Color Complex or Black lies-White Lies

BlogSkins.com Point of Focus Noipo.org Templates 4 Free Commentary: We Can’t Blame White Folks for Our Missing Fathers and Unknown Granddads Date: Wednesday, July 13, 2005 By: Gregory Kane, BlackAmericaWeb.com Where are the granddads? Chapter Four of Four When I went to give a Black History Month speech at a Baltimore middle school a few years ago, I tried to teach the students that black history isn’t just something learned in books, but something that exists right in their families. Big mistake. In a classroom full of 20 to 30 students, all black, I asked for names of parents. Then I asked for names of grandparents. Most students could name only one parent. That was usually the mother. A few could name their mothers and their grandmothers. One may have known a great-grandmother’s name. Not one knew the name of either a maternal or paternal grandfather. How did black folks get in this pathetic state in 21st century America? Our ancestors survived the Middle Passage (referred to more correctly by some black folks as “the Bitter Passage”), slavery, peonage, prison farms, state-sponsored domestic terrorism, lynching and Jim Crow. We came through all of that, in the early to mid-20th century, with black kids who had fathers in the home and who knew what their grandfathers’ names were. It’d be nice if we could trot out the convenient white villain to blame for absent daddies and unknown granddaddies. For at least the past 40 years, the convenient white villain has been good for us. We blame him -- and it’s usually a him, and he’s usually conservative or Republican -- whenever there’s some unsavory business about black folks we don’t want to account for ourselves. Too many black men in prison? That’s the fault of a white racist criminal justice system. The educational achievement gap that has whites graduating high school with a 12th grade education while blacks graduate with an 8th grade education? That’s because those mean old white folks don’t give enough money to black schools. The racial disparity in school discipline that sees black kids punished more than white ones? Our reliable convenient white villain is responsible for that. Black kids growing up without a daddy around? Black children looking completely baffled when asked to name their grandfathers? Well, white folks have done a lot to us. But they didn’t do this. Three weeks ago, readers of this column learned the fate of Anne Dozier’s three sons. All were fatally shot in Baltimore before their 20th birthdays. Not one daddy was around to remove his son from harm’s way. Apparently, no grandfathers were around either. While BlackAmericaWeb.com readers have been perusing my past three columns about what happens when black daddies fail their children, a 13-year-old Baltimore boy was charged with murder after he shot a 23-year-old man to death in a neighborhood not far from where Dozier’s sons lived. The boy’s mother, a 37-year-old cashier, told local news reporters she had a hard time handling her son after his father died. The boy had a string of arrests dating back two years on charges ranging from assault to drug dealing. We can’t fault that boy’s daddy on this one. The guy’s dead, after all. Perhaps a granddaddy could have stepped up. But news reports say the boy has an 18-year-old brother. They didn’t live with the mother, who has a third son, age 6, who lives with her. The two older boys live with -- you guessed it -- their grandmother. This tale is eerily reminiscent of what happened to Dozier’s sons. Dozier had five children by five different men. The 13-year-old’s mother has three sons by three different men. There was no daddy or even a father figure involved in the life of son number two. He regularly broke his curfew, skipped school, hung out with friends his mother admits she didn’t know from Adam and ran up a rap sheet. Now he stands accused of murder. The boy quite possibly bought into the “50 Cent” syndrome too common among black youth. Curtis Jackson, whose father failed him as surely as the fathers of the boys mentioned in these columns failed them, is a former drug dealer-turned-rap star who’s a legend because he was shot nine times. Sling some drugs? No big deal. Get shot nine times? No problem? Shoot somebody nine times? That’s just being a soldier. Whatever the faults of that 13-year-old murder suspect’s mother, she didn’t fail her son. We did Womonology says: Check out my favorite book list...BLACK LIES/WHITE LIES read it for yourself....I dare you Peace