Boys Town 2007

My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD;

neither be weary of his correction:

For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth;

even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.

Proverbs 3:11-12

As more and more of our young men fall prey to violence and our young women continue to have children outside the covenant of God, we must begin to look at some radical ideas to change the direction we are headed. What I am about to propose will be seen by many as controversial and maybe inhumane, but I believe it will help to bring our people back to their rightful place as strong men and women of God.

As the rates of Black on Black homicides increase annually and murder has become the leading cause of death for our young Black men, these rates appear to correspond to the rise in single mother households. This is not an indictment against single mothers, it is an indictment against the men who are willing to create life, but do nothing to sustain that life once it is born. Despite everyone’s calm demeanor and political correctness we are in a crisis that demands our immediate attention and our action.

What I propose is that we create residences for our Black male children born to single mothers staffed by Black male educators and social scientist. These would be homes that they would reside in once they reached an age where they could be separated from their mothers. They would remain there for possibly 10 months out of the year being educated, prepared, and trained in what it takes to be a successful Black man. They would be given a regular scholastic curriculum bolstered with history of our people and continent. They would be separated from their mothers and from girls of the same age. I guarantee if we had the courage and the will to do this, in one generation we could turn the fortunes of our people around; in two we would be the most successful minorities in this country.

This all seems so drastic; why do we need to resort to these measures?

In regard to the subtitle of the book, single motherhood is what hurts insofar as it often deprives children of important economic, parental, and community resources. Most single-mother families have low incomes or, following a divorce or separation, experience sudden drops in income. According to McLanahan and Sandefur, low incomes and sudden drops in income are the most important reasons that children in single-mother families fare worse than other children. Indeed, these two account for about half of the disadvantage in high school graduation, and somewhat less of the disadvantage in other outcomes.

Another factor behind the disadvantages faced by children in single-mother families is inadequate attention and guidance from the mother. Children need more than just economic security to thrive; they require parents who have the time to help them with their homework, read to them, and listen to how their day went in school. They also need parents who can supervise their activities outside of school. One parent alone does not have the time to do these things, whereas two parents working together often do.

Finally, children who live in single-parent families lack the community resources that other children frequently have. They are more likely to live in disadvantaged neighborhoods and to associate with peers who have negative attitudes toward school. They are also more likely to change residences, which disrupts their lives even further, since it usually means going to a new school and losing contact with old friends.[1]

The issues outlined in the above quote are all issues that have led to our no longer being competitive in education, invention, and science. It isn’t that single mothers are not trying to be good parents; it is just that they have the deck stacked against them going in. Most have to work for minimum or low wages; they have to work long hours and shifts that are not conducive to raising children. It is not that single mothers do not love their sons, but we are loving them to death right now. Maybe it is time to discuss alternatives to what we have been doing in the past and what we want to accomplish in the future. Do we want to continue down the path we are on condemning our children to a future of poverty and the cycle of lawlessness? Aren’t our children worth more than that?

I have deliberately not included statics supporting or refuting the benefits of same sex schooling, I have learned that no matter what numbers I pull out, opponents can pull out an equal number disputing my numbers. But this isn’t about numbers; this is about the things our young men need that don’t appear on any sheet of paper or scholastic test. Our young men more than anything need to learn how to be men and they will not learn it from our women. No other culture expects their young men to be trained by women in how to be men. We are the only ones in the world who are doing this.

The time has come to put emotionalism and sentimentality away and think about for a change what is best for our children. It is a selfish thing to have kids you know you can’t support, to sentence them to a lifetime of struggle just to survive. God have mercy on us…

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[1] http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/textver/16.2.a/impact.txt

Single Mothers Raising Men?

Today’s post will generate a lot of controversy but it is discussion that I think is way overdue. The question is can a woman raise a male child to become a “successful” man alone? Now of course the knee jerk reaction will be a resounding yes and there will be story after story of how it was and is being done. I applaud any and all single mothers that are raising young men alone. I pray for you daily. The question remains, is it possible for a woman, a single woman to raise a man on a consistent basis? The reason for this question stated this way is because of the numbers of young black men being raised by single mothers. Has this been positive for Black people or negative?

Due to the diverse myriad of information and scenarios, I am not going to try to answer this question in one post. I plan to continue this series periodically so that we are able to examine as much data and empirical evidence as we can. I am going to be proposing some controversial steps and ideas and I want to provide them with a full hearing. I ask that you be open minded and at least consider the proposals before dismissing them out of hand.

The rule of thumb has always been that a boy needs a man in the house to imitate and emulate the masculine skills needed to successfully navigate manhood in a hostile environment. With the landscape of the “family” changing daily, the question is this still a valid assumption or was it ever valid? We must begin by developing some common ground that we can proceed from or our debate will be grounded before ever taking flight.

Are men and women different and does being a man or woman require different skills to be successful? This is always a fly in the ointment for many, because we often times equate different with unequal. Men and women are equal in the eyes of their Creator and should be so in the world, with that being said men and women are different. Men and women were created to fill different roles and despite our societies insistence to the contrary the fact remains. Most women can bear children and have a more maternal or protective instinct of the family than men. Because we are a continuation of nature we can look to nature to get some ideas of the difference in roles between the species. Regardless of our desire to rid ourselves of our connections to our untamed neighbors we share a lot of similar behaviors with them. It’s funny in nature how it is often the mother that does most of the raising of the off-spring and giving them guidance in hunting, surviving, and development into adulthood.

As independent parents raising children without the presence of a father, mothers have long been treated with dubiousness, fear, and even contempt. Traditional theories contended that mothers who reared sons without the presence of an active father -- or who were married but “overbearing” or raising “mama’s boys” -- instilled lifelong psychic disability, schizophrenia, or, worst, homosexuality in their sons. More recently, society’s guardians have declared that mothers -- especially single mothers, whether unmarried and poor, divorced and employed, straight or lesbian, or as white and prosperous as Calista Flockhart and Jodie Foster -- are sending violent, drug-using hellions out in into the world, boys who present no positive maleness, all due to the combination of Mom’s presence and Dad’s absence. Since Freud, mothers have been inculcated with the idea that we need to cut our sons’ cords to make them men ready to take on masculine roles in the world, from working toward worldly success to making war.

We have been further told by Freudians, social psychologists, and the popular culture that our sons need their dads in order to become upstanding male citizens. If not for Beaver Cleaver’s mom and dad, June and Ward, where would Beaver and his brother, Wally, have been? Without Ward, wouldn’t the boys have missed the supposedly crucial opportunity to separate from June by identifying with a very present father?

According to Freud and others who followed him, June alone could not have achieved everything required to bring up “the Beav” successfully. During the first 3 to 4 years of Beaver’s life, he would have needed Ward to imitate, long for, and react to, in order to gain the prize of being like his father. This theory -- that boys acquire masculinity only with an in-house male in the mother’s bedroom -- has prevailed to the detriment of both mothers and their sons. It presumes that the earliest relationship between infant and mother is simply a caretaking one. The assumption is that the mother is only a need provider for her son, while he in turn becomes physically and emotionally dependent on her. Eventually, assuming there is a present father in the home, the mother must withdraw herself from the child if her son is to become independent of her and escape the dire fate of being a mama’s boy.[1]

Are these concepts accurate and have they served our community well in the past? Are there any lessons to be learned from the past? I believe we must begin to look at ourselves and ask some tough questions about what we truly believe and what we truly want. We cannot continue to live the way we do and allow the things we do and expect things to improve. On the contrary things are getting worse.

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[1] http://www.peggydrexler.com/excerpt.htm

Are You Worth Waiting For?

To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and

unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled.

Titus 1:15

As I was on my way to work this week, I saw a young lady wearing a tee shirt that stated, “I am worth waiting for”. I have to admit when I first read it I was shocked; it’s not every day that you find our young women wearing the message of abstinence. Unfortunately for many of our young women the uniform of the day is a little more tawdry. As the day went on and I thought about the young ladies shirt, I was reminded of the many comments from folks that abstinence is unworkable, and impractical. Those kids are going to have sex and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

I began to think about that logic and those who are promoting it. The majority of people promoting this logic are people who themselves were unwilling or unable to remain celibate. I thought back into my training; there is a saying to find out who is behind something, follow the money. In this case, who would have something to gain from promoting this position, would it be God or Satan? If it were God then this would be in direct contradiction to His Word, which he said he would never do.[1] If Satan, then why are we promoting his agenda and doing his bidding? Am I foolish enough to think that kids or adults for that matter won’t fornicate? No, but I am not so jaded and cynical to give up on standing for something, God.

I believe that our women and our girls are worth waiting for. I believe that our children are our most precious resource and they should be protected, sometimes from themselves. Too often in our community our children are not being protected, they are being abandoned and forced to raise themselves. In many cases it is not even intentional neglect, but the byproduct of single parenthood. I believe the majority of single mothers want the best for their children, but because they are so over worked and stressed they can’t provide the attention and the care the children require. Our community is full of strong and beautiful women, who have been raising our children alone for years. I think though that it is time for our women to look at the bigger picture of what single parenthood does.

William Raspberry of the Washington Post writes

For the 2000 Census, the percentage of black families headed by married couples was 38. The only good news is that it was also 38 percent in 1990, suggesting that the trend may have stopped getting worse.

Now consider this: Fatherless families are America's single largest source of poverty. The Annie E. Casey Foundation's "Kids Count" once reported that Americans who failed to complete high school, to get married and to reach age 20 before having their first child were nearly 10 times as likely to live in poverty as those who did these three things.

But while marriage may not be a cure for poverty, it does turn out to be a fairly reliable preventative . Isn't it worthwhile to spend more time and resources helping young people to understand the economic implications of single parenthood before they become single parents? Wouldn't it make sense to rethink our relatively recent easy acceptance of out-of-wedlock parenting?[2]

The conclusion is that if our young women choose to become pregnant without the benefit of marriage they are not only condemning themselves, but also their children to a greater chance of a lifetime of poverty. I don’t think that if presented with the evidence most mothers would knowingly place their children in the vicious cycle of poverty, but many of them do it. This has given rise to generations of families that cannot escape the cycle of poverty. We will not be able to break the cycle of poverty that plagues our community without addressing the epidemic of fornication. Any remedies that do not take this into account will be like placing a band-aid on a shooting victim, it helps but it ain’t going to stop the bleeding.

This bleak prospect for single mothers prompted US public affairs columnist Jonathan Rauch to suggest that "marriage is displacing both income and race as the great class divide in the new century". Indeed, research shows that the growth of single parent families accounts for virtually all the increase in US child poverty rates between the 1970s and early 1990s. Children growing up in single parent families are four times as likely to be poor than are those from two-parent families.

Today, almost two thirds of all poor children are in single-parent homes. Growing up in single-parent families also has negative effects on the social and economic outcomes of children. In addition to their high incidence of poverty and low income, studies show that children from single-mother families are much more likely to experience psychiatric disorders, ranging from hyperactivity, conduct or emotional disorders, and schooling problems than those living both parents. While children growing up in single-parent families are not doomed, the odds are certainly stacked against them.[3]

We as concerned parents and neighbors have to come up with a way to educate our children on the negative effects of fornication. The biggest hurdle is the fact that in our community it is not just our children that are practicing fornication, but our adults as well. It is very difficult to press the argument of abstinence when the adult is laying up with people they are not married to. I think what fuels a lot of the anti-abstinence argument is the fact that we don’t want to teach our kids about abstinence if it requires us to evaluate our own lifestyles. We should be more that just hearers of the Word, we should also become doers of the Word.[4]

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[1] Matthew 24:35

[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/31/AR2005073101075_2.html

[3] http://www.nzbr.org.nz/documents/perspectives/perspectives-2004/Issue47.pdf

[4] James 1:22

Chapter 4 Part 2

To continue, here is the place that the white establishment should step forward and accept responsibility for its racist policies that laid the groundwork for our current situation. Whether those policies were intentionally designed to create the atmosphere that helped to destabilize the black family, they did in fact have that effect. Because they penalized the women that were married, the policies sent the message that it was more beneficial to the family not to have a man present. The black woman no longer needed the man for financial security. The purpose of the man became procreation only and many men gladly accepted that role. It removed the responsibility from the man of raising the children they had fathered. However, what the family gained in economic security they lost in family stability. These policies replaced the presence of the father with a monthly check. These policies undermined the family structure and created a dependency that has taken decades to remove. These same policies had the opposite effect of their stated purpose. Instead of lifting people out of poverty and into the mainstream of American economic life, they created generational poverty. Those on the government rolls would pass that dependency on to their children and their children’s children. It became a vicious cycle and created an entrenched underclass. These guidelines also and more importantly perverted the divine plan of God for the family. They forced people to make a choice between economic survival or family loyalty. No one should ever have to make such a choice, but many did.

The purpose of this book is not to explore the depths of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man, but how we as a people must overcome the sin that we now practice with an attitude of indifference. The problem with placing blame for racism is that there is never anyone to accept the responsibility for it. In the white community, it has always been the previous generation that had the problem with racism. Have we been treated unjustly? Of course, we have! Am I trying to excuse the behavior of others towards us? Of course not! Nevertheless, we have to move forward and begin to take responsibility for our own destinies. The problem is that we think white people hate us and some do. The majority of whites are just indifferent towards our plight and us. The opposite of love is not hate it is indifference. Indifference means I do not care if you live or die, just do not bother me. I believe the term used is "NIMBY" or not in my backyard. Let me stay in the suburbs or in my gated community and leave me alone. Hate at least involves some emotion. How many of us now hate someone we once loved? However, how many of us are now indifferent towards someone we once loved?

Our future and our most precious resource depends on our taking responsibility for our own salvation. The salvation of our people and especially of our children depends on us and no one else. The time has come to stop waiting on others to do what we should do for ourselves. Rightly or wrongly, we are in the situation we are in, how we got here is moot. The real question is what are we going to do about it? Are we going to continue to look for help from outside sources, the very sources that enslaved us and counted us as less than a man in the first place? So far, our tactics and game plans have not proved profitable for correcting this gross inequity to the eventual benefit of all our children. It is high time that we take back our communities, one soul at a time. For too long we have had leaders that have enriched themselves at the expense of the rest of us. We have not treated our children as our most precious resource and we have begun to pay the price. What we have given our children as an inheritance is lies and empty promises. Instead of surrendering ourselves to God and getting under His authority, we have been waiting on the same people who enslaved us to rescue us. This is not only illogical and politically impractical, but an insult to our children period. Passing along an entitlement mentality is demeaning to us and to our children as if this world owes us because of our heritage, because of slavery and prejudice. Get over it! Right now, we need to accept the fact that we are our worse enemies. It is always easier to avoid responsibility for our own actions. Granted, someone brought the poison into our neighborhoods, but we did not have to take it. We will only get better results when we demand better from those in positions of responsibility and especially ourselves.

When God freed the Israelites He expected and demanded that they be responsible for themselves. With His guidance they would prosper without the help of their captors. However, when they submitted themselves to God, He would use their captors to prosper them.

“…who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd and will accomplish all
That I please; he will say of Jerusalem, “Let it be rebuilt.” And
Of the temple, “Let it’s foundation be laid.”’”
Isaiah 44:28