The absent Black father is a lie, was born and sold, and still profits from chains to character. Who hasn’t heard the Black stereo type, Black fathers are missing? However, the truth is one of the longest successful lies in American History. Built brick by brick, law by law. It has its roots in Reconstruction. After the civil war (of minimal consequences), and as slavery was so called abolished, white power structures needed a new way to control Black bodies. Especially Black men. That’s when the myth of the Black Brood emerged. A violent, uncontrollable male figure, a threat to the world and to white women, white property, and most importantly, the fragility of white supremacy. It is a perfect excuse for lynching, voter suppression, and criminalizing Black existence. (Note: Hand delivering many frivolous criminal records is another form of voter’s suppression.)

So began the rise of the Black codes, criminalizing vagrancy (being unemployed, rewarded another 30-days to 6-months and many times longer of America’s brutal slavery system), even talking back or out of turn before permission, looking in the mere direction of a white woman, chain gangs (built your local highway/expressways), convict leasing (Slavery to–go, Uber–Slave, or Rent-a-Slave, Insure-a-Slave) funneled tens of thousands of freed men back into forced labor. Add the shady media propagandas endorsed by another United State’s President like Birth of a Nation in 1915, which portrayed Black men as rapists and savages (unlike the decent white settlers that raped, and killed themselves into being respected Americans) sparked Klan revivals and national hysteria. Let’s be clear the dangerous Black man was/is a social fear construct. It is a deliberate invention designed to justify surveillance, separation, desensitizing, and the systemic exclusion from danger to derelict. Let’s take a moment to allow the immense irony to settle in, the very same people wiping themselves off from a fresh rape of a Black male or female and or rinsing the blood from their hands due to the standard mutilation then lynchings including taking parts of Black bodies as aphrodisiacs but still calling Black people threats…. What seems to be the biggest threat is the imagination of those feeling the weight from generations of guilt payments overdue and only fearing, “What if they do to us what we’ve done to them. “ Unlike Joe Rogan’s once famous show, that’s Americas truest form of Fear Factor. The savages of America receiving the overdue bill. (Somehow, the soulless jerks who wear expensive suits or dresses (bankers, real estate agents, brokers, CEOs, accountants, etc…) who steal (pay themselves first) thousands of employees’ life savings; but they’re just savvy business people, like our current president.

As the 20th century progressed, the White American story about the Black male evolved from the violent criminal to the irresponsible father. This was a public relations pivot, not a progress story. Now comes the Moynihan report in 1965, where the U.S. government said the fundamental problem for white dominance is the Black family structure. That’s crazy considering the Jim Crow Laws dismantled Black wealth and communities. The G.I. Bill excluded Black veterans’ home loans and more up until the late 1990s and still providing many racial problems through this day. Public Housing split families and Welfare which primary customer are White Americans, created rules forcing Black men out of the home for his family/child to qualify and receive government benefits unlike the many White families that needed assistance remaining whole. Unfortunately, too many Black women fell for the plan and hence what we see today with much scattered Black identity and community. At the end of the day, Black men were/are getting systematically punished for being involved. (You can’t threaten a person who doesn’t care about their children; routinely used financial tool of control.) Today, each group that benefited from the segregation of the Black man blames the same Black males for being recipients of this evil-genius plan.

The stereotype of the absent Black father replaced Black brute, but kept the same functions. Equaling Black people for inequality, the justified disinvestment, over policing, despicable disparities within the judicial system for the very same crimes or thought of crimes, and mass incarceration for being born a threat to fragile and jealous egos. To distract from the real problems, structural racism within the U.S. Public Relations blossomed. Let’s look again in 2013, the CDC repeated, yes the government one, confirmed, “Black dads are more likely than White or Hispanic dads to eat meals with their kids, help with homework, bathe and dress their kids, read to them,…” and yet the myth persists. Why? Because, the Lie is convenient. It absolves the U.S. policy makers AKA elected politicians, it fuels TV crime dramas and lets racism play dress up like a child’s favorite bedtime story. This isn’t about missing fathers. It’s about missing accountability for systems that created this myth, with the countless people that have benefited from it. And the receipts that prove it. It’s a LIE.

Black Love is Beautiful. Black Love is Powerful. Black Love is Nurturing. Black Love is Worldly. Black Love is Invincible. Black Love is Energy. Black Love is Life.

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