Years ago, I interviewed Coasey and Fumay, then the president of the NAACP.

As between the presence of white racism and the absence of black fathers, I asked him,

which poses the bigger threat to the black community.

Without missing a beat, he said, the absence of black fathers.

It was President Barack Obama who said, we all know these statistics, that children who

grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime,

nine times more likely to drop out of school, and twenty times more likely to end up in prison.

The Journal of Research on Adolescence confirms that even after controlling for varying levels

of household income, kids and father-epson homes are more likely to end up in jail, and

kids who never had a father in the house are the most likely to wind up behind bars.

In 1960, five percent of America's children entered the world without a mother and father

married to each other.

By 1980, it was 18 percent.

By 2000, it had risen to 33 percent, and 15 years later, the number reached 41 percent.

For blacks, even during slavery when marriage for slaves was illegal, black children were

more likely than today to be raised by both their mother and father.

Economist Walter Williams has written that, according to Census data from 1890 to 1940,

a black child was more likely to grow up with married parents than a white child.

For blacks, out of wedlocked births have gone from 25 percent in 1965 to 73 percent in 2015.

For whites, from less than 5 percent to over 25 percent, and for Hispanics, out of

wedlocked births have risen to 53 percent.

What happened to fathers?

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