I woke up Sunday morning to the voice of a grandson wishing me a happy father’s day.
Several hours later, my second grandson called with similar well wishing.
If the universe was just, they would have run into their father’s bedroom and offered him the accolades. But their father died in a car accident three years, one month and 29 days earlier, and unless they pay tribute to their mother, they would essentially have to ignore the holiday altogether.
Sadly, a large percentage of Black children find themselves facing that dilemma. All over Milwaukee, and around the country, millions of Black children could be heard reciting the new holiday mantra, ‘happy father’s day...Mom!’
That’s a tragedy of untold measure. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that many of us predicted 20 years ago. Now the chickens have come home to roost. It’s fried chicken. Greasy dark meat, full of steroids.
A couple of years ago I wrote a similarly disturbing column on a new series of holiday cards that actually read, ‘Happy Father’s Day, Mom.’ I called the cards a shocking, denigrating reality that puts into perspective a social phenomenon that too many of us are unwilling to acknowledge, much less address. It brings to light not only the disfunctionality of our culture, but foretells of a societal crisis that if left unabated, could doom our nation within a nation.
Some may say this is an over exaggeration. I beg to differ. It's all too real, and you need but visit a public or private school, stop by a playground on your way home, or tour any of a dozen depressed neighborhoods at mid day to discover the truth.
Talk to the young brothers, they are full of anger and frustration. Listen to these offspring of MIA fathers who have replaced ‘Dad’ with drug dealers adorned in expensive gold chains anchored by a diamond studded ‘cross.’ Hear the young men utter Ebonic phrases about imitating a pimp or selling drugs to replicate the lifestyles of materialistic role models.
With pants hanging low on their knees, you have to wonder where these cultural zombies hide their guns, which they won’t hesitate to use to impress a peer if someone accidentally steps on their $150 tennis shoes.
Visualize the manchild stuck in adolescence, without a father to help transition them to real manhood. Allow him to invade your dreams tonight, take heed of the anger in his voice, the anxiety and confusion. If you listen closely enough, or read between the lines, this manchild in the Promised Land is starving for male leadership, he is crying out for attention, guidance and support. Without it, he lashes out--he implodes--because he subconsciously recognizes that there is a void in his life, that he has been cheated out of a fundamental right to be raised by a man who protects, loves and leads him through the rites of passage.
To these young men, Father’s Day has become a joke, an annual reminder that they were shortchanged. They not only don’t have a traditional father in their lives, but also in many cases don’t even have a positive surrogate. They wake up each morning to a woman, are transported to school by a female bus driver, are taught by another, and returned to their depressed neighborhoods by yet another.
Society targets and stigmatizes these rudderless ships. But can you really blame them for lashing out? Would it not make more sense to blame the sperm donors who planted the seed, but didn’t hang around long enough to harvest his crop?
Unless you fertilize, nurture and cultivate, weeds will overtake the plant, if it doesn’t die on the vine--or kills the plants around him.
Father’s Day brings with it mixed emotions for me. Between calls from my grandsons, I thought of the thousands of local Black boys who had no one to salute on Father’s Day. It drove me to search out a Father’s Day card my late son, Malik, gave to me the year before his death. He thanked me for dedicating my life to his upbringing, and revealed that he questioned his ability to replicate my parenting skills until he realized that there is no manual for fatherhood, and as I navigated my way through that process, I provided him with the most important gifts a man can provide a son: time, attention, support and wisdom.
I supported, pushed and prodded Malik to excel. I exposed him to people wiser than myself. I engaged him in the civil rights movement; had him marching on the picket line as soon as he was old enough to lift a sign.
I took him to Africa to expose him to his cultural roots before he reached double digits. It was there that he discovered the quiet dignity of his distant cousins, an aura of self-esteem and poise even amidst some of the worse poverty known to mankind.
Malik and I held hands on the dock at Goree Island where our ancestors boarded the ships that would bring the captive Africans to America. We looked out into the sea, visualizing the ocean bottom that is covered with the skeletons of Africans who refused to be enslaved.
We then looked back at the coastline of the Motherland, the cradle of civilization, where our ancestors invented math, science, law and opened the first medical school known to man while Europeans were living in caves.
Our last meaningful trip together was to the Million Man March, where I watched with tears streaming down my face as Malik embraced strangers in an open display of unity and respect that is frequently missing from our community. It was a life-altering scene, a million Black men sharing a bond of unity and brotherhood.
Malik made note of those unique experiences, but most importantly, he recalled how I was always there for him when he had a question or a problem that needed solving. I was frequently at his school looking over his shoulder or conversing with his teachers.
I forced him to miss outings with friends to continue his martial arts training, and I once advised his Messmer High School basketball coach to suspend him from the team during their bid for the state championship because he uttered a disrespectful word to him during a team practice.
Most of all, Malik said he realized what I meant when I said fatherhood simply means to "take your child further than yourself--spiritually, educationally, culturally."
He said he had no doubts about his ability to be a good father, because he had a good example.
I wouldn’t call myself a perfect father; I’ve made many mistakes during Malik’s upbringing, and even now with his younger brothers. But I tried, and integrated what my father offered me, and his father taught him. Most importantly, I take seriously my God mandated responsibility, sometimes to the detriment of other relationships.
That places me in a minority today.
Author and fatherhood advocate Juwanza Kunjufu spoke about this social phenomenon during his visit to Milwaukee a couple of weeks ago. He noted that there were more married Black households during slavery than there are today.
Forty years ago, nearly 80% of Black households were nuclear families. Today that figure is closer to 40%. Depending on which figures you accept, somewhere between 60 and 70% of all Black households are headed by women.
Poor, uneducated Black women head 80% of those households. There are three zip codes in Milwaukee where over 90% of the children are born out of wedlock. Less than half will have a man actively involved in the upbringing of their child (active is a subjective term. To the government, it means paying child support; which is only half of the equation. Social services interpret "active" to mean men who spend at least two days a week with their child).
Of the poor, functionally illiterate sisters with more than two children, less than 18% will ever marry. Of that group 78% of their male children will drop out of school, and half of them will have a criminal record before age 25. Sixty plus percent will have one or more children out of wedlock. Their children will replicate that negative pattern.
Children born to Black professional women generally will navigate through the maze of disfunctionality. Children raised in the households of divorced sisters, generally fare as well (far more divorced men stay active than unmarried "Dads"). The probability of their male children doing well in school, evolving into good citizens and contributing members of society is greatly enhanced if their father is active. Black boys in that scenario generally graduate and stay out of trouble, particularly if they have a religious foundation.
The success rate for Black boys raised in impoverished single-parent household drops proportionately for each additional child in the family. For example, a Black boy raised in a female headed, improvised household with two siblings by two different "fathers," will also certainly drop out of school and end up in prison. (Maybe his cry for a male role model to help him navigate life is drowned out by the cries of his brothers and sisters.)
Simply put, a Black nuclear family is by far the best situation for Black children, particularly Black boys, followed by active fatherly input in a professional female-headed household. Children born into the culture of poverty have a less than 50% chance of emerging unscathed.
It’s a simple equation, but one few Black leaders, ministers, politicians or neighbors will admit to, much less address.
I assume they see the tragedy of fatherlessness before their eyes. I find it unconscionable that they can’t see the link between poverty, crime, mental disorders--manifest in violence and disruption in school--and the absence of fathers; the disappearing Black nuclear family.
My son wrote a poem before his death in which he talked about this social phenomenon, and how he hoped to impact it through his role as a teacher and mentor.
The pain is in their eyes.
These young Black men living in urban America,
Lost and abandoned,
Aimlessly walking the streets with nothing behind their eyes but anger,
Confusion, disappointment and boundless pain
These young men
Running the streets, occupying the corners
Often beaten beyond recognition,
With scars invisible and internal
Victims of a societal burden
With only distant hints of their tennis shoe daddies
These young men
Sons of Africa
Once full of hope and aspiration
Are now knee-less, chained to a self-fulfilling prophecy
Voices broken
Homeless and forgotten,
Most will be terrorized into becoming beggars or thieves,
Or terrorists holding our community and culture hostage
Many ultra dependents on a system that considers them less than human
A society that will treat them with less dignity and respect than their counterparts,
Even without a heartbeat
I am among these young men daily
Mindless, self-proclaimed hustlers
Manipulators
Who would rather join than initiate
Obey rather than question
Follow rather than lead
And finally talk, rap, rather than READ
I am a mirror of these children
But I graduated
From the literary works of Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, WEB Dubois, Sonia Sanchez, Maulana Karenga, Mari Evans, Sterling Brown, Ida B. Wells, Haki Madabuti, Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon,
And of course, Mikel Holt
I evolved from a family with a father who cared
We are in a state of illiteracy and lack of respect
Contrary to common belief, their real education does not only occur on the concrete of the hood
But rather with serious learning situations
It needs to start at home,
But if it doesn’t, and if I have my way
It’ll blossom in the classroom
--Malik Holt
My grandsons will not fit the profile of the young men described by their father.
I am much older than I was when I raised Malik, but I have enough energy left to facilitate the quality time needed to make an impact. Most importantly, I understand the alternative, and in the absence of my son, would be derelict and damned not to give what I can.
Hopefully, we can collectively convince the sperm donors to follow suit. Not just because it’s the right thing to do, and can save a child, and our community, but also because they apparently have no idea of the joy and sense of accomplishment they can acquire by watching that seed blossom into an upright adult, a real man with a sense of responsibility, purpose and vision.
Not to engage in the process of fatherhood is to miss the smile on a bright young face, the security and comfort that comes when you wipe away tears that result from an injured knee or skinned elbow.
The sperm donor will never feel the swelling in their chest when the product of your loins and investment sinks a shot in a basketball game, proudly hands you a report card, or emerges from his bedroom looking like royalty in a tux rented for the school prom.
There is joy, pain, exuberance and sadness each step along life’s fatherhood journey.
I can attest to the stress and fears that are a part of raising a Black male in today’s society. You fear when they come home late, or even if you see them conversing with a neighborhood thug.
You might even debate whether to censor the music they listen to, or the "fast" girl he decides to date. But it all comes down to the foundation you laid.
You’ll finally realize you did something right when you sit in the auditorium as your child walks across the stage to accept a diploma, and later a college degree. At that moment, you realize your investment paid off; that your words of wisdom, the discipline, the guidance sank in. There is no greater feeling in the world; one a sperm donor will never know.
As a parent you recognize your children, particularly sons, will stumble along the way. But a good father teaches them that to stumble is to fall forward faster.
I can’t dedicate as much time to my grandsons as I did with Malik, or my other children. But knowing how much it will impact their lives, I’ll give more than I think I can, and then add a little frosting to the cake. I’ll water the plants and pull out any weeds; I’ll cultivate and fertilize.
Frequently, I’ll think of what Malik would do if he were here, and how he lives through them, and how I can influence them to walk the path he previously tread.
And I’ll keep preaching the joys of fatherhood and encouraging, pleading and begging others to follow my example. In fact, I’m committing myself to tell everyone who will listen to embrace an absentee father and urge him to do what is right, and if possible, to fill the void ourselves. As a community, we can do no less, whether with our children, grandchildren, or the impressionable and angry Black boy down the street.
As POP was telling me yesterday, boats don’t steer themselves, they need a rudder. Without one, they are destined to run aground.
Hotep.
