Rich Dad, No Dad!
Did Barack Obama have a point about absentee fathers in the African American community? Previously, Writer Erin Aubry Kaplan and Fox News Contributor Juan Williams discussed the racial significance of Obama's candidacy and the leadership and themes of the modern civil rights movement.
Now, here comes some straight talk about black men.
Point: Erin Aubry Kaplan
Of course Barack Obama had a point about absentee fathers. Nobody supports fathers, black or otherwise, going AWOL or shirking their paternal duties. Everybody knows that single-mother households are disproportionately concentrated in black communities and add to the chaos that has beset those communities since Africans first came to this country as slaves.
Nobody likes this situation.
With the possible exception of prison guard unions, people across every imaginable demographic -- black, white, poor, middle class, Democrat, Republican, Green -- would love for this problem to go away tomorrow. We'd all be better off, starting with all the kids living without their dads.
But the reason we're nowhere near solving the problem is that the whole issue of absentee black fathers and what it speaks to have been hopelessly politicized.
The right has dominated the conversation for years and put it in a moral, individualistic framework; this is where the right tends to put a lot of things, especially ones with racial implications (race and morality are very closely linked in the minds of many Americans).
Black fathers are therefore in a hell of their own making. The solution? Pull your pants up, stay away from gangs, look harder for a job, graduate from high school, pursue a college degree and take those chips off your shoulder (and take those tattoos off while you're at it).
To be fair, this isn't just what the right believes; it's what lots of ordinary black folks who are registered Democrats believe too. It's certainly not all of what they believe, but it is an expression of a larger desire to improve their community in any way that makes sense. Yet this is not a political view as much as it is a social one -- for black people, "conservative" often has little to do with party affiliation.
It's just one of the many nuances lost in the pundit-driven, polarizing non-discussion of blacks and fatherhood.Speaking of nuance, Obama's tough-love remarks about absentee black fathers, which he made in a church during his Father's Day speech, were taken out of context somewhat. The media zeroed in on his line, "Any fool can have a child. That doesn't make you a father." But if you look at the whole speech, Obama also talked about the role the government can and should play in bettering black people's lives.
For example, after detailing the responsibilities of black fathers, Obama went on to say, "It's a responsibility that also extends to Washington. Because if fathers are doing their part ... then our government should meet them halfway."
It was the kind of ideological compromise at which Obama has gotten very good, maybe too good. But the fact that these sentiments went virtually unreported is evidence of how narrowly we see the black father "debate" and how strongly we resist broadening that view into something even slightly more empathetic.
To read Juan Williams counterpoint, click here.
Erin Aubry Kaplan is a freelance writer and contributing editor to Opinion. She is a former weekly columnist for The Times and a former LA Weekly staff writer. She blogs at threebrothersandasister.blogspot.com
Did Barack Obama have a point about absentee fathers in the African American community? Previously, Writer Erin Aubry Kaplan and Fox News Contributor Juan Williams discussed the racial significance of Obama's candidacy and the leadership and themes of the modern civil rights movement.
Now, here comes some straight talk about black men.
Point: Erin Aubry Kaplan
Of course Barack Obama had a point about absentee fathers. Nobody supports fathers, black or otherwise, going AWOL or shirking their paternal duties. Everybody knows that single-mother households are disproportionately concentrated in black communities and add to the chaos that has beset those communities since Africans first came to this country as slaves.
Nobody likes this situation.
With the possible exception of prison guard unions, people across every imaginable demographic -- black, white, poor, middle class, Democrat, Republican, Green -- would love for this problem to go away tomorrow. We'd all be better off, starting with all the kids living without their dads.
But the reason we're nowhere near solving the problem is that the whole issue of absentee black fathers and what it speaks to have been hopelessly politicized.The right has dominated the conversation for years and put it in a moral, individualistic framework; this is where the right tends to put a lot of things, especially ones with racial implications (race and morality are very closely linked in the minds of many Americans).
Black fathers are therefore in a hell of their own making. The solution? Pull your pants up, stay away from gangs, look harder for a job, graduate from high school, pursue a college degree and take those chips off your shoulder (and take those tattoos off while you're at it).
To be fair, this isn't just what the right believes; it's what lots of ordinary black folks who are registered Democrats believe too. It's certainly not all of what they believe, but it is an expression of a larger desire to improve their community in any way that makes sense. Yet this is not a political view as much as it is a social one -- for black people, "conservative" often has little to do with party affiliation.
It's just one of the many nuances lost in the pundit-driven, polarizing non-discussion of blacks and fatherhood.Speaking of nuance, Obama's tough-love remarks about absentee black fathers, which he made in a church during his Father's Day speech, were taken out of context somewhat. The media zeroed in on his line, "Any fool can have a child. That doesn't make you a father." But if you look at the whole speech, Obama also talked about the role the government can and should play in bettering black people's lives.
For example, after detailing the responsibilities of black fathers, Obama went on to say, "It's a responsibility that also extends to Washington. Because if fathers are doing their part ... then our government should meet them halfway."It was the kind of ideological compromise at which Obama has gotten very good, maybe too good. But the fact that these sentiments went virtually unreported is evidence of how narrowly we see the black father "debate" and how strongly we resist broadening that view into something even slightly more empathetic.
To read Juan Williams counterpoint, click here.
Erin Aubry Kaplan is a freelance writer and contributing editor to Opinion. She is a former weekly columnist for The Times and a former LA Weekly staff writer. She blogs at threebrothersandasister.blogspot.com