BROTHERS, CAN WE COLOR US FATHER?
(six reflections)
1.
i don't like using rubbers. never did. but, when i was coming up (i was born 24 march 1947) the world seemed totally different from the way things are now.
we worried mostly about catching the clap, which is what we called gonorrhea. and secondly, about getting a girl pregnant. we heard about syphilis, but didn't think too much about it. from what we knew, a shot of penicillin in your ass could knock out most anything you might catch. there wasn't no herpes. and no aids. and some might say: hey, those were the good old days.
as for the girl getting pregnant, well, that was a risk, but it was really more of a risk for the girl than for us, cause we believed if she really didn't want to get pregnant than she would do something to make sure she didn't. and we only hoped that the "something" she did wasn't refusing to have sex unless we wore a rubber.
you see, some things never change. when it comes to sex, males want as much pleasure as they can get with as least responsibility as they are forced to accept.
in today's world, the extremely high incidence of aids in communities of color is forcing us to be somewhat more responsible, but generally only because aids is a killer and we already got enough stacked against us without adding this killer disease to the barriers blocking our survival. therefore, we use condoms not out of any real allegiance to our partners, but rather out of a sense of self-preservation.
...now before somebody goes off the deep end and starts talking about how they use condoms all the time and nobody has to force them... why don't we just confess, given a choice of using or not using (especially if we think it is otherwise safe), we won't use a condom...
although staying healthy and alive is a major issue, the problem with focusing only on health is that focus allows us to avoid the more important issue: fatherhood.
2.
notice i didn't say, "the girl getting pregnant." if a male and female are sexually active, then pregnancy is always a possibility, even with condoms, even with the pill, etc., etc. and though pregnancy is important, the question of fatherhood is even more important.
while the figures detailing sexually transmitted diseases grows higher and higher and the percentage of babies born outside of marriage is over 50% among african americans (and is over x% among poor people in america regardless of color), none of those statistics addresses our major problem: young men do not know how to be fathers.
and worse yet, there are indications that we might not want to be fathers.
3.
listening to the popular music on the radio, watching the videos on cable, going to the hit movies at the show, can lead you to believe that nobody puts a real high priority on having or being a father.
certainly, being a father is seldom presented as part of the process of keeping it real, which increasingly is defined as getting paid, getting laid, and getting away with whatever you feel like doing.
i believe that, for men, making babies is biological and raising babies is cultural. nobody has to teach us how to make a baby, we'll figure that out. but unless somebody teaches us how to be a father, we'll probably never figure that out.
in america they have schools and books for everything. you can get a ph.d. for studying roaches, but where do you go to learn how to be a father?
most of us learn by example, by watching our parents. so what happens when so many of us don't have fathers? the answer is simple: exactly what's going on in our neighborhoods today: we can't be what we don't know how to be.
my father and mother had three children. my first wife and i had five children. after sixteen years of marriage, i left. and though i was not there on a day-to-day basis for my children during their high school years, they knew their father and as young children had grown up with their father.
one of the more interesting characteristics of the five salaam siblings is that both of the males are married and none of the females is married.
i suggest that it is infinitely harder for today's young black woman to find a black man who is both ready and able to commit to creating and maintaining a family than it is for a young black man to find a black woman to do the same. and it is not just the proverbial numerical shortage of black men. where the real shortage is, is in the hearts and minds of brothers struggling to make it modern american society, a society which encourages materialism and individualism.
can anyone imagine the bulk of today's rappers as fathers, as people responsible for rearing sons and daughters (don't even mention being a committed companion to their partners)? yeah, i know a number of rappers are family folk with children, but do they project that as part of their image of who they are?
rappers, athletes and entertainers are the most visible success stories for young black males—and how many of those success stories feature and foreground fatherhood?
and yet, regardless of media projected images, i believe that it is the personal day to day that ultimately influences what we do, and thus, i am not surprised that both of my sons have married their high school sweethearts and are working hard at being caring, supportive and committed fathers. more over, i know that being committed fathers is no easy matter. in fact, fatherhood is a challenge that on any given day can be almost too much to bear. nevertheless, i am proud that both of them are working hard to beat the odds.
i would say that part of the reason for their willingness to accept the challenge is that my sons mtume and tutashinda had the example of fatherhood in their lives, even if that example was not perfect and even if i ended up divorcing their mother.
4.
there are a couple of hard truths that we men ought to own up to: 1. no one woman can sexually satisfy us forever. 2. marriages may or may not last, but being a mother or father is forever. let me explain, because neither statement is as simple as it may seem on the surface.
generally speaking, sex is a pleasurable biological act that also has deep individual psychological aspects, as well as far reaching social implications for both partners.
our sex drive is not a choice, this impulse is a part of our nature (or biological make-up). however, how we express (or suppress, transform, transfer or otherwise manifest) this impulse is based on cultural conditioning and individual choice. although there are extreme examples, such as artificial insemination and the future possibility of cloning, for the overwhelming majority of the human species, sex is an inextricable part of procreation.
perhaps a reason sex feels so good to us is because procreation is necessary for ongoing human existence. however, strictly from a biological basis, immediately after what most of we men consider the most pleasurable part of sex (the climax) we are finished with our role in the procreative act. for women, if conception results, that moment is a beginning and not a conclusion. this is one of the major reasons for the different approaches to sex of the male and the female.
in other words, after ejaculation (and a moment to rest), the male is ready to move on. afterwards the female desires companionship, and, once she becomes pregnant, actually needs companionship. unlike other mammals, a pregnant woman can not easily survive by herself.
questions about being faithful, being honorable, being moral, Christian, etc. etc. really are not the foundation of our inner feelings. the biological basis precedes any of our beliefs. when considering procreation, because men and women function differently, it is not surprising that our basic view of roles and responsibilities vis-à-vis sex are different.
biologically men are more attracted to young women in their prime childbearing years (late teens to late thirties) than to women in other age groups. nobody remains in the same age group forever, but regardless of age, the preferences of men don't really change that much. the "actions" of men may change as a result of conscious choices and social customs, but the preferences remain the same precisely because it's biologically wired into our makeup.
although there are exceptions, for the most part, regardless of his age, a man's sperm can impregnate a woman, but a woman can not get pregnant regardless of what age she is. what does all this mean? it means that most heterosexual men will feel an impulse or an attraction to different women throughout their lifetime, however most of those women will be in their childbearing years.
no woman can stay young forever. as she ages, no woman can remain "sexually attractive" in comparison to other women. moreover, if we are truly honest with ourselves, we men will acknowledge that we are not only attracted to women in their childbearing years, we also find satisfaction in being able to "conquer" or "capture" an attractive woman. ironically, this means that because she is already a "captured" woman (a "wife"), regardless of how attractive, a wife does not offer us the thrill of conquest. i suggest that it is in the biological make up for men to be attracted to "other" women.
i am not arguing biological determinism. i am not saying that biology absolutely determines how we will act. instead, i am arguing that there are deep seated, biologically-based emotions we have as males that influence, but do not necessarily determine our thoughts, feelings and actions. additionally, i believe what is most important is our culture, i.e. how we view ourselves and view the world, what values we hold and how we act based on our views and values. my concern is that popular commercial culture is overwhelming in pushing negative views and values, thoughts and actions regarding interpersonal relationships between men and women.
when we say "don't hate the playa, hate the game," do we really understand that there would be no game if no one played? playas playing is what makes the game. and right now, sex without commitment is what sells. indeed, the whole definition of a playa does not include being a father, and that is a problem.
here is where the culture of the group and the choice of the individual come into the equation. in different cultures there are all kinds of approaches to the question of sex, marriage and fatherhood. my contention is that in modern america, for most young black males, there is no specific cultural orientation to the details of being a father.
fatherhood, like sex, has two aspects: biological and cultural (which has both the group dynamic and the individual choice dynamic). the blood relationship of parent to child is fixed at conception and exists forever. the cultural relationship is dynamic and dependent on how people act. so then, the question is: what does a father do?
5.
by his actions, my daddy impressed on me the importance of taking care of your family. for him that meant more than wife and children. that meant caring for my grandfather in his elderly years, for my aunts, helping people in the neighborhood, and actively supporting the then developing civil rights movement. fatherhood was both a responsibility in the home and in the community.
he never gave me or my brothers a specific lecture on how to be a father. he never bought us a book that told the story. and he wasn't too keen on church, even though his father was a jack-leg (or itinerant) preacher, and my grandfather on my mother's side was a pastor who had a church in the country and a church in the city. so we learned by watching and by following his directions.
he made his sons clean house, tend the garden, mown the lawn, pick up trash and keep the neighborhood clean. seems like we were responsible for the whole block where we grew up. whatever we had, we had to share with others. he always gave people rides—we lived a long way from the bus stop and when we were driving home in the evening he would never fail to offer a ride to neighborhood people walking home from the bus stop.
my kids grew up watching me. and their uncles and the members of our pan afrikan nationalist organization. we had our own school and educated our children up through fourth grade. did you ever think that maybe early childhood education was a parent's responsibility?
but it's a different world today, a very different world. and the examples of fatherhood are fewer and fewer, and further and further apart. especially if we look at the issue of the larger community, one think is clear: the majority of young black children are reared by their mothers and seldom, if ever, see their fathers.
whether we are conscious of it or not, life long, monogamous marriages are relatively rare among our people today. our social expectations and behaviors are changing. and driven by the images around us in popular culture which shape and influence us everyday, most of us change with the times but never really think about changing the way things are.
have you ever thought about being a father? what it would mean specifically—that is, what you would have to do to be a father and whether that is what you want to do at this point in your life?
i know i didn't consciously think about it before my wife and i had children. and that's my point: if we don't consciously think about doing something, we will unconsciously do it. if we unconsciously father children, when it comes to actively being a father to our child we will fall back on the social examples we have. if we have no examples...
6.
you ever tried with all your heart to do something and couldn't do it? you ever really, really worked hard to achieve something and just couldn't get it? and then after awhile, you decide, well maybe i can do without it, maybe i didn't need it anyway?
some of us think we can do without fathers. some of us think maybe we don't need fathers anyway. i came up ok, and i didn't have a dad around. some of us try to fool ourselves.
we are not ok without fathers. our communities are in a shambles. chemical dependence among our people is an all time high—whether you are talking about cigarettes, alcohol, over the counter medications, prescribed drugs, or so-called "illegal" drugs, it's all a form of chemical dependence.
although i don't buy into the "young black male is an endangered species" syndrome in the sense of raw survival, i do believe we are a people in crisis. the shrinking number of black fathers is but one symptom of that crisis.
it is sometimes tempting to wallow in the mud of self-pity and failure. you know, woe-is-me, look how they done/are doing us wrong! but while our condition may not be our fault, getting out of the sad shape we are in is our responsibility. it is on us to change the way things are.
there is no mystery to breaking the cycle of fatherlessness.
if we want fathers in our communities, we have to work at it like we work at anything else we really want to achieve. the first step, however, is an individual choice: do i really want to be a father?
brother, can we color you father?
and don't tell us your answer. show us your answer by the way you relate to your child and to the mother of your child, and to all the rest of the people in your community.
—kalamu ya salaam