Comment by jariel
5 years ago
"They're saying the American nuclear family"
Not the 'American' -> 'Western'. And that's just way of making the 'family' consistent with 'Colonialism' and 'White People' because it suits their bigotry. The nuclear family is pretty closely similar around the world, outside of mostly aboriginal communities. Obviously it's somewhat different in different places, with multi-generations under the same roof.
I view this as fundamentally antagonistic - it's 'making stuff up' to find supposedly powerful and inspiring words, 'defining the enemy' ever more as 'White People'.
It defines their struggle as not one to 'finish school and gain competence' but as merely against the forces of 'White people'.
Of course by most objective measures, nuclear families are good for society.
This is the inherent problem when we mix radicalism with 'good intentions' - they end up mestastisizing the 'grain of truth' (ie racism exists) into everything (ie everything is racist).
No, pretty much none of this is true. The English/American model of isolated "nuclear" families isn't even the norm throughout Europe (see, for instance, Italy), let alone throughout the world. I decline to take the rest of the argument you're making seriously, since your foundational premise isn't even accurate. Anything else I'd say would just be restating my previous comment.
Having lived quite long enough on the Continent (in multiple continental countries) to know otherwise, this is obviously not true.
At very least English families have more in common with German families than German families do with Italian or Spanish families.
But it's moot: because family structure across civility is not fundamentally different with respect to the antagonising view of BLM.
Aside from some degree of intergenerational cohabitation, it's not that different in advanced countries.
The BLM statement with respect to family is unfounded bigotry, specifically created to concretise and define the image of their enemy.
It's very similar to Trump specifically trying to use the term 'Wuhan Virus' so as to invoke 'blame' for the virus on China. There is a 'kernel of truth' to complicity in China - in that China did some very bad things during the early phase of the pandemic, but that doesn't justify the use of this kind of language to blame them for the entirety of the problem. The language he uses here is to provoke - and to shift blame for the inadequacies of his own system, using crude language mapped onto an external group. When in doubt, use xenophobia.
BLM attacking the 'Western Family Unit' is shifting the narrative and denying any responsibility for a very foundational problem within the community - and that is >50% of Black children have little no relationship with at least one of their parents, and that rates are about double for Black families as they are for other groups [1]. Now - obviously it's a very complicated problem (i.e. incarceration etc.), but it's a lot easier to dismiss if you don't have to see it as a problem, rather, merely an oppressive measure by your villainous opponents.
The argument "The Black community has challenges at least partly due to the deep fragmentation of the family unit" can simply be dismissed and ignored with the radical, and ironically xenophobic statement: "The family unit is colonialist and racist".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_family_struct...