This is a summary of the comments Ruth Institute advisor Lynn Wardle made on the panel "The Politics of Marriage and Family" at the 2009 National Summit on Marriage, Parenting and Families at Hampton Unversity.
I was honored to participate in the recent National Summit on Marriage, Parenting and Families at Hampton University, September 29-30, 2009, co-sponsored by the National Center on African American Marriages and Parenting. My panel on Wednesday addressed “The Politics of Marriage and Family” and included, in addition to myself, former Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears of the Georgia Supreme Court, former Judge Arthur Burnett of the District of Columbia Superior Court, and two Virginia elected officials (a state Senator and a city councilman). Theodore M. Shaw, former President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, was moderator.
The principal focus of the Summit was on addressing issues concerning the state of marriage, parenting and family in the African-American community. That is especially important for, as Kay Hymowitz has so eloquently explained in “Marriage and Caste,” there “two Americas” -- separate and unequal. One is relatively rich, the other one poor; one thriving and the other struggling; one is mostly white, while the other largely of minority races (especially African-American). This is also true particularly of and within the African-American communities; there are two communities: one is married, the other unmarried (single or cohabiting or divorced); one bearing children after marriage, the other bearing children out of wedlock; one making progress, the other falling behind; and marriage is the major and most significant difference between the two communities and the two Americas.
The meaning of marriage and family are the defining issues of this generation; they are the primary civil rights issues of our day; and the protection of the institution of marriage is the major civil rights battle of our time. How these issues are resolved will determine the future of America, and of African-American communities in this country – whether they prosper or wither, whether they grow or dwindle, whether they flourish or languish.
Read the rest from Wardle here.
Here is the summary of the comments that Ruth Institute Executive Director Jamie Gruber made of the youth panel at the Marriage Summit.
This past week Dr. J and I ventured to the National Summit of Marriage, Parenting and Family, at Hampton University, a historically black college. It was a beautiful setting for a conference set along the James River; the oak tree leaves were beginning to change colors and students bustled to and from class. There sits a large Oak Tree on campus that is known as the Emancipation Oak. It is the first place in Virginia that the Emancipation Proclamation was read. It was also on this same spot that those gathered for the Marriage Summit signed the Hampton Proclamation that declares a commitment to the revitalization of marriage and families. In addition, it invited our fellow Americans to join us in the fight for marriage. Hampton University created The National Center of African American Marriages and Parenting this year to address the serious issues of low marriage rates in the African American culture.
I participated on the Next Generation Panel at the Summit where we addressed the issues that threaten the future of our marriages and those of the next generation. We established that while most young adults see marriage as the best environment to raise children and to have good relationships, there seems to be multiple barriers that prohibit us from seeking healthy marriage. We created a vision for our peers, and formed a social change action plan to begin the efforts of restoring the institute of marriage!
Some of the barriers to healthy marriages that the next generation faces include: inaccurate concepts of marriage and of themselves, the misplaced need to be established before getting married, the tidal pull of the media on the minds of the next generation, and the attack of the gender identities leaving us clueless as to the roles of husbands and wives.
We envision for our peers a better understanding of the institution of marriage. Our hope is that we as a generation better understand the self-sacrifice and mutual benefit of marriage. This will produce homes with both a mother and a father; homes that teach children what it is to be a man or a woman; homes that foster service for one another, and the power of working together. Our hope for empowered families is that children will be taken care of—and will grow up to be confident and secure in who they are and what they are purposed to do…. That they will be contributing members of society and the world will be better because of them.
There are not enough intergenerational conversations going on. Young people need to hear real talk about certain issues to develop a healthy view of marriage. To read the full write up and all the action items we created visit our blog.
