Posted on January 13, 2017

The Dangerous Myth of the ‘Missing Black Father’

Mychal Denzel Smith, Washington Post, January 10, 2017

Growing up, the lesson was everywhere: Every major problem in black America can be solved if we addressed the problem of missing fathers.

“No longer is a person embarrassed because they’re pregnant without a husband,” disgraced comedian and alleged rapist Bill Cosby said in 2004. “No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child.” When a police officer was killed in Jersey City, in July 2014, a local television news reporter said on air that “the underlying cause” of the “anti-cop mentality that has so contaminated America’s inner cities” was “young black men growing up without fathers.” A Reuters headline from 2007 proclaimed, “Father absence ‘decimates’ black community in U.S.”

President Obama has been one of the biggest advocates of this idea. In a 2008 speech delivered on Father’s Day at a church on Chicago’s South Side, the first viable black candidate for president of the United States chastised black fathers. Too many black fathers, he said, are missing from too many lives and too many homes. “They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. We know the statistics — that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison,” Obama said. “They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.”

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However, responsible fatherhood only goes so far in a world plagued by institutionalized oppression. For black children, the presence of fathers would not alter racist drug laws, prosecutorial protection of police officers who kill, mass school closures or the poisoning of their water. By focusing on the supposed absence of black fathers, we allow ourselves to pretend this oppression is not real, while also further scapegoating black men for America’s societal ills.

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Of course, there are studies that show that children who grow up in two-parent households perform better in schoolare less likely to commit crime and have higher future earning potential. What these studies often don’t take into account is the impact of depressed wages, chronic unemployment, discriminatory hiring practices, the history of mass incarceration, housing segregation and inequality in educational opportunity, not just on family structure but on the resources available to black families to produce results similar to their white counterparts.

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Even with the presence of fathers in the home, the persistently high black male unemployment rate would do little to close the existing and increasing racial wealth gap, which is at a place where it would take 228 years for black households to catch up.

It’s hard to put this inadequate philosophy to rest. It’s hard because the “missing black father” has caused so much pain. That hurt runs through the rhetoric of every well-meaning person who has ever admonished black fathers for not being in their children’s lives. It’s the foundation of Obama’s first book. That pain is real and can’t be discounted.

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This isn’t an argument in favor of deadbeat fathers, but a call to detach ourselves from the myth that the only and best way to raise a child depends on the presence of a man we call a father.

So far, Obama has refused. In response to the killing of Trayvon Martin and subsequent acquittal of George Zimmerman, his plan of action was a partnership between nonprofit organizations and corporations to provide increased mentorship for young black men, called My Brother’s Keeper, which has recently enlisted the star power of rapper Kendrick Lamar and NBA guard Stephen Curry.

There is nothing wrong with promoting mentorship. There is something wrong with a president who told us for years that he was not the president of Black America but all of America, as if black people were not part of America, now putting forth his first racially specific program, and it not being any policy, but rather a spate of philanthropic endeavors. It was insulting, but right in line with his philosophy.

As if he had been elected to be mentor-in-chief. As if mentors are all black boys need to survive. As if what he really meant was mentor as a stand-in for father. As if he could save black boys by becoming their surrogate father. As if we can afford to continue believing the myth. Trayvon Martin had a father. Jordan Davis had a father. Michael Brown had a father. Tamir Rice had a father. Having a father won’t protect black boys from America