This won’t go over too well with liberals.
Via WaPo:
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called in to the radio show of conservative commentator Laura Ingraham on Tuesday to discuss, among other things, the unrest in Baltimore. And try as he might, he can’t keep from having father problems.
“There are so many things we can talk about,” Paul said, by way of trying to explain what had happened. “It’s something we talk about not in the immediate aftermath but over time: The breakdown of family structure, the lack of fathers, the lack of sort of a moral code in our society.” He added: “This isn’t just a racial thing; it goes across racial boundaries.”
The comment about “lack of fathers” was quickly picked up by liberal media outlets (in part thanks to the unhappy coincidence that Paul’s own son was recently busted for DUI in Kentucky).
It’s a not-uncommon argument for discussions that center around race. It’s often levied as a sort of broad-brush critique, along the lines of “why don’t they talk about black-on-black violence” (which we’ve addressed before). The implication in mentioning the absence of black fathers can be — but isn’t always — that there is a shortcoming in the black community that leads to bad behavior among young black people. Put more simply: The reference is fraught.
Paul’s brief mention of it, however, likely isn’t meant to be a shorthand, but instead to be a placemark for the discussion that he himself says should result from the violence in Maryland. He’s mentioned the absence of black fathers before as part of his outreach to the black community — usually in the context of black fathers being in prison. “If we’re for families with a mother and father around, we need to be for fixing the criminal justice system,” he said at an historically black college in Maryland earlier this year.