The subject of father-absence remains taboo among many black activists, even though the rate of father-absence among blacks is horrifying. For these activists, any attempt to discuss black cultural failures is a kind of victim-blaming and a distraction from what really ails the black community—the persistence of white supremacy.When my mother called me in from play one afternoon to meet the man seated in our living room, her introduction was redundant—I immediately knew who he was. And, right off, I did not like him. His absence had been a painful matter in my life. The house that we lived in explained some of it. It was unfit for human tenancy—a decaying hovel with a leaking roof, creaking structures, and a termite infestation. I was ashamed to let anyone other than my closest friends know where I lived.
I was 12 that year of 1956. This was the Jim Crow South where poverty was the default condition of the black masses. Black males were restricted to the lowly crafts of ditch digger, janitor, and farmer, unless they catered directly to the black community, in which case the jobs of preacher, teacher, and shop-owner were also open. Most worked the hardscrabble categories so there was poverty all around, and since my mother was the only breadwinner, our poverty was wretched.
But this is not a story of black victimhood. This is, instead, an essay about a flaw in black culture that is just as uncomfortable for me to speak about as it is for my black brothers and sisters to hear. But a problem must be acknowledged before it can be fixed. And the failure of black fathers is among the worst problems afflicting our community.
My mother was a maid. Since her $25-a-week salary did not go very far, I was a skinny kid with a constant cold, owing to a poor diet and a house that grew Arctic in the winter months. There was a wood stove in the living room and another in the kitchen but their heat did not radiate beyond those rooms. We only ever used the kitchen stove for cooking in order to save fuel. To keep warm during winter, we slept under five blankets. If a glass of water was left out overnight, it had iced over by morning. There was no hot running water.
The poverty programs back then were designed to ensure survival. They were not like those today which help a person through life. Even if programs like those had been available, my mother’s stubborn pride would not have allowed her to use them. I am not criticizing the safety net of our current welfare system. I am a liberal. But my mother’s code of honor was simply part of who she was—a tough lady.
Most devastating for me was the psychological impact of my father’s absence. The most miserable moments of my childhood were when other kids asked me where my father was. In the days before we understood conception, I could just tell them that I just didn’t have one. But after we all learned a bit of biology, the question became so upsetting that on a few occasions I had to walk away from play activities.
I didn’t know what to tell them because my mother refused to speak of this man, even when I asked. He was a forbidden topic in her house, and so I learned to keep my mouth shut. I found out later from an uncle that my father regularly beat my mother which is why she divorced him when I was born. This shows her grit and gumption, for in those days, women could scarcely fend for themselves economically, and so battered wives were condemned to suffer as punching bags. But not my mother.
Growing up without a dad made me feel as though I lacked the full humanity and manhood of my cousins, friends, and classmates. From what I can recall, every other black home seemed to have a father. Southern blacks were already second-class citizens and I felt even lower than those around me. And since I did not have the self-confidence and self-esteem of my male peers, I sought adventures later in life to compensate. In the Army, I volunteered for paratroop units, fought in Vietnam, and was disciplined for insubordination four times. I boxed as an amateur. I drove at 120 miles an hour on the German Autobahn. I ran marathons. I worked as a demolitions specialist and as a long-haul truck driver. And I would hang out with some of the most ferocious males I could find.
Does the criminal behavior of some young black males today owe something to a sense of lost masculinity? I feel sure that this is so. A friend who works as an Army recruiter told me that so many black males have criminal records, the military is no longer the instrument for building machismo that it was when I joined. So, in inner-city communities where viciousness defines manhood, darker paths have become the option.
In 1965, a controversial report entitled “The Negro Family: A Case of National Action” was published by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a sociologist working at the Labor Department. Moynihan concluded that a lot of the social problems affecting American blacks owed to the disintegration of the black family. “At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society,” he wrote, “is the deterioration of the Negro family. It is the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community at the present time.” He went on:
As a direct result of this high rate of divorce, separation, and desertion, a very large percent of Negro families are headed by females. While the percentage of such families among whites has been dropping since 1940, it has been rising among Negroes.
The percent of nonwhite families headed by a female is more than double the percent for whites. Fatherless nonwhite families increased by a sixth between 1950 and 1960, but held constant for white families.
It has been estimated that only a minority of Negro children reach the age of 18 having lived all their lives with both of their parents.
Once again, this measure of family disorganization is found to be diminishing among white families and increasing among Negro families.
These figures were troubling, but they only offered a hint of what was to come. By the time the “Moynihan Report, Revisited” was published in 2013, 73 percent of black children were born to unmarried mothers. The figure for non-Hispanic white children was 29 percent:

I was stunned. A few months ago, I mentioned this to a black activist who was working on the problem of black violence in a nearby town. He had been trying to figure out why violence seemed to be endemic among their young black males and had reached a dead end. When I suggested that father-absence was not properly socializing black youth and asked him if he had read the Moynihan Report, he told me that the report was written by racist right-wingers determined to condemn blacks for their own misfortunes. I didn’t bring it up with him again. For now, the town’s solution is recreation centers.
It was not the first time I had heard the report dismissed in this way. It was basically the attitude of the black community upon the report’s publication. The backlash from the community was so militant and damning—reviling its author in the process—that the Johnson Administration dropped the issue and turned its attention to the Vietnam War. This reaction was not entirely surprising, given the demonization of blacks by many whites since first contact in the 1400s. Denigration used to justify outrageous and dehumanizing treatment produced a hypersensitivity among blacks that reflexively prevents us from accepting criticism from outsiders. Criticism from insiders has become something like heresy.
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Comparison can only become an ally when we use it to compare ourselves to the right standard and if we do so for the right reason. It can only become an ally when we compare ourselves to Jesus out of a longing to be more like him. The way to grow in holiness is not to compare ourselves to other people, but to compare ourselves to the Savior.

Comparison comes as naturally to us as eating, breathing, laughing, weeping. From our youngest days we begin to compare ourselves to others and quickly find the old adage to be true: Comparison is the enemy of joy. Though we so readily compare ourselves with others, we discover that this fosters a deep unhappiness. What promises joy actually delivers misery.
The reason is that comparison is intrinsically competitive, so that we don’t really want to be merely pretty, but prettier than the other person; we don’t really want to be merely wealthy, but wealthier than he is; we don’t really want to be merely successful, but more successful than the other person. No follower count is high enough until it is higher than hers, no church big enough until it is bigger than his. If we fail to get the things our hearts desire we grow in envy, but if we do get them we grow in pride. Our comparison is never rewarded with contentment.
Even in our Christian lives we can be prone to comparison. We can judge ourselves righteous by comparing ourselves to others’ depravity, we can judge ourselves faithful by comparing ourselves to others’ sinfulness, we can judge ourselves committed by comparing ourselves to others’ apathy. We can become like the Pharisee Jesus introduced in a parable—the one who went to the temple to pray and said, “I thank you, God, that I am not like other men”—especially like that traitorous tax collector who stood nearby.
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More importantly, debating the constitutionality of the bill avoids the real crisis afflicting students in public schools. It’s not so much that they don’t know right from wrong (though this is obviously a problem); it’s that too many lack the very capacity to know right from wrong. Thinking morally and empathetically requires some degree of imagination, logic, and an ability to control one’s feelings—in other words, it requires maturity. This is why most Christian churches usually wait until a child reaches “the age of reason” (usually seven or eight years old) before teaching things like the Ten Commandments and Christ’s parables.

The Louisiana legislature is about to pass a bill that would require every public school in the state to post the Ten Commandments in each classroom. The bill’s author, Rep. Dodie Horton, explained that the “purpose [of the law] is not solely religious” but also serves to “display the history of our country and foundation of our legal system.”
On cue, the disestablishmentarians took immediate issue with the bill, arguing that it was synonymous with theocratic indoctrination. As an attorney from the ACLU put it, ”Public schools shouldn’t be used to religiously indoctrinate or convert students.” Some unsuspecting non-Christian students may see one of these posters, ponder its implications, and literally come to Jesus.
One can only hope! But the greater likelihood is that they will see it as just more clutter on teachers’ already busy walls, next to the Gandhi and Malcolm X posters, across the from the motivational Garfield poster, and right behind the state, national, and Pride flags up front. Perhaps some conservative teachers might try to use it to tame their less civilized classes, while some progressive teachers will see it as yet another reason to whine about the stupid conservatives running their state.
But most teachers will probably post it on their walls … and ignore it—much like they do with posters of learning objectives, school mission statements, bullying hotlines, and all the other meaningless content mandated from on high. Somehow, miraculously, the response to the dysfunction of public schools is supposed to be remedied by one more visual that indirectly encourages them to make better choices.
None of this is to say that the critics are right. Nor is this to say that the idea behind the bill is wrong. Rather, it is to say that, as it stands, the bill does not go far enough in addressing the moral illiteracy plaguing public schools.
Along with their innumerable academic deficiencies, too many of today’s students are selfish, shortsighted, irrational, and utterly superficial. They fail to recognize that all actions have consequences, that other people have feelings too, and that they are ultimately responsible for the way they behave. Many of them struggle to differentiate between right and wrong, good and bad, truth and falsehood. Even a good number of juniors and seniors whom I work with in Advanced Placement English classes will draw a blank when encountering the words “virtue” and “vice.”
Naturally, this carries significant implications for their education on multiple fronts. In some cases, schools descend into a “Lord of the Flies”–style anarchy where students brutalize one another, as frequently happens in Louisiana’s urban campuses. In other instances, high-achieving students will lie and cheat their way to the top, only to fail miserably when they leave the permissive, grade-inflating environments of school and college.
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