This is your interpretation of what I said and it is wrong. The data actually showed that marriage rates increased after slavery continuously to the extent that, and I will repeat nonsense as you put it , "As late as 1950, black women were more likely to be married than white women, and only 9% of black families with children were headed by a single parent."
Something else has to be the cause of fatherlessness. I didn't say slavery was the cause at all. The culture I was referring to is associated with the institutional dependency on social programmes that actually incentivizes irresponsibility and the lack of parenting that produces dysfunctional children who can't compete in the real world.
I suggest you read what I wrote closer, because the misinterpretation is all yours. You didn't say slavery was the cause, I did. I said you can't blame the lack of progress on "black culture" while disingenously failing to recognize that symptoms you describe as "cultural" are really vestigial remnants of slavery. That is what I meant by you can't have it both ways.
I am further stunned... say nothing of insulted by your insistance that there is some sort of "institutional dependency on social programmes." You speak from a position of ignorance and my initial exhortation didn't sufficiently apprise you of that, apparently. Yours is the often-repeated misrepresentation of reality that blacks have this special affinity for social programs. "Institutional dependency" is the word you used... when the reality states just the opposite:
Another finding of the study is that the distribution of benefits no longer aligns with the demography of poverty. African-Americans, who make up 22 percent of the poor, receive 14 percent of government benefits, close to their 12 percent population share.
White non-Hispanics, who make up 42 percent of the poor, receive 69 percent of government benefits – again, much closer to their 64 percent population share.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/who-benefits-from-the-safety-net/
Me calling your contribution ignorant and uninformed isn't meant to insult you, I bear you no personal animus. Rather it's meant to challenge you to avoid falling for the insidious trap that so many blacks from the diaspora fall for, the demonization of African Americans, usually driven by perniciousness and laziness in the press, and bought into by non-African American blacks, some as a way of thinking themselves better than American-born blacks. Black people are benefitting at or near their per capita representation in the population, while white people are getting 1.5 times their per capita representation, yet in so many minds the face of welfare remains a black/brown face. Where is the institutional dependency that you talk of? Do you have proof? Or do you think that black Americans are busy passing a legacy of dependency to their children? To be sure, this happens in pockets... but it happens in larger numbers in Appalachia where blacks have a miniscular footprint. That's the story that's never told. And not to stereotype the good people of W. Va and Ky too much... it happens in traditionally 'red' quarters such as Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee as well. But you wouldn't know this unless you force yourself to look at the actual demographic breakdown of government dependency.
As for your argument on fatherlessness... you cite marriage statistics as your proof, when in reality you need to be looking at out-of-wedlock births. The number of marriages in the black community has fallen... as has the number of marriages across all races. What you seemingly don't know is that the number of out-of-wedlock births has been declining in the black community:
The basic conclusion is that the birth rate for unmarried black women is--and has been--declining. In 1970 the birth rate for unmarried black women was 96 per 1,000. In 1980, it was 87.9. In 2005 it was 60.6. There is a huge spike in the late 1980s, but the overal trend is clear--the birth rate for unmarried black women has been declining for almost 40 years.
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2009/02/the-math-on-black-out-of-wedlock-births/6738/
However, the number of babies born to married blacks has also dropped precipitously... far steeper than the out-of-wedlock births. If you understand statistics you'll understand why then the RATE of out-of-wedlock births has risen, even though the actual INCIDENCE of out-of-wedlock births has fallen. You can only compare out-of-wedlock births to births to married couples, and if the latter is falling faster than the former, then you end up with a statistically skewed perspective which fuels the misinformation that you are now repeating.