In a February 2 column, Rocky Mountain News editorial page editor Vincent Carroll mentioned an op-ed by Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute about out-of-wedlock birth rates among Hispanic women without identifying the Institute as a conservative think tank.

From Carroll's column:

“Forty-five percent of all Hispanic births occur outside of marriage, compared with 24 percent for whites and 15 percent for Asians. Only the percentage for blacks -- 68 percent -- is higher. But the black population is not going to triple over the next few decades.”

-- Heather Mac Donald, the Manhattan Institute

Mac Donald's statistics are a deflating reminder of why the heroic help provided by good teachers, mentors, ministers and others for at-risk youth amounts to rowing against a whitewater rapids. It is hard enough for young Hispanics from working-class backgrounds to close the educational and income gaps with whites and Asians even when they benefit from a solid family structure. But without it? The odds against them get positively scary.

Mac Donald is a John M. Olin fellow at Manhattan Institute. According to MediaTransparency.org, the John M. Olin Foundation “grew out of a family manufacturing business (chemical and munitions)” and funded “right-wing think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy Research, and the Hoover Institute of War, Revolution and Peace" before closing its doors in November 2005. The Manhattan Institute's mission “is to develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility,” according to its website.