Real Talk

I have put off writing about this.

Anyone who is living in civilized society is aware of the brutal killing of Derrion Albert, the high school student whose murder was caught on video a couple of weeks back.

Black media have feasted on this carcass since it fell. Yesterday, the US Attorney General and Secretary of Education flew to Chicago to discuss what can be done about violence among Chicago youth. Close to 40 Chicago Public Schools students have been killed since the school year began six weeks ago.

The responses to this crisis have been sadly typical.

“Where are the fathers in this?”

Well, that’s a good one. We all know how I feel about daddies and their kids. Where ARE the fathers? Let’s not just blame this on the dads, though. It takes two to make a baby. There are too many women of all ages laying down with and getting pregnant by guys they KNOW have no intentions of being fathers. How do you know? Sneaky little clues abound. Like the fact he has several kids by several different mothers and you never see him in any of those children’s company. Or the fact that several of his kids were born months apart by different women. Perhaps it’s the fact that like Tommy on “Martin”, no one can say just what this guy does for a living.

I mean, he is hanging out all day doing nothing. This isn’t a hustler. I can respect hustlers. They are gonna make some money and strive to make more. This dude is a bum. The only part of his body that works regularly is between his legs. He has so little regard for himself that he routinely refers to himself as a “nigger”. Once, I was working for my buddy, managing his apartment building. Mom came to look at a place with her son and “fiancé”. No damn wedding in sight, but I guess “friend with priveleges” gets old. Son and this guy had more in common, from clothes to a general lack of regard for anything other than themselves. She made excuses for them both the entire time. What the hell? When I asked dude his occupation, just to be funny, he went into a long diatribe about heading to the studio…Mom never once mentioning extra space for his kids. We all know he had some. We also know he probably wouldn’t recognize them if he bumped into them on the street. Perhaps when he gets robbed by his own offspring, the lights will come on upstairs...

I haven't forgotten the fathers among us who are married, educated and well earning. That's a three way trifecta...until that guy wakes up one day and decides, for some dumb reason, that keeping up appearances is more important than building a family. He's the baseball coach...who's doing the single moms on the team...the deacon in church who helps himself to some of the pot. He is a card carrying member of the Good Brotha Club who is never seen with his wife on Friday nights and is only seen with his kids when there's an opportunity for him to look good.

The fathers are lousy, but let’s look at the mothers, too. I worked in our nation’s school system for a number of years. Let me clarify. I worked in a school where you are sent when the district is tired of your shenanigans, but by law, has to place you somewhere. An overwhelming majority of my student body came from single parent homes. Single parenting is not new. In these cases, however, I use the term “parenting” loosely. There are grown folks in the household, but it is pretty clear not much parenting occurs. The parents’ and the kids’ priorities are all the same: let’s have a good time. Let me do for me. Let me get paid. Many of these parents were happy to have their kids labeled and in an alternative school because it added to the family’s bottom line. I had one bright student whose mother explained that she was reluctant to have her daughter go to college because “she gets an income from the state, and the household would lose that is she left.” These are not the deadbeat dads we love to hate. These are the mothers who are indiscriminate in who they get with between the sheets and are all but negligent in doing anything but pursuing their own agenda once the child arrives.

Some mothers have gotten so territorial they want the father to do nothing but provide the sperm and some money. Oh, and a scapegoat when the kid screws up.

These are the same mothers who make it clear that in many instances, they do not want input from any man regarding their child’s rearing. Or lack thereof. Payment? Sure. Input? Do not contribute. “That’s my child…” Well, Baby, your child is stomping kids to death on busy streets over some madness.

A few years back, a young man’s home was firebombed in Maryland by some drug dealers he owed money. I listened to the usual lamentations on WVON, and was surprised when an older gentleman called in. After so many callers making excuses for the boy and of course blaming anything male, this old man made a solid point.

“The problem is this: those women knew what they had in their house. They knew he was into something he shouldn’t have been. And that boy knew his momma, grandmamma, and aunties weren’t going to say anything.

“He would have had one time to live with a man and have it found out he was bringing this mess on his home, and he would have had to go. No amount of crying, I’m sorry, I’ll change would do it. Get your stuff and don’t bring this mess around my house. Those women in his house are just as responsible for this as that boy is. “

I know a woman who divorced her husband shortly after their daughter was born. She made sure she got her money, but really worked to limit the amount of time he spent with his kid after he remarried. Dude just wasn’t much of a fighter. Mom ignored any input dad offered in raising this kid, even going as far as to say, “You don’t have to listen to your father.” She would only bring Dad in when the young lady got completely out of control. His job was to be the bad guy. Invariable, after he played the heavy, she made a point of berating him, often in front of the child, for “putting yo’ hands on my child.”

This child is a teenager now and off the chain. That’s probably Dad’s fault, too.
A trend I am noticing lately is the number of educated, professional married women who are dipping out or leaving their spouses. This is about milestones. One milestone was to finish college. The other was to get married. Have the kids. A time arises when some figure marriage isn’t for them. Why not leave? The system will guarantee your employed soon-to-be ex spouse provides, and you pretty much get to keep the kids, house and money while also gaining your freedom. Some of those kids are coming of age, and the problems they are facing are not minor. The father is blamed for being a variety of things, but it is also made very clear that his input in the process is to be minimal, at best. He can fight it, and some have, racking up thousands of dollars in legal bills just for the right to parent their child. To hopefully keep him from stomping someone to death on 111th street.

I won't start on the churches. All I will say, for now, is never have so many people visited someone's house every Sunday and walked away determined not to practice a damn thing they heard from Monday through Saturday. We all holla about being saved but we make so many excuses for the devil within...

A number of Black folk got mad when a non-Black commented, “Perhaps this has something to do with parenting in that community.”

Now, we may not like to hear that, but you gotta, no pun intended, call a spade a spade.

Historically, other groups have gone through this in earlier times. Something bothers me, though.

During Reconstruction, immediately after slavery, we had more cohesive families and communities than we do now.

In a time when I could get lynched for looking at a white woman, I knew there was a right and a wrong when it came to how I did people.

At a time when there were no student loans and job programs, I knew that part of adulthood meant that I would have to be employed. I needed to procure training to either work a trade or enter a profession. I had to support myself, and later, my family.

During a period when nobody respected me as a human being, I knew that it was imperative I respect myself, and others who look like me.

We can pretend all we like that if someone sees that we tolerate regular violence and buffoonery in our communities, that person is racist. If the someone leveling that criticism looks like us, he is an Uncle Tom.

The numbers speak for themselves, though.

People like Derrion Albert die way before their time because we don’t like to deal with the truth head on.

That mob didn’t kill Derrion Albert. Our mindset on what we think is right, how we think our children should be raised, and finally, what we will accept, is what’s guilty.

Our excuses and acceptance of barbarism as just the way “we” live killed him.

Plain and simple?

We ain't foolin' nobody but ourselves.