‘Nation of Cowards.’

According to Mike Hendrix, it’s the people who don’t want to talk about things like this at all, at all:

In The Atlantic Monthly, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead noted that the “relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature. The nation’s mayors, as well as police officers, social workers, probation officers, and court officials, consistently point to family break up as the most important source of rising rates of crime.”

Let me repeat: Control for single-parent families and there are no differences between the races when it comes to crime.

It’s hard to argue that there isn’t a reluctance in this country to discuss the possibility that some of our cultural choices are maybe not working out so hot. Even alluding to it feels kind of strange, really. Kind of taboo – and not in the kinky way; in the ‘we do not speak of this matter’ way.