It’s a blessing to see Fathers celebrated just as it is to see mothers celebrated. I know America loves the fatherless Black child stereotype. They also love the absentee Black father stereotype.
Since the mid 1960s when the government introduced Welfare to single Black women, with the stipulation being that the Black father leave the home, that’s been America’s favorite stereotype of Black men- the absentee father.
“They” took jobs out of the inner cities in the late 1960s going into the 70s, after racial violence caused Blacks to flee from the Jim Crow south to the northern inner cities. This caused “White flight” from the inner cities. The power structure took the jobs and resources out of the inner cities along with the White flight. Redlining kept migrating Blacks from moving to the suburbs where White flight and job and resource flight landed. Subsequently and consequently, the migrating Blacks were confined to the now jobless and resourceless inner cities, causing a need for Welfare for poor Black families. That’s when they introduced Welfare to Black women with the condition being that the Black father leave the home.
The coup de grace was when “they” flooded the inner cities with heroin in the 70s, put agent, drug dealing, king pen provocateurs to influence future generations of organic, fatherless, drug dealers, added crack cocaine in the 80s, and did the mass lockup in the 90s.
Even with this deliberate breakup of the Black family and financial crippling of the Black father, this level of criminality still only represented a small percentage of Black America. The average blue collar and white collar working class Black family still had Black fathers. But the media still loved to highlight that small percentage, lower class criminal aspect that they socially engineered while acting as if it was an organic happening and also acting as if Black men are just innate criminals and slackers.
The media loves highlighting the Black professional athlete who grew up without a father while being accompanied with the struggling single mother.
The media loves promoting the wayward, fatherless criminal, turned rapper who was raised by the streets and a single mother.
But we all know there are plenty of responsible, available, and hardworking Black fathers in working class Black America. That’s the majority.
So when you see a Black dad in their child’s life, it is the norm and not an anomaly. Give them a base level of respect for being their for their child, not because it’s a rarity amidst this false notion of multiple absentee Black dads in jail, dead, on drugs, or simply abandoning their responsibilities as a father.
Absentee Black fathers make up a small percentage of Black fathers, while a larger percentage of Black fathers are their for their kids. That’s business as usual.
Black fathers are available and Black fathers matter. In fact, all fathers matter. But all fathers mattering goes without saying. Theirs no on going stereotype of other ethnicities being absent in their child’s life. Nor was their ever a calculated attempt by the power structure to financially and legally cripple other races of fathers out of being in their child’s lives.
So yes. All fathers matter- including Black fathers. Black fathers matter.
