Kristen Clarke: Black Single Mothers Raise Criminals

Wednesday, March 3, 2021 // Research

American families face challenges at every turn, whether it’s a coarsening of culture, a school system that is failing our children, or social media platforms that are hostile to traditional values. And while there is near universal agreement that a mother and father in a child’s life is the ideal family, sometimes that does not work out. And all too often children end up living with just one parent, most often with a single mother. As the Census Bureau reports, 23% of children in America are living with a single mother. For nearly a quarter of the families in America it is the single mom who juggles working a day job, tutoring their children, and supporting their social lives. It’s a tough job, and one that goes without enough appreciation.

There are many policies that the federal government could promote – policies that enable school choice being chief among them – that would make life easier on single moms. What families do not need is top leaders in their government being openly hostile to single mothers. Especially people who state that without a father, mothers cannot raise well adjusted children who are productive members of their communities.

This open hostility is exactly what families have in Kristen Clarke, the Biden’s Administration’s nominee to be the head of the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. Clarke’s an out of touch New York liberal, educated at the exclusive private school Choate, and credentialed at Harvard and Columbia – exactly the type of places you’d expect to turn out someone who thinks being raised by a single mom is a direct path to a life of crime and violence.

It’s unsurprising then that while the Chair of the radical Black Student’s Association at Harvard she leveled a broadside against single moms saying that they were incapable of raising children by themselves.

At a forum at Harvard she was asked, “What do you see as the causes of this [the black family’s] decline?”

Clarke responded:

“The black family has evolved into one that is basically a matriarchal structure. Where the mother is the head of the household. Transmission of values is very important. And it is documented that when the man is in the household children will do better in school and they will be able to control this desire for immediate satisfaction. These are all psychological studies. And because in black families, the structure has evolved to where women dominate, you have children now being raised now how can’t suppress this desire for immediate satisfaction and thus you kinda have the basis … the reason for crime and other distractions which prevent children from doing well in school. “

This is a stunning indictment of both women and mothers. In Clarke’s comments she states that:

  • Single women cannot raise children to be disciplined young people.
  • Without a father in the house, children are destined to become violent criminals.
  • The leadership of strong black women in families is not something to be admired, but rather something to bemoan because it leads to a generation of criminals.

Had this stunning assertion by Clarke not been overshadowed by her other radical left wing comments about how “Melanin endows Blacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities,” then the media may have noticed how President Biden nominated someone who is anti-woman and anti-single mother to one of the most senior Civil Rights positions in the government.