Giving Honor to God for allowing me to share this moment and space with you. In this day and time with so much going on within the world and within our own community the ability to be here with you I don’t take for granted. I often say somewhere and someplace a 48 year brother just took his last breath so again I AM just thankful to be here with you. Secondly, I would like to thank my man Bo Gator for asking me to share this moment with you brothers. The ability to be in a room of conscious men who have taken up the mantle of fatherhood in such a deliberate fashion is such an energizing experience for me and to not be here would almost be criminal. Lastly, I want to thank you the “FATHERS, the wanna be FATHERS and all the dudes who fill in as FATHERS for being here. As a reasonably new father in terms of name I know how thankless at times our role can be. We often get the worst gifts, the least amount of credit when things go well and ALL the credit when things go bad. It’s funny just the other day I was doing some reflection and it came to me that we don’t even have a song. I mean there is “Dear Mama,” “I’ll Always Love My Momma,” and just plain ole “Momma.”
To that end I won’t hold you long, but I wanted to share with you what I see as the 3 paradigms of manhood, but more importantly how those things fit into the paradigm of fatherhood. But before I do that allow me to say by no way shape form or fashion do I see myself as some sort of parental expert but I do see myself as a father sharing his thoughts about fatherhood with other fathers. That being said here we go.
1. We have to be our own truth tellers. It is my belief that we have internalized so many of the untruths about who we are as black men particularly as fathers that sometimes we find ourselves representing and even quoting the very lies that were told about us. Matter of fact here are a few that I often hear that I want to simply dispel.
a. There are more black men in prison than in college
For the record, there is NOT and I repeat there are NOT more Black men in prison than there are in college. Matter of fact according to the Department of Justice, the U.S Census Bureau and the National Center for Educational statisticsthere are approximately 1.4 million black men in college versus 840,000 in prison and this number is inclusive of federal, state and local jails. However, the education numbers didn’t even take into account some of the large state HBCU’s like FAMU or TN State, etc.
b. If the black community had more back men particularly fathers taking care their families, then communities wouldn’t be in the shape they are in
According to the National Center for Health Statistics when it comes to Black men and their families particularly with children under 5 for which the data was kept Black fathers led every group including white men in terms of time spent with their children, reading to their children, eating a meal with their children, playing with their children and even giving their children baths. That is for those who live in and outside of the house.
c. Brothers don't get married and have more children out of wedlock than anyone else
In terms of marriage according to the same source above black men are no more likely to be married or not married than any other racial group. However, our lack of commitment to the institution has somehow made us the scapegoat for what’s wrong when the fact of the matter is black marriage has always been a fragile institution since the days of slavery when master was the determining factor on who got married and who didn’t. Not to cast any type of shade or downplay what’s going on at the Boarder today, but African Americans been getting separated from the parents since our introduction into this country.
However, by a show of hands how many of you have heard or in some cases even repeated the narratives I just referenced.
That being said as I mentioned earlier we have to be our own truth tellers and be willing to stand in our truth and what that doesn’t allow you to do particularly those of you in this room is to be willfully ignorant because the one thing you can’t do is unknow the truth and the truth is we are not what we get told we are as black men and particularly as black fathers everyday.
2. We are as the late Derrick Bell wrote in his book “Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism” the faces at the bottom of the well. However, what we don’t often realize or realize to late is there is wisdom down there and we particularly as black fathers and specially as black men must do is find a way to communicate that wisdom to our children. For as long as I have been doing this work involving community I am continuously amazed at how many of us spend our days trying NOT to be that face. That somehow in the midst of everything that we will accomplish our individual accomplishments will somehow be the ID badge we need to gain access to a better quality of life. While having access is not a bad thing at all where it turns sour is when OUR access becomes insularly from the collective struggle of our larger community. No matter how we point to erroneous statistics and believe you the individual are the exception to the rule the global minority will always remind you that you are NOT and as black fathers that can be a detriment to us. So the wisdom and tenacity that has sustained us as Black men and was forged in us through the middle passage and seared into us through slavery and Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement and allowed us to come through the crack epidemic and the prison industrial complex has to be instilled into our children because I will tell you from my lens WE are producing a collective of smart yet delusional generation of children. It’s beyond criminal when we as Black men walk away from our children and leave sisters to navigate child rearing alone. And no amount of Jordan’s or KD’s or even monetary contributions can create what kids are going to need that only comes through time and your presence.
3. Finally, in the words of my dear brother the late Orrin Reddick “We All We Got.” In other words we are our brother’s keeper and that in and of itself means that we have to hold each other accountable. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise it is NOT rough out here. Our children and their children’s children are inheriting a world where the rate of change is unprecedented. Therefore, we have to step up. We have to help each other step up. At the same rate, we have to hold brothers accountable, just like we do when it comes time for putting gas in the car or his half on the hotel bill on a road trip, weed, his part of the bill at the restaurant, we have to do the same when it comes to their children. We cannot afford to stick our heads in the sand when we know our boy or main man got kids and won’t take care of them. That has to be a deal breaker for us. And no sister can keep him from that. You can’t let that be his excuse let alone your excuse. We have to have the same level of vigilance about seeing our kids as they do about collecting child support.
And when it comes to our kids we have to be prepared to meet contempt with outrage, we have to be prepared to meet complacency with a sense of urgency, we have to meet lies with truth, we have to meet all the things that we know that go against our children being decent human beings with a sense of righteousness. And sometimes that accountability starts with the man in the mirror and once that is done we have to be prepared to take someone else along with us. That someone could be another brother or a friend of our kids, but we got to bring someone along. The road is filled with too many challenges for you to think all you have to do is look out for you and yours. The reason we are here today is because a brother had the wherewithal to start Better Dad’s Society and bring all of us along for the ride to learn from each other and grow from each other and support each other therefore you don’t get to think I AM doing my job simply by taking care of your own. We come from a collective community concept and our very survival has been built upon it no matter what the global minority says to you. Our bootstraps have always involved other people.
Finally, when its all said and done and our time is done it is my prayer that the wisdom we have learned from each other as men and fathers will be transmitted down to our children’s children children and we will be able to say finally free at last free at last thank God Almighty we are free at last.
Right on to the Real and Death to the Fakers…
I AM
Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen
