If Obama Had a Son

When he was first sworn in as Attorney General, Eric Holder made one of the more obtuse comments in political history. When it comes to issues of race, Holder declared, we are "a nation of cowards ... we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race." Really? It seems to me that we talk endlessly, and usually unproductively, about race. We love nothing better in America than a good racial angle. The Trayvon Martin case pushes all the buttons. Black provocateurs such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton get to strut their stuff. The liberal media get to distort and cheerlead for one side. Conservatives get to indulge their disdain for the race hustlers, and everyone's blood pressure rises.

We are now engaged in another fruitless shouting match about whether young black men are being hunted on the streets of America and whether "stand your ground" laws are dangerous. But as the estimable Ann Coulter has pointed out, Florida's "stand your ground" law was irrelevant to the Martin case. Whichever version of events that night you believe: A) that Zimmerman followed and shot Martin in cold blood; or B) that Zimmerman shot Martin in the midst of a fight; the law, which does not require a person who fears for his life to retreat before using deadly force, is not implicated.

While some carry placards demanding justice for Martin, and others counter that thousands of young blacks are killed every year by other blacks without a provoking anything like this sort of outrage; the larger issue is lost.

In fact, young black men are being hunted and killed in appalling numbers. But the violence and mayhem that disproportionately afflicts the African-American community is part of a society-wide disorder. It has a racial angle, but it's not about race. That disorder is family breakdown, and no discussion of violence or murder or victimization is informed without reference to that overwhelming fact.

Why do African-Americans, with 12.6 percent of the nation's population, account for 50 percent of the murder victims? Because fatherlessness is most pervasive among blacks.

The illegitimacy rate among all Americans has been rising for decades. In 2012, we reached a grim milestone: The majority of births to women under the age of 30 are now outside of marriage. Among blacks, 72 percent of births are to unmarried women. And while some unmarried mothers go on to marry the fathers of their babies, it's rare in the African-American community, where only 31 percent of couples are married (In 1960, it was 61 percent).

Mona Charen Follow @twitterapi

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