How the Black Church Has Failed Us

Almost 90% of Black Americans express absolutely certain belief in God; compared to just over 70% of the total U.S. population. Two other important statistics gleaned from this survey: (1) 80% of Black Americans report that religion is very important in their lives as compared to 57% of the general U.S. population; and (2) 55% of Black Americans report that they interpret scripture literally as compared to 32% of the general U.S. population. - PEW Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life

There has been a lot of discussion lately concerning the role of the black church. It has been accused of subjugating women and keeping them single, it has been accused of hypocrisy concerning gays, and for being impotent when it comes to resolving the major social issues that we face as a community. While these may be legitimate criticisms and worthy of discussion I don’t think these are the reasons for the failure of the black church in our communities. What many of these authors argue is that in their opinion the church should become more liberal on social issues. I couldn’t disagree more.

Based on the research you would think that black people were the most pious people in America if not certainly the most religious. But in looking at the data there seems to be a disconnect between what people are saying and what they are doing. I believe that disconnect is a direct result of the “Gospel” they are receiving from the pulpits. I would never claim that the black church is some monolithic entity that follows the same doctrine in all locations. But in my experience the message being preached in most black churches is the same message that was preached during reconstruction. The black church continues to manifest itself as if nothing has changed in the last 250 years. The problems that we face today as a people are not the same problems we faced following slavery when the daily lives of black people were controlled by outside forces.

If we are to overcome the new challenges that face us such as unwed single mothers, the disintegration of the black family, and the escalation of black crime and violence we must provide new solutions. The church has not provided black people with the direction and the tools to attack these challenges. As a result you get this disconnect between believing in God and living for God. An example would be the discussion concerning the black church and the high rate of single mothers. What the authors fail to realize is that prior to becoming a single mother these women were single non-mothers who attended church and professed a belief in God, a belief that spells out in its text in chapter 2 that we are to be married prior to having children. This is in chapter 2 of the Holy Bible which the majority of black people believe to be literally the Word of God. If we can’t get pass chapter 2 of our Holy Book what chance will we have with the other concepts being expressed later?

The black church doesn’t need to become more liberal in its interpretations of the Word; it needs to become more consistent. The black church has fostered this belief in the “Magic Jesus”. A Savior who will magically appear and solve all of the cares of life so long as you pledge allegiance not to Jesus but to this church and thus removing all responsibility for one’s behavior by the waving of a wand. So rather than providing black people with the tools to combat crime, irresponsible behavior, and lack of preparation the church instead gives them a lucky charm or a magic genie. In 1967, 25% of black children were living in single female heads of households today that number is over 70%. While the black church is not the single cause of this epidemic it has remained primarily silent during this explosion. Want to have pre-marital sex; don’t worry magic Jesus will save you. Don’t want to prepare your children for the future; don’t worry magic Jesus will fix it. Instead of offering magic Jesus the church should be providing our people with things like parenting training, character building classes for our young men being raised by single mothers, and financial training.

Finally, there must be an awakening in our people concerning our role in God’s plan. Prior to being our Savior Jesus must be our Lord. Jesus states, “If you love me, you will obey me.” To blame the institution that you are not being obedient to for your problems is like my going to school every day not paying attention and then blaming the school for my lack of learning. We should stop excusing our behavior because we are black, or we are poor, or discriminated against. As a human being I owe it to other human beings to do certain things. Not because they are white things or black things, rich things or poor things, they are human things. I owe it to other human beings not to kill them, to pick up after myself, and to try and be the best person I can be. These are not acting black or white, they are acting human.

The time has come for our churches to leave the rhetoric of the reconstruction era behind when blacks were unable to control much of their daily lives and recognize that there are things we must do for ourselves. We must come out from the pews and pulpits and reach out to those who need our support and guidance. We must provide those in the pews with the tools to better their lives and the lives of their children. The black church will need to do a better job of reaching out to our men by providing them more than just a magic Jesus and we must do it while we have them there. The majority of black men were in church at some point in their lives and the church lost them. The children have not failed, we have failed them. We have to do a better job of training them up to be men of character and that job cannot be done by women.

The Jews tried to keep Christ contained within their law, while the Greeks sought to turn Him into a philosophy; the Romans made of Him an empire; the Europeans reduced Him to a culture, and we Americans have made a business of Him. – Unknown

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The Myth of the Super Black Woman

At the risk of offending women in general and black women specifically I have undertaken the task of destroying a commonly held myth by both whites and blacks. This myth has so permeated our collective conscious that it is often depicted in story and movie. This mythical black woman is often times portrayed as some super human single black mother who has overcome tremendous obstacles to raise her family despite the odds. It has given way to the belief by many that black women have some inherent strength or ability that allows them to be able to raise children successfully without men. The danger of this myth is that because of it today many black women are choosing to do precisely that. They have accepted and fostered this false belief to the point that many look at men as merely sperm donors and have no expectations of their presence in the lives of their children. Let me state unequivocally and without wavering the experiment of women raising children by themselves has failed and failed miserably.

Due to the fact that so many men have allowed themselves to be silenced by feminists today any male that in any way calls into question a woman’s desire to give birth, raise, and fail her children is considered a chauvinist. Because we have allowed women to frame the arguments surrounding family, children, and reproduction men no longer have any opportunity to take part in the discussions or analysis of these issues. Despite the propaganda of some women and the lack of concern by so-called news organizations the evidence is clear. The vast majority of children raised in single women head of households are suffering and as a result the society at large is suffering. The society is suffering because not only do these children create social problems, but this lifestyle is growing throughout our society. Granted divorce is playing a larger and larger role in our society and creating a large number of these homes, but what is also playing a major role is the desire of women to have children without the expectation of having men in the lives of their children.

To me for a woman to deliberately have children without the expectation of having the father in that child’s life is the epitome of selfishness. With all of the empirical data we now have concerning the ill-effects of such a household on the great majority of our children it would be considered unconscionable for anyone but a woman to consider such a choice. I don’t agree with the logic that many of these children are accidents or mistakes of reckless people. If you make a mistake and have a child under these conditions that is one thing, but if you have multiple children from multiple men then this is no longer a mistake it is a lifestyle choice. The evidence is clear that not only is this detrimental to our children’s well being, but also to our nation’s well being. It is not about a woman being strong enough to raise children alone. An example would be if I break the doorknob on my door and I use some rope to open and close the door, granted that would work but that is not how the door was designed to work. No matter how I would like for it to be otherwise the fact remains I am making the best out of a bad situation. Young women who are raised in fatherless homes make up 85% of the future single unwed mothers so we are perpetuating the education, crime, and social problems into generation after generation. The proof is that in the 1960’s 20% of all black children were being raised in single mother households; today that number is almost 70%.

In spite of the rare success stories that we see on the television the truth is that most of these children grow up in and remain in poverty, they are poorly educated, and prone to criminal activity. We hear about the 15% that are successful and ignore the 85% who are not. Imagine if at your job you were 85% wrong about whatever it is you do and then not only were you not terminated but you were promoted as a success story. Black women are not genetically or culturally disposed to be able to withstand the rigors of raising children alone, no woman is. The sad part is that this is not a problem of poor or teenage women, but a choice being made by older women. The majority of new unwed mothers are women over 21. We have turned having a baby into a fashion accessory or a substitute for missing intimacy.

There will be those who criticize me for "picking" on the women, but let’s be honest women have always driven the reproduction and repopulation of the species. It was the morals of women in the 1960’s that had the rate at 20% not the morals of men. There will be those who say black women don’t have the requisite number of potential partners and my answer to that is that if black women are doing such a good job of raising these young men why are there not enough good men? Are there other external reasons for the lack of good black male suitors? Of course there is. There is racism, there is systemic marginalization of black men, and there is lack of economic development. The problem is simply this and it hasn’t changed since 1960, until we begin to stabilize our families and provide a healthy environment for our children to develop the tools they need for success all the integration, money, and opportunity won’t make a bit of difference. If we open up a door and our kids are not prepared to go through it then we all fail.

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From One War Zone To Another

This is the story of a mother who had to make the desperate choice of sending her son from one war zone (the mean streets of America) to another war zone (the streets of Liberia) in order to try and save his life. It is the choice no mother should ever have to make, but unfortunately it is a choice many black mothers have had to make over the years. Maybe it wasn’t the civil war of Liberia, but it could have been Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq. Many a black parent has sent a child off to war so they might escape the killing fields of urban America.

She had made up the lies that coaxed him on the plane, and arranged for her brother to take him into his household. She did this knowing much of what her Americanized son would face there: the empty belly, the threat of public whippings, the cramped sense of possibility.

Yet she was equally sure of this: He would be better off there than in Park Hill, the Staten Island neighborhood where she was bringing up two sons and two daughters.

Augustus had been well schooled in the lessons of Park Hill, which has taken in so many waves of refugees over the last 30 years that it is known in some quarters as Little Liberia. By his teenage years, he had adopted a street name (Ghostface) and a gang affiliation (Bloodline) and learned how drugs coursed through the neighborhood into the hands of customers.[1]

It is frightening to believe that a young black man is safer in a civil war in a foreign country than he is at home in America. He is, if that home happens to be in the gang and drug infested streets of the inner city. Our cities are turning into war zones pitting one young black man against another for the limited resources that the drug trade has created. Young men are risking their freedom and their lives to live a lifestyle of false promise and false bravado, leaving their mothers to worry and mourn their early departures. Departures usually brought about by the hand of another black man.

This story highlights the growing disconnect occurring between the youth and the adults of our communities. There is a divergence between the goals and aspirations of the parents and the “reality” of the streets beckoning their sons. For many young black men the streets are offering a better alternative to the hard won lessons of their parents. They watch as their single mothers struggle to make ends meet with the low wage jobs they are forced to take, while at the same time they see the fast money and lifestyle being offered by gangs and the streets. They struggle in an educational system that doesn’t want them and a support system that doesn’t exist. Due to a lack of male guidance they grow up with a distorted sense of manhood and the responsibilities that it brings. They love and at the same time detest their mothers for the lives they have been given.

What does this say about us as a society, that we are willing to let another generation of young black men die or be imprisoned without any effort to integrate them into society? I find it hard to believe that with all of the intellectuals and studies that have been done, we can’t solve this. So the question then becomes, do we want to solve it? For years we read and see story after story of the untimely death of another black youth at the hands of another black youth and yet we do nothing. We can provide hundreds of billions of dollars to destroy a country and yet we can’t find any money to help build our own country? These young men are the by-product of our neglect and of a system that does not value their talents or their imaginations. They are the forgotten children of black men who did not understand or accept that being a father is more than being a “baby’s daddy”, black men who have by the millions placed the burden of raising their children on the woman.

“My mom’s friends, I respect them, but they don’t know about life,” he said, glassy-eyed, as the television flickered in the corner. “My thugs, they know about life, because they were in the struggle, too.”

His friends had seen darkness in the world, Augustus said, just as he had. Some had gotten shot. Some had been arrested. They knew what was up.

“That type of people,” he said, “they got big dreams.”[2]

This situation is wrong on so many levels. This situation is about more than money; money alone will not fix this. The time has come in this nation in general and in the black community specifically to make this situation a priority. We have allowed the myths and the lies of the streets to go unchallenged to our children, they have lost touch with reality and have replaced it with someone else’s false reality. The reality they live in is real only because we allow it to be, we allow them to believe that the dead end life of drug dealing and gang banging is preferable to honest living and work. There is no one to offset the allure of easy money with the reality of its consequences, which is death, prison, and emptiness. There is no one to teach them that being a man is not about smoking dope, making babies, and killing other young men. There is no one to teach them the hard lessons of being man, going to work, raising your kids and loving your wife.

No mother should ever have to choose to send her son to a war to save him, but if things don’t change soon in our communities it very well may be safer than being at home. And that is a tragedy for all of us. The whole world is lessened by the senseless violence that is cutting down our young men before they ever get to live. The whole world is lessened by a system that renders them useless before they reach their teens. We have no idea the contribution these lost young souls could have on the world, what gifts they could bring. Instead we readily accept their destruction and chalk it up to another bad ass kid that gets shot and killed. I hope one of these days they will be recognized as human again and worthy of our support and our anger. All they receive now is our pity and pity is just one step up from contempt.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/nyregion/14liberians.html
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/nyregion/14liberians.html

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Who Blesses The Fatherless Child?

Them thats got shall get
Them thats not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Billie Holiday/Arthur Herzog Jr.

I recently read a piece that said 70% of black children are living with single-mothers. [1] This is outrageous and even more outrageous is the lack of discussion in the black community that it gets. Let me give you some statistics before I go on:

* Children from fatherless homes are five times more likely to be poor, and ten times more likely to be extremely poor.
* Seventy percent of juveniles in reform school and long term prison inmates come from fatherless homes.
* Children from fatherless homes are twice as likely to be high school drop outs.
* Fatherless children have more emotional and behavioral problems.
* Girls from fatherless homes are three times as likely to be unwed teenage mothers. Adolescents in mother-only families are more likely to be sexually active, and daughters are more likely to become single-parent mothers.
* Boys from fatherless homes have a higher incidence of unemployment, incarceration, and noninvolvement with their own children.
* Ninety percent of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes.
* Seventy-one percent of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes.
* Seventy-five percent of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes.
* Eighty percent of rapists come from fatherless homes.

These statistics are horrific and should be frightening to all of us. This is not an essay to denigrate or in any way to belittle the single mothers in our community nor is this an essay to espouse any religious viewpoint. This isn’t about morality or social norms; it is about the self-destruction taking place in our communities. The numbers don’t lie, as more and more of our children are being raised in the single mother environment it is proving detrimental to us as a people and as a nation.

Why is it that whenever this subject is breached we bristle at its fundamental conclusions and become defensive, wanting to change the subject. Until we come to grips with this as a people, even if we do overcome all of the external pressures coming against us, we will still remain entrenched in poverty and violence. Our communities are broken, because so many of our homes are broken. As the number of single mother households has increased so has the degradation of our neighborhoods, schools, and social fiber. Do the math; there is a correlation in the rise in crime, the level of violence, and the gang mentality and the rise in single mother households. Are we to conclude that these results are from happenstance? It is this attitude of denial that has allowed this epidemic to go unchecked.

This is not a slam at women. The last time I checked making babies required both a male and a female under natural conditions. There are those who claim that the importance of the father in the home is overstated, I completely disagree and believe the research bears me out. In 13 studies conducted on children from single mother homes, 11 of the studies reported negative results. It is difficult to discuss an issue this personal, but the consequences of these decisions affect us all.

We must begin to demonstrate to our children the benefits of waiting to have children. We must convince our young men and women that it is in their best interest as well as in the interest of their future children to wait. We need to show them the consequences of not waiting and how it will negatively impact their lives. We must begin to stress the importance of education and personal responsibility in the growth of their lives. We cannot expect others to do what we are not willing to do for ourselves. There is a host of issues that our children face that are external, but in the end these won’t matter if we continue to send them out into the world unprepared for the world that awaits them. We must stop teaching about how the world should be and start preparing them for the world that is.

The raising of children requires both a man and a woman involved in the child’s life. I don’t care how many women I have been with, I don’t know what it takes to be a woman. I may know what I like about women, but I don’t know what it is to be a woman. I could not raise my daughter to be a complete woman because I don’t know, not because I don’t want to. We cannot continue to keep this circle of unwed mothers, children in poverty, and angry young men unbroken. Somehow we have to break the cycle or racism will be the least of our worries.

[1] http://www.fatherabsence.com/article3.html

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