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What do you say to
fathers . . .
By Joseph Jordan
who lead cultural/artistic revolutions, who love women
no matter what, hold little black/brown/white/red Babies
(and all mixtures thereof) when they cry and have no
problems doing the same when they become adults, who
teach and advise, write, paint, and sculpt and mold, who
wish for peace while fighting for justice,
who cry when one of us moves on and stays on point when
another falls ill, who protect our daughters and anguish
when sons falter, who cherish the women in our lives
whether they stay or leave, and even when they come
back, who speak, spanish, creole, ebonics, a sort-of
english, french, krioulu, gujarati, patois, portuguese,
hindi, geechee-gullah, and that yadda, yadda shit,
who know how to tune-up a '66 chevy, and put up drywall,
who remember working in the auto factory or the gypsum
plant or the navy yard or who pulled tobacco to help out
the family or pay tuition, who know the difference
between gratin, jagacida, pelau, channa, sofrito and big
mac sauce and which one is fit to eat,
who barbecue, churrasco, grill, and pull pig and pick
crabs, who keep rosewater and curry in the cabinet just
in case SHE shows up, who made mothers cry one minute
and laugh the next and who loved, joked, fought and
loved and loved, and fought, and truly loved our own
fathers and said f... you to those who couldn't
understand how that worked, who spent their last nickel
to help a partner (like me),
who know why we men love Malcolm and Dr. J, and Albizu
Campos, and Mandela, y el Negro Primero and Reddy, CLR,
and Cabral and Gandhi, Muhammad Ali and Tito Puente and
Marvin Gaye, the Tempts, and JB, Run DMC, Kool Moe Dee,
Blind Lemon Jefferson and Miles and Coltrane, and Fela
and Sekou, Saint, and Matoaca, and Larry Neal, and
Skunder and Willie and them on the east side,
who know what the real deal is with Obama, who are poets
and welders, and painters, and players, and ballers and
brave men when it counts and even when she doesn't see
it, who once fell in love so deeply that our
hands/heads/and hearts all ached in unison,
who know the difference between beaujolais and merlot
and grogue and dirty hearts and spades, who walk away
when we want to strike out in anger and hug 2nd cousin
Petey and give him some dap even after he's eaten the
last slice of sweet potato pie,
who fell in love with the sister with the big legs and
long braids even when we didn't know why she looked so
good to us, and with the one who taught us how to kiss
behind the trees when no one was looking, who understand
that you can judge the character of a man by watching
how he plays dominoes,
who fought our raging hormones until the hormones won,
and who fight now to hold on to them in these years as
they slowly ebb away, who fight death-dealing diseases
to a stand-still or at least to a truce,
who truly know in their hearts that if they had been an
inch taller, a pound heavier, or a second faster the
NBA/NFL/Olympics/World Cup/Pam Grier would have been no
problem for us, etc., etc., and so forth.
What do you say??? You say Happy Father's Day—even when
others say it, but could never know what it really means
to us.
My best and highest regards to all of you who know the
reality—this is an original in appreciation for your
friendship and for the example you provide for me.
A Luta Continua
Joseph
Joseph Jordan / Assoc. Prof.,
Director / Sonja Haynes Stone Center / University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill / (919) 962-9001 jfjordan@email.unc.edu
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Responses
Barack Obama's Father's Day Speech (video): Note the
prepared speech is not the same as the
spoken speech—Rudy
Obama Urges
Fathers to Step Up—Barack Obama
celebrated Father's Day by calling on black fathers, who
he said are "missing from too many lives and too many
homes," to become active in raising their children.
"They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like
boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families
are weaker because of it," the Democratic presidential
candidate said Sunday at a largely black church in his
hometown. Reminding the congregation of his firsthand
experience growing up without a father, Obama said he
was lucky to have loving grandparents who helped his
mother. He got support, second chances and scholarships
that helped him get an education. Obama's father left
when he was 2. "A lot of children don't get those
chances. There is no margin for error in their lives,"
said Obama, an Illinois senator. "I resolved many years
ago that it was my obligation to break the cycle—that
if I could be anything in life, I would be a good father
to my girls," added Obama, whose daughters, Sasha and Malia, and his wife, Michelle, watched from the
audience. . . . The issue adds to his family values
credentials and lets voters see him delivering a stern
message to black voters. "We can't simply write these
problems off to past injustices," Obama said to applause
Sunday. "Those injustices are real. There's a reason our
families are in disrepair, and some of it has to do with
a tragic history, but we can't keep using that as an
excuse."
AOL News
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What a wonderful alternative to
Obama's Father's Day address. Thank you, Joseph.—William
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Mi estimado hermano Joseph,
You have the unique ability to say
those things we all feel and know but always seem so
incapable of saying.
I just got back to Atlanta.
However, I spent Father's day on Isla Grande with my
cousin Yuri, her husband Nelson, kids and parents Berta
and Cliff. It was a fabulous Caribbean day full of sun
blue skies, puffy white clouds and conversations on
politics, music, love, great seafood and family. We
spoke Spanish and English and lots of stuff in between.
It feels good to be celebrated along with very good and
not so good men on our day - Father's Day. Thank you
for reminding me that we need to say Felíz Dia to
fathers everywhere.
Abrazotes papa, Arturo
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Brother Joseph,
What a wonderfully moving, reinvigorating message to
receive upon arriving home Monday night from The Gambia
where I had little access to my mail. Thank you for your
courage and insight, your clear and poetic voice, your
friendship and comradeship, and your example of
disciplined socially progressive work for our people the
world over. In peace, progress, justice, James
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Obama Insults
Half a Race
—Glen Ford
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Obama No—He's
a vacuous opportunist. I’ve never been an Obama
supporter. I’ve known him since the very beginning of
his political career, which was his campaign for the
seat in my state senate district in Chicago. He struck
me then as a vacuous opportunist, a good performer with
an ear for how to make white liberals like him. I argued
at the time that his fundamental political center of
gravity, beneath an empty rhetoric of hope and change
and new directions, is neoliberal. His political
repertoire has always included the repugnant stratagem
of using connection with black audiences in exactly the
same way Bill Clinton did—i.e., getting props both for
emoting with the black crowd and talking through them to
affirm a victim-blaming “tough love” message that
focuses on alleged behavioral pathologies in poor black
communities. Because he’s able to claim racial insider
standing, he actually goes beyond Clinton and rehearses
the scurrilous and ridiculous sort of narrative Bill
Cosby has made infamous.—Adolph
Reed Jr. , author of
W. E. B. Du Bois and American Political Thought
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Obama and the Criminal Justice
System
Barack Obama delivered another
masterful speech Sunday. The news report I saw made
it seem like he merely did an impersonation of Bill
Cosby, but he was more subtle and sophisticated than
that. Nonetheless, it was a speech that Cosby would be
proud of since it did endorse Cosby’s arguments.
Obama said that yes black communities needed more jobs
and better schools and that past injustices did play a
role in the absence of fathers in black homes, but that
black people could not use those things as excuses. He
said that black men should not be languishing in prison
when they should be out looking for a job.
There are too many issues here that should be unpacked
and discussed for me to deal with all of them at this
point, but I’ll tackle a few.
The injustices are not only in the past. Our current
criminal justice system is biased by race and class as I
illustrated last week in
“Whites,
Blacks and Illicit Drugs”.
If we had different criminal justice policies there
would be fewer black men in prison. We need to work to
eliminate the race and class biases in the criminal
justice system. We need to expand opportunities for drug
treatment. We need to use alternative, community-based
sentencing for certain non-violent offenders. If we had
elected officials who were committed to reforms of this
sort, there would be more black men available to be the
fathers that Obama and Cosby would like to see.
This is a very real issue for black women in the poorest
black communities. Even the conservative (by my
standards) scholar Isabel Sawhill admits that “for
certain subgroups of African-American women” she “did
find a shortage of eligible men” for them to marry.1
We simply can’t improve the rate of two-parent families
in the poorest black communities without dealing with
the present racial injustices in our criminal justice
system.
Obama argues that blacks should not use issues like the
lack of jobs, the high rate of poverty, the high degree
of economic inequality as excuses for the absence of men
in black families. But there is a growing body of
research that identifies the lack of jobs, poverty and
economic inequality as important causes of the higher
rates of crime in black communities.2
If we want to keep black men out of prison, we will also
need economic policies to address these issues.
The economic development of poor black communities is
also important because black men who are unemployed are
probably less likely to marry. Poor black women are
probably not interested in marrying unemployed black
men. Unemployed black men are probably reluctant to
marry if they cannot contribute financially to the
household.
The more education one has the more likely one is to
marry.3
The issue of the separate and unequal education that
black students receive is, again, not simply an excuse.
If we improve the educational attainment of blacks, we
will likely increase marriage rates.
If Obama wishes to increase the marriage rates in black
communities, he needs to (1) recognize the racial
disparities in our criminal justice system as one of the
current injustices facing black America, (2) institute
policies that lead to good jobs for blacks, and (3)
improve the quality of black schools. Is Obama able to
recognize the importance of these policies? Will Obama
be willing and able to deliver them, if he does?—Thora
Institute
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posted 17 June 2008 |
