I lived in Europe for almost 15 years. I’ve seen first hand how the collapse of the African family has huge negative consequences on the African community there.
In suburbs inhabited by immigrants from Asia, turkey, Arabs countries and subsaharian Africa, and by poor Europeans, kids from Asian families consistently succeed better at school and later in life, while attending the same schools as the kids of other ethnicities.
A friend even said recently, he has never seen a homeless Asian in America or in Europe!
In the contrary, It’s rare to find a kid from an african family born in Europe who’d graduate at university, left alone turn out to be a successful professional.
What makes such a huge experience for kids living in the same environment, going to the same school, with the same teachers?
Family.
Asians value family and are still ready to sacrifice to building healthier families than any other ethnicity.
This evening I was talking to a community leader here, and we all agreed that marriages have disappeared from the community and single moms families are now the majority.
During the conversation, I asked him to consider family as a small country where there should be a leader, a constitution, a civil code, a police, a system of accountability, a healer, etc.
A country fails when there is no good leader. Where there is no well designed constitution. Where there is no rule. Where there is no police. Where there is no healer. Etc.
The same for a family. When kids grow up without ever seen a family leader, a system of rules that are enforced with compliance mechanisms. Where there is no accountability. those kids could not be saved from poor performance later in life.
Ask any family with poor policing, how do their kids perform. You’d hear teen pregnancy, bad behaviors in society, poor marks at school, jail time, arrogance, sociopathy, etc.
Building a family requires a lot of sacrifices and discipline. Asians are good at both. Africans have lost those two values, and around the world we are champions in single parent families, and sleeping around mindlessly.
We will continue to fail, at everything we do, regardless of the investment, if we continue to fail at the basic building block of any society which is family.
Selfishness, quick temper, disloyalty, irresponsibility and laziness are the main diseases that kill a family.
The healthy nutrients are discipline, sacrifice, commitment, patience and empathy.
Societies and ethnicities with strong families will outperform and dominate those with weak or collapsed family structures.
Are family structures destroyed in your country like mine? How could we revive the African family?