The Disintegrationist retort is to blame each of these factors, in turn, on institutional racism. That makes it easy to avoid explaining exactly what is causing these problems. Single motherhood was far lower before the Civil Rights Act than it is today; crime rates spiked after the end of Jim Crow; and educational rates have stagnated for years. When doctors don’t know what is causing a disease or how to cure it, they call it a syndrome. When sociologists don’t know what is causing a problem or how to cure it, they call it systemic. The difference, of course, is that sociologists often do
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