By Dayvon Love
It is frustrating that we live in a world where the personal lives of elected officials and public figures take up so much space in the news media. Often Americans are groomed to make the mistake of reducing politics and the contestation for power to personality contests. Unfortunately, we aren’t going to change that dynamic any time soon, but it doesn’t make the Baltimore Sun editorial board’s Aug. 12 piece on Mayor Brandon Scott’s marriage any less ridiculous.
Even though it claims to take a positive tone, it is both condescending to Mayor Scott and to Black people in general. Mayor Scott can handle himself in addressing, to the extent he desires, the dynamic of condescension to him. But I will address the way that this piece is condescending to Black people and perpetuates racist stigmas of inherent Black inferiority.
A 2018 study in the Social Science Quarterly by Ellerbe, Jones and Carlson, titled “Race/Ethnic Differences in Non-Resident Fathers’ Involvement after a Non-Marital Birth,” found that Black fathers “shared responsibilities more frequently and displayed more effective co‐parenting than Hispanic and White fathers.”
Additionally, a 2013 CDC study found that “Black fathers (70 percent) were most likely to have bathed, dressed, diapered or helped their children use the toilet every day compared with White (60 percent) and Hispanic fathers (45 percent).”
Black fathers were also found to be more likely to help their children with homework and take them to and from activities. This is just a small bit of the information that exists about how present Black men are in their families. This is important social scientific data that refutes a core claim in the piece that “fathers are not so involved with their children.”
Robert B. Hill wrote in 1972 about the strength of Black families. He outlines five of those strengths based off of his sociological study of Black families. He noted that Black families have the following:
-Strong kinship bonds
-Strong work orientation
-Adaptability of family roles
-Strong achievement orientation
-Strong religious orientation
Focusing particularly on the point regarding the adaptability of family roles, Black families have historically shown up for each other in ways that are consistent with the findings of the studies mentioned previously that Black men are more active in the life of their children than any other racial group.
When people discuss the notion of missing Black fathers, it is often framed as a circumstance where Black men are choosing not to be present. But the data indicates otherwise.
There are 88 Black men for every 100 Black women, compared to 97 White men for every 100 White women, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This means that there are significantly less men available to our community than in the White community. The diminished availability is the result of mass incarceration wherein Black men are locked out of legitimate means of economic mobility and entered illicit markets that track them into the criminal justice system and make them susceptible to violent encounters with other Black men who are competing in the same unregulated and dangerous illegal activities.
The challenges that emerge from an absence of Black fathers is not primarily an issue of Black fathers choosing not to be fathers to their children. There are certainly Black men who choose not to be in their child’s life, just like there are men of other racial groups that make the same bad choices. But those individual stories do not negate the reality that while Black men are fighting hard to support their families, they are being ripped away from their families by systems that have been weaponized to undermine the humanity of Black people.
The societal pain that emerges from lacking meaningful economic opportunity, societal propaganda that represents Black people as inherently criminal, blight and disinvestment in Black communities, and many other aspects of the condition that Black people are in, produces so much pain and financial challenges that are obscured in the Baltimore Sun editorial. Even though the Sun editorial mentions issues like poverty and housing, it frames those issues as if they are incidental. The reality is that those challenges exist as a result of policies, norms and institutional practices (i.e. redlining, mass incarceration, neoliberal economic policies) that make up some of the organs of the system of White supremacy that organizes every aspect of civil society.
The proper narrative is that– in spite of the tremendous challenges that Black people face–Black fathers are showing up for Black children. Even though there are still many challenges that Black youth face, and that there is more that can be done by Black men to show up for our community, Black men should be an example to the White community about how to persevere through societal assaults to show up for our children at higher rates than them. Those who are interested in supporting Black men who face these challenges should focus on trying to stop the propaganda that is pushing policies like sentence enhancements for gun crimes, prosecuting quality of life crimes, and support organizations like the Baltimore Rites of Passage Initiative, Black Men’s Xchange and many other organizations that are led by Black men who are looking to step up in the lives of Black children.
Pieces like the Baltimore Sun editorial are another example of the racist propaganda David Smith, executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcasting, is using his wealth to advance a narrative about Baltimore that is hopelessly pathological.
Given the pervasiveness of David Smith and Sinclair Broadcasting’s media narratives, it is concerning that they will condition our consciousness to be incapable of believing the good things that Black people are doing in Baltimore.
It seems that unless Baltimore is perfect, it will be presented in the media as eternally doomed. My hope is that we can talk about our challenges, while at the same time being able to see the solutions to these challenges in the people that David Smith and Sinclair Broadcasting seem to denigrate every day.
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