In my not-so-humble opinion, the single most pressing issue in the “black community,” however you define it, is that black men have abandoned their children.
I don’t need to lay out the arguments and post statistics related to drug use, criminality, underachievement, promiscuity, and teenage pregnancy among fatherless children. You’ve read and heard it all before.
It’s a vicious cycle. Until black people start having babies within marriage the way they used to, it will be difficult to break the cycle. The chances that a fatherless boy will grow up with the expectation of getting married first, having children later, and supporting his family are quite low. It’s not likely he’s learning how to be a husband, father, and provider from the women in his family, who themselves probably were fatherless and are rearing fatherless children. It’s awful. Blacks have done this terrible thing to themselves and have no one to blame but themselves.
I’d love to go on CNN and talk about that.
Joseph C. Phillips, actor and author of He Talk Like A White Boy, addresses this issue in his latest column. An excerpt:
“I was blessed with three beautiful sons. I watch them from across the room as they wrestle or sit quietly reading, and I am in awe of God’s handiwork. The miracle of their lives takes my breath away. I listened to their heart beats when they were no bigger than goldfish swimming in their mother’s womb. I held them when they were helpless, fed them and cleaned them, and every day, they grow a little bit further into themselves and away from me and their mother. I cannot imagine being more in love with another human being. There is nothing I would not do for them, nothing I would not give.
“What is truly astonishing is that there are so many men in this society that willingly forgo the transcendental experience of watching their children grow and mature. They abandon the work of raising their sons to the mother. Although there are times I wish I could stamp ‘Return to Sender’ on my children’s foreheads and send them on their way, given a choice, there isn’t a thing I would change because as selfish as it sounds, they have made my life richer and fuller.
“More importantly, I make their lives fuller. If not from me, from whom will they learn manhood? How will they learn to treat women if not by watching how I treat their mother? How will they learn faith if not by witnessing me on my knees in prayer? How will they learn discipline without my firm hand to guide them? Without fathers, boys are left to make it up as they go along — or they will latch on to the first knucklehead that shows them some attention.”
See my review of Joseph’s book.
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