by Dr. Boyce Watkins, Syracuse University
Elliot Millner brought it to my attention that Attorney General Eric Holder has been apparently spending a lot of time with Bill Cosby these days. In a recent speech at a black church in Queens, NY, Holder took a page out of the Barack Obama Campaign Catalog and chose to win favors with the black middle class by recklessly bashing away at absentee fathers and returning to the whole "ya'll just need to grow up and be more responsible" argument that allows any politician to explain away a blatant disregard for meaningful public policy. Rather than talking about things that we can do as a society to take our collective foot off the necks of black men, he chose to say that black men are choosing to put the foot on their own necks.
Elliot Millner, who is also in the legal profession, intelligently said the things that I am sure Eric Holder wanted to say. But unlike Holder, Millner is not constrained by the political shackles that come with being an appointed leader in a society that makes a habit of oppressing, destroying and marginalizing black men.
In his speech, Holder said that, "It should simply be unacceptable for a man to have a child and then not play an integral part in the raising and nurturing of the child."
That quote is a nice way of reflecting on the obvious. It's sort of like saying, "It should be unacceptable for a black man to become the Attorney General of the United States and not play an integral part in helping other black men overcome the blatantly racist and destructive justice system over which you preside."
1 comment:
Why is it that we only concentrate on black men and not talk about irresponsible black women? Black women for the last 40 to 50 years have made a conscience choice to have children out of wedlock with disastrous results. I know of no social movement in this country where black men stated they didn't want to be father figures or married for that matter.
Black women drank the feminist kool Aid and decided they didn't need men or fathers for their children. Many brothers that I know are struggling to be a part of their children's lives because these single black mothers want to be "independent women" and therefore make all the choices and decisions themselves when it comes to raising their children. Many of these black mother use welfare, food stamps and section 8 housing to call themselves independent. But when these children fail we ONLY talk about black men.
Black women need to start taking some ownership over the failures of our race as well. As far as Eric Holder is concern he was appointed by Obama. Enough said. Obama threw black men under the bus during the campaign for white votes, quite his church for white votes and rarely campaigned in the black community. As a black man I don't expect anything from anyone in the Obama administration.
Post a Comment