Comment by raxxorrax
5 years ago
What has it to do with racism though?
What is the other extended familiy model? family clans? What would be the practical difference? Are the no disadvantages?
Exactly these political issues, which I have no strong opinion on, are randomly added to issues of police violence that makes the whole movement look very dishonest.
Where in the western world are people that tell you how to structure your family?
The American nuclear family was supported by the state, notably through housing policy; for instance, the best neighborhoods in the country have "single family zoning", which literally prohibit extended families in suburban neighborhoods. In fact: even after redlining, which persisted in many forms into our own lifetimes, many areas are still single-family zoned. These zoning ordinances are all turn-of-the-20th-century racist devices.
The movement isn't dishonest. Its critics are simply ignorant. That's not surprising; they've been kept in ignorance deliberately.
Of course better off people prefer these areas to high density housing. Even better off people might get into gated communities, which could be called extended family just as well. And this is a far worse situation.
Yes, the suburban happy family living the American dream might be a touch too idealistic, harsh building regulation might drive prices which disadvantages poor demographics and there were maybe people that used it for racist purposes. Doesn't mean everyone did. And high density housing is probably a lot more stressful even without a family apart from the most expensive options available.
You're not responding to what I'm saying, you're responding to what you wished I said. In reality, what I said was that municipalities enacted laws, specifically targeting black families during an era of proud and overt segregation, designed to make it difficult for extended families to move into white neighborhoods.
There is a long case history involving these ordinances, including extensive documentary evidence that occupancy caps and definitions of "immediate family" were designed specifically to exclude blacks (in the first half of the 20th century) and latinos as well (in the second), taking advantage of both the fact that black and latino households are far more likely to include grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and also the (obvious, in retrospect) fact that municipalities simply don't enforce these regulations against white households --- again, a fact documented in the case history.
At any rate, the dispute upthread suggested that there was no racial justice aspect to the "Western-prescribed nuclear family", and whether you agree with the courts or not, there clearly is such an aspect; the allegation that BLM is exceeding its charter by railing against "nuclear families" is easily refuted, and we should have all known better than to raise this objection in the first place.
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