Dispelling the myths about black fathers

Aaron Paxton Arnold, an entrepreneur and lifestyle consultant, is the founder of MusicIsMyBusiness.  The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN)In America, the perception is that the black father doesn't exist. Negative stereotypes of black men persist, and people on the right blame the victim in cases like those of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and Michael Brown.

But if we look at the ground level, black fathers are there all around us. On the streets and in hip-hop culture, "the Block" is celebrated and used to describe a neighborhood. Black men, young and old, take pride in their hood. If you come to my block you will see black fathers and husbands celebrating with their wives and spending quality time with their children.

A couple of years ago when I was outside my home playing with my daughter, some of my fellow African-American male neighbors were also outside playing with their kids. It was almost a surreal moment as I begin to think that we were all young black men in our 30s, married, homeowners and taking care of our children.

Over the years, those commonalities created a brotherhood and bond between us that will last forever. It helps to dispel the myths and negative statements that are often expressed in and out of our community, like "there are no good black men," "black men don't take care of their kids," or "black men abandon their families."

Yet, before my very eyes, I was looking at this amazing image -- young black men, with their kids, being playful nurturing fathers. One time, I took my daughter to a daddy-daughter event and again was inspired to see the abundance of young black men and their daughters having the best time. I realized that while we still have problems in our communities, there have for decades been black men who have been good men, good husbands and of course good fathers.

However, this positive picture is rarely shown. It's an oversight that appears to prevent the constructive narrative from bringing changes to our communities. What we have is an institutionalized racism, which counters those images with negativity and perpetuates an idea that African-American men are no good, especially as fathers.

Now, there is some truth to the stereotypes. An article in the New York Times entitled "1.5 million black men missing" describes the disproportionate number of black men missing from everyday life versus their black female counterparts. Whether it's due to early deaths, incarceration, homicide, heart disease or accidents, black men grapple with issues that result in more single-parent families. But there has to be another narrative countering this by showing the positive picture.

If we look at some statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), we learn that:

* Children under the age 5: Black Fathers prepared and/or ate meals more with their children vs their white and Hispanic counterparts

* Children 5-18: Black Fathers took children to and from activities daily more compared to their white and Hispanic counterparts

* Children 5-18: Black Fathers also helped their kids with homework more than their white and Hispanic counterparts

Positive energy begets positive results. And if positive trends like this can help dispel the myths of black fathers as irresponsible, then young African-Americans will know (whether they have a father in their life or not) that they can prove the myth wrong.

If this positive narrative is shown more, maybe and just maybe, those outside (and within) the African-American community will look at black men as human beings and not as rabble-rousers or criminals. Maybe the police, retail establishments, corporate America and our judicial system will then stop racially profiling black men.

It sounds naive and far-fetched but one thing is for sure: if we don't show and share positive stories about black fathers, then the ugliness of institutional racism will prevail.

America and the world knows for too long the struggles plaguing African-Americans. Black men are associated with drugs, prison incarceration and gun violence. It's time for America to learn about the other side of African American men -- and it starts with telling and celebrating the amazing stories of all the great black fathers in our communities.

Sketchims attention mus' be drawn to this here as he is a major detractor of black fathers..

in Toronto there is a problem with the black family.  I don't have the ins and outs of it...that would need a proper study

but from what I see there are a great deal of black women in TO who have learned to live off the system.  they have children, drive the father away and go to the government to get, housing and guaranteed income and welfare and mothers allowance and all of that stuff.

there are no fathers in those situations and they contribute greatly to the delinquent problem that black youth appear to represent in TO...the last time I looked.  and that has been some years now.  I imagine there has been improvement in the meantime

there is a hell of an hostile relationship between black men and women in TO. most black men appear to be with white women.  relationships with white women present their own set of problems for black men I understand.  but the impression is that there are compensatory benefits with white women, not to be had with and from black women

however black men appear to be where their families are at

Roughly 67 percent of black children in the US are in a single-parent family.

Roughly 53 of Native American children in the US are in a single-parent family.

Roughly 42 percent of Latino children in the US are in a single-parent family.

Roughly 25 percent of white children in the US are in a single-parent family.

The US is a young country. As a nation becomes more "advanced", marriage across all races starts to equalise, then starts to go down while single parenting goes up. In the UK for example, 1 out of 5 children are in a single-parent family. In Japan it's even worse; the Japanese can't be bothered to marry, have sex, kids or even kiss.

Remember, the nuclear family itself is a relatively new idea, a product of the Church and the Industrial Revolution. As economic and social factors change, family patterns change and what becomes the "norm" changes too.

I think in the future, we will all be depressed lesbian single moms with robot sex toys, viritual kids and a Tinder account full of sexually ambiguous transvestites.

how 'young is america really.....

it began in europe, a transfer really.  america is as old as europe..first Britain and the French..then all the rest contributed.

america may have at first attempt to resist the Jewish banking enslavement of old europe...but I don't think they  tried to resist much more of old europe but welcomed it...they brought it with them in all european cultural/religious variants and economic mainstream.

americans from europe wanted it all for themselves so they refused to pay taxes to the king..revolted, grew powerful and came to own the king(queen) himself.

to look at trends with full spectrum historical perspective is the right way I guess.  but the historical perspective from  experience teaches us not to trust  the european derived american perspective period..no expression of it at all..including the figures in studies.  these are usually manipulated to say what the establish way wants to imposed on people.  they are not generally true

a good example are population figures.  ever since I was a kid the black population figures of the USA have been the same..12%.  in the time I have been alive the american population has increased from say 190 to 320 million people...and the black % has remained the same.  how in the hell can that be?  such stats can correspond to no evolutionary reality.  it must change, either down or up by at least some small margin.

but I used to visit the USA often...and one of the things I tried to do was to roughly asses the population by what I would see in New York State...Buffalo to Brooklyn.  I would be in Brooklyn for days and never saw a white person.  I drove through New York State from east to west and the amount of Black people I saw was stunning..especially in the big towns...Utica, Bighampton, Rochester, Albany, Buffalo.  everywhere..not a little but a lot..huge numbers, teeming numbers.

then again you hear that by such a such a time..actually now people of colour outnumber whites in the states..at least some part of it and by such a time it will be america as a whole.

but if that is so the numbers do not add up.  if Black people are 12% and Latinos are roughly equal to black numbers 12%..and if we add Indo and Chinese and others who are nowhere near the black demography then even if we stretch it we are talking 35% of the american population..nowhere near parity

the only way that parity they talk about can be real is if black numbers in the USA is triple what is admitted...somewhere between 35-40% of america's 320 millions. that is what I believe is the actual number of  black people in the USA

the question is who is counting....

this is what I mean to dispel by all of that.  I don't believe that figure.

In fact I don't believe all of those figures.

the question is..who is doing the counting

Those numbers are from the US Census Bureau. I don't know if they're trustworthy or not.

America is pretty young. The first Americans - the Native Indians - didn't have "nuclear families". They had looser, more extended families. Then the Europeans arrive and bring the "ideal" of the Good, Christian, Nuclear Family, which everyone aspired too. Then the Africans came.

Here's disturbing footage from a 1971 satirical masterpiece/exploitation film:



In slavery times, there were few nuclear family structures among field-hands, and adults and their children and "mates" were often seperated, sold-off, or selectively bred as dispassionately as we breed dogs or cattle today. Marriage for slaves was also illegal and slaves had no legal rights to their kids. It's only around about 1870 that you had blacks legally getting married and forming modern nuclear families. They became sharecroppers and black families tended to work together (historically, the height of black marriage was also the height of black land ownership). As blacks moved from agriculture to manufacturing and service jobs from the 1930s onwards, however, those feeble bonds start breaking down, for whatever reasons.

Nowadays, you need both parents working just to earn enough cash to survive. A nation full of non-breeding (ie Japan), or baby crazy (US Latinos/Blacks), welfare sucking, unmarried folk too broke to purchase anything is probably a good thing in the long term. Like taking a kind of weird-ass monkey wrench to the system.

yes..well the historical perspective can take us all the way back to bacterial mutation that led to unicellular, multi-cellular, amphibian, Mammal  etc...through hunter gathers,nomads, diggers of roots and makers of flints, group, tribe, clan..matrilineal society and female promiscuity with avuncular inheritance etc.

no marriage and nuclear family  then. 

you could tell who a child's mother was but not who the father was. so the uncle gave his goods on passing to his sisters child whom he knew was indeed her child.  he could tell who his sister was through his mother. indeed he could quite well have been her father too, save society knew and looked for the mother only at the time

he could not tell his own children because of the so called promiscuity. but it was culture under the then dominant female, which culture was overthrown or revolutionized by the rise of the father, under the drive of technological advance, the greatest social destabilizing force

the last shall be first and the first last.  from dominant the female went to dominated and chastity belts.. and all manner of sexual circumscription, cultural and mechanical, to ensure the father knew who is children were.  the woman complied on pain of death..not least by stoning for adultery.

for the same reason the fatherhood established the incest principle, which also seems to have other insistent drivers like and end to war by facilitating external marriage for the binding of groups and unitary expansion/social expansion

the nuclear family is indeed a product of the rise of the fatherhood, organized christian religion and capitalism.. conditions you described.. and it will not last much longer. 

the nuclear family  is already under full assault by the manipulators of society,  the same forces who evolved it.  they are bent on keeping capitalism in place..or themselves on top as the dominant social class... and the nuclear family no longer fits this purpose. much more depravity, like legal incest marriage etc., is coming from that source, if they have the time 

but the nuclear family may die faster if the revolution comes I suspect. back to community forms of life on this high technological stage, the old style extended family may re-emerge and be strengthened.  it would be a time to take our relationship with nature as basic, focus on knowing and understanding nature and how we must live in nature to ensure we see as many more days as we can as a species

IF the Black male has now evolved into a 1 woman Father rather that MULTIPLE women Fathers.

then the definition of Confusion as Fathers day in Black communities is now Obsolete  !!


kudos to the black male for sacrificing their age old practice of  impregnating multiple females~~

I like to look at the Caribbean stats rather than North America.

Jamaica is a hot bed for this plenty pickney with multiple women scenario !

In breeding among blacks is also common in the Islands....

as I said before yuh live in the wrong place.  yuh ever hear about Kentucky and Alabama ::confused::

try deh!  you wud be right at home :-[

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