Bachmann: Black Kids Better Off During Slavery
"Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President."
Critics chimed in immediately reminding the GOP candidate that slave families were often broken up as a matter of business. Marriage between men and women slaves was not recognized and was infact illegal. Family members were sold or traded off to other plantations and were viewed as nothing more than beasts of burden. Not to mention these children did not learn to read, write or calculate math while getting daily lessons in humiliation and cruel and unusual punishment.
Bachmann, who previously and erroneously referred to John Quincy Adams as a "founding father" who worked tirelessly to free slaves, was likely making a reference to a study note in the pledge. That note cited a 2005 research paper called "The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans".
According to the study, by 1880, 56.3 percent of Black households were what we now call “nuclear families.” (For Whites, that figure was 66.9 percent.) By 1950, nearly 80 percent of Black families were headed by married couples. By 1996, that figure had dropped to just 34 percent.
But one of the authors of the study, Dr. Lorraine Blackmon, told Forbes.com that Bachmann is "just wrong” and made "a serious error."
While the data regarding the dissolution of the black family over the centuries is considered stark, Bachmann while likely be defending her historical rendition on the Sunday talk show circuit.
