What, if anything, can we do to prepare and encourage men who are absent from their children’s lives to become better fathers? This is one of the questions discussed during the shooting of FROM FATHERLESS TO FATHERHOOD.
In this outtake, Steve, reflects on what fatherhood means to him, while offering some encouragement to those fathers who are voluntarily missing from the lives of their children.
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The Central Park Five’s, Yusef Salaam, holds the youngest of his children at 24 Hours of Peace in Newark, NJ.
Welcome! Click the FROM FATHERLESS TO FATHERHOOD logo below to enter the PARENTING section of our site, and don’t forget to subscribe to our monthly newsletter below.
Today’s en vogue language concerning a person’s lived experiences involves the master narrative, or commonly understood ways of being. And for Black folk, Black men and boys in particular, there is a default understanding of us as being bound within an urban narrative. Certainly, mainstream music and moving images celebrate the hard-scrabbled city life that Black boys and Black men are assumed to grow up in. It is romantic to many, the idea of wrestling the cityscape to achieve against the odds. It is largely a myth, however, insomuch as the lived experiences of Black people is diverse and increasingly involves a pronounced class that lives in suburban areas.
These suburban areas, in turn, are diverse and place unique demands on the psyche of Black people. W.E.B. Du Bois historically explained the pull of Black folk having to attend to a mainstream and to a Black cultural experience. While Black identity pioneer William Cross described the behavioral adaptation to this polarity through code switching between the two realities articulated by Du Bois.
The puzzle is not a new one then, how to navigate a Black cultural experience and one that is more broadly explained as “American” without losing self in the process. The key is found in realizing that our self, our identities are both uniquely Black and typically American. Indeed – to paraphrase Langston Hughes – we, too, sing America.
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And grasping this reality gives us permission, in many ways, to be more Black by filling our self with experiences that are beyond the arrested development that many assume we need to attach ourselves to. It is important for us to be in settings that are not “typically” Black or urban, because it helps to grow the understanding of what and how Black Americans are – we are more than that master narrative. Our identities are made robust by exposure.
So then, fathers have the responsibility to present more to their sons than the expectations of Black masculinity that are found in the city story. This is done carefully by qualifying suburban schooling, trips to the lake, golfing, lacrosse and that summer jaunt to Ethiopia as components of Black liberation. Though it might sound like a bit of a stretch, having Black bodies occupy these spaces pushes us into healthy living beyond the margins. Thinking and doing in this way eradicates the foolish notion of being smart and accomplished as being “white” by connecting Black identification to a world culture that is in service to Black people in urban and suburban areas alike.
No doubt, this is easier said than done. But this is living, and we have a right and responsibility to push against the sensibilities of racism that suggest we belong elsewhere than everywhere.
Contributor – David Wall Rice, Ph. D
Research Scientist and College Professor and Chair of the Psychology Department, Morehouse College.
Follow David Wall Rice on twitter @Dwallrice
American Politicians are noted for holding babies. It’s a tradition that’s said to have begun in 1828 with Andrew Jackson, according to The Atlantic. But just how many can teach you how to cradle a baby? The answer: Barack Obama can. A recent image of the 44th President doing such captures just how it’s done.
The cradle hold. This is perhaps the most common way to hold your baby and a great way to gaze into the new baby’s eyes; it’s also the most natural and easiest way to hold your baby. It’s easiest to hold your baby this way when the baby is swaddled. Here’s what you should do:
Devon Still needed some good news. The Cincinnati Bengals rookie’s daughter, Leah, has been battling stage 4 cancer at the same time he was battling to make the team. Last week Still was cut, but when the organization learned of his situation, they signed him back to the practice squad. He was on the team, sort of. The practice squad allows him to practice with the players but doesn’t allow him to dress for game days, meaning that he would never actually play in a game unless he was on the active roster.
It didn’t matter to Still, though. Being signed to the team meant that he would earn some $6,300 a week. Plus—and most important—he would receive much-needed health insurance for his daughter, who, ESPN notes, has been given a 50-50 chance of surviving.
“I wanted to make the roster, but I have a lot of stuff going on right now that I can’t give football 100 percent,” Still said to reporters last week. “[The team] could have just washed their hands completely of it. Said, ‘We don’t care what’s going on in his personal life, we just want people who can care 100 percent on football.’ That’s, after all, what they pay us to do.”
Devon Still and daughter LeahTwitter
Word of Still’s situation and the Bengals’ kindness spread. On Monday the Bengals announced that all sales of Still’s No. 75 jersey would go to pediatric-cancer research, and less than 24 hours later, ESPN reported that it was the Bengals’ fastest-selling jersey in team history.
But that is not all. The Bengals have also solidified their commitment to the rookie: It was announced Tuesday that Still has been signed to the active 53-man roster.
“We have an open roster spot, and this is the best football move we can make to fill it,” coach Marvin Lewis said in a statement viewed by ESPN. “We think Devon is ready to rejoin our line rotation and be productive. It already was stated that a big reason Devon opened on the practice squad was that he couldn’t fully focus on football this preseason. He had to take care of his daughter. But Devon has told us he feels ready to contribute now, so it’s the right move at the right time. And we’ve told Devon he can still be afforded the personal time he needs to attend to his daughter’s care.”
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“The movie of your life is only as successful as the people who you allow to play roles in it” – DeVon Franklin
Uncle Kenny, Papa and David Glover. As you sit with Sony Pictures film executive, Devon Franklin, you’d imagine these to be the names of characters in a script to be developed and possibly green lit. They are not. Instead they are actual people, based many miles away from the flashing lights of tinsel town and the hills of Hollywood, California. Key players in the trajectory of a young man raised, one of three children, all boys, by a single mother in Oakland, California.
Upon entering his office you are greeted by an array of movie posters, awards, magazine covers and a framed picture of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. . On this day Devon Franklin describes the sudden death of his father, and the role that a small group of men played in serving as models of what it meant to be a man. King, who described himself as a drum major for justice, is a fitting presence in the office of Franklin, a drum major for faith of sorts. That faith is described in Franklin’s book, Produced by Faith, released in 2011.
The book analogizes faith in God, combined with action, to the creation and development of a successful movie. As for Devon’s movie; the one that has taken him from Oakland to the highest realms of Hollywood, he takes a moment to share how his mother’s foresight to entrust the examples provided by a small group of men have instilled in him characteristics, lessons and values that he carries everywhere.
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