Friday, January 04, 2013

We, of the fatherless tribe

The Washington Times ran a story a few weeks ago on the continuing increase in fatherless families in the U.S.

The increase has hit all races, but it's worse amongst inner city black families. In Washington, for instance, 85% of white families are headed by two parents compared to only 25% of black families.

A black woman named Ashley has written a post on this topic titled "We, of the fatherless tribe". It has this opening:
“We, of the fatherless tribe love men differently.”

That one line of Gina Loring’s poem, “You Move Me” strikes me every time I hear it because as a young Black woman it rings so heart-wrenchingly true.

Some of us have other shadows of fathers who help but they can never quite be the “Daddy” that we silently envy in the lives of other Black girls. And those other Black girls seem so oblivious, don’t they? So unaware of the pot of gold they’re holding. In having a protective figure. Someone to validate them and instill self-worth. A rule-setter and protector. It’s not the norm anymore. And here we are. Trying to figure out ourselves...We struggle with insecurities before we even know what the word means.
 
I find this interesting as it's written by a woman who seems fairly left-wing, albeit Christian, in her views. And yet, having experienced fatherlessness herself, she sees it as something distinct and valuable, as something that is not the same as having a mother. A father, she writes, is a protective figure, who has the power to bring a level of security and self-worth to a girl's life.

She goes on, too, to write about the effect that feeling abandoned had on her future relationships with men: at first, a rushing into relationships to feel wanted or needed; then a "calloused" closing off to men, to avoid the hurt of feeling abandoned again.

But what's to be done? Ashley has, at least, taken one positive step. And that's to reject the current trend to define parenthood simply as the unisex physical care of children. Under this definition an "involved father" is one who takes over the physical care of children. It's not that fathers don't or can't do some of this, but it's not something that is distinctively paternal.

In other words, if you define parenthood as the unisex physical care of children, then that means that fathers aren't a necessary part of family life as they don't contribute anything distinctive as fathers. And that then gives the green light both for women to push men out of the family and for men to walk away.

23 comments:

  1. "And that then gives the green light both for women to push men out of the family and for men to walk away." Really good point there - feminists have to take some of the responsibility for fathers abandoning their families when they do so much to devalue a man’s role. Not that any father who walks away from his children is any less of a deadbeat because of this.

    Similarly, the physical or sexual abuse of women is rooted to some extent in the feminist devaluing of the nuclear family. What other institution can properly teach respect for women? If a mother does her job properly in loving and affirming the child, the child respects himself and respects women because of the love and respect he has for the first woman in his life.

    It’s not just black American families suffering from missing fathers either – according to a survey in Britain, the 10th most popular Christmas wish for children is a father! Wow!

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  2. I think the figures for single motherhood in the USA by race is the following:

    70% of all Black families are headed by a single mother.

    50% of all Hispanic families are headed by a single mother.

    20-25% of all White families are headed by a single mother.

    10-15% of all Asian families are headed by a single mother.

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  3. My last GF was black. So few of their peers had fathers they don't even expect to start two parent families.

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  4. Yes, yes, sad and all that. Now how do we insulate ourselves from the charge that the black fathers are in absentia because of an institutionalised racist society? And a patriarchal one at that.

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  5. @ ThingY said...

    It has nothing to do with us...

    except of course that blacks are even included in our societies.

    Guilt by association. Blacks are the ultimate mooches. Guilt is a powerful tool for people that like to abuse someones generosity.

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  6. Anon@ 06:03

    Untrue. They exist in the societies we have created and like it or not we bear the brunt of their shortcomings. So how do we insulate ourselves from shouldering this burden, not of our own making? Number one is as you have noted is to feel no guilt, which is easy for non should be felt.

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  7. Plato Sandilands: It’s not just black American families suffering from missing fathers either – according to a survey in Britain, the 10th most popular Christmas wish for children is a father! Wow!
    -
    Ouch!

    Think how much pain that represents.

    Almost all needless, the result of adults acting along lines suggested by feminism and autonomy theory, but contrary to nature, religion and national tradition.

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  8. ThingY: Yes, yes, sad and all that. Now how do we insulate ourselves from the charge that the black fathers are in absentia because of an institutionalised racist society? And a patriarchal one at that.
    -
    You don't. Instead you counter-attack, by pointing out that the "anti-racist" finger-pointers are anti-white.

    You can't avoid being charged with racism if you are white. That's because "racist" basically means "white".

    U. Delaware

    “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”

    That means that whites count as racist, and non-whites do not.

    That means that the mandatory policy in all white nations to get rid of "racism" is the same thing as a policy to get rid of whites.

    That's not just theory. Chronic mass immigration into all white countries and forced integration has the implication that eventually there will be no whites. In other words, it's genocide.

    So the finger-pointing "anti-racists" are pro-genocide.

    What's more, they are lying about "privilege," as the data on marriage illustrate. There is a racial hierarchy developing in formerly white but increasingly "multicultural" (read: non-white) countries. Even if you don't count Jews (who are well above whites in intelligence and just about every measure of social success) as a separate group, whites are not at the top of it; Asians are.

    Since you can't immunize yourself against the bogus charge of "racism" the best thing you can do is make yourself an active, counter-attacking target, by referring to these truths.

    This kind of aggressiveness has worked for the left. In his book Rules For Radicals Saul Alinsky recounted or really boasted that he had been threatened with an invitation to testify to the American federal legislature. He replied that they were welcome to invite him, but then he wouldn't shut up; he would name names and be delighted to say his piece. They never called him.

    If this aggressive attitude worked well for a villain who dedicated his book to Lucifer, why shouldn't we use such boldness in a much better cause?

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  9. So how do we insulate ourselves from shouldering this burden

    I love how Liberals use the term we as pointed out by Auster.

    Me personally i'm not doing anything. You can knock yourself out with your pet hobby of cutting yourself over blacks.
    Not me or anyone else.

    The answer is we insulate ourselves. We do not associate with blacks or liberals such as yourself that shackle us to themselves.

    If you believe Whites are burdened to take care of blacks that is "A whites mans burden" That is white supremacy. That is what Liberalism is all about.

    White Supremacy. As happened in the past White supremacy nearly destroyed the world. Liberalism is attempting just that.
    The destruction of the west by saying liberal whites are the supreme moral saviors(dictators) of all the third world races and "minorities"

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  10. "In other words, if you define parenthood as the unisex physical care of children, then that means that fathers aren't a necessary part of family life as they don't contribute anything distinctive as fathers. And that then gives the green light both for women to push men out of the family and for men to walk away. "

    And this then leads to liberals forcing gay "marriage" using the statistics that their feminist cronies brought about (50% of marriages blah blah blah) and by trying to push how there are 0 differences between men and women.

    This is one more reason to fight against gay "marriage" simply because feminists and liberals have been slowly destroying marriage as they see it as an ancient relic of past patriarchy and oppression.

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  11. The Gawker has a piece about racist canines:
    http://gawker.com/5972557/why-are-dogs-racist-canine-experts-speak

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  12. SWPL White Liberals and Asians will blame this on the evil bad White people (e.g. White conservatives) for all of the ills befalling Hispanics and Blacks in the USA (e.g. poverty, crime, violence, family dysfunction, bad school scores).

    These good for nothing White liberals do not live near most Blacks and Hispanics trust me. They are insulated in certain regions of America due to expensive housing prices/expensive private schools/lots of bodyguards and security and so don't know how most Blacks and Hispanics are. They think that most Blacks and Hispanics are scientists, doctors, lawyers or whatever law-abiding citizen according to fictionalized images of them on TV and the Internet.

    SWPL Whites plus Asians also only see token Blacks/Hispanics (think Barack Obama/Michelle Obama) and thereby think that most NAMs are like him. They are not.

    In reality most blacks are like Obama's son (by his own admission): thuggish Trayvon Martin.

    White/Asian liberals will just keep using the exception to the rule and forget general trends. That's what they always do.

    They are aslo filled with hatred for "backward rural redneck White conservatives who cling to their guns and religion" in the USA.

    Plus most of them are now currently immigrating to the American big cities and shipping dysfunctional/violent Hispanics and Blacks to the suburbs (no thanks to the expensive prices of big cities which keeps most NAMs out).

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  13. Mark, you've presented a thoughtful post.

    I am a black American woman who grew up with my father (a widower), and no mother even as an infant until father remarried when I was 10. I had my own set of issues clearly, but I was blessed with the strong guidance and protection of my father.

    When I came of age I was a minority having a father, but not an anomaly. By the time I started college, I was quite rare.

    In fact my husband, who also grew up in a two parent home, said one of the things that struck him about me was that I had a father. He'd dated lots of girls and none of them had fathers. The difference apparently was striking.

    We can go on about how dysfunctional black culture is, and I agree that it is. We can talk about whose burden it is or isn't. I for one put the blame for the familial breakdown solely on the shoulders of the black community. No one owes us anything.

    That said, it is rather foolish to ignore the policies in this country that flourished in the 60's and 70's. Policies that subsidized and incentivized illegitimacy while discouraging marriage.

    Enter the 90's and you have millions of black single mothers profiting from their "double minority" status, getting education grants, jobs, and opportunities that our men were not getting.

    The gap between black men and black women keeps getting wider, but the sex continues and the resulting (future delinquent) children keep being born, although the reality is that the black birth rate is plummeting as quickly as the white birth rate. You don't hear much about that 'round these parts.

    As Americans, we've screwed up- royally. Our family lives in a very white subdivision and there have been a few teenaged pregnancies here, and not on the part of my daughters, who have their fathers. These are girls from broken homes.

    If we keep on this trajectory, we will soon see a closing of the gap between races when it comes to OOW births.

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  14. Elspeth,

    I agree that the problem is caused in part by state subsidies.

    You can see that also in white communities, for instance, in the U.K where young women apparently get a council flat if they become single mothers. The path to independence is no longer to find the right sort of man to marry, but to have a baby on your own.

    I agree too that whites shouldn't be too complacent about the larger social trends. There's an interesting graph here (about three quarters of the way down the page), which shows the rate of out of wedlock births for each race from the 1930s to today.

    It shows that the rate in 1940 was low for blacks (15%) and almost non-existent for whites. But the rate took off in the 1960s for all races (the article blames Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty).

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  15. "the article blames Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty)."

    It wouldn't be hard to blame LBJ's war on hard work, why bother working hard when you can have all the sex you want and not worry about whether or not you'll have a place to sleep at night or food on the table.

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  16. @ Daybreaker

    I am familiar with the mantra of anti-racist = anti-white. I haven't had recourse too often to it, not in any such explicit term but the message is made clear. Living in Australia the rot is just starting to set in and I am interested in the ideological underpinnings behind the destruction (eg equality and its roots in secular christianity, Robert/David Manne etc).

    My aggressive stance is that I admit no guilt, no shame for my genetic and cultural heritage and quite often in an uncouth and vituperative manner (for those recidivists who only understand such interaction).

    @ Anonymous 12:27 5th

    So I ask how can we insulate ourselves from shouldering the burden which you take as a Liberal (read progressive) statement and then you reply that we insulate ourselves. I think you need to read with a more critical eye.

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  17. @ThingY

    It's exactly what i'm doing. Should I employ critical thinking (tm)?

    Because I suspect you are a yet another Liberal troll. I'm not going to respond further to your baiting.

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  18. @ Anonymous

    Suspect away. However I must say that the feckless manner in which you jump to the charge does nothing for unity of cause.

    @ Elizabeth Smith

    This brings to mind a piece I read about white elites preferring non-English speaking immigrant labor for their homes because the sight of someone who looks and sounds like them but is different in almost every other manner (dress, topics of conversation, music etc.) is unbearable to them.

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  19. @ ThingY said...

    You do nothing for our cause by suggesting Whites take an aggressive stance.

    So they are liable to incur loss of employment, legal persecution or worse.

    The first thing Whites should do is form their own new institutions free from the current liberal status quo.
    Not engage in matching the belligerent attitude of blacks with equal or greater force.

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  20. @ Anonymous

    I have said to feel no guilt over that which the left/establishment/cathedral etc. tries to shame us with. My response about my own aggressive stance was in response to Daybreaker's comments. I do use nous and tact and am aware of the boundaries in each situation. I don't blithely advocate throwing away careers and livelihoods. However it is good for others to see that there are those who will take a strong stand and risk where they will not.

    Pray tell, how do you suggest we form these institutions when the machinery needed to build them and defend them have been hijacked and used to destroy and outlaw them? I ask earnestly, I make no pretensions of having answers to few of the problems besieging us let alone all.

    Lastly, if I assume correctly that you are in the US, there are contextual differences in what you and I face. Just as a virus mutates as it transmits across the world to form different strains, so there are differences in the challenges that face us. I ask you to keep that in mind, as I will.

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  21. @ThingY

    No. I'm Australian.
    Various Ethnic groups have success forming impenetrable ethnic communities. It is not impossible.

    Like Mark has suggested (I could not be 100% certain this is his idea)but the first step is the formation of meeting groups. Then the process of buying housing in a particular highly traditional most likely rural or semi rural area.

    Now my own ideas is that the formation should be around privately created "traditionalists" schools. Private Australian history schools that teach traditional Australian history(the history I was personally never taught adequately) as the core subject with the rest of the subjects being highly practical subjects and classical arts.
    This would give kids the chance to have highly marketable skills (again an opportunity I was never given).

    Formation of a community around the schools would be the objective.

    I've observed some countries and ethnicity practice this in person.
    Like the Finns. All extremely qualified (in fact the most qualified in Europe at least).
    I'm not an expert but I have theorized they do this so their people have the opportunity to go overseas and work even if there is not work in their own country. Then effectively they can come back home to start families.

    Finland is also being savaged by radical liberalism. Finns will probably be non-existent next century considering their tiny population.
    They are both a good example of what to do and what not to do.

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  22. This brings to mind a piece I read about white elites preferring non-English speaking immigrant labor for their homes because the sight of someone who looks and sounds like them but is different in almost every other manner (dress, topics of conversation, music etc.) is unbearable to them.

    It has to do with "downward class mobility" according to another piece. The lower class white is an obvious sign of an intrinsic fear for the white elite that he may become poorer in the future and his descendants may turn out like him.

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  23. @Elizabeth.

    That is because of Europeans long and tumultuous history (as well as the study of other peoples history).
    That ruling classes get overthrown by peasantry continuously (divided often by ethnic lines)
    The "Elite" then need to bring in mercenaries to bully and harass the native peasantry.

    Sound familiar?

    Also many whites have a deviant rebellious attitude that they will never become slaves. This is possibly a distant memory (through our oral and written history) of when we were slaves or a rejection of slavery itself.

    I know I feel this way. Being servant is slavery to me.

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