Where's Waldo?  The New York Times plays this game on a large scale with a disingenuous article talking about the "disappearance" of 1.5 million black men.

In New York, almost 120,000 black men between the ages of 25 and 54 are missing from everyday life. In Chicago, 45,000 are, and more than 30,000 are missing in Philadelphia. Across the South — from North Charleston, S.C., through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi and up into Ferguson, Mo. — hundreds of thousands more are missing.

They are missing, largely because of early deaths or because they are behind bars. Remarkably, black women who are 25 to 54 and not in jail outnumber black men in that category by 1.5 million, according to anUpshot analysis. For every 100 black women in this age group living outside of jail, there are only 83 black men. 

Perhaps the starkest description of the situation is this: More than one out of every six black men who today should be between 25 and 54 years old have disappeared from daily life.

Incarceration and early deaths are the overwhelming drivers of the gap. Of the 1.5 million missing black men from 25 to 54 — which demographers call the prime-age years — higher imprisonment rates account for almost 600,000. 

Higher mortality is the other main cause. About 900,000 fewer prime-age black men than women live in the United States, according to the census. It’s impossible to know precisely how much of the difference is the result of mortality, but it appears to account for a big part. Homicide, the leading cause of death for young African-American men, plays a large role

This ends the New York Times analysis.  Homicide plays a large role.  But what causes homicide?  Is it all the racist white policemen shooting black men in the back?  As nearly all of us know, most black homicides result from black-on-black crime.  The New York Times knows this, too, but to go the final step, and tell why so many black people are dying, is something its editors and reporters have a curious lack of interest in exploring.  And you'll find no one marching in Ferguson, Missouri or anywhere else acting out in outrage about this.

The other large cause is "incarceration."  Homicide.  Incarceration.  The Times throws these nouns out there, as if they were autonomous beasts with their own minds who gobble up black men on their own.

We know, of course, that there are causes of homocide and incarceration.  The disintegration of the black family.  Some of us know that this wasn't always the situation, that in the first half of the 20^th century, black families were remarkably intact, and the Post Office never had any problems figuring out where to deliver the mail on Fathers' Day.

What happened after that was the welfare state, which made it affordable to have children out of wedlock, and the change in cultural attitudes, which made it not merely acceptable, but trendy to have children out of wedlock.  Look at Hillary Clinton's presidential announcement video, featuring not one but two single mothers, literally flexing their muscles and showing how happy they are raising a child alone.  What they don't show is how all those children go astray with little or no parential supervision because no father figure is around.  That is the cause of all the "missing" black men.

The Times is horrified by this statistic, but not horrified enough to explore the causes of it, instead content to treat it as a phenomenon ("homicide" or "incarceration") that simply happens, like the weather.  (Actually, I take that back, because the Times does believe, incorrectly, that it knows what causes the weather to happen.)

This article was produced by NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.