What's your take on it? I'm not sure on the poverty increase claim, but single parenthood has indeed gone up since that epoch. There are enough stats to provide support for the idea that single parenthood is correlated with higher levels of crime, poverty, and lower levels of education (Obama
spoke on this in 2008). The original argument (from my interpretation) seems more of a counter-argument to the notion that Jim Crow laws and the like were critical if not pivotal in driving black poverty, crime, and lack of education. The counter-point would then be that these fundamental factors of well-being have in fact worsened. What are the strongest explanations for this phenomenon? What has happened that's in fact so strong of a factor in driving black impoverishment that overcomes institutional racism of old? We could list a whole host of factors, but would they be as influential as single parenthood?