For many blacks, Fathers Day comes and goes with mixed feelings; there are ingredients of love, hatred, resentment, abandonment and disdain, all shaken together. But at the base of all of these emotions is pain and then, fear.
Hats off to the good black fathers. You should be in the trenches getting more fathers to be like you, not validating the reasons they've found to not love their children, continuing to defend grown men, instead of their children--our future! It's as if the children don't matter; as if the sheer numbers of them are not tragic! I hear good black men and superior black fathers on Face Book and other social networking sites providing the tissue for the tears of these failed black fathers during the pitty parties, with little or no thought about the tears shed by their children; no motivation to tell these men to stop the crying, stand up, own up to their responsibilities; they made their beds and now must sleep in them. Help the mothers of your children raise them!!
The pain many feel about this Fathers Day is from the audacity that a man could actually injure his own walking away; staying away; withholding the love he should demonstrate; using reasons or excuses for his carelessness. And then, the question, how could his love be so weak for humans he help to make? What kind of heart does this person have?
The fear, more profound, is that love does not exist at all for his children and discovery could somehow be a commentary on one's worth, importance; actual humanity.
This Fathers Day, share the truth from your heart. A father's absence hurts. It hurts too often for the children of black fathers. Nearly 70% of the homes where their children live are headed by single mothers. True, white men leave their children, too; about 27% of their homes are single parented. But we don't have the numbers to compete with their expenditures! They are still strong and healthy! We are few in numbers. Saying "they do it too" does not off set the harm to our few numbers. A man who has $100 can afford to spend $10. A man who has only $20 and spends that same $10 is vulnerable.
Whatever the reasons black fathers have discovered as cover for not loving their children, we as a culture should tell them to let nothing...not anything keep them from loving the next generations. Lets not provide them with pitty parties for the bad choices they made with the mothers; the problems with their 'baby mamas' post child birth. The children should not have to suffer their parents toxic, though s*xually productive, relationship! Our future as a people depends on it!
Pain and fear in humans can produce distorted and twisted lives, evidenced and resulting today on the streets of our communities, the prison cells and through the careless way we handle God's precious gift of s*x, supposed to produce a deeper love between two people, but instead gives birth to children not cared for and the disease HIVAids which carries a death sentence.
STOP!!!!
Gail Smallwood, author
Black Men Stop!
http://blackmenstop.ning.com http://twitter.com/blackmenstop http://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Book-Rel...
Posted By: g smallwood
Wednesday, June 16th 2010 at 4:40PM
You can also
click
here to view all posts by this author...
