"We can no longer blame systemic shadows for the internal work Black men are unwilling to do...
I’d always blamed the United States government for the fatherless experience of so many Black children, people like my cousin and his four siblings. I was raised hearing that it was the crack epidemic of the ’80s that ripped so many Black men from their families, that mass incarceration separated innocent men from their children, and that the unavoidable allure of a life of poverty anchored with the welfare system was too good to be true to some Black women. My childhood was full of fables about the Black welfare queen, a woman who willingly excommunicated the devoted Black man in her life in exchange for government cheese and a subsidized studio in a project dwelling.
Somehow, my uncle hit the victim lottery all three times, even doubled back a few times to be sure. He was another Black man denied the freedom to father, victimized by his own Black woman working in conjunction with an unjust system.
I was an adult before I learned the length of these lies. In reality, parental absence was never as taboo as I was taught, particularly of the paternal variety. From 1880 through 1960, the rate of paternal absence averaged around 30% for black children ages 0 to 14, in comparison to 10% for white children over the same years. Now, we can attribute a great deal of this to the migration patterns of Black people post-slavery, where millions left the South, lured by the prospect of financial prosperity, mainly the Northern migration (1840–1890), Western migration (1840–1970), and Great Migration (1916–1930). Additionally, parental mortality was common in the nineteenth century, the assumed life expectancy of Black adults was just shy of 35.
However, with geographical and medical stability came further familial destabilization. Paternal absence among black children rose from 32% in 1960 to 53% in 1980. On the heels of the 1965 Moynihan report, “The Negro Family: A Case for National Support”, which critics felt fingered the single mother as both the victim and the villain in the growing absence of black fathers, social commentators were hesitant to hand the blame over to black men. Instead, sociologists sought culprits outside the community, i.e., white supremacy, which was an easier evil to explain. It was obvious that this system was squeezing the life out of black fathers; where were the jobs; what about police brutality; not to mention child support, another name for the war on Black men. However, timelines fail to support the assertion that the phenomenon was a recent one...
Before Reagan ever took office and took up the task of doubling prison populations, before the first reports of crack emerged in cities like Los Angeles in 1981, half of all black children lived in single-parent homes, the gross majority of those homes headed by women. This number continued to climb, in 1990 reaching 63%, and even increased throughout the early 2000s despite record low unemployment rates for Black men and prison admission rates declining upwards of 24%. At the same time, the myth of the welfare queen was being taken to task by decades of research debunking the rumored welfare-loving single mother mockup. Not only did single black mothers experience shorter stints of government dependence than recipients of other races, but their children were no more likely than anyone else’s to enter the welfare system themselves, challenging the depiction of the single-family government-funded home complete with three generations of Black women and children. For years, we faced Washington while Black men packed their bags behind our backs...
It became clear to me that this was a matter of shitty men and the circles that surrounded them, not some secret system holding Black men’s arms behind his back...
The same data that speaks to high mass incarceration rates speaks to the fact that most Black incarcerated individuals had absent fathers. The same data that speaks to the prevalence of inner-city violence indicates that most perpetrators and their victims share the experience of fatherlessness. The same research that speaks to mass illiteracy, high school dropout rates, and underperforming Black students in the classroom indicates that most children with academic and behavioral struggles are raised in fatherless homes with limited parental input, involvement, and supervision.
Our focus is so much on defending the imaginary morality and poor decisions of men, we can’t be bothered to see how the children are suffering. Our response to this growing phenomenon has been just as troubling as our accountability avoidance; complete with an odd argument suggesting that absent black fathers, unlike those of other races, were somehow absent yet extremely active. So active, in fact, that we could contend their absence wasn’t really all that relevant to begin with, just another ploy by the white man to tarnish Black men’s reputations. However, the 2013 CDC report cited in this argument doesn’t say anything remotely suggestive of that...
Black non-coresidential fathers, i.e. those who lived apart from their children, were less likely to see or speak to their children regularly, host their children in their homes, eat meals with them, ask them about their day, take them to activities, or help with homework. The report ended with a poll asking these absent Black fathers to rate their own parenting, the majority answered with “very good job”. The cognitive dissonance is deafening...
Black men weren’t removed from the homes, they got up and left. They made the same choice in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and 2000’s that they continue to make today...
There is no Black anti-father task force picking the world’s best Black dads up from soccer practice, never to be seen again. The real conspiracy is they simply don’t desire to be there."
