Snoop Dogg’s critics show the 70/90 Project to rebuild black families can work

The progressives criticizing Snoop Dogg and Nelly for performing at President Trump’s inauguration events know something most conservatives are too afraid to admit: shame and stigma work.

The left’s penchant for publicly ridiculing the wayward and disobedient is one of the main reasons Democrats receive 90% of the black vote every election cycle. What some people see as a sign black voters are taken for granted, I see as a ray of hope that conformity for the right purpose is possible.

Every person who is concerned about America’s future should be talking about the state of the family.

If Democrats can get nine out of 10 black voters to support their candidate for the White House, I think even more should get behind efforts to rebuild the family.

That’s why I would like to propose the 70/90 Project — an initiative to completely reverse the current trajectory of the black family. The mission is simple: Move 70% of black children from being born to unmarried parents and 45% being raised by a single mother to 90% of black children being born to married parents and living in intact homes.

I acknowledge the goal is ambitious. American families are doing worse than in previous generations. The age of first marriage has gone up, and the marriage rate has gone down. Total fertility has decreased, but more children are being born to unmarried parents than ever before. Every person who is concerned about America’s future should be talking about the state of the family.

Addressing these challenges won’t be easy, but as President Trump said in his inaugural address: “In America, the impossible is what we do best.”

One way to “do the impossible” is for black leaders to harness the community’s social, financial, and political capital to rebuild the family. That is a much better reason to work in unison than acting as mules for a party that will say and do anything for a vote.

The 70/90 Project’s success would depend largely on the individual choices of millions of men and women who decide when and under what circumstances to bring a child into the world. But that doesn’t mean institutions don’t have a role to play.

Historically black colleges and universities should be thinking about ways to help families in their surrounding communities build stronger relationships while encouraging a “ring by spring” culture on their own campuses. Black preachers would need to reaffirm the reality that God created two sexes, marriage is the cornerstone of the family, and the family is the bedrock of society.

Civil rights organizations and social commentators would need to be honest enough to acknowledge that “marriage inequality” is doing more to hold the community back than racial discrimination. Just 33% of black adults are married, compared to 48% of Latinos, 57% of whites, and 63% of Asians. Only a fool would argue that children could have such different family inputs but still achieve the same social outcomes.

The 70/90 Project will also require stakeholders to establish new family norms and use every tool available — from persuasion and affirmation to coercion and shame — to enforce them.

Doing so will undoubtedly lead to accusations that promoting marriage and intact families stigmatizes single mothers and their children. But the truth is that children need both parents. Fathers are not the family’s appendix — nice to have but not essential. Every child has a right to the protection, affection, and correction of the two people who made them. The ideal environment for this right to be exercised by a child is in a loving, two-parent household with a married mother and father.

Progressives often champion “diversity,” but their personal attacks on Snoop and Nelly reveal their true focus: enforcing conformity. They readily platform pimps, drug dealers, strippers, and professional twerkers — as long as they help drive the black vote on Election Day.

They only weaponize shame against people who transgress their political program. But if the gatekeepers of black culture are going to get 90% compliance in a particular area, ensuring every child is raised in a home with a married mother and father would do far more for racial uplift than getting another Democrat into office.