The path from victims to victors

GET SMART ABOUT SEX
Gangsta rap makes our young people tough, but not so tough that they can walk through prison walls. It can jazz them about sex, but it can’t begin to make them good fathers. No matter how often or how publicly they grab their crotches, crotch-grabbing isn’t even going to get them a bus ride downtown.

Here’s the sad and stupid part. The more socially impotent the black man is feeling, the more he will rely on sexual conquests to prove his manliness. There’s a lot of bragging that goes on among black men when sex and paternity are their main claims to fame. Some will see getting a girl pregnant and having a child as proof of their virility. But what it really proves is their insecurity.

Many young women are equally insecure. When a young man whispers to a girl, “If you really loved me, you’d have my baby,” she finds this kind of “sweet” manipulation difficult to resist. Even though many teenage girls are demanding that their beaus use condoms, others keep quiet out of fear of losing their lovers.

Real men act responsibly, and they sure as hell don’t walk away from the mothers of their babies. Real men make a commitment to these young mothers. If they do not marry them, at least they should take care of their children.

Unfortunately, not all boys become real men. In our poorer neighborhoods, in fact, few do. We deceive ourselves if we deny that there is a crisis among black families. Roughly 70 percent of black babies are born each year to single mothers. The mothers are not all teenagers either. The rate of teen pregnancies has come down. These single mothers are often women old enough and educated enough to make good choices.

The fact is, though, that many of the black females who used to get married when they became pregnant are no longer doing so. There is less shame and less embarrassment. But more than that, some black women simply don’t want to marry the fathers of their babies because these men appear to have little else to offer beyond the sperm. Many of these men are unemployed and unemployable.

Recent studies by scholars at several major universities and as reported in leading newspapers show that a critical mass of young black men is becoming “ever more disconnected from the mainstream society” than they used to be, much more so than white or even Hispanic men.

In poor communities, more than half of all black men do not finish high school. What happens to these guys is not at all happy. Despite a strong economy for the last two decades, most have not hooked into the job market in any meaningful way.

These studies show that the percentage of unemployed young black males continued to climb even as the stock market did. By the year 2000, after eight straight years of economic growth, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their twenties did not have regular employment. These were just about the only people in America who didn’t. They couldn’t find work, they weren’t looking, or the warden wouldn’t let them out to look. By 2004, that percentage had increased to a preposterous 72 percent, almost four times more than among Hispanic dropouts. Even including high school graduates, half of black men in their twenties were jobless in 2004.

Because so many black men are unemployed, underemployed, and incarcerated, they are not proposing marriage, and if they did, their proposals might not be taken seriously. A father takes care of his children.

These men have trouble taking care of themselves. The relationship between them and the mothers of their babies is often strained, or worse.

Society keeps laying the problem on the “unwed mother.” You never hear anything about the “unwed father.” We have to talk more about these men and to these men if we are ever to see them assume their responsibilities as men.

What aggravates the problem is the absolute shortage of black men.

Due to their naturally shorter life span, the high rate of death from homicide and accidents, the imprisonment factor, and other problems that take men off the street, there are many more available black women than men at every age level. The odds favor the men and often spoil them.

Not too long ago a television show featured a thirteen-year-old mother who had somehow managed to have two of her suitors appear on the show for a paternity test. One of the boys was black, the other Puerto Rican.

They were fifteen- and sixteen-year-old best friends, who both had had sex with this young girl during the general time she had conceived.

The word shameless comes to mind. Why these people would wash linen this dirty not just in public but on national TV is still another sign that all is not well in the world. Why someone would encourage them and reward them is even more troubling.

In any case, the Puerto Rican boy said he was planning on joining the army. The black boy said he was going to college. Both said the baby would mess up their lives and wanted no part of him. When the results were read, the Puerto Rican kid whooped in relief, the black kid groaned in despair, and the girl cried.

“I’m still going to school,” said the reluctant dad smugly. The fact that a sixteen-year-old can say this on TV without worrying about sounding like a heartless jerk gives you some idea of where his training came from.

Neither he nor his own mother wanted anything to do with that baby. And no one called him an “unwed father.”

TONE DOWN THE CULTURE
The Ku Klux Klan could not have devised a media culture as destructive as the one our media moguls, black and white, have created for black  America. Too often on TV news programs, black males are shown as abusive, irresponsible, absentee exploiters. This image may reflect a certain reality, but the media should also provide positive models, and not emphasize the negative.

In 1995, the Million Man March in Washington DC brought together hundreds of thousands of black men who publicly affirmed their responsibilities to their families and children. But even that was not enough to counter the flood of negative imagery.

What do record producers think when they churn out that gangsta rap with antisocial, women-hating messages? Do they think that black male youth won’t act out what they have heard repeated since they were old enough to listen?

Oh yes, then there’s nigga a thousand times a day, every day. Martin and Malcolm and Medgar Evers must be turning over in their graves. They put their lives on the line. Why? So our young people can pick up where white people left off and debase themselves instead of being debased? Talk about lowering self-esteem.

WALK BACK IN
When people say, “I never liked the Huxtables,” we know why. People who don’t like Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable don’t like—or don’t know—their own fathers.

We can’t speak honestly of black culture in America unless and until we honestly address the issue of the estrangement of fathers and their children.

The situation is by no means hopeless. We just have to get these fathers to realize that the children they sired are their children and always will be their children. By walking away, they have punished their children. They leave these children feeling abandoned. Once they come and claim their children, and feel the joy and the beauty of a hug, they will at least begin to understand what fatherhood is all about. But let’s not kid ourselves either. This is much easier said than done.

For no good reason we can understand, society seems to be telling young black men that fatherhood is no big thing. Society tells young people in general to look after number one and to worry about everyone else later, if at all. Like the sixteen-year-old on the TV show—if you don’t like the outcome, walk away. Even if you get married and you’re not happy, walk away. With all the temptations to walk away, the black divorce and separation rate today is 50 percent higher than the white rate.

And black women who divorce are considerably less likely to remarry than white divorcees, partly because of the shortage of black males.

Without being told and told often, young men simply do not know or understand what a father’s responsibilities are. Many of them have never seen a real father in action. Many do not appreciate that fathers are important to a child’s healthy development or that unemployed, separated, and unwed fathers can still interact with their children and contribute significantly to their well-being.

A wise voice from Compton, California, John Hill: The environment is not you. You can rise above those things that have happened to you. Those of you who are raising your children—turn off the television, take some time, sit down and read with them.

Talk to them, motivate them, help them to become something that they want to be. That’s what you have to do. The teacher does not raise your children. Teachers teach. Your job is to raise your own children.

You can’t give over that responsibility to somebody else. And please, whatever you do, don’t let the gangs raise your children.

Gangs don’t raise your children. And to all of them here, we have got to become fathers in our neighborhoods, fathers to our children, and fathers to every child in that neighborhood. We have to understand that we have to be there; the children are only getting 50 percent because only the mother is there.

SISTERS, HANG IN THERE
Black women, bless their hearts, are more loyal to black men than we deserve. Still, they are not afraid to write about the strains in the relationships between us.

Many black men have heard this outcry and heeded it. They have decided to organize, to raise not only their own consciousness but that of other young black males as well. Today, just as black men as a group are more aware of their chauvinism, black women are more aware of the unique struggles of black men. Yet, despite our common history of victimization, we are still victimizing each other—with black males inflicting the most damage.

The reasons for this are not hard to figure. As gender barriers began to crumble in the late 1960s along with racial barriers, women entered the workforce in droves; more recently, there has been an enormous influx of immigrants. These factors led to the displacement of many black male workers. At the same time, the shift to new technology and service jobs left many black men without the education and skills to compete for any except the lowest paying jobs. The job market became more competitive for poor black men with few job skills and inadequate educational preparation.

Some thoughts from Darryl Green: Young girls need to have a relationship with their fathers as well. If that father is not present in the young girl’s life, nine times out of ten she is going to have something wrong with her in the dating process when it comes to knowing what a man is. When I look at my seven-year-old daughter now, I realize that I’m the first man she is ever going to know in her life. And if I screw that up, she is going to be screwed up. So I’m saying to men as Dr. Cosby has said, “We need you all to come back home, fellas.”

Enough is enough. We need you at the crib. Drop the kids off at school in the morning. Pick them up in the afternoon. We need you to have an active role in their lives.

Black men and women have begun to harbor racial stereotypes about each other. Black males who already feel insecure around white people resent feeling a similar kind of insecurity around “strong” black women.

But no one can take a man’s physical power away, certainly not women.

That’s why sometimes—too often—black men overcompensate with rage.

They direct their destructive rage against black women in any number of unfortunate ways—verbal abuse, battery, even rape. Meanwhile, gangsta rap musicians cheer them on.

Unable to fight back, women can unknowingly transfer their rage toward their sons—just because they are male. Black boys in femaleheaded households feel the hurt most when the mother is angry with a black male. If they hear their mom say, “Black men ain’t worth s—,” the boys wonder whether that includes them. When their moms yell, “You’re no good, just like your father!” all the doubt goes away.

Black males and females must take the time to talk about their relationships with each other and with the children. Open discussion, with guidance from counselors, about the sexual and parental tension in black communities is something we all should encourage.

Some black men have already decided to acknowledge that pain and to make their brothers aware of it too. Black men have rallied and formed such organizations as 100 Black Men and Concerned Black Men to help vulnerable young black males and to serve as role models and mentors. Civil rights organizations have developed various “black male responsibility” projects, and some school districts have considered the merits of organizing all black male schools to address their needs.

Low expectations coming from a teacher can cause a child to fail.

Coming from a parent, low expectations can crush the soul.

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