Shad White is running for office. It’s just not clear yet which office he is running for.
It’s a safe bet he isn’t the position he already holds as state auditor, based on the various “reports” he puts together and distributes through both the state auditor’s official Twitter account and his own personal Twitter account.
Under the guise of his position as state auditor, White produces “studies” on culture-war issues that show how much social ills cost taxpayers. That, of course, is well outside the purvey of his job, but it’s red meat to conservative voters.
His latest “report” is the cost of “fatherlessness” in Mississippi. Boys raised in a fatherless home are more likely to go to prison. Girls raised in a fatherless home are more likely to be a single mom. Children raised by single mothers are less likely to graduate high school and far more likely to fall into poverty.
Stay tuned for Shad’s next report, which reveals that grass is green.
The report is just six pages, hardly a serious look at the issue, and relies on old data, some dating back to 10 years or more, as well as citing the extremist-right Family Research Council.
On the final page, the report offers solutions. Check that, it offers one solution: expanding Junior ROTC programs in the state. White makes the conclusion on the basis of data drawn from the 2019 JROTC program in Jackson Public Schools. Almost 100 percent of JROTC students graduated, well above the JPS graduation rate of 75 percent.
But that study is of dubious merit. For one, it did not divulge how many of those JROTC students were growing up without a father in the house. Nor did compare JROTC graduation rates with students involved in other extracurricular programs. It’s another “tell me something I already know” effort. Students who are involved in extracurriculars — sports, band, art, etc. — are generally more likely to graduate than those who don’t.
Of course, you can’t cover everything in six pages, but it seems hard to imagine that the report would address our state’s incarceration rate. Mississippi is now the world’s leader in putting people behind bars — more inmates per capita than any state or nation, including China, Russia and Iran, according to the World Population Review.
A lot of those inmates are fathers, but that is addressed nowhere in this White’s report.
What White is really doing in this report is setting up straw man arguments for purely political reasons, claiming “the left” wants to let violent criminals out of prison and prefers single-parent homes, both of which are ridiculous claims.
What is the reason that so many children grow up in fatherless homes? There’s no single answer, but as it is with most society ills, poverty cannot be ignored. White will tell you that absentee fathers are the cause of poverty, but in many cases fatherless homes are the byproduct of poverty.
There’s no acknowledgement of that in White’s report, naturally.
He’s rather clinging to culture war rhetoric that offers no real insight, which should be obvious.
Junior ROTC is a fine program, I’m sure, but it’s no cure for broken homes.
If this is all White can offer, it’s clear he’s not serious about this topic.
It’s just campaign literature for his yet-to-be announced ambitions.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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