When Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled New York City’s preliminary racial equity plan in April, it had goals and indicators related to education outcomes, incarceration and child poverty. But while the mayor’s plan
focused on creating equal outcomes in the schoolhouse, courthouse and jailhouse, it completely ignored the place where these all begin: the home.

This was no administrative oversight. The truth is that progressives apply an equity lens to every institution except the institution of marriage, and every structure except family structure.
Today, close to 70% of black children are born to unmarried parents, a non-marital birth rate significantly higher than the one for their white (27%), Asian (12%) and Hispanic (54%) counterparts. Similar rates exist in New York, where birth data show 75% of African American babies were born out of wedlock in 2023, nearly double the city’s overall rate.

These disparities don’t end once a child is born. Half of black children live with a single parent. Only 28% of African American households are comprised of married couples, compared to a national average of nearly 50%. Both measures are the result of a steep decline in marriage among African Americans since the 1960s. In 1965, close to 60% of black adults were married. Today, only 35% are.

These statistics point to an uncomfortable but obvious truth: the married, two-parent family structure is now the exception — not the norm — in black America.

That matters because the connection between family structure and social outcomes is impossible to deny. The mayor’s vision for racial equity includes a world where “all families have economic security” and no child grows up in poverty. That goal is impossible when policymakers consistently ignore the relationship between median household income and marriage rates.

Asian American families have the highest earnings ($121,700) and marriage rates (62%), followed by whites ($92,530 and 53%), Hispanics ($70,950 and 47%) and then blacks ($56,020 and 35%). It is worth noting, however, that the median income for black married couples under 65 ($121,900) is higher than the overall household income for all groups. The link between family structure and economic security also works in the reverse. In 2024, just 5% of children in married-parent families were living below the poverty line, compared to 31% in families headed by a single mother.

If progressives are serious about racial justice and improving life for children, they can’t continue to ignore the root cause of the disparities they claim to be fighting.

My new book, “The Vanishing Black Family,” gives them a blueprint to turn words into action and begin a social movement to increase the number of black children growing up in a loving home with a married mother and father.

Rebuilding the marriage-before-baby carriage culture that was the norm from the end of the Civil War through the end of the Civil Rights Movement will only be successful if family restoration is prioritized, first and foremost, by black leaders. That means churches in the Deep South offering marriage counseling for young couples, black advertising companies designing nationwide ad campaigns extolling the joys of family life and HBCUs producing research on Gen Z attitudes toward dating and relationships.

There is also a role for policymakers of every background to play. Mayors and other elected officials can begin incorporating family structure into data collection, policy analysis, program design, political rhetoric and public messaging. Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s 2013 media campaign to reduce teen pregnancy included ads that introduced young people to the “success sequence” — finish high school, get a job and get married before having children — that reduces the chances of living in poverty to nearly zero. There is no reason cities can’t incorporate this information into K-12 curricula.

These efforts are all important steps to restoring a culture of marriage and strong families in neighborhoods where one has not existed for decades. While racial equality may be the hook needed to convince progressives to focus on the family, the ultimate goal is to give black children the privilege that benefits all kids: growing up in a loving, stable and secure home with a married mother and father.

Delano Squires is the director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Human Flourishing at The Heritage Foundation and author of “The Vanishing Black Family: How Welfare and Feminism Made Marriage Optional and Children Vulnerable” (Sentinel, out June 16.)