O Father, Where Art Thou?
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The engaged black father is an elusive character in popular culture. The percentage of black children living in fatherless homes—roughly 50 percent—has perpetuated an orthodoxy that black men are irresponsible and indifferent to fatherhood. Authors such as Coates are in a position to change that. In addition to “Struggle,” last year saw the release of two photo-essay books, Carol Ross’s “Pop” and Rachel Vassel’s “Daughters of Men,” which aimed to show black men celebrating their love for their children.
{snip} according to a Pew Research study conducted last year, more than two thirds of blacks say that today’s fathers are doing a worse job than fathers did 20 or 30 years ago. Of the whites polled for the study, only 44 percent said the same. It is this fear of the rapid extinction of black fathers that provides Bill Cosby, the vanilla comedian turned culture warrior, his raison d’être: correcting the ills of the black community with up-by-the-bootstraps straight talk. Cosby has spent years traveling the country, exhorting packed crowds of black men to be better fathers, fathers not unlike Cliff Huxtable, the upper-class patriarch he played on his ‘80s sitcom.
But images of the Huxtable archetype can be psychologically deleterious. As uplifting a story as is, say, “The Pursuit of Happyness”—the memoir of single father Chris Gardner (and, later, a Will Smith movie)—its primary focus is on Gardner’s struggle to provide his son financial security. This reinforces the notion that a man’s value as a father only goes as far as his ability to earn money. “What’s important to black men in a society that has a fair amount of racism is a notion of manhood,” says Mark Anthony Neal, an associate professor of black popular culture at Duke University. “Manhood is all they have, and what that usually means in our culture is the ability to provide for your family financially.”
{snip} A 2007 study noted that a black father’s ability to financially contribute is one of the biggest determinants of whether he stays in the home. “There’s a host of evidence noting that men who cannot fulfill the breadwinner role often experience distress and interruptions in positive engagement in family life,” says Boston University professor Rebekah Levine Coley, who worked on the study. Low-income, low-skilled men are culturally expected not to care about being good fathers, and those who do care feel like failures when they cannot meet a definition of successful fatherhood in which being the breadwinner is the sole metric. This conundrum gives rise to the absentee father, the lion who would rather be proud than lead his pride.
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(Posted on May 12, 2008)
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A 2007 study noted that a black father’s ability to financially contribute is one of the biggest determinants of whether he stays in the home. “There’s a host of evidence noting that men who cannot fulfill the breadwinner role often experience distress and interruptions in positive engagement in family life,” says Boston University professor Rebekah Levine Coley, who worked on the study. Low-income, low-skilled men are culturally expected not to care about being good fathers, and those who do care feel like failures when they cannot meet a definition of successful fatherhood in which being the breadwinner is the sole metric. This conundrum gives rise to the absentee father, the lion who would rather be proud than lead his pride.
This is just cheap propaganda. What white father can’t support his family and feels so bad about it that he just leaves? he works two menial jobs, they live with family, but everybody pulls together and struggle through the hard times.The black men have no real love of family.
Richard lynn of Cambridige University writes in “Race Differences inIntelligence” pages 229-230:
“In addition to thes five cognitive problems of survival in the northern hemishpere, a further selection pressure for greater intelligence on these peoples would have been ther operation of sexual selection by women. In Eurasia and North America women would have been entirely dependent on men for much of the year to provide food for themselves and their children. in equatorial Africa and the southern hemisphere where plant and insect foods are available throughout the year, women are relatively independent of men. Even when women with infants and young dependent children with them on foraging trips, or can leave them in the care of other women for a few hours while they go out and gather plant foods. It would have been much more difficult and frequently impossible for women with infants and young children in the norterhn hemisphere to go out on hunting expeditions, possibly lasting several days, kill and dismember large animals, and carry pieces of themfor many miles back to camps. The effect of this would have been that women in the northern hemisophere would have depended on men to bring them food. They would have therefore have tended to accept as mates intelligent men who were good at hunting and making tools and weapons. The effect of this sexual selection by women would have been that intelligent men would have more children and this would have increased the intelligence of the group. Another effect of the greater dependence of women on men in Eurasia would have been that men and women would become psychologically more bonded. THIS EXPLAINS WHY THE MARRIAGES OF EUROPEAN AND EAST ASIAN PEOPLES ARE MORE STABLE THAN THOSE OF AFRICANS.”(my caps)
Posted by W Hendershot at 8:43 PM on May 12
How can blacks be better fathers when the women are lousy mothers? I mean, isn’t it the black mammies who are wailing in court that their boy is a good boy and he’s innocent, after it has been proven beyond all doubt that he has feloniously assaulted someone, robbed someone, raped someone, or murdered someone?
And the figure of 50% homes being fatherless. All the figures I’ve read say that 70% of blacks are born out of wedlock. I’m wondering if this character above is including boyfriends in the home, so the figure will increase to 50%.
Notice how much time and trouble is devoted to something unfavorable or lacking about blacks and imagine how much better society would be if they were back in their home continent. You know, the one that reverend Wright says is the sole concentration of all their thoughts, yet they continue to live here and spew hatred.
Posted by w.r. at 10:03 PM on May 12
Talk about lies, damn lies and statistics. The statistics presented in this article are so devoid of any scientific basis it’s quite breathtaking. for example:
‘A 2007 study noted that a black father’s ability to financially contribute is one of the biggest determinants of whether he stays in the home’
Where is the cause and effect?
The study actually means nothing. A no-hoping black will neither financially contribute or stay in the home. One is not the cause of the other.
Posted by Paul at 11:24 PM on May 12
More apologetics! And what strange, evasive writing.
[But images of the Huxtable archetype can be psychologically deleterious.
…has perpetuated an orthodoxy that black men are irresponsible.
…..”the sole metric”?, “deleterious”, “conundrum” etc.]
Orthodoxy? Why not just say the word “stereotype,” damaging, measurement, standard, puzzle, which is obviously what he means? Using pompous words and bombastic language is standard practice among black scholars and apologists to inflate and lend weight to that which is otherwise transparent nonsense.
Posted by at 11:45 PM on May 12
*“Manhood is all they have, and what that usually means in our culture is the ability to provide for your family financially.”*
Funny that - I thought “manhood” in the ‘African-American society’ was being a ‘playa’, and fathering as many offspring as possible before moving on to the next who-I mean, “un-inhibited women”.
For a ‘cultural reference’ for the seeming black inability to ‘stick around after birth’, I advise American Renaissance readers read the (plagiarised, I know) novel of “Roots” where - interestingly enough - the father of ol’ Kunte has *no* role in raising the son, outside appearing during the coming-of-age ceremony.
Posted by Obscuratus at 11:56 PM on May 12
We now have a phenomenon that should be called “The Broken Record.”
Since liberals can’t look at the truth, they have to keep playing the same old songs to explain black failure. It’s like a record with a scratch that just keeps playing the same piece of music, over and over and over . . .
These Golden Oldies will keep them entertained forever.
Posted by Reader-1 at 11:59 PM on May 12
“There’s a host of evidence noting that men who cannot fulfill the breadwinner role often experience distress and interruptions in positive engagement in family life”
And yet provide one of these youngsters with an affirmative action job - and this same distressed soul will sire multiple children by different mothers.
Posted by at 1:52 PM on May 13
I guess when a black father stays married all the while fathering multiple children by other women outside the home that’s considered a ‘success’ in todays day and age. And something to be admired.
Posted by at 2:00 PM on May 13
” Papa was a rolling stone, where ever he laid his hat was his home. All he left us, was, alone.”
Posted by at 3:32 PM on May 13
One reason alone explains black behavior and black failure.
Average IQ of 75 which is classified as retard level.
Posted by at 3:56 PM on May 13
If poverty is the cause of poor fatherhood, then why weren’t we a country of poor fathers during the Depression?
Posted by mythbuster at 9:17 PM on May 13
I guess when a black father stays married all the while fathering multiple children by other women outside the home that’s considered a ‘success’ in todays day and age.
Posted by at 2:00 PM
————
Actually, he IS a success, in biological terms. And he is winning the demographic war.
Posted by at 12:31 PM on May 15
In many Western European countries parents often don’t marry one another but they remain partnered. I find it pretty incredible that we now have apologetics for a failed black culture that seems to set the benchmark so low for black males that as long as he visits and cooks breakfast we shouldn’t really expect him to live up to his financial responsibilities.
Then again we now have a viable black presidential candidate who is the son of a polygamist. How does that role model go over in the black community? You can have four different mama’s and your son ends up President.
Posted by Europeans don't marry at 12:01 PM on May 24