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FATHER’S DAY 2003
“Man of The House” is becoming a misnomer
By BUD JOHNSON
African-American News & Issues

 “The misogyny articulated by the hip hop generation comes from its marginalization by a welfare system that defines "family" as a woman with children and a check from AFDC or child support. It's not just the demise of work in urban American that has alienated Black men from the family-supporting and child-rearing positions they used to occupy with pride; it's a welfare/child support system that has substituted for them. It's 30-years of Black male dislocation that's moved us from the R&B of 25 years ago - "Ain't No Woman Like The One I've Got" - to such lyrics as “Bitches Ain't Nuthin But Hoes and Tricks."

The foregoing prologue (that was lifted from a 1996 Washington Informer article), should make it obvious that this isn’t going to be a positive Father’s Day tribute, that have been a tradition since 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson approved of the idea. It wasn’t made a national holiday, however, until 1924, when President Calvin Coolidge made it a national event. However, it wasn’t official until 1966, after President Lyndon Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the 3rd Sunday of June as Father's Day and put the official stamp on a celebration that was going on for almost half a century. Ironically, 1966 was the beginning of African American father’s worse nightmare.
For sure, LBJ kept the promise that he made in his first State of the Union message (Jan. 4, 1965), after being elected for a full term and did, indeed, push an enormous program of social welfare legislation including federal support of education, medical care for he aged through an expanded Social Security Program, and federal legal protections for citizens deprived of the franchise by certain state legislation laws. His vision of a “Great Society” started with a “war on poverty,” but in hindsight America made a war on Black fathers, i.e., male head of households, inasmuch as the ill-conceived social programs became a Trojan horse that turned African American families upside down. Whether it was America’s intent, or not, most federal programs devalued Black fathers.
Most social programs addressed women and children under 25, thus, a wife and teenage children actually were able to earn more money in federal funded training programs and/or student loans to attend college, than the average grassroots Black male breadwinners in the home. Even worse, affirmative action also worked against Black fathers. Corporate America quickly learned that they could “kill two birds with one stone,” by hiring the less threatening Black females. And, even quasi-public jobs in the utilities industry, seldom, if ever, considered training over 25 Black males a bad investment and Black fathers with two or three kids in college certainly didn’t meet that criteria.
History records that Black males, whose job description is “laborer,” was put in the tenuous position of being unable to pay the cost to be the boss in their own homes. It’s difficult for a Black man to head a household, when even his kids can generate more income from social programs than he does working on menial, low paying jobs. That sad fact was exacerbated when Black females became a double minority, ergo, affirmative action opened doors for less threatening Black women, instead of their men. Lest we forget, many social programs favored welfare mothers, who had no man in the house. Denial notwithstanding, independent, economically empowered Black female’s rap was just as demeaning to Black males, that had been excluded by LBJ’s Great Society.

Many Black male’s spirits were grievously wounded, after their meager finances negated romances and they became more of a liability than an asset for their family. The welfare system, indeed, allows single mothers to live better on government assistance than on poor husband’s salary. Henceforth, while it wasn’t put into music, or backed up by a beat, “If you ain’t helping, you can get to stepping, because I can do bad by myself,” it’s definitely a popular rap, that top’s the list on Black America’s dysfunctional family charts. In today’s double-digit unemployment rates among Black males, the rap is more popular than ever. A recent study on Black unemployment concluded: “Despite equal opportunity laws and affirmative action policies, many African Americans are struggling on a day-to-day basis.”
“Unemployment in the African American community continues to rise, female-headed families on public welfare live at bare subsistence levels, and children are being victimized as the poorest of the poor, with little hope of surmounting their essentially predetermined destinies. These conditions arose from years of deprivation, oppression, and bias, exacerbated by institutional racism that goes unrecognized by the dominant forces at large; contemporary racism is much more subtle than the blatant exclusionary practices of the past. Institutional racism is a product of the societal arrangements and structures that exclude African Americans and other people of color from necessary resources and power that would establish the determination to change their oppressed conditions.”
“Public schools fail to provide them with satisfactory educations and marketable skills. The discrimination that exists in jobs, housing, and the availability of health and social services undermines the ability to gain control of self and community. Inequality and economic stagnation, inflamed by an enduring history of oppression and institutional racism, have fueled a sense of outrage at a system that promises, but does not deliver, opportunity for all.” Meanwhile, there are many strong Black males, who aren’t rolling over and giving up, therefore the same report also surmised: “Despite the growth in the African American middle class, there continues to be a marked differential in the incomes and poverty levels of African Americans and white people in this country.
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, in 1992, African American families had a median income of $21,550, whereas the median income of white families was $37,780, but the gap increased when the 21st century was greeted with an economic downturn. Thirty-three percent of African Americans were living in poverty, compared with 11 percent of white people, according the Census 2000 reports: But, in spite of those chilling stats, many Black elitist, who live from paycheck to paycheck, refuse to identify with their disenfranchised people. They often declare, “We are not a monolithic people, who all think alike. We don’t blame the White man for all our problems, but, instead we get off our butts and go to work”

Needless to say, that kind of mindless rhetoric keeps Black America divided and confused and, as a result, affirmative action is in jeopardy. On June 13, 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Federal programs classifying people by race, even for purposes such as creating work opportunities for members of minority groups are unconstitutional. Conservatives hailed the ruling as the end of an era of affirmative action, or at least the beginning of the end. Just one week after the Supreme Court's ruling, however, a preliminary report on the new demographic study found that in the employment arena, race still matters a great deal, and so does skin tone, according to an Urban Enterprise Corp’s study at the Kenan-Flagler Business School.

The most significant results of the study came from comparisons of unemployment rates among white, black, light-skinned black men and dark-skinned black men in Los Angeles. In the sample, only 8.6 percent of white males were unemployed, compared with 23 percent of black males in general and 27 percent of dark-skinned black males with similar backgrounds. Light-skinned African Americans were more likely to be working than were their dark-skinned counterparts. Nevertheless, a whole lot of hard working, dark-skinned Black fathers are hanging in there. And, if they have the blessed assurance that God’s grace is sufficient, they’ll have a Happy Father’s Day.