Here’s the key graph of the foregoing piece:
“A month before Obama made this stereotypical and plainly false assertion, Boston University professor Rebekah Levine Coley, in a comprehensive study on the black family, found that black fathers who aren’t in the home are much more likely to sustain regular contact with their children than absentee white fathers, or for that matter, fathers of any other ethnic group. The study is not an obscure study buried in the thick pages of a musty academic journal. It was widely cited in a feature article on black fathers in the May 19, 2008 issue of Newsweek. There was no excuse then to spout this myth. The facts are totally contrary to Obama’s knock.”
Excuse me? How is this plainly false, apart from your saying so? What makes the BU study comprehensive, apart from you and Newsweek saying so? Google “Rebekah Coley + black + study” and you end up with the Newsweek article and Hutchison’s editorial. Hmmm. Is this an unpublished study, or one soon to be published? But oh no, this is no “obscure study buried in the thick pages of a musty academic journal obscure study.” That sort of study might be available for all of us to read!
“The facts are totally contrary to Obama’s knock.” How is that exactly? The ONLY fact you cite, Mr. Hutchison, is: “black fathers who aren’t in the home are much more likely to sustain regular contact with their children than absentee white fathers.” Uh, but isn’t the issue whether black fathers are more likely to be in the home in the first place? And you gotta admit, “contact” is a pretty neutral word. In my and your minds, I’m sure it connotes a doting father who re-arranges his weekend to make time for a baseball game with his son. But it probably also includes the dad who calls his kid to ask what mommy’s been up to and did she just get paid, or can you drive daddy to work today? And it would be useful to know the ages of the children, by race, when daddy left the home. Older kids are less likely to have regular contacts with their absent fathers than younger kids. Oh my bad, I forgot that the last fact I just wrote is just my opinion. I wouldn’t want you to mix up my facts with my prejudices.
