterson argues this is the worst of times for American blacks.  Though he doesn't use the phrase, he is essentially saying slavery and neoslavery caused PTSD among black individuals, marriages and families.

The following quotations are from Rituals of Blood; his focus is on "persisting problems."

"An analysis of persisting problems, . . . must return to the past in completing the search for causes."

"There is a crisis in nearly all aspects of gender relations among all classes of Afro-Americans, and it is getting worse."

"Afro-Americans have the lowest rate of marriage in the nation, and those who do get married have the highest rate of divorce of any major ethnic group.  The result is that most Afro-Americans, especially women will go through most of their adult lives as single people."

"the myth of the hood, the belief that viable informal friendship patterns exist, compensating for the breakdown or absence of more formal institutions."

"The sad truth is that Afro-Americans are today the loneliest of all Americans---lonely and isolated as a group; lonely and isolated in their neighborhoods, through which they are often too terrified to walk; lonely as households headed by women sick and tired of being 'the strong black woman';
 lonely as single men fearful of commitment; lonely as single women wary of a 'love and trouble' tradition that has always been more trouble than love."

"I go against the prevailing revisionist view that slavery had little or nothing to do with present gender and familial problems."

"Martial and family relations have always been in crisis. . . .  This crisis is the major internal source of the wider problems of Afro-Americans.  It is the main means by which the group ends up victimizing itself.  For, without consistent and lasting relations between men and women, and without a durable, supportive framework within which children are brought up, a group of people is in deep trouble.  Even more tragically, this internal wound is the main means by which the externally originating problems of Afro-Americans are magnified and transmitted."

"The declining marriage rate, increasing divorce rate, increasing rate of female-headed families, and rising rate of teenage pregnancy that are beginning to beset and alarm Euro-Americans have long been experienced by Afro-Americans.  Indeed, the Euro-American trend seems to trail the Afro-American by about fifteen years or so."

Patterson concludes that the black ghetto is so badly damaged that is impossible to rebuild it; instead, blacks should be dispersed into the larger society.