The "Marriage Vow" and African American Families

On today’s Brian Lehrer Show there was a segment on a “Marriage Vow” being promoted by a religious right group called the The Family Leader.  The original version of the Vow, as signed by Tea Party / Religious Right darling Michele Bachman (among others), stated the following:

“a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”

After some public outcry, this clause apparently was dropped from the Vow. 

There are so many ways in which this clause is stupid and uninformed.  Let me focus on one:  the notion that a child born into slavery in 1860 was part of a “household.”  African American slaves were not permitted to run their own “households.”  In fact, in many states slaves were not legally permitted to marry.  Even where marriages were permitted, slaves remained the property of their owners, who could separate families at will. 

The truth is that no black child born into slavery in 1860 was raised in a “two-parent household.”  All such children were were raised in multi-person work-camp-prison compounds headed dictatorially by a white male, who owned them as his property.  (Rather ironically, but sadly not surprisingly, The Family Leader touts itself as a purveyor of Focus on the Family’s “Truth Project.”)

Does this suggest the authors of the original version of this Vow are racist?  Well, yes.  Here we get a glimpse behind the racial code-word curtain of American libertarian Tea Party politics.  Why anyone claiming to be a follower of Jesus would align him or herself with this sort of thing is beyond me.