Andrew Sullivan points to Time’s new photo essay on high schoolers. Listen to Kevin….
When I was about six or seven my father died. This was either the worst or best thing that ever happened to me. In fact, now that I think about it, it was both. That experience was both my blessing and my curse. It’s not like I was saddened by the event. I hardly knew my father. His memory only survives in my head because of three scenarios: the way his coarse mustache pricked my cheek when he kissed me, the short collect calls he made from the correctional facility, and the photos that my mother keeps under her bed. After his death my mother became incredibly detached.She became a mere exoskeleton of her former self. With a deeply depressed mother who basically stopped living, I had no choice but to take care of myself. I became as self-reliant as possible. There was no more time for childhood. I was all about business. Thanks to the death of my father, I learned to value independence, hard work, and maturity. This is my blessing. Thanks to the death of my father I grew up much too fast and never learned how to ask anyone for help. I carry my own burdens . . . alone. This is my curse.
This is extraordinary. Or is it?
Juan Williams says that nearly 3 in 4 blacks are born out of wedlock and well over half grow up without even a father figure.
We know this, of course. White people, I mean. We may not know a whole lot about the problems of growing up black in America, but we’re fairly conversant in explanations which remind us the problems have nothing to do with us. “Why are so many blacks in prison? Breakdowns in the family. They’re going to have to get that figured out.”
I’m not suggesting the stats aren’t true, or that fatherlessness isn’t creating massive problems in black communities.
But I wonder if we tout them because they give us comfort. Easier to stand at a distance and point out what blacks must do to solve their own problems than to explore the structural and cultural conditions that may have gotten the ball rolling in the first place. Besides, all of that stuff is in the past… nothing we can do about it now, right?
Speck, meet plank.
