Academic Whackery Attacks Marriage

Hat tip The College Fix

“Letiecq employs “critical family theorizing…to delineate an overarching orientation to structural oppression and unequal power relations that advantages [white heteropatriarchal nuclear families] and marginalizes others as a function of marriage fundamentalism.”

Founding Father George Mason must be rolling in his grave. The university in Fairfax, Virginia that bears his name has a professor teaching there who maintains that marriage is something designed to maintain white supremacy over non-whites-or something like that. The College Fix has the report here.

“In this article, I draw upon critical feminist and intersectional frameworks to delineate an overarching orientation to structural oppression and unequal power relations that advantages White heteropatriarchal nuclear families (WHNFs) and marginalizes others as a function of family structure and relationship status.”

-Letiecq

Where do I begin? Clearly, this is part of the overall effort by the woke left to destroy our family structure. That’s because it has been clearly shown that the breakdown of the nuclear, two-parent family has led to countless societal woes here in the US.  Professor Bethany Letiecq has to know that. For her to employ such tortured reasoning to argue that marriage (at least in the West) is an instrument of oppression designed to maintain some white power structure is silly. 

I am not arguing that the institution of marriage in the US during my father’s generation and back beyond was based on equality of roles. It was based on the husband working to support the family while the wife took care of the house, the cooking, and the children. The institution has changed a lot just in my lifetime. 

Nor do I wish to put down the so-called non-traditional families, single parents, same-sex marriages etc. They have their rights too.  Nobody is saying they cannot be good parents and raise children well. But they are at a disadvantage.

But if Letiecq wants to make the case (intersectionality?) that a stable, two-parent family is a destructive force in society, I would like to throw out a question. Is she denying-or does she even care) about the problem of absentee fathers in African-American communities across America? Is she arguing that black children are actually better off having only a mother in their lives and no real father? 

During the worst days of Jim Crow in the South and overall discrimination against blacks all over the country, the rate of babies born out of wedlock was about 25%. Today it is about 72%. What has led to that shocking change in numbers is open to argument and is the topic of a separate argument itself. Most black conservatives today will tell you (I always quote Larry Elder) that the single biggest problem facing black Americans today is not white racism, but the out-of-wedlock birth rate. In other words, most black children are growing up without a real father/male role model in their lives. Crime, drugs, and gangs, soon follow. It is clear that black children have a better chance of growing into successful adults if they have a stable two-parent family. Yet, Letiecq either ignores or belittles that issue. (To be fair, white out-of-wedlock births have also risen dramatically, but nowhere near 70%.)

I also find it curious how Western feminists dedicate themselves to glass ceilings and abortion issues here in America, as well as sexual and other physical abuse (which are valid issues), but at the same time, studiously ignore the horrific treatment of women in many other parts of the world (child marriage, forced female circumcision, honor killings etc.) I don’t know enough about Letiecq to know whether she addresses herself to those latter issues or not. Given her use of woke academic jargon, I suspect not.