When Delano Squires was growing up, he was surrounded by young black men who were not only getting into trouble, but getting into gangs and going to jail — while he kept his hands clean.“At a certain point in my teenage years, I said, ‘Well, it’s because of the families we were raised in. All our parents were married, ... we were going to the same church, same values across households, a community of men who were raising us and keeping us in line. And I realized that family structure was the key,” Squires tells BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock on “Jason Whitlock Harmony.”“So from there, just one of those things that I’ve always thought about, the importance of family, the importance of marriage, importance of my dad in my day-to-day life, his everyday presence. And at a certain point, I wanted to write about it,” he explains.And Squires did write about it in his new book, “The Vanishing Black Family,” where he argues that the breakdown of the black family is to blame for lack of education and high crime rates.“Men and women are continuing to have children, particularly in our community, where 70% of kids are born out of wedlock,” Squires tells Whitlock.“The other thing that we’ve seen over the course of the last 60 years is that as poverty has decreased in the black community, the non-marital birth rate has increased,” he continues, using NBA players as an example.“In a league that was 70-plus percent black, you had guys who were fathering four, five, six, seven kids out of wedlock, even though they were making millions of dollars a year,” he explains, noting that economics appear to have very little to do with children being born out of wedlock.“I think economics is a part of it, but the real reason is because marriage is no longer seen as valuable, desirable, accessible, or indispensable for the purpose of forming a family. And the reason for that goes back much further than current economic trends,” he tells Whitlock.Whitlock has his own theory as to why the black family has broken down.“If we had more God, we could have a successful marriage, and we could raise up better kids. That’s the missing ingredient,” Whitlock says.“The cause of the vanishing black family is because we’re not looking for God to be our provider. We’re looking for money to be our provider. And so, whatever makes us the most money is going to fix the most problems,” he continues.“And to me it’s, you know, we’ve just lost focus on who our real provider is. It’s not man-made money. It’s God,” he adds.Want more from Jason Whitlock?To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
