Fathers play an important position within the wholesome growth of youngsters and households. Analysis demonstrates how lively Black fathers are of their youngsters’s lives as supportive, caretaking, and nurturing dad and mom. The Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) discovered that Black fathers had been extra concerned of their youngsters’s day by day lives than different fathers from varied racial teams (Jones & Mosher, 2013). But, these males nonetheless face distinctive challenges as a result of structural and systemic boundaries.
“The…CDC discovered that Black fathers had been extra concerned of their youngsters’s day by day lives than different fathers from varied racial teams.”
One of many systemic boundaries that Black males face is the misrepresentation of who they’re as fathers and the affect on their youngsters’s lives. The mainstream societal deficit-based portrayal that has been invented and amplified via tv, radio, movies, and a few scholarly analysis perpetuates challenges that Black fathers face. For example, Dovin Richards, the creator of Daddy Doin’ Work shared on NBCBLK (an extension of an internet NBC supply that elevates America’s dialog about Black identification, politics, and tradition) interview mentioned, “Being a Black dad in 2015 is sophisticated. As well as, to managing toddler tantrums, diaper modifications, and play dates, I can’t assist however discover society’s notion of me.”
Richards responded in a manner that means that along with his typical fathering tasks, he’s confronted with the stereotypical dilemmas of being a Black father. Lately, there was a slight narrative shift on account of particular person platforms corresponding to social media accounts, blogs, publications, and organizations on a mission to redefine the narrative of Black fatherhood and households. Organizations corresponding to The Dad Gang, Dope Black Dads, and others function a strong dynamic to dispel many societal myths about Black fathers, but extra work should be executed.
Black males report that televised media portrays an incomplete image of Black fatherhood that continues to be dangerous to their position (Wilson, 2018). They felt the media solely portrayed a optimistic picture of Black fathers after they had been being bought on one thing. For example, when proven an image of a Black father vacuuming the carpet together with his toddler underneath his legs, one father replied, “You would possibly see Larry on a Cheetos or a Cheerios industrial.” Sharing the sensation of solely seeing optimistic Black fathers televised when companies connect them to a client advertising and marketing or gross sales pitch.
Communities of coloration acknowledge that Black males have a lot extra to supply as fathers than how companies seize their picture and amplify them within the media. Many fathers have recognized explicit areas they need to see amplified about who they’re on this position.
The second half of this text will spotlight three particular points that Black fathers named as lacking from mainstream depictions of them.
Black males are agency of their roles as fathers and have expressed a need for the media to depict them as extra steady each inside their fatherly roles and houses. Such photos would seize how humble Black fathers are and their great love and respect for his or her moms, wives, and youngsters. Additionally, these fathers conveyed the necessity for the media to share the worry surrounding the considered probably failing their households and, most significantly, the intentional relationship that Black fathers have with God.
Black fathers proceed to have a major optimistic presence of their communities, and share their need for the media to seize how concerned in communities they genuinely are. Whether or not it’s supporting native companies, group marches, or partaking in social fathering actions, Black fathers are entrance and middle.
Fathers shared that the educated Black man isn’t depicted on tv, and they need to be proven extra typically partaking in instructional actions with their little one. Moreover, Black fathers report that their sacrifices to be part of their youngsters’s lives are usually not all the time represented, particularly given the distinctive challenges Black males expertise as a result of institutionalized racism. These males additionally shared among the distinctive obstacles they’ve needed to overcome to be part of each facet of their little one’s life, together with faculty capabilities and physician appointments.
Regardless of the unfavorable narrative typically advised about Black fathers, they’re very lively of their youngsters’s lives and take satisfaction in being a mum or dad. On this article, I, the creator, made the intentional effort to not identify any of the stereotypical myths to cut back the perpetuation of associating such inaccurate and deficit-based photos with Black fathers.
We should proceed to amplify who these males actually are by difficult inaccurate descriptions and pictures of Black fathers and inspiring optimistic portrayals which might be extra in alignment with who we all know as our fathers, stepfathers, grandfathers, uncles, cousins, and pals. Listed here are a number of methods to counter the present narrative and encourage optimistic portrayals of Black fathers:
- Comply with social media accounts, blogs, publications, and organizations on a mission to redefine the narrative of Black fatherhood and households.
- Reshare publications and magazines that seize correct depictions of Black fathers and households.
- Help optimistic imagery of Black fathers corresponding to art work or books.
- Amplify optimistic traits about these males.
- Ask your native library, bookstore, and faculty to inventory their stock with optimistic representations of Black fathers; listed are a number of books that seize a real depiction of Black fathers. “My Daddy Did it!” “Lady Dad,” “Daddy’s Arms,” or “Simply Like Your Daddy.”
Contributing author
Dr. Lindsey Wilson
Dr. Lindsey Wilson is a extremely sought fairness educator, coach, printed creator, and speaker on the subjects of race, socioeconomic standing, social change, and counter-narratives.
She approaches her work from a singular place as each a licensed skilled counselor and social science physician.
She is dedicated to her calling of addressing racial inequities and serving to others, such as you, establish your position within the change that the world urgently wants.
Dr. Wilson can also be the creator of “My Daddy Did It!“
