Compared To What?

"The Marriage Vow"--a pledge which certain Republican candidates have signed--is a document I oppose for a number of reasons.  Yet the controversy it's stirred comes mostly from this part:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.

This is incredibly tone deaf.  No matter what point you think you're making, you simply shouldn't bring up something as horrific as slavery and note certain things were better then. (Which reminds me, didn't Jesse Jackson--I think it was him--have an old gag where he noted that employment on any terms isn't necessarily good since, after all, there was 100% employment under slavery?)

In fact, after all the controversy, the slavery reference was dropped.  Nevertheless, some of the criticism over the pledge seems to me wrongheaded.  A good example comes from Tera W. Hunter, a professor at Princeton, in a recent New York Times editorial.  It starts thus:

WAS slavery an idyllic world of stable families headed by married parents? The recent controversy over “The Marriage Vow,” a document endorsed by the Republican presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, might seem like just another example of how racial politics and historical ignorance are perennial features of the election cycle.

The vow, which included the assertion that “a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President,” was amended after the outrage it stirred. [....]

Why does the ugly resuscitation of the myth of the happy slave family matter?

The opening question is bizarre.  Who's claiming today that slavery was an "idyllic world of stable familes"? The point is exactly the opposite. At the risk of stating the obvious, the reason they're making the slavery comparison is to say "see, things are so bad today that even during the unimaginable horror of slavery two-parent households were more common." And then Hunter slips in the bit about "married parents" when there's nothing in the original about marriage.

Next, notice what she omits when she quotes from the Vow:  "Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families..." I can understand why.  It pretty much wipes out her whole argument.

I don't know how closely Professor Hunter read the Vow, but it's hard to interpret in such a way that it resuscitates "the myth of the happy slave family." I guess Hunter is arguing against the enemies she wishes she had.