Barack Obama and the Abuse of Black Fathers
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Barack Obama and the Abuse of Black Fathers
by Tyrone Simpson
This article will be featured in the upcoming issue of Acoma, an Italian journal on American politics and culture.
"We don't need our governmental leaders to teach us about family life, we need them to create the economic circumstances that will support it."
I am a well-educated African American male in my late 30s; married, though childless (a condition that has rendered my marriage increasingly tenuous), and among the many effects I expected Barack Obama and his presidential candidacy to have on me, a contraceptive one was hardly chief among them.
Over the course of the last decade, my wife and I have been engaged in a painful debate about the course of our mutual future. She wants to be a mother, a desire, I am sure, that signals, although does not guarantee, that she would be a good one. Few are as generously loving and attentive to other people as she. She would be as much a gift to the child, as she believes a child will be a gift to her.
I do not want to be a father. I state my position this way more to depict our postures diametrically rather than to actually express what is true. Fear disables optics that are otherwise reliable (the Iraq war stands as macabre evidence of this psychological fact); it handicaps the ability to see and decipher one's will. I am, indeed, afraid to be a father and thus I am utterly unsure if I want to be one. This fear of my own paternity, one that my relatives and friends diagnose as irrational and self-penalizing, has much to do with my own experience as a son.
Like Obama, and the numbers of black men he claimed in solidarity this past Father's day for having shared the same misery, I have been bereft of my father's financial and emotional support for the balance of my life. The existential distance between my father and I, moreover, has deprived me of the data necessary to account for his absence. When given the opportunity to narrate the estrangement between us, I tell a story of a bright and capable man who braved Manhattan to establish himself amidst the lucrative, yet treacherous corridors of Wall Street's global finance. A promising middle manager when the Reagan presidency began, my father became acquainted with the unfeeling calculus of corporate downsizing. His dismissal from his post traumatized him, as sudden joblessness injures the psyche of most men, and thrust him into a depression that defied relief. I suppose it was pride that made it difficult for him to secure stable employment from that point on (still inadequately accounted for in the shiftless black dad narrative that has become a staple of American political discourse, is how often the demise of the patriarch hinges on a certain sense of personal, if not racial pride. The desire to have one's social desire filled, without compromise).
"The shiftless black dad narrative that has become a staple of American political discourse."
Unwilling to labor below the professional status he once had, my father made it certain that he would do so. Odd or insecure jobs were his lot in the years to come. Despite the abrupt decline in station, my father at times would act as if his once promising career continued to persist. He would rise early, dress himself in shirt and tie and hurry from the home in a blaze of white-collar seriousness. My sister and I learned the truth later; the ritual was contrived-an anguished performance of a man not wanting to admit to his neighbors and his children that he had lost a crucial battle with this world and needed repair.
I saw my father shrink in size, shuffling soullessly through our project apartment, his head clouded by musings of his own defeat. True passion would emerge from him, it appeared, only when his children did something to disappoint-neglecting chores, grades, or curfews. It is possible that our shortcomings held up a mirror to his own or, in fact, that we symbolized the remaining vestiges of his once proud domain. Controlling us meant his word still mattered in this world, somewhere. His alternating emissions of patriarchal anger and impotent self-mourning made him the type of man with whom few would want to keep company. The gloom he spread throughout the home and the economic austerity that underwrote it, made our apartment carceral. This containment was scarcely able, however, to prevent the four of us-me, my sister, and my parents--from emotionally going our separate ways. On many levels, we still fail to find intersection to this day.
Among the many reasons why Mr. Obama's words last month were so piercingly painful was because of how uncaringly they misrepresented and mishandled a story like my father's and those of other black fathers like him. Among the many wishes African Americans have pinned on Obama's presidential candidacy is that he would, alas, bring a measured black political voice to the national stage. We anointed him to express, in the finely crafted, corporate English that he wields with elegance and ease, a perspective sensitive to the deep complexity of black life in the United States. Not as vulnerable to caricature and ridicule like Jackson, Farrakhan, and Sharpton, Obama was to air our grievances and hopes in a manner that would compel the world to listen. His eloquence would shield us from insult, and on occasion, make us the subjects of salute.
Though it could hardly be considered full advocacy, Obama's "Philadelphia Address" this past March acknowledged in earnest tones the sheer grit required of black Americans to live a livable life. "What's remarkable," the candidate ventured, "is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds, how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them." This was an account of black heroism and perseverance seldom uttered outside of the black church and Black History Month (though the frequency with which it is featured in both venues is noticeably declining). It certainly was not a staple of American electoral politics. Since this oration, Obama has been ordained the biracial messiah whose ability to empathize with the varied and vexed sentiments of the electorate would orchestrate the nation's racial redemption. Shockingly, however, it is precisely this compassion - the sense that devils and angels inhabit all human souls, the sense that life can be rude and unfair to well-meaning people - that is missing from his denunciation of scores of seemingly irresponsible Black men. Though many of the liberal punditry have now declared it sacrilege to question the sincerity of Obama, it is important to note that the difference between these two speeches, the short distance between the sensitivity of one and the callousness of the other, is occupied by a secured presidential nomination rather than a projected one.
"Among the many wishes African Americans have pinned on Obama's presidential candidacy is that he would, alas, bring a measured black political voice to the national stage."
The sheer lack of novelty of this reprimand of black fathers is as disquieting as it is uncharitable. Barack predicated his superiority to Hillary on his ability to bring true change to the nation's political culture. As we now mark historical time by the conflagration of 9/11 ("the world changed that day"), we would be able to do the same with Barack's presidency. Gone would be the days of partisan pettiness, corporate malfeasance, racial strife, arrant income disparities and imperial aggression. Reproaching the black father, however, does little to show that this leader will look beyond the horizons of insight presently known to us.
Students of American intellectual history are aware that anxieties about black paternity have existed since the close of the Civil War (because, of course, there was no such thing as a "black father," or a "black mother" for that matter, before emancipation). W. E. B. Dubois worried about black families in his 1899 publication, The Philadelphia Negro, a work still inadequately recognized as seminal work in American sociology. E. Franklin Frazier supplied additional hand-wringing about this issue in The Negro Family in the United States" in 1939, and the revered senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, punctuated the hysteria with the federal publication, "The Negro Family: A Case for National Action" in 1965. (Those who study the public discussion that Moynihan's work instigated will notice that it is at this time that American citizenship becomes publicly redefined. At the moment that the United States finally conceded to admit African Americans into the polity as full citizens, national leaders and opinion makers re-imagined citizenship not as something enjoyed by people born on or naturalized to American soil, but by those who fulfill the imperatives of "good" heterosexual fathers and mothers-producing civically the very epitome of a flipped script).
For those who pay attention to the ebb and flow of racial politics, a reflection on this scholarly archive, however, is not necessary to recognize the shopworn nature of Barack's critique. The "family values" platform of the Republican Party in the last quarter century has shrewdly "signified" on what it understood as the dishonorable familial and sexual practices of underclass blacks, and not so surprisingly, their rhetoric has resonated with the black bourgeoisie-a demographic historically embarrassed by the seemingly unruly ways of its black lessers-and have gained echo in the public commentary of Bill Cosby and many black clergymen across the country. Ignoring the right-minded criticism levied against Cosby for publicly condemning blacks for their own misery while saying little about how white society has contributed to their plight, Barack eagerly repeated this sin in his Father's Day speech (I should note that though it references discrimination, Obama's earlier "Philadelphia Address" on race never assigns blame for this discrimination. It emerges from the ether, we are left to deduce, since Whites are cast as innocent former immigrants).
Barack's condemnation of fugitive black fathers is not the airing of dirty laundry; it is pointing to lines of dirty laundry already suspended above the grass while ignoring the flock of guilty pigeons perched indifferently above them. In delivering this critique without an equal meditation on the socioeconomic factors that frustrate good black fatherhood, Obama's speech does not signal the intrepid leadership one would expect of a political messiah. Instead it steeps the candidate in second-rate mimicry, and reveals a cynical ploy to amass popular support by conjuring up, for the purposes of banishing, a bogeyman that holds only a modest threat: the absent black father.
"Obama's speech steeps the candidate in second-rate mimicry."
The clear evidence of the folly involved in speaking of the absent black father as a national concern lies not merely in the fact that it is not one (if it was, then the nation would deploy its resources to ameliorate the problem. But as we know, government has restructured itself so that it seldom addresses issues of social welfare. That is why we need Oprah, and Dr. Phil and Tyra and Judge Mathis to buoy our self-esteem because our fate will only be what we make it), but in the professional competence and achievement of Obama himself. As opposed to our present president, whose family is so fully functional that it threatens to turn the executive branch into a monarchy (the sins of the heir went unchallenged by his subjects for far too long), the democratic nominee himself is a product of a broken home. His fatherless plight did not prevent Obama from qualifying for the highest office in the land. To declare paternal absence pathological, one must ignore thousands of black men who have persevered through the misfortune of being fatherless to become productive members of society. Moreover, it risks making a fetish of the father, someone we desire so hysterically that we ignore the selfless sacrifices of the women who heroically raised little boys into good and great men. By making these women invisible, the absent black father narrative reproduces the sexism that enabled black men to abscond in the first place.
As I have been suggesting, Obama's preachment last month does more than disrespect the fears, sweat, and tears of black mothers. For many of those fatherless boys who have become adults, particularly those who have engaged in the difficult emotional labor of forgiving their neglectful fathers, it resurrects feelings of victimization and resentment that does nothing for the personal and collective growth of black men. A central yet deeply understated dynamic in the continuing struggles of the black community is the difficulty black men experience with valuing and trusting each other (How else would one explain the curious drama between Obama and Pastor Jeremiah Wright). Certainly, black men are quite adroit at sharing barbershop banter about sports, women, and the political affairs to which we remain spectators, but we still struggle with conversing about the matters that count: how to raise our children, how to love women, how to manage anger, how to disagree without becoming violent, how to collaborate on business matters, how to change public education, how to bring brutalizing police to account, how to shut down jails, how to depose princes. Such crucial existential intraracial and intrasexual cooperation is made more fraught by the sloppy, yet strategic recollection of how we have been forsaken by the black men who sired us. We need not be reminded that we have been wronged in some way and that our lives have been hard. The public disparagement of our dads hinders our ability to love them and thus love ourselves.
Of course, the dogged strength that we sons bring to loving ourselves despite the unnecessary reminders that our fathers have abandoned us sometimes produces a healing that brings with it its own injuries. The deadbeat black dad narrative that Obama revived for national consideration last month powerfully shaped my ghetto adolescence decades ago. I learned early on what society thought of black men, and thus, in order to avoid becoming someone unworthy of public regard, elected to avoid fatherhood at all costs. To achieve this psychic neutering, I made of my own sexual impulses an enemy and often saw my desire for intimacy as an inconvenience that deserved my begrudged attention. Naturally, this attitude compromised the health of my romantic relationships in youth, and, as I am suggesting here, continues to besiege me during my adulthood. Part of my present difficulty lies in the fact that though I have succeeded in eschewing the affliction of teenage parenthood and am now economically capable of raising a child, I now find myself incapable of shutting off the prohibitions that I imposed upon myself years ago. I have listened to the inhumane wisdom that the racist interpreters of the Moynihan Report instituted as gospel: I am not supposed to be a father, because a person like me cannot be a good one.
I am thus straitjacketed in my own life by the idea that my father's professional demise and parental inadequacy are not merely defining parts of a social inheritance but of a biological one. Maybe absenteeism, as the pundits frequently suggest, is part of my black DNA. Like him, I need not go to the lengths of abandoning my family outright. Instead, when misfortune hits, rather than brave solutions and play my role as caretaker of my wife and child, I would curl cowardly into a depressive cocoon and let misery take shelter in my home. Maybe my absence would be more subtle. Maybe I would be hesitant to hold the infant when it needed to be held, unavailable when it needed a partner for an important moment of play, distracted when it needed help with homework, late when the child needed to be retrieved from choir practice, preoccupied with office matters when one of many teenage crises visited upon the youth and s/he needed my counsel. These are the everyday requirements of effective fatherhood. What if I miss my cue and do something to cause my wife and child to hate me, hate me enough to say the same ugly things about me that people have said about my father. People who don't even know him say these things. People like Barack Obama.
"We have become too comfortable with receiving sermons from our politicians rather than service."
The democratic nominee is not solely culpable for the violence of his words, but rather the unfortunate political culture that we hoped he would change. As an extension of the millenialist awakening that has increased the importance of faith and spirituality in the lives of many Americans, we have become too comfortable with receiving sermons from our politicians rather than service. For those still confused about how George W. Bush was able to gain a second term as our president despite his profound inadequacies in all matters of state, you need look no farther (election fraud notwithstanding) than his style of address. "Dubya" is the Baptist-preacher-turned-politician par excellence. He has mastered the call and response style that lends itself to teaching his audience life-lessons-a charismatic practice that overshadows his incapacity to manage foreign and national affairs. It is as if we have now come to expect from our national leader the feel-good homilies that on Sundays bolster us through another week of soul-killing labor. With the frequent comparisons to Reverend King, we are asking Obama to continue the conflation of the ministerial and the presidential without counting its costs. We don't need our governmental leaders to teach us about family life, we need them to create the economic circumstances that will support it.
What causes me concern is that Obama and the black people who support him actually see the performance of competent black patriarchy as the key contribution he can make to black politics as president. His proponents expect him to model proudly what a black father should be so that his example may be held up as a guide for other African American men to follow. There is certainly honor in this idea. It fades into preachiness and treachery, however, if this is all the nominee plans to do to impact black people, specifically. His Father's Day remarks, the campaign's persistent attempts to make a spectacle of his wife and daughters, and Obama's reluctance to detail clearly his policies and initiatives, have done nothing to quell my suspicion that this may be the extent of his plans.
This dream of the Obamas bringing the Cosby fantasy to the White House signals what should be the true fear of progressives: the possibility that the election of Obama will conclude the process of politically sedating African Americans begun during the Clinton years. Though no longer embraced by blacks as the nation's "first African American president" because of his race-baiting during his wife's campaign, Bill Clinton was once deeply beloved by the black electorate. We showered him with unconditional affection while he expanded the prison system, destroyed welfare, and exported solid jobs beyond our borders. His uncanny ability in public to make us feel good about ourselves, to pawn off symbolic black enfranchisement as the real thing, enabled him to pursue such policies without the inconveniences of black resistance or critique. Is Obama positioning himself to enjoy the same privilege? Will he be able to abuse black people without consequence?
I have written this essay to strongly insist that we should not provide Obama this luxury. We should be disturbed by his insulting critique of black fatherhood. If some black men are indeed "just sit[ting] in the house watching ‘SportsCenter,'" instead of fulfilling their paternal responsibilities, some of them, and I would like to think most of them, are doing so because they have been rejected in some way by a society that remains inhospitable to their hopes and dreams. Any other interpretation of their malaise is tainted with a racist mythology that our leaders, regardless of their race, are supposed to discredit rather than endorse. These tales of abandoning dads, in all their wretchedness, are nonetheless the sacred stories of the African American experience. They are stained with tears and blood and they are ours for us to recite. They should be milked for whatever nourishment they may provide their sons and the sons that come after them. In the sounds made by their telling, we must listen for the humanity that dwells therein and regard it as holy. To do otherwise, is to dismember corpses.
"I am waiting for the resentment of insulted fathers and wounded sons to be turned back on Obama."
If we believe the official reports, the most despicable aspect of Obama's diatribe about absent black fathers is the fact that its message was not solely intended for the people it scolds, but instead for white cultural conservatives whose votes can tip the electorate in his favor. If this is true (and experts seems to think it is), Obama reveals himself deaf to the lesson his struggle with Hillary tried to teach. Obama gained a decisive advantage with black voters when the Clintons demonstrated that they would willingly cater to the racist opinions of the nation in order to accrue votes. To this day, many African Americans see the race-baiting behavior of Bill Clinton as an unforgivable trespass that will forever serve as the reason for their estrangement from him. I am waiting for the resentment of insulted fathers and wounded sons to be turned back on Obama. Regardless of how the campaign for president evolves, these black men will recall that one of his first gestures after securing the Democratic nomination was to make a spectacle of our pain. The deed is unlikely to result in exile (for Obama, regrettably, is too symbolically important for black men to fully disown him), but might emerge as indifference when the nominee is in dire need of support. When the lynch party sets out for him (and it will. The drama of Reverend Wright was merely a dress rehearsal for things to come). Who will take up arms, man the front yard, and prevent the attackers from making their approach. It won't be my father. It won't be me. It certainly won't be my son or daughter...who is likely to never be.
Tyrone Simpson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Vassar College. He is also part of the Urban Studies Program, Africana Studies Program, and Program in American Culture. Prof. Simpson can be contacted at tysimpson@vassar.edu
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Comments
Ty
Your points may well be valid; that's debatable.
But what does that have to do with running for president?
Other than to declare that further government intervention will not be forthcoming, why the celebration of tough love from a presidential candidate?
Is that a victory of any sort for anybody?
This government bails out financial institutions, but if a candidate told them that their bad business decisions were their own d*mned fault during an election year, that candidate likely would not get donations from that industry and would probably lose the election.
Seems to me that the first step to real equity for black Americans in this country is to hold those who seek public office accountable, not the other way around.
Hopeless
Not much else to say, people here believe believe what they believe and that is that. But I stand by my main point in all this. Most of what happens to us, is because of what we do, not because of what somebody else does. This is not a 3rd world society, people actually scratch and claw to get into this country. It is not perfection, but its a damn fine place for a decent chance for most people. And the point about results matters, black people who do better in school, do better in general, you have a high percentage not finishing highschool. That is not the goverments doing, it is not the government causing daily tardies and class ditching from so many kids, you who would take a blind eye to actions that have a far more direct effect on a persons well being in life are a disgrace in my view.
Does that view make me a conservative? If so then liberalism has gone down the path of stupidity and nonsense. I give liberals more credit than that. I like to call a spade a spade, and I stand by my assertion that government is not the cause of the bulk of the problems in peoples lives. That is the world view of a cripple when its not true. Which it seems many here are eager to take up.
The poor have to work harder. They can't buy their kids all the attention and enrichment which they need. Even the preschools which they can afford may be little more than warehouses. Poor fathers have to give in their time what they cannot buy for their children, but they cannot fail because the children of the poor need more than anyone else loving parents in their lives. Poor fathers can't see their children as one more burden in their burdensome lives. The live of the poor are hard. Life is not fair. Families crack under the pressure, yet there can be no excuse not to do right by your kids. I know that my wife's mother and paternal grandparents did right by her and her brother. They sacrificed a great deal of their own leisure in part because her father was irresponsible and absconded. But her responsible mother, grandfather and grandmother also achieved immortality because their devotion was passed on to my wife who is now passing it on to our two daughters.
One can't be a loving father and not be disturbed by how little effort so many fathers of every ethnic persuasion put into raising their kids.
Obama speaks for me and my family's values.
Face It - Moynihan Was Right!
"I learned early on what society thought of black men, and thus, in order to avoid becoming someone unworthy of public regard, elected to avoid fatherhood at all costs."
This statement is a pathetic cop-out on your part. I doubt that anything would make racist white America happier than for black men to stop proliferating and perhaps disappear from society altogether.
Although I agree with your conclusion that Obama's Father's Day rant was insulting, I disagree with how you arrived at it. With volumes of research available that details the fact that black fathers are absent due to expulsion and powerlessness in a matriarchal black family structure, you have done nothing more than join the bandwagon and fault them for abandonment. Until the continuing marginalization of black men as fathers by social policies and historical practices in a hostile America is recognized as the root cause of the resultant fatherlessness in the black community, nothing is likely to change.
BOOJIE BLACKS NEED AN EXCUSE
Are black teenagers having more sex than white teenagers?
I felt betrayed by Obama's Father's Day Speech. He would have done well to accentuate the positive while not ignoring the negative.
As you say, the symbolism of Obama is to great for us to ignore. Unfortunately, we may be getting another Clarence Thomas.
Think about it
If half of all marriages end in divorce and most black people don't bother to marry in the first place, whose kids end up being raised by single parents in the greatest number?
Why is it more okay for a black Democratic snob to stereotype and pigeonhole black people than it is for a rightwing white one to do the same thing?
Gah.
"This is not a 3rd world society, people actually scratch and claw to get into this country. It is not perfection, but its a damn fine place for a decent chance for most people. "
Who said America wasn't a third world society ? Where the hell do you live ? How much do you earn ? Do you remember something called New Orleans ? Katrina ? Nah ? Oh okay, it doesn't matter. I guess in your world most people are rich in America, because most people...uh... do stuff.
Also, remember people have been coming to America at all times. It has nothing to do with the actual reality of the American way of life, and the "chances" you have there.
" And the point about results matters, black people who do better in school, do better in general, you have a high percentage not finishing high school. That is not the government's doing, it is not the government causing daily tardies and class ditching from so many kids, you who would take a blind eye to actions that have a far more direct effect on a persons well being in life are a disgrace in my view. "
What a joke. So basically, the only thing that stops Black kids from going to college, and absolutely-certainly-without-a-doubt succeeding in life and becoming rich, is because they just don't want to.
Simple as that.
So all we need to do is show those Black kids some preaching from some guy who seems well-off enough to give us lessons about success.
Here's a little lesson for you asshole : when everyone fails around you, when your friends hang out in gangs, when you know guys who make thousands by selling weed, when your father is unemployed, when your mother is unemployed, when your grand-parents are unemployed, all this shit creates an atmosphere where kids just don't even consider going to college.
This is something Rev Wright explained in the PBS special I believe: what he does is he gets Black people who succeeded and he has Black kids meet them. And he said, and I remember very well, "They can't believe they could be doctors, or physicians for instance."
Okay ? There is a reality in the Black community and that reality influences how Blacks consider their future. You say Blacks have to consider it the way you prescribe, ON THEIR OWN.
This is absolutely fantastic.
To Major
What about his speech was wrong there? If the negative was not wrong then what was the problem? That he did not make excuses and deflections? Too bad. Such a sheltered view, take a look at this article to highlight some of the tensions.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121668579909472083.html
And as for the Clarence Thomas crack, while I do not agree with everything he believes, it is NOT Thomas who is the lemming, he take positions 90 % of other black people do not, if NOTHING else that takes SOME level of thought and analysis. Taking positions that the other monolithic block of black people take is far less laudable or novel. I happen to think its a BAD thing that the black population votes like a monolith, too much group think, not enough thinking in general.
To Ty
Clarence Thomas is most definitely a lemming. He may not be following 90% of black Americans, but he is following Antonin Scalia. I'm convinced he'd follow him out a window.
During his 17 years sitting on the SCOTUS, he has not asked one question in any cases brought before the court. If there is any level of thought and analysis going on, I'd love to see the evidence.
To Red Rabbit
If only it were simply Thomas, I have a feeling there is a great hostility for ANY non liberal democratic black person who does not toe the conventional line. Ward Connerly comes to mind, and there is no great love for Michael Steel either. Though hopefully this is changing. Bill Cosby got flack, but also quite a bit of support within the possible silent majority. In either case, my main point still stands that when you have a virtual monolith of voting blocks, that does not speak well for the variety of thought within a group.
BOOKER T. OBAMA WAS LYING
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-lay-off-black-fathers/
"A month before Obama made this stereotypical and plainly false assertion, Boston University professor Rebekah Levine Coley, in a comprehensive study on the black family, found that black fathers who aren’t in the home are much MORE LIKELY to sustain regular contact with their children than absentee white fathers, or for that matter, fathers of any other ethnic group. The study is not an obscure study buried in the thick pages of a musty academic journal. It was widely cited in a feature article on black fathers in the May 19, 2008 issue of Newsweek. There was no excuse then to spout this myth. The facts are totally contrary to Obama’s knock."
Boojie blacks have been telling these lies to please racist white folks for the past 40 years. Their corporate ideology prevents them from actually trying to solve the systemic problems/racism that afflicts the black community; so, they need excuses and scapegoats to camouflage their lack of concern for those blacks less fortunate than themselves. They have been repeating these segregationist-inspired lies for so long that even most blacks believe this nonsense. The only good thing about Booker T. Obama's candidacy is that it exposes the exploitation of the black community by arrogant, black, corporate hacks. Their day of dictating government policy may soon be coming to an end.
Thanks,skeptic 1,
I don't vote,the politicians are just spineless and too corrupt.Obama is another clarence thomas,just lighter skinned,so numbskull blacks go for that!
To insure Blacks not gain a foothold in economic prosperity,the corrupt Clinton administration and the GWB'klan flooded the country with illegals,sucking up jobs and opportunities that were availible because of the struggle and the proliferation of the Black seed (despite the trappings of abortions).Schools opened at nights(despite lies of insufficient funds)to teach english to these illegals,using Blacks tax dollars to finance dirty deed.Furthermore,Whites persuaded Black Mothers to fill family-courts,needing only allegations to be guaranteed a paycheck from Black fathers and a job,even in fields that required men!Thus the "I don't need a man" era!Just run to the court or station and the corrupt White judge will emasculate her man,and reward her with a "toll-free"check,minus the degradation of the welfare system,thus,inventing the concept of a "deadbeat-dad"as their joker-card!
So,Black fathers never left,so much as they were driven away,by plots and schemes to destroy the Black family!Barac nor bourgeois Blacks can't see this because of their own complicity in pimping and exploiting thei own kind for imagined power and a few U.S.dollar bills!!!
To LL
I think some of you are in denial, you make quibbles over contact levels? As if that excuses the far greater numbers of illegitimate black households? At least the originator of the post came out and said he did not want to have kids, and did not. But for those that do, kids generally do better, from any background, with raised by two parents, there are more financial resources in general, more parental support available, its just better. Why can you not just admit the reality, and that the numbers could be improved? Basically, what is wrong with you? Its not just the numbers of intact households, take black men versus black women. Black women are far more likely do do better in school, graduate highschool, go to college, etc. etc. Now lets try and think through this riddle, black women go to the same schools as black men, come from the same families with the same issues and same school system issue as their black male peers, so why such a disparity? Is THIS society too? There is something going on that has nothing to do with the outside and everything to do with internal dysfunction. Which do you think a better model for a young black guy, his father? Or other, young adolescent males? Oh but no, can't be that, never that, its society, its the "other." Look in the mirror people, or FAIL the very people you claim you want to lift up. The time for blindness and false analysis is becoming too destructive, enough.
BOOJIE BLACKS ARE IN DENIAL
Booker T. Obama lied.
He wasn't talking about marriage.
He wasn't talking about men getting custody of their children.
"Boujie" is not an argument
And Booker T Washington was a more positive fork to take than the alternative, moreso today than in the past, but this is lost on too many.
You're not listening
Barack Obama told black Americans in no uncertain terms that he has no plans to help them in any way.
He did so on Father's Day.
It is true that Senator Obama mentioned his awareness of the problems that face the black communtity:
"Yes, we need more cops on the street. Yes, we need fewer guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Yes, we need more money for our schools, and more outstanding teachers in the classroom, and more afterschool programs for our children. Yes, we need more jobs and more job training and more opportunity in our communities."
However, he did not mention that as president, he would address those needs or how he would accomplish those goals.
Yet so many of us sit around and debate the veracity of the statistics he cited that we miss the intent of the words.
It is not the job of government to legislate morality.
So why would a candidate for president make a speech about moral irresponsibility?
It makes no sense.
That's why Obama didn't do that.
What he did was lay out the reasons, in explicit detail, why his administration would not be sympathetic to the current plight of black Americans.
Because it's your own fault.
You're lousy parents.
Black men shirk their responsibility, they abuse their wives, they neglect their children.
Why should the government help them?
"It’s a wonderful thing if you are married and living in a home with your children, but don’t just sit in the house and watch “SportsCenter†all weekend long."
edit
"But our young boys and girls see that. They see when you are ignoring or mistreating your wife. They see when you are inconsiderate at home; or when you are distant; or when you are thinking only of yourself. And so it’s no surprise when we see that behavior in our schools or on our streets."
Black women work hard to raise their children alone, he acknowledged that.
They need help.
What's Obama's solution?
They need a man.
"We need to help all the mothers out there who are raising these kids by themselves; the mothers who drop them off at school, go to work, pick up them up in the afternoon, work another shift, get dinner, make lunches, pay the bills, fix the house, and all the other things it takes both parents to do. So many of these women are doing a heroic job, but they need support. They need another parent. Their children need another parent."
He laid out specific programs designed to help black 2 parent families, yet he offered no proposals that address the governments role in assissting the black community as it is.
"...– it’s a responsibility that also extends to Washington. Because if fathers are doing their part; if they’re taking our responsibilities seriously to be there for their children, and set high expectations for them, and instill in them a sense of excellence and empathy, then our government should meet them halfway."
He then goes on to offer proposals that encourage fathers to be more responsible parents, which is lovely.
Yet it completely misses the point that
black America has a right to expect its elected officials to initiate policies that correct the institutional imbalances that negatively affect them,
whether or not these errant black men suddenly become the knights in shining armour Obama would like to require them to be.
With respect
Many of the issues you raised are not the in the realm of what a president does, that is more local government. On a more philosophical level, I dislike the tone of "what is he going to do for us" as if the real problem is what someone else is or is not doing for us. I look at that view as self destructive, it dodges the issues you have direct control over and have the capacity to change and improve upon yourself. What is he going to do for me? How about what I am going to do for myself. Most of what happens to and for us, is based upon what WE do, not what somebody else does. The sooner we learn that the better. And the answer is NOT always just more money and resources. How many per dollars per child reports must be seen to illustrate that resources alone is not the be all and end all?
Washington DC spends some of the most money per child in the nation, and the results are some of the worst. Yet you will constantly hear the problem being pegged on we are not getting enough money this, or we need more programs that. And in the meantime, the people you mean to help wither, wane, and become more lost. This is not helping them by ignoring the primary causes of distress. I am not that old, did not get out of highschool that long ago, I can tell you what I observed, alot of guys were just not into school, more of the black girls were, out of 100 students over a 3.0 for an assembly, only 3 were black males, about 15 were black girls, why? Money? white privilege? Better teachers? NO, same school, same families, same resources, NOT EVERYTHING IS THE GOVERNMENTS FAULT OR SHORTFALL. STOP that nonsense. You may think people are nothing more than willows twisting in the wind, I refuse to believe that nonsense. No one controls the cards they are dealt, but we DO control how we play them, and no, we will NOT all start out from the same place, some will have to work harder to reach the same goal, some will have it easier, is this fair? no, and that is OK. To expect everyone to start from the same place is unreasonable. But understand this, there is NOTHING STOPPING ANYONE from improving themselves and getting ahead in life, it may be harder for some, but there is no physical barrier. Extra steps for some, sure, as it always was for those who first climb higher, so that later it will be easier for those that follow. Hence the nice thing for intact families, they provide a stronger foundation.
Oh dear, we have another Kool-Aid sipping black conservative (i.
Can you guys wake me up after Ty's finished with his conservative, do-for-yourself-the-government-can't-save-you-victim-blaming sermons? If I wanted to hear this sort of moralizing and advocacy of "self-help" I'll take a trip to my local Baptist Church this coming Sunday, but with a lot more theatrics (at least I can get some enjoyable Gospel music that is always pleasing to the ears, regardless of one's religious leanings). Oh, but I forgot -- "personal responsibility" is foreign to the Negro, so beating this message over their heads ad-nauseum is just the cure to get those, lazy, shiftless, irresponsible "savages" into shape!
Again...Yawn....
Brother LL is right: these arguments about "The Black Family" and "Fatherhood" is about as old and stale as Booker T. Washington's hundred-year-old speeches about how black folks need to "correct" their "behavior" before they can expect and demand anything from our government. Ty is a perfect example of how this strong Bookerite Conservatism continues to run strong in many sections of our community. Of course, such conservative buppies like Ty will never realize that moralizing and talking down to those they feel are their inferiors will never solve the solutions to radically change the systemic problems that haunts our communities.
On a side note: I always find it interesting how black social conservatives like Ty make the arguments about poor black folks that are no different than those given by the likes of Pat Buchanan ("blacks need to change their culture, their behavior," blah, blah, blah), yet are too damn oblivious to notice how their actions does nothing but give legitimacy to such reactionary, and frankly racist, views that are used to gut government from its responsibility towards the citizenry.
There are other reasons too
I am a successful and financially stable SPBM and I choose not to have children as well. I feel pretty much like Tyrone does because my father was a minister and very distant though present. Children are expensive over the long haul and there are no guarantees they will even turn out right since parental influence is slight these days and steadily decreasing. Also I do not wish to have a child with a nonintellectual woman. I would only marry a nonwhite woman but I am simply not finding women that are not concerned more about money, appearance and having fun that substance, loyalty and morality. I'm staying single and childless until I find it.
But Obama's comments were completely out of line even if they were correct, which they weren't. Black people do not air our dirty laundry to each other in front of whites. It is forbidden. Whites already have enough misconstrued and twisted ammunition to use against us. We don't need any more Bill Cosbys, Shelby Steeles, John McWhorters and Larry Elders telling them how horrible we are when we aren't. Obama will get what is coming to him because like his former minister said "The chickens always come home to roost."
Ty
I aassume when you say, "the issues you raised" that you are referring to me.
However, I would like to point out that I didn't raise any issues, I merely quoted Obama and commented on what he said.
Also, if any elected official is not going to do anything for you, why vote for them?
Quid pro quo is as old as politics, why should that fundamntal principle not apply to black voters and politicians?
Thank You Maximalist
Rarely have I come across people that can understand what is really happening in the black family in America.
To expand on your statement, "So,Black fathers never left,so much as they were driven away,by plots and schemes to destroy the Black family!" I would offer that not only have black fathers been driven away but in fact that they have never been allowed to have a secure role in the family from the outset.
Throughout American history, the one thing the white man did not want is to see independent-minded black men in roles of authority - not even in his own family! For the 300 years of slavery, black fatherhood was not even recognized in American law. With segregation and the terror of lynching that followed nominal emancipation, his sociopolitical powerlessness was further emphasized. Matrifocal families was the result of this black father-hostile legacy and this pattern of female dominance in the family continues up to the present day.
Thus, today's court-operated, so-called child support system (which has its roots in the slave practice of the white man controlling the black woman's young for his own profit) is the modern day version of the black father's continued marginalization and use as a stud, a scapegoat and an economic plowhorse.
Obama Warning 7-24-08
Obama savages the Black community every three weeks. He will be back from his trip just in time to wage pycho war on us again.
I hope that the writer of this thoughtful article recognizes that the
blessing of being a good father is based upon Gods guidance. Rely on Gods strength and not on your own in the journey of fatherhood.
Obama only points out flaws in the Black community. If Moynihan was right, then it must also be true that Irish men drink too much. Its different when the lens is pointed at you isn't it?
Obama is a four dollar bill. He is a psyops operation plan and simple. I advise all Black people to run from Obama as far and as fast as you can.
Little
There is never certainty of anything. But not all paths are equally volatile. People who go to Los Angeles to try and make it as an actor have a much lower chance of doing well than say a person who did well enough in school and gets trained as a nurse, a high demand profession that has a very nice standard of living. There are many such professions, not everyone needs to be funneled into a 4 year university, but rather than meandering around and not participating and taking some thoughtful reigns of ones direction, many are lost when it comes to what they are going to do to make a living.
And I know not everyone in America is rich or even well off, I am not either at this stage, but the point is this, no one controls where they start off in life, but they DO have control over where they end up.
This is controversial... why?
As to the reasons people come to America it is PRECISELY because they think they can make a better life in the US than they can in their home country, if you bothered to ask immigrants you would not get some trash talk about How terrible America is, because unlike the people who grew up in this shade, they know what REAL poverty is like, what REAL barriers are, where Katrina is DWARFED by orders of magnitude. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali once said in an interview in a related topic "You grew up in freedom, so you can SPIT on freedom, because you do not know what it is like not to have it."
As for the last points, about seeing everyone fail around you, I agree completely that that is massive negative factor, but you know what, it is still not the government that is CAUSING that. I refuse to allow people to deflect causes where they do not belong. And that means not LYING to them and putting it in their head that the SOCIETY is structurally stacked against them, no matter WHAT they do. That is a bald faced lie. Again, not everyone will have a golden path, but there is almost always a path. Even if you have to cut extra clearings to get there.
Why did the kid join a gang? where are his parents? lives with his mother? grandparents? Where is his father? Around? Not around? Did the government make the father not stick around? Ok, so we see an unproductive path being followed, why is there no change into a more stable path?
I know there are issues to be dealt with, my point to most of you, is that a great number of them come from within the community, not outside it.
The problem as I see it, is that all these deflections cause people to just give up on becoming part of the larger society, as there is no hope anyway, everything is stacked against them, there is no way to get ahead anyway, why should I bother voting, why should I bother going to class, why should I bother buckling down, going the extra mile, being on time, etc etc etc.
BECAUSE IT MATTERS, it is NOT all a lost cause, and the sooner this Poisonous belief that it is is put to death the better.
Don't you see? blaming all the ills on society/government makes people LESS likely to consider their OWN bad choices!!!!!!!!!! It's almost like you are TRYING to cripple peoples outcome. We all make bad choices, its the healthier person that sees what they are doing wrong and fixes their end, and gets up and tries again. It is the cripple who sees the world and their reality through the lens of being a slave to the whims of society/government where one starts in life.
Choose. I really do not see how this sentiment is so abrasive, it makes perfect sense in my mind.
OBAMA PLAYED THE RACE CARD, NOT CLINTON
FROM: WWW.BUZZMACHINE.COM
The thin catalogue of complaints against the Clinton campaign from the Obama campaign were unfounded, manipulative and self-indulgent. At best they called into question the oversensitivity of Mr Obama, at worst they showed him willing to play a divisive race card that is damaging the entire Democratic Party and tarnishing a great and historic electoral contest for the centre Left. The whole episode has convinced me he isn’t tough enough for the White House.
For since when has referring to somebody’s past admitted drug use - if indeed the Clinton campaign ever intended to do that, which is far from clear - been a racial slur? More racist, I would say, to equate drugs with blacks, and that’s what the Obama campaign is doing, not the Clinton one.
As for Mrs Clinton’s statement that Martin Luther King’s dream of racial equality was realised only when President Johnson managed to get the 1964 Civil Rights Act through Congress? No more than fact, surely; an attack on Mr Obama’s lack of experience, certainly, but hardly a slur upon King. Mr Obama’s campaign is twisting things so that a comment about any black man is a comment about him, just as any attack on him is an attack on all black people. I ask again: who is playing the race card here?
Crisis of Family in America
The changing family unit is still at odds with the unrealistic expectations that many citizens in this country have. Whites are just as deep in crisis as blacks today. The defining difference is economics and the racism blacks still face.
People who harbor doubts about being parents should definitely not have kids. It's not like the earth needs more people anyway. But for those having kids, they must confront the realities of parenthood. Taking care of your children, raising them and sacrificing for them. No excuses accepted. Not even racism. Parents must be prepared mentally for their responsibility. Those who are, even in abject conditions, always fare better than those who crumble at the slightest obstacle. The key is always to find a way.
Like all of 0bama's comments, they are self-serving. White America loves to pick on the black man and demonize him. But the truth is, and I say this as a black woman, black women must accept our pound of flesh in this equation.
You cannot advance in life without self-evaluation. Blacks want their egos to be stroked, which is why politicians have been lying and flying in their faces for decades. All the while nothing changes. Ask any person who has achieved success of any kind and they most likely will tell you of that moment when they confronted themselves and made a decision to change for the better. It's a very ego-sobering moment that is necessary to achieve.
As a community, we can continue to wallow in self-pity and anger, we can continue procreating mindlessly at too young an age, or we can begin to piece together the elements that make for a successful life: education figuring prominently in that equation. We are long past the point where white America is going to lend a helping hand. That boat sailed in the 60's and nothing about an 0bama presidency is going to resurrect that.
Recently, I read an article which described the genesis of the Moynihan Report and what followed. Like all of you, for years, I despised Moynihan and his report. After reading that article along with my own observations in the black urban community I lived in, I realize that the report was accurate. It was our response to the report that has defined our community since then.
The leadership back then had a kneejerk reaction and laid the ground work for the black American perspective that only white America can change our lives. Had the leadership recognized that blacks at least had a 25% investment in our own lives along with the realities of racism in America, we would be in a very different place right now.
Everything in the Moynihan Report was not insulting. The black extended family model was one that could have been used as a framework to transform institutional policies and would have greatly aided the changing family unit in the white community which now has many single parent households and unmarried women having children.
It doesn't matter who says it, and we can get an attitude all we want to about this truth, all kids need the care of 2 parents who are mature mentally and committed to the upbringing of the child. They don't have to married and certainly, our black extended family serves as a valuable support system to these parenting efforts.
I don't support 0bama and don't expect anything from him. But it amazes me that blacks think that somehow white society is simply going to fall at our feet and give us anything we want. Certainly not now as their own economic prosperity is in serious jeopardy.
We might as well face it: That ain't gonna happen! Yes, there is racism, but we only make racism worse when we don't find ways to educate ourselves to contend with it. Producing generation after generation of uneducated angry children is not the answer.
It's too bad that 0bama never mentions the fact that his mother used to wake him up at 4:30 every morning to read and do school work while they were living in Indonesia. She did this because the schools there were inferior and she didn't want him to fall behind. These are the stories that are encouraging, that help people to figure out a way around the institutional racism.
And I'm not suggesting that women wake their kids up this early, but they can at least make sure they get to libraries. They can at least turn off the tv for an hour, they can stay on top of their schools to make sure that their kids are getting what they need.
No excuses. And being educated is not a white thing!
The black community needs BOTH strong fathers and mothers.
It's time we faced that racism is no longer the WHOLE picture. What we do in our individual lives can be the difference.
I have the right to be offended
Obama's speech was offensive and it promoted centuries' old false stereotypes about African American men. It was intended to comfort and appease the white voters who he must reach. Because this is how I interpret Obama's speech does not mean that I am looking for the government to solve all the problems within the African American community. One has a right to be offended by Obama's nefarious assault (and there have been others) on the African American community without being accused of not wanting to step up and deal with the issues that affect our community. This is such insane logic. It represents a mindset that has blindly accepted this racist propaganda that was orchestrated to alleviate the racist conscience of its complicity in the condition of black America. Many African Americans, such as myself, are in the trenches working hard almost everyday to improve the dysfunction that impacts too much of our community and I have the absolute right to be offended by Obama's charade. Moreover, like any other group, African Americans have the right to ask our government to step up to resolve societal inequalities. The government has the moral obligation to remove the institutional barriers that it created which interfere with the ability, of all of its citizens, to have equal access to the education, employment, etc. that are necessary to lead a productive life. The government does not get a pass. And the African American community should demand from Obama that he stop using us as his whipping post. None of this means that we are unwilling to do what is required to improve our condition. Many of the blacks who I know personally, who defend Obama’s assault, live comfortable lifestyles and take little to no action to build any part of our community. They are very often both judgmental and cowardly.
Kay, you have accepted the racist media's depiction of what Obama is saying. In no way is he relieving the federal government of its responsibility towards black citizens. He made this as clear as he could in his address to the NAACP. But the media did not pick up on that story. They ran with their own racist aspiration--that Obama would blame only blacks in the same way that racist whites do. You should read his entire NAACP address and study his actual policy proposals and voting record. So far, you are just echoing the racist media.
Barry
Barry, With all due respect, I have been following Obama's comments to the black community very closely for they have been very troubling. He seemingly vacillated some before the NAACP which I believe was largely due to the negative reaction he received from black intellectuals, etc. regarding his infamous Father's Day speech. I am well aware of the "series" of comments Obama has made to and concerning the African American community. I also am a member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, so I am practically an expert on the subject of racist media distortion. Where can I find Obama's policy proposals regarding African Americans? Thanks.
mimi
You said, "Recently, I read an article which described the genesis of the Moynihan Report and what followed. Like all of you, for years, I despised Moynihan and his report. After reading that article along with my own observations in the black urban community I lived in, I realize that the report was accurate. It was our response to the report that has defined our community since then."
I sincerely mean no disrespect, but your reading one article and your personal observation of your neighborhood does not render you sufficiently qualified to give this opinion as though it is fact.
He did not vacillate before the NAACP. All he did was change the order of his Father Day's comments, so that the call for governmental responsibility came before the call for personal responsibility. You may be aware of these comments in some abstract sense, but you have obviously not read them carefully. He clearly is not excusing government responsibility as you claim. If you had been following his comments, you would not that his proposals are not race but mostly class specific whether they deal with job opportunity, treatment of felons, or child care.
He is not the neo conservative or neo liberal that you all are trying to make him out to be on the basis of the racist media's coverage of him.
Barry
You can go back and read BAR articles that are on this very site to ascertain the full range of comments Obama has made to the African American community. He has made derogatory and stereotypic commments that were specifically directed at the black community intended to point out its personal failings. Many of the comments are utterly shameful. Also, the New Yorker, without rendering any judgment, recently laid out some of Obama's comments. Also, the racist MSM to which you refer actually favorably covers Obama--at lease for now.
sorry kayy you did not respond to my point. Let's say that I grant your point that Obama, son of a white mama, has made derogatory comments about American blacks (again I find myself in agreement with his family values--see my post above). Still you have not responded to my point that you are wrong that Obama has relieved the federal government of its responsibility to the poor. He proposes job opportunity programs, programs for the reintegration of felons, child care subsidies, nurse visits, expanded EITC, tax breaks for poor seniors, and an expanded public insurance alternative (by the way it's a good thing he did not propose Clinton's mandate because that way he does not hand over tens of millions of new customers to the insurance industry without getting anything in return from them).
His program includes minor reforms worth fighting for as defensive measures; and he clearly will make sure that the increased tax burden of this war does not fall disproportionately on the working class (that is what Reagan did by increasing payroll taxes which rose more than the income tax decreased for the working class). All minor reforms and defensive measures the working class should fight for.
Plus, he'll withdraw combat troops from Iraq, protect us by focusing on al Qaeda rather than an oil company occupation, reregulate the financial industry, and reinstitute our civil liberties.
It would be crazy to let McCain take power, and I think there are many people here who cut off their nose to spite their face.
Spinning in circles
Obama's plans as stated in his Father's Day speech specifically relate to 2 parent families.
As I've stated before in this thread, his solution for single mothers was to get a man.
After hearing this, why would anybody do further research?
His goals seem clear.
Spinning his positions, building and burning straw men, defending conservative stereotyping as justifiable, even justifying shifting war locales as some sort of moral victory is hard to swallow.
If as he asserts, the "real war" is in Afghanistan because that's where Bin Laden is, why haven't we been further attacked in the seven years since 911 and the 5 years we've been fighting in the wrong place?
The bottom line is that in an Obama administration we'd still be just as much at war and single parent families would be just as unlikely to morph into successful, functioning, healthy 2 parent families.
As long as the government focuses on the fathers and not the children, they offer little or no hope for a better future, in my opinion.
his propoals for child care, tax breaks, health insurance, and nurse visits cover single mothers
*
attaks have been focused on where US troops are;
al-Qaeda is launching plots against us soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are attacking Indians
*
infant in hand, waiting for alert time; cant elaborate
A politician's role
is to craft policy to improve the lives of his constituents, the same ones whose votes are needed to put that very politician in office. A politician is out of line when he has a you are great americans style speech for white audiences and a you fat lazy people have got to do better, for black audiences. No less than the founding fathers themselves would call a politician tyrannical and despotic if he did such a thing in their day. Disparaging the black community with the world media watching is not a substitute for effective public policy or effective political representation. Apparently, there is a generation of black people who don't understand that politicians are our public servants. Their role is POLICY, not PATRONIZING and Blacks should not accept patronizing in lieu of effective policy.
*
No his solution for single mothers was not to get a man. On fathers day he insisted on the right of mothers to demand that fathers live up to their legal and moral obligations because this is good for the children and the harried mother. That he insisted that single mothers have this right does not imply that a woman must make an absent father a part of the children's lives. The man after all may be abusive or more trouble than he's worth.
*
I certainly agree that Obama has decided not to campaign against racism. For example, he does not let people know that a white felon is more likely to get a job than a black man without a rap sheet even they have the same resumes. There are a couple of reasons for this: 1. he thinks macroeconomic class based oppression is a more important source of misery than racism (though he clearly recognizes that racism has ensured that disproportionate number of the people who suffer poverty are racialized minorities). 2. he think he can win class based and some progressive taxation if he doesn't talk about racism or anything that could smack of quotas (of which I am in favor, by the way!). I think he is wrong (and I am hurt) that he does not decry racism. But then Adolph Reed, a BAR favorite, is talking up class first people like Walter Benn Michaels, so where does that leave people here?
*
I certainly don't think Obama can do much to improve the lives of the working class. In fact I see him i the purely defensive role of staving off Republican assaults on limited working hours, wages and unions conditions and the political wage (the income supplements provided by the state). I am voting for him on mostly defensive grounds. There will certainly be a great need for extra parliamentary politics.
*
Yes the US will still be militarily engaged if Obama is president, but shoring up the Aghani government against the Taliban offensive serves my security interests. It is a necessary fight; it is the right fight.
*
On philbin's comment, Obama is proposing policy, but there are sources of problems which the government cannot fix--for example, parents using the television as baby sister and children being raised without valuing empathy. But while you BAR people are accusing Obama of patronizing you, the right wing has already figured out what Obama is really saying and they are complaining that they are being asked in any way to subsidize the return of poor absent fathers to their children's lives.
Of course
there are issues that the government cannot fix. NO one (Not one) has denied that and it's stupid to keep parroting it as if it were some new revelation since the skinny kid with the funny name uttered it. But it is a problem to have a president disparaging an entire ethnic group in his speeches and appearances strictly to distance himself from blackness in exchange for white conservative votes.
This he does while making promises to do things for jewish, hispanic, native american, and GLBT communities. Even Moynihan, for christ's sake, recognized that goverment should play a role in reducing POVERTY in the worlds most wealthy nation because he recognized that there is a perpetual underclass in this society due to the opportunistic nature of this society.
Barack Obama has a pattern of disparaging black culture and black people in the national media. This is unacceptable for a public servant in a global spotlight. Whatever happened to encouraging people? What ever happened to Si Se Puede?
He started out not delving into race for fear of being cast as the black candidate. Now he can't stop himself from reflexively vomiting bile all over black people who flock in droves to see him make history and whose 90% rate of support allows him to maintain an edge.
If Obama can't publically make the same promises and committment to black people that he made to AIPAC, the hispanic community, and the Gay community, then he needs to shut up. Black America will not be his whipping boy so he can exorcise his demons left by the psychological scar of his own absent father.
I beg to differ
"We need to help all the mothers out there who are raising these kids by themselves; the mothers who drop them off at school, go to work, pick up them up in the afternoon, work another shift, get dinner, make lunches, pay the bills, fix the house, and all the other things it takes both parents to do. So many of these women are doing a heroic job, but they need support. They need another parent. Their children need another parent. That’s what keeps their foundation strong. It’s what keeps the foundation of our country strong."
You can take that any way you want to, but unless those single mothers have an alternate lifestyle, he said they need a man.
SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS REQUIRE SYSTEMIC SOLUTIONS
Forcing two people who don't like each other to get married isn't going to fix our systemic problems.
Headache
I know I am the odd man out in this comment section, but honestly all this talk of how RACIST the nation is is just crazed. Its like people see no progress, refuse to see no progress. The fact is that racial tensions are orders of magnitude better today than they were years ago, the institutional barriers are marginalized and demonized, as they should be.
Different results persist, but the bulk of this is not due to RACIST AMERICA. Jesus people, get a clue. I know many of you think this is the case, and I know I am not going to convince any of you this is not the case, too looned up for that, but please consider this point. Just because you think something is the case, does not make it the case. If you can harbor that one kernel of doubt, then there may be some hope of sanity for you.
As for people who think Obama disparaged the black community for bringing up certain issues in his fathers day speech... How thin is your skin? Really? I know the creator of this article got bent out of shape when by his own example, Obama's comments had NO bearing on him as he does not have kids.
I know people can get defensive but damn people. If what he was talking about applied to certain people, then it applied to them, if not then why are people getting upset? I think the reason people get upset when anyone highlights issues in the black community, which many claim are well known and redundant, is that it take attention away from the round the clock demands for RACIAL JUSTICE FROM THIS RACIST COUNTRY....
Oh no, someone went off the stupid, incorrect message, the wind will dry my tears. I am not a big Obama supporter, but I am not going to blast the guy for stating the obvious, and for those upset at him for stating the obvious and highlighting it, and deflecting attention from your crazed beliefs, try and mop of the eggshells around yourselves, its piling higher than the trees.
I don't know if it's "Miseducation"
But some here talk of education while portraying lack of knowledge I don't understand. I never thought I would here Black people say there are too many people on the Planet. Only the Supreme determines. And if that's the case why aren't they the first to remove themelves.
Black people talking about bombing A country for our Security. That's just plain crazy. Like Malcolm X said the Negro done lost his mind. Anyone with an ounce of compassion who can look at the picture on Margaret Kimberly's article and say go bomb those people needs to go with Obama because we don't need them. And if Obama wants to keep up safe why doesn't he start with Police Brutality right around the corner from him. Oh I forgot we should Obey the law, while being brutally murdered by the law.
Do you know what Obama and his wife gave those poor single mothers in Chicago. Just Google Michelle Obama and Chicago's Not For Profit Hospitals. While she was bilking them out of affordable health care, He gave them some nice unheated, roach and rat infested homes to live in. While he and his good friend and Campaign contributor Tony Rezko walked away fat and happy and paid. But Obama promptly threw him under the bus too. I expect more of that good treatment from President Booker T. Obama
To the author Fatherhood is certainly a personal decision and I feel you. I bet a some of here can certainly understand how you feel about distance. My own Father died when I was young but I see it in other men. But I don't think it's lack of love. I think we have a lot of psychological problems that deal directly with racism. Oh I'm not allowed to say that anymore. We already come 90% of the way to equality in America. From where I sit the observation is totally absurd. Iwouldn't want a dad like Booker T. Obama's teaching my Black daughters to be ashamed of their Blackness. I would avoid his advice like the plague.
And as far as Obama's Mother reading to him at 4:30 in the morning. Please get over it. Blacks learned to read under threat of lynching. And many learned by candlelight after their 16 to 18 her slave day shift. Black women have done too much more me to defer to a White woman for example. I had a Wonderful Mother, Grandmother, Aunts and many other Black women in the community and in our History.
As The BAR Staff and many posters have written Obama is Chameleon although he is becoming more and more transparent. But I like Glen Ford's word for him the best Damien the Omen
Ty, please...
Ty, keep on reading Philbin's post. Believe me, it will liberate you from your lack of self-esteem, self-hatred and your intense desire to be white.
Excellent points Robin. I applaud you guys for standing up to these know-nothing-Obama-apologists. Your contributions to the serious attempts by so many, to liberate ourselves from American racism, a racism that embarrasses Ty to the extent that he'd rather deny its existence and blame its victims under the guise of being one with those who fight against racial oppression - an oppression that has been perpetrated for centuries by the barons of this diabolical system whose tentacles reach far and beyond the borders of this country.
"I know I am the odd man out in this comment section, but honestly all this talk of how RACIST the nation is is just crazed" Your words Ty, not mine.
"I think the reason people get upset when anyone highlights issues in the black community, which many claim are well known and redundant, is that it take attention away from the round the clock demands for RACIAL JUSTICE FROM THIS RACIST COUNTRY".... These two statements are from the same post! When I saw this contradiction, I thought you were merely "hunting with the hounds, and running with the hares", but I don't think you are that smart. Methinks you are just a confused ignorant nonentity with severly limited intellectual abilities. Sorry, not only do I think that's the case, I know it to be the case. It is your irrational analysis and illogical arguments that have exposed this fact, thus confirming my conclusions about you.
The mistake Ty makes is typically white. He judges
racial progress in terms of how far we have come while
blacks (and I define that broadly in the more British sense) tend to judge the status quo in terms of a future idealized state of true respect and equality. Things look better if think as Ty does, in comparison to the past. Racial discrimination becomes intolerable once we judge the present from a future ideal state. So as to Obama's statement that we have come 90% of the way, that could be accepted as long we are not comforted by that due to our still judging the present from a future ideal state.
What is a "white" mistake?
?
As for comparing the present to an Ideal state, you will ALWAYS be pissed and disappointed when compared to an ideal state. Utopia does not, and will not EVER exist, get over it. And that is OK.
It's not that racism does not exist in America, its that to the extent that it does exist, it is not the binding and oppressive force that it once was. THAT is the point.
Of course there are still racist people in the country, perhaps everyone has some degree of it, so WHAT!
I could make the case that everyone has some degree of malice inside them as well, but so long as it does not manifest itself in a systematic and destructive way, then I can live with that level of imperfection.
For those that demand perfection, purity, demand it till the end of time, you will NEVER be sated.
And by the way, the best way to shatter a stereotype, to disabuse someone who thinks a certain way about people from a certain background, is by EXAMPLE, not saying they should not think it.
As if you all do not have prejudices about people and the world around you. Some are legitimate observations, some not, but saying something is not so is not going to convince you or anyone else in the deep recesses of their mind that it is not so. Seeing those ideas continuously shattered day in and day out would change a persons views.
But that is never the focus, like so many here, you target the wrong constraint, fail the people you are trying to help, all the while content that you are struggling for the good path.
It is not enough to believe something is right in order to achieve results, it has to BE right. And this idea of a current, year 2008 and on OPPRESSIVE RACIST CLOUD THAT DAMPENS EVERYTHING, is a fools believe, a cripples belief.
Someone mentioned Wright bringing in professionals and talking to black people, those people who earned their marks did not just get "lucky" to make the cut, there was work and dedication and personal struggle involved. And for those that make that extra effort, it WILL be noticed, and while it will never GUARANTEE you will get in or be successful at a given moment, it will increase your likelihood. Doing nothing, not playing the game because you think it is stacked against you, giving up and railing about racial oppression, is a fools mantra, at best. Not because it could not be an issue, because today, it IS not the driving issue in MOST people lives MOST of the time.
MOST, not ALL people.
I meant typically white in a statistical sense. The Washington Post several months ago reported on an academic study that found whites do typically tend race relations in terms of the past while blacks tend to judge them in terms of a future ideal state. Your thinking is just typically white.
It just makes no sense to say that we cannot acknowledge the role of racism in social outcomes and talk about ways to combat if even if racism is not the major cause of the social problems from which black people disproportionately suffer. For example blacks suffer from disproportionately represented in so called blue collar jobs but blue collar workers, regardless of race, have a much higher chance of death by heart disease than white collar workers. So race often works indirectly, in terms of its historical effects, where the immediate problem is class inequality.
At any rate your whole rant makes almost no sense to me at all.
Thank You Mzimkhulu
I'm sorry but some of these people just sound crazy to me. To say. For example Ty writes, "Its not that racism does not exist in America, it does exist, it is not the binding and oppressive force that it once was. That is the point," What!
I don't know what America he is living in. But I live Amerikka. He must have forgotten about Sean Bell, Jena 6, San Francisco 8, Hurricane Katrina. They deliberately put Our people in harms way. Then when the Hurricane did do the job they blew the Levees. People just have to take a look at what's happened in that City since then. And it happened under a Black Mayor.
I see it for what it is, not from what some study tells me. I feel it everyday, there was a 12 year old boy shot in the back by a Black police officer for having a piece of candy in his pocket. Is that racism? I guess Ty will say what was he doing with Candy ez Bill Cosby's Pound Cake.
Booker T. Obama and his cronies are doing a hatchet job on US. Rev Wright warned us, You know Rev Wright that old relic from the past. Unfortunately, judging from some of the Obamamites comments they are doing a pretty good job. The same hatchet job the Big Six did on us with the March On Washington. Malcolm X told us the whole story. The same hatchet Booker T. Washington did on us with the Atlanta Compromise. Marcus Garvey told us.
Just because Obama made that absurd 90% statement. Some Black people all over the World are saying I'm going to believe him and not my lying eyes. All some of the comments seem to indicate is that you've internalized racism and turned on the Victim and yes I mean Victim! A crime was committed against us and when I say us I mean all of us Black, Brown, Red people the World over. No one was ever arrested, no one was ever tried and no one was ever convicted. And from their own laws there is no Statute of Limitations on Murder!
You Obama lovers need to listen and learn. You can't throw us under the bus like the dirty relatives no one wants to see. There will never be any Peace until there is Justice. You can't sit in the house and eat while the people outside starve. You can't p*ss on people and tell them it Lemonade.
Peace
Wright's irresponsible comments about AIDS and fulsome praise of Farrakhan should have no place in a progressive presidential campaign. I am glad that Obama distanced himself from that as well as his discredited simplistic ideas about black and white learning styles.
drhartal
There is credible research that supports Wright's AID's assertion. Many never even bothered to check. Here is the link. http://boydgraves.blogspot.com/2008/04/cemeterycrematory-promise-land-of.... There is other research as well.
And Wright's comments concerning Farrakhan were very specific in nature and pertained to his impact on the African American community only. Anyone who heard otherwise heard what they desired to here. Wright has been grossly defamed. Enough with the lies!
I am glad Obama distanced himself too. It's tragic that Wright ever let him into his life.
Obama is definitely the one who benefited over the years. Any one who knows Wright knows that there is far more to him than the media portrayal. He is well published and there is plenty of information out here about him that would summarily discredit the media nonsense.
BOOJIE BLACKS KEEP REPEATING THE LIE
If it is so obvious, why are black men taking care of their children better than white men who live outside the home?
"But most black fathers aren't the flawless, idealized Huxtables nor the shiftless, irresponsible "Maury" deadbeats. Like Paul Coates, they're somewhere in between, fathers who built families without much forethought, but with an abundance of love and leadership. Many black fathers have found this middle ground. The Coley study also found that black fathers who don't reside in the home are more likely to sustain regular contact with their children than fathers of any other racial group. It's true that children are statistically better off when raised by a married couple-the Huxtable model should be the ideal-but unmarried, nonresident fathers shouldn't be made to feel like failures. In order to reduce rates of absentee black fathers, we must learn to view fatherhood as an à la carte menu, not a prix fixe."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/136335