Friday, November 4, 2022
What is a father?
What is a Father
A father is a man that practices daily sacrifice, he puts self and ego and his dreams on a shelf and locks it away until he has given you the world. A father works hard at his job for his family, gets home from work late and goes to work again; homework inspection, pulling your blanket up, fixing your bicycle and sometimes braiding or attempting to fix his daughter's hair, poorly.
Father's go to the store or a mall to get a new pair of shoes or suit that he desperately needs but returns with something for his child that his child doesn't need just yo see that smile and gets that hug that fuels his soul. Father's know the words to Finding Nemo, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Beauty and the Beast and finishes watching it even after his child falls asleep in his lap. A father challenges you, sometimes angers you, motivates you, disciplines you, protects you but always loves you.
Father's go to bed at 1am wake up at 3am to feed their newborn, sleeps for 2 hours wakes back up at 5 kisses you while you sleep and goes to work. A father loses his job but his child never knows because he is the greatest insulator so you never want for anything. Fathers comes into their child's room sits on the bed while tears run down his eyes thinking how beautiful you are and wishes he could keep you his baby forever. Fathers sit at the kitchen table while his child does homework even though he is clueless about the homework, he fakes it, encourages you and when he doesn't know the answer sternly tells you to pay attention in class.
Father's tells you there is no monster in your room and that there is nothing to be afraid of and when you insist there is he lays down beside you, holds you tight and falls asleep with you. Fathers make pancakes that may look funny taste better than anything. Fathers are not just father's to their own but to any youth that cross their path in need of mentoring, direction or encouragement. Fathers don't look for thanks, applause or gifts they receive all they need from their children's smile, laughter and joy.
Fathers run beside you on your first bicycle ride for as long as they can. He watches you until you finally get your balance, confidence and bearings and move beyond him independent of his constant presence. As he watches you ride away with bittersweet emotions you move forward and steady. This early separation, this first bike ride prepares him emotionally for when you leave for summer camp, college and marriage knowing that he has poured everything he could into you from his heart, sweat and love. Fathers have conversations with you at six years old that you may not fully understand until your thirty six and when you do that is when you realize how much he really loves you.
Fatherhood is a minimum of 6,570 days which is eighteen years.
Ray Davis
Fatherhood6570
It is never too late to reconnect to your child
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
A brief history of the destruction of the African American family, from the Book The Maintenance of Denial by Ray Davis
For the past 35 years I have spoken about fatherhood in the African-American community passionately, incessantly and exhaustingly. When disingenuous critics ponder the lack of fathers in the African American community the finger is often pointed accusingly at African Americans. The words culture or morals are used as the operative words to blame African Americans for the current conditions of the African American family. We are lectured by the conservative right, political establishment and by intellectuals like George Will, Andrew Sullivan and even African Americans like Thomas Sowell. We are scolded by very rich propagandists such as Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson of Fox News that the impoverished conditions, educational deficits, disproportionate incarceration rates and economic divide are simply originated from the distilled down choice of African Americans refusing to marry our women and raise our children.
The African American family did not immigrate here, they did not come out of a desperate desire to have a better life or to seek asylum like Jews escaping from Nazi Germany or the Irish fleeing religious conflicts or Italians out of severe poverty. We did not come for economic ascension, religious persecution or racial discrimination. Africans were captured from Africa and kidnapped to America for one reason, to be manufactured from free human beings of self governance into slaves. The African provided free labor to America helped build one of the fastest econonomy of any country. We were used as human capital, reduced to sub humans through torture, genocide, rape and terror invoked for profit of unpaid labor. Africans were brought to America on slave ships packed like sardines for efficiency. African women were raped carte blanche in front of their husbands and children which devastated the African American family for generations. America offered Africans state sanctioned domestic terrorism which had no comparison in the analog of human history. Their men, husbands, brothers and fathers, utterly powerless, held at bay by gun watched in excruciating agony as their women were raped by men who used whips and guns with the causality that we use cell phones today. Africans kidnapped in America learned an existential lesson in survival early on. They learned, that to survive they must consciously submit to the terrifying reality that any level of permanent intimacy regarding marriage, protection and care of their loved ones was washed away as aggressively as the ocean waters waves that pushed the slave ships to a new land of unimaginable terrors.
The propaganda demonizing Black men, Black fathers and the Black family was and is as effective at destroying the Black family as Hitler's propaganda campaign against the Jews in Nazi Germany. Ronald Reagan propagated the Welfare queen stereotype, the same Ronald Reagan whose was taped talking to President Richard Nixon stating "To see those, those monkeys from those African countries, damn them, they're still uncomfortable wearing shoes." President Nixon rather than admonish Reagan affirmed this racist insult with a huge laugh. These are the men that preach to African Americans about morality, decency and family structure. These are the men, descendants of the founding fathers of which many were slave owners that upheld and institutionalized laws and legislation crafted to destroy the African family. These are the men that instituted and maintained laws to maintain control of their property, to maintain the status of African Americans as slaves. These are the men whose benefactors and ancestors today date to judge and criticize the African American family.
Time capsule forward to Donald Trump, the symbolic manifestation of American hubris, benefactor of generation wealth and consummate hypocrite of American values. Donald Trump, serial divorcer, the only American President to have had five children from three different marriages. Trump, the serial draft dodger, who avoided the draft 5 times, once for bone spurs. Trump, the serial bankrupter, serial tax dodger, serial misogynist. Yet with all of these well published behaviors the so called Christian right whom wear their conservative principals like a badge of honor completely ignored Trumps immoral and liberally progressive lifestyle and installed him into the White House enthusiastically. Trumps conservative base never used the same measurements of moral judgement or character assessment used to measure the condition of the African American family. If there was any President that is the worst example of family values Trump easily wins the mantle yet millions of Americans that speak high of family values voted low in selecting Trump.
To most politicians knowing history is a critical part of their ascension if only for symbolic posturing. History however regarding the state of fatherhood and the African American family is not really discussed, indeed it is most often ignored. It actually falls under the nomenclature classification of what conservatives rally against called critical race theory which means we don't acknowledge it, consequently, it does not exist. So the conclusion from the conservative right is that African Americans landed magically on the shores of America and decided that family, marriage and fatherhood was a tradition that the African American would no longer embrace. Untold in this story however is that for the African slave, new to America, marriage was not legal or allowed by their slave owners. This part of American history that has been ignored, purged from history books and the victim of computer algorithmic editing. This is part of a brief history of the destruction of the African American family.
So lets take a brief moment to examine what happened to the African American family with historical references that in another time were referred to as facts.
African Americans have just barely survived five social tsunamis in a brief history of time.
The first tsunami faced by the African was the Atlantic Slave Trade. It lasted from 1526 to 1867 or 341 years. There were approximately 12.5 million Africans captured, men, women and children. The slave ships that transported the slaves was the first formal introduction of Africans to the European. On the slave ships, a three to six month journey, a journey engineered for the complete deconstruction of human beings. Packaged like sardines in a can the slave ship to the African was a laboratory of horror, excruciating evil and rendered the Africans as powerless as a white laboratory rat. The ships carried from 250 to 600 slaves. Diseases were rampant; cholera, scurvy, smallpox, the flu, dehydration, and suffocating conditions. One in five Africans died in transport, those who died were thrown overboard witnessed by the women and children. The mothers and the children who were often kept on deck for the sexual pleasures for the Europeans. At the complete and sole mercy of his European captor the slaves only avenue of escape, to jump overboard off of the ship into a certain death from the frigid salt water filling their lungs. The suicide of jumping overboard was still less terrifying than witnessing and living with the knowledge that their children and families had been sold, separated and murdered. The conditions were so bad that had the Africans been Christians they may have believed they had died and gone to an eternal hell.
From day one when the African was kidnapped to America, the African mans role, the fathers primary reason to exist, to protect, provide, maintain and sustain for his family was completely obliterated. The African male was reduced to a spectator, powerless, unable to defend his family. Defenseless in the ability to protect his keep his family to keep them together to prevent his wife from being raped and the hell on earth that they were about to experience was about to get much much worse. Rape by the slave owner was at will. Slave owner Robert Lumpkin of Richmond Virginia raped his slave Mary Lumpkin so many times as a child he impregnated her with seven children, five of whom survived. This was standard operating procedure and another long lasting contributor to the African American families destruction. Children who were the products of White slave owners had two fathers one that was wed to thier mother and powerless to father them and the other who raped their mother yet maintained there status as slaves. Children, ripped from their mothers arms never to be seen again and fathers unable to act watched in anguish as theeir masochistic slave owners chained and whipped them to unconsciousness. This was the first installment of the systemic and institutional destruction of the African and the African American family and the aftershocks of this 20 generational horror are with us today, still.
Slavery, the second tsunami, lasted four hundred years. Four hundred years is 20 generations of slavery suffered by the African American family. According to US News, "African Americans have been free in this country for less time that they were enslaved. Blacks have been free for 152 years, which means That most African Americans are only two to three generations away from slavery."
June, 19,2017 https://ww.usnews.com > articles
Slavery was enthusiastically supported legally by an aspirational American constitution with lofty words of freedom totally contradicted by the systemic legalization of slavery. African Americans have only had 2 maybe 3 years of legal generational freedom which has still not materialized today. It vigorously allowed for the greatest evil a nation could have, legalized slavery. Slavery started in 1619 when the slave ship, The White Lion arrived in Jamestown, VA with 20 enslaved Africans. Slavery ended (on paper only) December 6, 1865 or 246 years later. Slavery, the second tsunami lasted generations and generations and allowed for daily terrorism, rape, lynching and state sanctioned murder. Slavery reduced the newly arrived African below the status below that of a dog. The overwhelming majority of the White population was completely comfortable and complicit with American slavery just like the German population was complicit and comfortable with placing beings in gas ovens. So after 20 generations of lynching, torture, rape and selling African America children never to be seen by their parents again some dare ask why has the African American family not reached a level of normality. What happens to a human being yesterday matters regarding their current circumstances today. What has happened to the African American for over 20 generations for 400 years may not ever be fully reparable.
Reconstruction, the third tsunami was a psychological tease. According to the Equal Justice Initiative nearly 2,000 lynchings of Black people took place between 1865 and 1877. It allowed some African slaves in America in America for 39 years from 1861 to 1900 a very very brief moment of state surveillance freedom. In this world that offered you freedom the boundaries were vey narrow and very short and moving beyond those boundaries would minimally get you beaten, arrested, jailed or murdered. Imagine a once free man in his own land being taken to a strange land unable to use his own language knocked down to his knees on a slave ship journeying one to two months. Upon arrival to his new land of captivity he tries to stand but again is slammed down to his stomach with the knee of slavery on his back for 400 years. Then in this nightmarish desert he awakens to an oasis called reconstruction. In this desert, a twilight zone of infinite sand, he reaches the oasis and to his brokenhearted awakening finds out that the oasis is only a mirage called reconstruction. What little hope he had for his desperate thirst for freedom dissipates in despair. Knocked down again he does not believe he shall rise again. He believes the desert of reconstruction will be his final burial ground his cemetery of rest with freedom only to be realized on the other side of life. Reconstruction never had full government support so slavery was still in full effect without monitoring and enforcement from the federal government.
The fourth tsunami of segregation lasted from 1865 to 1968 lasted 103 years
Segregation, the fourth tsunami still lives with Americans comfortably today and the segregation today is sponsored by federal and state sanctioned redlining, bank loans, mortgages, accessing better school systems preventing African Americans from buying homes, moving to better neighborhoods. But now, a new promise called segregation offers a new freedom, a separate but theoretically equal world. The segregation that we are under today is best classified as sanitized segregation. While it promises equality regardless of race, as Jonathon Kozol has illuminated on the American school system in his great seminal book Savage and Inequalities, the American schools are as segregated today as they were in 1954. In addition African-American men that served in the military in higher percentages than their White peers were denied using the to GI Bill if they were fortunate to come home alive from war. Another opportunity for freedom the new African American rises again slowly, cautiously for a moment but again is slammed down with the full weight of federally enforced segregation on himself, his woman and his children. Then on paper it seems he is free, he tries to find his way, tries to smell and taste freedom although he never had full entrance through the doors of education, housing, employment or full status as human. His veteran status overseas gives him the rights to fight for foreigners freedoms, those same freedoms while in his own country are denied. The welfare system stereotyped for the African American wad not even provided to African Americans as Whites received it. The GI bill denied to millions of African Americans which prevented home home ownership which is the fastest way to build generational wealth. Denied the GI Bill and college grants which prevented African American veterans and their families from going to college. Imagine going to fight for freedom in foreign lands when in your own country those same freedoms were denied. Coming back from war seeing signs everywhere Whites here Coloreds here and no niggers allowed. The African American veteran the most patriotic American unable to find stable employment opportunities thus unable to marry thus unable to sustain a functional family.
The fourth tsunami, the war on drugs officially started in 1971. The 50-year war on drugs imprisoned millions of African Americans
https://en.m.wickipedia.org
In June 1971 President Nixon declared a "War on Drugs." stating that drug abuse was "public enemy number one"
In an interview conducted by journalist Dan Baum and published in Harper magazine,, Ehrlichman explained that the Nixon campaign had two enemies: " the antiwar left and Black people." Timeline: Americas War on Drugs
The prison industrial was the baby, the offspring of the war on drugs. As late as 1975 the United States had barely two hundred thousand people in prison. Then the war on drugs was declared. The war on drugs, a not so elegant euphemism for the war on African American males where one of three born today will spend time in the criminal justice system. This stunning percentage of African Americans disproportionately incarcerated begs and pleads a profound question. Are Africans Americans born with a genetic predisposition for crime encoded on their DNA? Is there some unknown cultural force subconsciously planted in us that do not allow us the ability to marry and raise children together? Is it because we disproportionately vote democrat that demonizes us? These are actual proclamations by the conservative right and are so potent a form of propaganda that it has distilled down into the minds of some African Americans as well. Many African Americans suffering from Stockholm syndrome due to their colonial state of captivity identify more with their colonial masters than their own African cultural history that they never had benefit of embracing. America land of the free home of the brave is 4 percent of the worlds population but incacerates more citizens than any country. For African Americans, going to prison at a rate five times higher than Whites, the ability to forge a majority of father led homes with married households is virtually impossible. The prison industrial system. is another major barrier for the sustainability of the African American family.
When we disregard history, we maintain a state of denial, this denial unchecked leads to schizophrenia. I would submit today that we have a culture, and American community of which are operating outside of reality. A nation that in spite of copiously documented empirical evidence shows that African Americans are treated grossly different from White Americans regarding every aspect of American life. So rather than face that statistical evidence rather than face every horrid aspect of slave history, it is far more convenient to point to the victims and tell them that their status as African Americans has nothing to do with their history. It is far more convenient to promote the ahistorical lie that the state of the African American family is because of their unwillingnesst to enter into the American dream.
Today 400 years later with barely 2 to 3 years of generational freedom, the state of the African-American American family has still not recovered after 20 generations of slavery. Today, we are still plagued with single headed households, unemployment, underemployment, health and educational deficits, crime epidemics and disproportionate incarceration rates which disables families, neighborhoods and community. Many African American women remain single because African American men are still not granted economic stability and are plagued with non violent criminal records, and that is a fundamental reason they struggle to marry and start a sustainable family.
Denial has a psychological function that is necessary for human beings to maintain a functional level of sanity, individually and institutionally. I would submit that the majority of Americans including many African Americans are victims of post Stockholm syndrome because of slavery. In never acknowliging the horrors of slavery both African Americans and Whites live in a state of unhealthy denial never understanding their divide. A society that is in denial of slavery no less than Germany and their extermination of the Jews, no less than the American Indian holocaust which has rendered the Indians on the verge of extinction. Americans are in a collective state of schizophrenic denial about the viral and systemic nature of racism and how it affects all of us. For who indeed could function and remain sane knowing and understanding that they were benefactors of a nations legacy with state sanctioned terrorism that allowed rape, torture, lynching, selling human beings and free labor for 400 years and remain sane. So when the questions is asked why is the African American family still struggling in a land where they have been for four hundred years, now we are armed with a breif history of the destruction of the African American family.
Ray Davis
Author of the upcoming book, The Maintenance of Denial, Americans in Mass Denial and the Social Tools that Maintain our Denial.
The writer writes about all things cultural and global but has always focused on the family.
Raydavisgroup@aol.com
Fatherhoo6570
443.413.9425
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Fatherhood6570, Why I wish there was no Michael Jackson Tyler Perry or James Baldwin, Fatherhood, Entertainment and the Pathology of Black Genius
“Believing himself to be ugly simply because his father told him so calling him frog eyes. Baldwin also thought his mother to be ugly due to the insults imposed upon her. On one specific occasion, Baldwin summoned his mother to the window after spotting a woman with thick lips and big eyes on the streets and proclaimed, Look there's someone who's uglier than you and me." Baldwin biographer
“My childhood was hell. I was beaten abused and bathed in ammonia as a child." Tyler Perry
“Beatings were administered with razor straps, belts, wire coat hangers, rulers, switches, and fists. Bloody noses were not uncommon, and more than once one of the boys was knocked senseless.” Michael Jackson.
There is no argument that Tyler Perry, Michael Jackson and the late great novelist/activist James Baldwin have been some of the most gifted human beings that God has lent us. The irony of theses luminaries is that their talent was forged by their painfully abusive childhoods. All three miraculously survived a childhood that would have made many of us suicidal, institutionalized or homicidal. Perhaps in their tortured childhood lies their genius. Is it possible that they could have evolved into the same artist’s without the pain and suffering that they all received from their fathers? Is the analogy of coal turning into diamonds after several thousand years of incredible pressure appropriate here? Could we have had the greatness of Tyler, Michael and Baldwin without the abuse which originated from their slave narrative of self hatred passed down from slave master to father? A rage that lays dormant in massive denial eventually resurfaces violently and when one inevitably succumbs to external pressures it is often fatal to those they love. African Americans males frustration from their inability to attack systemic racism and is redirected and spent onto attack of their own women and children as master would have it. Could we, as benefactors of theses great artist preferred that these great men had a “normal” happy childhood but remained anonymous to us and the world? Could we have been selfless enough to have traded their entertainment gifts for an innocent childhood thus purging their gifts and surrendering their immortal celebrity status to conventional anonymity?
Context is everything, no story can be told with full truth without proper context. African American men dropped upon alien shores, neutered, powerless and without benefit of law, rights or humanity have accumulated much rage. Unfortunately this rage and anger has often fallen on those who they loved the most, their own women and children. African American fathers, the root of their family, unable to plant anchor and hold steadfast are constantly at the mercy of economic, legislative and social tsunami’s. From slavery to separate but equal to welfare systems to the prison industrial systems, African Americans have never had one generation of calm waters to plant anchor. America suffers from institutional historical amnesia and ignores one striking historical fact; that African Americans have been slaves in America much longer than they have been free. The anger of men denied basic rights most often turns them into monsters to both their families and external communities. If that statement seems too strong, be clear. Michael, Tyler and Baldwin as young children saw Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde whenever they saw their fathers and 1/3 of all African American men will be held captive in the penal system.
Tyler, Jackson and Baldwin stories all parallel as all three were emotionally castrated and beaten mercilessly by their fathers without protection of their mothers. Each had to create other worlds were they could hide, die in and be born again. All were the victims of men who were supposed to love and protect them, their fathers. All had their own pathological choice of escape, Tyler’s rabbit hole led him to Madea, an alter-ego who dresses as a woman. Madea, his superego, who he acknowledges represents his Aunt, who once put a gun to his fathers head after his father had almost beaten him to death. This scene, a nightmare of his past resurfaces as a specter of his present in his movies and and in his plays. Madea, large and in charge, the matriarch, an African American woman not afraid of the police or jail, fearless and reckless, unafraid to tote gun, masculine, was profoundly who Tyler wanted his mother to be, who Tyler needed to be. Madea, the mother he wish he had to mute his fathers abuse, to kill his bogeyman, to scare away the monster in his closet. Madea, his angel, the father he never had, the father he wish he had, the reincarnation of his Aunt. Madea, an inseparable part of his psyche who will forever live in Perry and will continue to resurface in his movies and plays until he is healed which unfortunately like Baldwin and Jackson will most likely never occur.
Perry's mother, submissive, serviette and docile, like Michael and Baldwin’s mothers allowed the beatings and the verbal abuse, did not protect them and never took them away from these American made monsters. When the mother, the center of any child’s universe can’t or won’t protect her child, the child hates the mother subconsciously never acknowledging or aware of this hate on a conscious level. This hate is never acknowledged by the victim because what child could acknowledge hating their mother consciously and remain sane. But the hate does manifest itself in their daughters in the selection of males their daughters choose and in their sons in the females that their sons choose perpetuating a cycle of lord of the flies communities. In the absence of the father mothers become gods that are not benevolent.(Read my article on Fatherhood6570 and Hip Hop) This is why Mothers day in the African American community is so overly celebrated.
In the absence of father (as over 70% of African American homes are) mother is loved, feared and hated. Indeed, there is massive denial in the African American community that fathers are needed, a necessary rationalization system to justify the fathers absence to justify the love they never received. It is impossible for Tyler to escape Madea because she represents the father he wanted to have, righteous, protective, paternal. It is impossible for Perry to envision a father in a man, Madea is the only father Perry can accept. Without Madea, Tyler Perry, who had attempted suicide twice would have eventually killed himself, Madea is his lifeline that protects the little boy in him that never evolved into a man. In a community where over 70% of African American males grow up without their father there are millions of Perry’s; unfortunately without Perry’s genius and talent, many of these males escape is the highly profitable prison industrial complex system where 1 of every 3 African American males will eventually reside.
Michael's story, same theme, different variation. A child prodigy, like Baldwin, his genius was recognized early. As told in one biography. "Joe Jackson used to lock Michael in a closet, my source says. "The abuse just goes on and on. Janet was also afraid of him. I once found her in the kitchen with a huge knife. She was going to use it on him." Michael’s escape from his father started on the stage and ended literally in Neverland, his fortress of fantasy, impenetrable to his greatest foe, Joe Jackson, his father. What Madea is to Perry, the stage and Neverland were to Jackson. It is no coincidence that both Michael and Perry have traded their African American masculinity for the costume of women as Michael always wanted to look like Diana Ross and Tyler his Aunt through Madea. But escape has it’s price. As Michael escaped from his father he simultaneously fled from himself, like Perry, both entered a world of schizophrenia rewarded by American capitalism via celebrity status.
Beaten, brutalized and called scarring names by his father, Michael, like any child abused still loved his father and was pathologically confused by his father who both sang praises about him and to others while beating and abusing him deepening Michael's psychosis. Michael’s pain led him to pathological denial of who he was. His physical transformation, stunningly frightening, was an attempt to hide from both his father and the paternalism of the ever present white caste system that both hates and desires African Americans skin color as this is their own form of institutional schizophrenia. Michael, rather than fight them, joined them, his drug of choice a burning desire to become apart of Americas number one aspirational brand, a white American. To transcend his black skin, to escape from Joe Jackson he had to escape from himself transforming from the beautiful little African American he was into an oversized elf with hair, cheekbones and a nose that was beyond cartoonish that transcended the norm of human physical anthropology.
Michael’s genius was so powerful that he filled a deep void in America that is buried in it's own self destruction, paranoia and emptiness. When he performed the audience looked up, arms up and open ready to embrace him as they wept, hysteric and fainting, desperate for a glimpse of him, a touch of him. As he descended onto the stage from on high, he was their Jesus, their saint, their salvation. In a land of pathological denial about the genocide of the domestic population, the American Indian, 400 years of slavery, the dropping of nuclear weapons on other human beings, Michael offered repentance for them through his music, through the unconditional love he offered. For if Michael could so forgive his father he could so forgive America, they believed. They, in their collective institutional guilt sought his forgiveness, his repentance in the only gods they truly recognize as the ones that walk the earth. African Americans on the other hand saw Michael simply as their little brother, their sons and their family, African Americans danced and sang and celebrated him not as a god but as Gods gift, no different that Marvin or Luther. One could argue that if sacrifice is the highest form of love, the love that Michael commanded from millions was at the expense of his sacrifice of self commanded by father Joe.
James Baldwin, easily one of America’s greatest novelist once stated “I never had a childhood” and “I never had a father.” Of course, like Michael and Tyler he had both but because of his physical and psychological abuse he suffered, he had neither. While Perry’s sexuality has quietly been questioned and Michaels sexuality appeared almost androgynous, Baldwin was openly gay, an incredible statement considering the times he lived in and the bold activist he was. As Perry’s retreat was Madea and Michael's was Neverland, Baldwin’s matrix was through his subconscious choice of gayness and his great intellectual gifts. Like Michael, he joined them believing that his great intellect would allow him into their world and would offer him asylum as a gay African American man in a strange land. He attempted membership through his gift of word and pen and if you have not read him would be the equivalent of not hearing Coltrane, watching Michael Jordan or seeing a sunset. With his overly generous use of commas, Baldwin captured in one sentence what most writers could not capture in an entire novel.
Baldwin tried to reclaim his humanity stolen from him from his father through intellectual ascension. In his case membership had no privilege's. Baldwin’s pathology was (as is the modern educated middle class African American) was that he could recapture his humanity through the certification of white approval; of his intellect, linguistical ability and his pen. The indoctrination of African Americans through education has always given African Americans the illusion that through educational pedigrees, W2’s, or bespoke residences that they would receive acceptance by whites. Where Baldwin tried to escape his pain through intellect, Michael did so through skin lightening, as Perry morphed into female costume all furthering the damage of what Emeritus Earl El-Amin WEAA Public Radio Talk Show host and activist calls destroying our “genetic memory.” Baldwin's expatriate status to France with his white male lover was a final attempt for inner peace and tranquility once stating that to be Black and conscious in America forces one to walk a tightrope of sanity vs. insanity.
All three struggle and struggled with their sexuality which is often an inevitable consequence of abused males. All, victims of a massive fatherhood deficit, painfully tried to fill the hungry void left by their fathers through the physical veneered love of other men or abandoning their own masculinity. Tyler, like Luther, not out but struggling, Michael, oscillating between boys and women and Baldwin openly accepting white male lovers. For Baldwin, who fought for Black rights with the fierceness of Malcolm X to take a white male lover is the equivalent of Nat Turner taking a white wife, yet he surrendered as many African American do who climb the ladder. Michael the innocent, surrounded himself with boys, like the catholic Priest who meant no harm, in denying themselves one forbidden pleasure surrendered to another. Perry, raised in the church, tortured by his Christian upbringing tries to have women but needs a male lover to quench the thirst created by his father. The tragic price of Black genius in these cases rooted in abuse initiated by institutional racism and carried on by their fathers is unfortunately standard operational procedure in the African American community. The epidemic levels of fatherlessness and fathers who abuse their children has created a manifest destiny of pathology in high school drop outs, HIV, incarceration, drug infested neighborhoods, homicide, teenage pregnancy, gangs and abortion as a way of birth control making the womb of an African American women the most dangerous place for an African American child to reside.
If the prerequisite of producing a Michael Jackson, Tyler Perry or James Baldwin was based on their torturous childhood, I would have preferred that they never reached their greatness, I would have preferred for them an ordinary life of mediocrity, anonymity and banality. I would prefer that we had never heard of them and that they never reached the heights that they did. As much as I have been awed by their gifts and talents, as much as I have imitated Michael’s dancing, laughed at Perry's comedic genius and wept after reading Baldwin I would have surrendered these stirring emotions they have stirred in me for them to have a childhood of peace, serenity and joy. But is our need for entertainment so narcissistic and self-serving, so great that we would rather watch Michael spin in circles three times in a snap rather than allow him a healthy father and a childhood absence of abuse? Is the void in us so hollow today that we would demand Tyler's Perry being bathed in ammonia by his own grandmother so that we years later would laugh at his an Madea alter-ego? Was the existential and transformative experience of reading Baldwin and having him fight for our humanity worth the brutality he lived through under his monstrous father? Was their genius possible without the torture and abuse?
As fathers, we are the root of community and we must first create homes that make our women feel safe, valued and respected. By nurturing our women first we produce healthy children before conception. Our women and how we treat them is the singular way for us to recover dignity, respect and community. The healthiest children come from homes where the mother and father have the highest level of self esteem, communication, shared values and displayed affection. These traits cannot be taught by programs, private industry or government, indeed the majority of African American children are already state property as a result of absentee fathers. Lunch programs, food stamps, government housing, medicare and beyond prove that the love of the father has been substituted by the paternalism of the state. Children do not do what we say but do imitate what they see. We must let our children see templates of healthy marriages as blueprints of excellence. When the mother and the father give our children a minimum of 18 years or 6,570 days of the highest level of homeostasis the children flourish and are capable of genius on many levels. By establishing the highest level of homeostasis between the mother and father will we by default produce children that can achieve the genius of Michael Jackson, Tyler Perry and James Baldwin without the holocaust of their childhoods. Fatherhood at minimum is an 18 year 6,570 day commitment and when over 80% of all African American children live 6,570 days without their father African American children suffer the greatest deficit America has, an unquenchable love deficit.
This is an excerpt from Mr. Davis's forthcoming book, "The Maintenance of Denial"
Email: Raydavisgroup@aol.com
Blog: Fatherhood6570
Facebook: Ray Davis fatherhood6570
“My childhood was hell. I was beaten abused and bathed in ammonia as a child." Tyler Perry
“Beatings were administered with razor straps, belts, wire coat hangers, rulers, switches, and fists. Bloody noses were not uncommon, and more than once one of the boys was knocked senseless.” Michael Jackson.
There is no argument that Tyler Perry, Michael Jackson and the late great novelist/activist James Baldwin have been some of the most gifted human beings that God has lent us. The irony of theses luminaries is that their talent was forged by their painfully abusive childhoods. All three miraculously survived a childhood that would have made many of us suicidal, institutionalized or homicidal. Perhaps in their tortured childhood lies their genius. Is it possible that they could have evolved into the same artist’s without the pain and suffering that they all received from their fathers? Is the analogy of coal turning into diamonds after several thousand years of incredible pressure appropriate here? Could we have had the greatness of Tyler, Michael and Baldwin without the abuse which originated from their slave narrative of self hatred passed down from slave master to father? A rage that lays dormant in massive denial eventually resurfaces violently and when one inevitably succumbs to external pressures it is often fatal to those they love. African Americans males frustration from their inability to attack systemic racism and is redirected and spent onto attack of their own women and children as master would have it. Could we, as benefactors of theses great artist preferred that these great men had a “normal” happy childhood but remained anonymous to us and the world? Could we have been selfless enough to have traded their entertainment gifts for an innocent childhood thus purging their gifts and surrendering their immortal celebrity status to conventional anonymity?
Context is everything, no story can be told with full truth without proper context. African American men dropped upon alien shores, neutered, powerless and without benefit of law, rights or humanity have accumulated much rage. Unfortunately this rage and anger has often fallen on those who they loved the most, their own women and children. African American fathers, the root of their family, unable to plant anchor and hold steadfast are constantly at the mercy of economic, legislative and social tsunami’s. From slavery to separate but equal to welfare systems to the prison industrial systems, African Americans have never had one generation of calm waters to plant anchor. America suffers from institutional historical amnesia and ignores one striking historical fact; that African Americans have been slaves in America much longer than they have been free. The anger of men denied basic rights most often turns them into monsters to both their families and external communities. If that statement seems too strong, be clear. Michael, Tyler and Baldwin as young children saw Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde whenever they saw their fathers and 1/3 of all African American men will be held captive in the penal system.
Tyler, Jackson and Baldwin stories all parallel as all three were emotionally castrated and beaten mercilessly by their fathers without protection of their mothers. Each had to create other worlds were they could hide, die in and be born again. All were the victims of men who were supposed to love and protect them, their fathers. All had their own pathological choice of escape, Tyler’s rabbit hole led him to Madea, an alter-ego who dresses as a woman. Madea, his superego, who he acknowledges represents his Aunt, who once put a gun to his fathers head after his father had almost beaten him to death. This scene, a nightmare of his past resurfaces as a specter of his present in his movies and and in his plays. Madea, large and in charge, the matriarch, an African American woman not afraid of the police or jail, fearless and reckless, unafraid to tote gun, masculine, was profoundly who Tyler wanted his mother to be, who Tyler needed to be. Madea, the mother he wish he had to mute his fathers abuse, to kill his bogeyman, to scare away the monster in his closet. Madea, his angel, the father he never had, the father he wish he had, the reincarnation of his Aunt. Madea, an inseparable part of his psyche who will forever live in Perry and will continue to resurface in his movies and plays until he is healed which unfortunately like Baldwin and Jackson will most likely never occur.
Perry's mother, submissive, serviette and docile, like Michael and Baldwin’s mothers allowed the beatings and the verbal abuse, did not protect them and never took them away from these American made monsters. When the mother, the center of any child’s universe can’t or won’t protect her child, the child hates the mother subconsciously never acknowledging or aware of this hate on a conscious level. This hate is never acknowledged by the victim because what child could acknowledge hating their mother consciously and remain sane. But the hate does manifest itself in their daughters in the selection of males their daughters choose and in their sons in the females that their sons choose perpetuating a cycle of lord of the flies communities. In the absence of the father mothers become gods that are not benevolent.(Read my article on Fatherhood6570 and Hip Hop) This is why Mothers day in the African American community is so overly celebrated.
In the absence of father (as over 70% of African American homes are) mother is loved, feared and hated. Indeed, there is massive denial in the African American community that fathers are needed, a necessary rationalization system to justify the fathers absence to justify the love they never received. It is impossible for Tyler to escape Madea because she represents the father he wanted to have, righteous, protective, paternal. It is impossible for Perry to envision a father in a man, Madea is the only father Perry can accept. Without Madea, Tyler Perry, who had attempted suicide twice would have eventually killed himself, Madea is his lifeline that protects the little boy in him that never evolved into a man. In a community where over 70% of African American males grow up without their father there are millions of Perry’s; unfortunately without Perry’s genius and talent, many of these males escape is the highly profitable prison industrial complex system where 1 of every 3 African American males will eventually reside.
Michael's story, same theme, different variation. A child prodigy, like Baldwin, his genius was recognized early. As told in one biography. "Joe Jackson used to lock Michael in a closet, my source says. "The abuse just goes on and on. Janet was also afraid of him. I once found her in the kitchen with a huge knife. She was going to use it on him." Michael’s escape from his father started on the stage and ended literally in Neverland, his fortress of fantasy, impenetrable to his greatest foe, Joe Jackson, his father. What Madea is to Perry, the stage and Neverland were to Jackson. It is no coincidence that both Michael and Perry have traded their African American masculinity for the costume of women as Michael always wanted to look like Diana Ross and Tyler his Aunt through Madea. But escape has it’s price. As Michael escaped from his father he simultaneously fled from himself, like Perry, both entered a world of schizophrenia rewarded by American capitalism via celebrity status.
Beaten, brutalized and called scarring names by his father, Michael, like any child abused still loved his father and was pathologically confused by his father who both sang praises about him and to others while beating and abusing him deepening Michael's psychosis. Michael’s pain led him to pathological denial of who he was. His physical transformation, stunningly frightening, was an attempt to hide from both his father and the paternalism of the ever present white caste system that both hates and desires African Americans skin color as this is their own form of institutional schizophrenia. Michael, rather than fight them, joined them, his drug of choice a burning desire to become apart of Americas number one aspirational brand, a white American. To transcend his black skin, to escape from Joe Jackson he had to escape from himself transforming from the beautiful little African American he was into an oversized elf with hair, cheekbones and a nose that was beyond cartoonish that transcended the norm of human physical anthropology.
Michael’s genius was so powerful that he filled a deep void in America that is buried in it's own self destruction, paranoia and emptiness. When he performed the audience looked up, arms up and open ready to embrace him as they wept, hysteric and fainting, desperate for a glimpse of him, a touch of him. As he descended onto the stage from on high, he was their Jesus, their saint, their salvation. In a land of pathological denial about the genocide of the domestic population, the American Indian, 400 years of slavery, the dropping of nuclear weapons on other human beings, Michael offered repentance for them through his music, through the unconditional love he offered. For if Michael could so forgive his father he could so forgive America, they believed. They, in their collective institutional guilt sought his forgiveness, his repentance in the only gods they truly recognize as the ones that walk the earth. African Americans on the other hand saw Michael simply as their little brother, their sons and their family, African Americans danced and sang and celebrated him not as a god but as Gods gift, no different that Marvin or Luther. One could argue that if sacrifice is the highest form of love, the love that Michael commanded from millions was at the expense of his sacrifice of self commanded by father Joe.
James Baldwin, easily one of America’s greatest novelist once stated “I never had a childhood” and “I never had a father.” Of course, like Michael and Tyler he had both but because of his physical and psychological abuse he suffered, he had neither. While Perry’s sexuality has quietly been questioned and Michaels sexuality appeared almost androgynous, Baldwin was openly gay, an incredible statement considering the times he lived in and the bold activist he was. As Perry’s retreat was Madea and Michael's was Neverland, Baldwin’s matrix was through his subconscious choice of gayness and his great intellectual gifts. Like Michael, he joined them believing that his great intellect would allow him into their world and would offer him asylum as a gay African American man in a strange land. He attempted membership through his gift of word and pen and if you have not read him would be the equivalent of not hearing Coltrane, watching Michael Jordan or seeing a sunset. With his overly generous use of commas, Baldwin captured in one sentence what most writers could not capture in an entire novel.
Baldwin tried to reclaim his humanity stolen from him from his father through intellectual ascension. In his case membership had no privilege's. Baldwin’s pathology was (as is the modern educated middle class African American) was that he could recapture his humanity through the certification of white approval; of his intellect, linguistical ability and his pen. The indoctrination of African Americans through education has always given African Americans the illusion that through educational pedigrees, W2’s, or bespoke residences that they would receive acceptance by whites. Where Baldwin tried to escape his pain through intellect, Michael did so through skin lightening, as Perry morphed into female costume all furthering the damage of what Emeritus Earl El-Amin WEAA Public Radio Talk Show host and activist calls destroying our “genetic memory.” Baldwin's expatriate status to France with his white male lover was a final attempt for inner peace and tranquility once stating that to be Black and conscious in America forces one to walk a tightrope of sanity vs. insanity.
All three struggle and struggled with their sexuality which is often an inevitable consequence of abused males. All, victims of a massive fatherhood deficit, painfully tried to fill the hungry void left by their fathers through the physical veneered love of other men or abandoning their own masculinity. Tyler, like Luther, not out but struggling, Michael, oscillating between boys and women and Baldwin openly accepting white male lovers. For Baldwin, who fought for Black rights with the fierceness of Malcolm X to take a white male lover is the equivalent of Nat Turner taking a white wife, yet he surrendered as many African American do who climb the ladder. Michael the innocent, surrounded himself with boys, like the catholic Priest who meant no harm, in denying themselves one forbidden pleasure surrendered to another. Perry, raised in the church, tortured by his Christian upbringing tries to have women but needs a male lover to quench the thirst created by his father. The tragic price of Black genius in these cases rooted in abuse initiated by institutional racism and carried on by their fathers is unfortunately standard operational procedure in the African American community. The epidemic levels of fatherlessness and fathers who abuse their children has created a manifest destiny of pathology in high school drop outs, HIV, incarceration, drug infested neighborhoods, homicide, teenage pregnancy, gangs and abortion as a way of birth control making the womb of an African American women the most dangerous place for an African American child to reside.
If the prerequisite of producing a Michael Jackson, Tyler Perry or James Baldwin was based on their torturous childhood, I would have preferred that they never reached their greatness, I would have preferred for them an ordinary life of mediocrity, anonymity and banality. I would prefer that we had never heard of them and that they never reached the heights that they did. As much as I have been awed by their gifts and talents, as much as I have imitated Michael’s dancing, laughed at Perry's comedic genius and wept after reading Baldwin I would have surrendered these stirring emotions they have stirred in me for them to have a childhood of peace, serenity and joy. But is our need for entertainment so narcissistic and self-serving, so great that we would rather watch Michael spin in circles three times in a snap rather than allow him a healthy father and a childhood absence of abuse? Is the void in us so hollow today that we would demand Tyler's Perry being bathed in ammonia by his own grandmother so that we years later would laugh at his an Madea alter-ego? Was the existential and transformative experience of reading Baldwin and having him fight for our humanity worth the brutality he lived through under his monstrous father? Was their genius possible without the torture and abuse?
As fathers, we are the root of community and we must first create homes that make our women feel safe, valued and respected. By nurturing our women first we produce healthy children before conception. Our women and how we treat them is the singular way for us to recover dignity, respect and community. The healthiest children come from homes where the mother and father have the highest level of self esteem, communication, shared values and displayed affection. These traits cannot be taught by programs, private industry or government, indeed the majority of African American children are already state property as a result of absentee fathers. Lunch programs, food stamps, government housing, medicare and beyond prove that the love of the father has been substituted by the paternalism of the state. Children do not do what we say but do imitate what they see. We must let our children see templates of healthy marriages as blueprints of excellence. When the mother and the father give our children a minimum of 18 years or 6,570 days of the highest level of homeostasis the children flourish and are capable of genius on many levels. By establishing the highest level of homeostasis between the mother and father will we by default produce children that can achieve the genius of Michael Jackson, Tyler Perry and James Baldwin without the holocaust of their childhoods. Fatherhood at minimum is an 18 year 6,570 day commitment and when over 80% of all African American children live 6,570 days without their father African American children suffer the greatest deficit America has, an unquenchable love deficit.
This is an excerpt from Mr. Davis's forthcoming book, "The Maintenance of Denial"
Email: Raydavisgroup@aol.com
Blog: Fatherhood6570
Facebook: Ray Davis fatherhood6570
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
Fatherhood6570 What is a Thug ?
A thug is a boy, whose never been hugged by his Dad 365 days in a year. A thug is a boy, who tries to be hard but hasn’t been taught how to shed tears. A thug struggles with momma,
He thinks it’s her fault, that his father the thug isn’t there. He can’t understand, his fathers no man and made him a thug, not hip-hop or momma. Thugs wear strictly designer, are iced and bling-blinging while their children are full of resentment. Thugs think Playstations, X-boxes, Iphones and Nikes replace Daddy’s love, time spent and commitment. Big and Tupac great artist's called themselves thugs would've traded fame, fortune for one day of Dads love. Their rhymes would have been real not meant for consumers, spitting lyrics
Of Black self improvement. Like Martin and Malcolm, they could have woke millions
and started a national movement. A thugs not scared to die, he expects it you see, dying is better than life. Like Tupac and Big who talked big about death, so afraid of their life neither are left. Without fathers boys are blind, no past and no future, they walk in the dark, lost trying to be men. Their fathers their eyes, without Dad they're blind, they stumble and fall without their Dad’s hand. Thugs think women are babies mamma's, bitches and Ho’s. They love sex without love, like fifty, they’re confused. They look in the mirror and wonder what’s wrong, alcohol, their children and women they abuse. Thugs remain boys, in spite of their age
and a body, that makes them think they’re a man. He lives with his mama, drives his girls car, baby boy’s what we call them, never a man. He plays Playstation all day and quits every job, as soon as child support finds him. He has several children, by a few different women and supports none, while his Escalade blings with new rims. Thugs sons are angry, confused and are lonely. With no father, his life, has no vision or plan. Independent Black women who make their own money get confused by Beyonce thinking they can raise men. A thug disrespects women, like his father who taught him because he wasn’t there he’ll never take a Black woman and call him his wife. Like himself and his children he just doesn’t care. Thugs need love from a man, to go boys to men, no diploma or woman can save him. Its why God made man, to raise boys to be men. Without fathers, at forty, he behaves like he’s still seven. To create a thug, multiply 365 days times 18 years of no bother
Imagine;
6,570 day's with no hugs, no love, to a boy from his father
Ray Davis
The writer, Ray Davis is availible for speaking engagements and can be reached at Raydavisgroup@aol.com or his Blog: Fatherhood6570
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Fatherhood6570 EIGHT HABITS OF EXCELLENT AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS
FATHERHOOD6570 8 HABITS OF EXCELLENT AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS
The 8 habits below are the same habits I executed in my home with my 3 children. My oldest son is currently in a PhD program for Electrical Engineering / Nanotechnology. My daughter, a Spelman College graduate has been accepted to every medical school she has applied to and is pursuing medicine. My youngest son is a special needs student who will require parental care all of his life. I have added a bonus on caring for special needs children. I don’t share the information about my children to brag but to tell every parent ALL OF OUR CHILDREN ARE MASTERPIECES waiting to be developed. As my running narrative has maintained, what we do with our children daily for 18 years or 6,570 days as I constantly talk about determines their success. Our children are our canvas you as parents are the artist. Below are 8 steps to painting your masterpiece.
A world class education does not come from overpriced private schools, vouchers, designer clothes or gated communities. It comes from homes were love is defined as sacrifice, discipline, high expectations and frequent inspections. It demands an investment of daily regimen, constant nurturing and giving more of a commitment to our children than playstations, X boxes and our jobs. Below are the 8 Habits of Excellent African American Students and attached to each habit is a comprehensive resource guide for each topic.
Although this guide is user friendly to all children I have dedicated this to African American children due to the epidemic statistics they suffer nationally in our school systems.
8 HABITS OF EXCELLENT AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS
1. NO TV AT ALL between Monday and Thursday, none. A child / teen gets home between 3:00pm and 5:00pm. A snack and dinner will require 1 hour. Give them 1 hour of down time but structure this time with choices of play. This free time could consist of activities such as checkers, reading, puzzles, writing, drawing, chess, board games, etc. I personally do not like video games but if you must a 30 minute limit should be in place. Two hours of uninterrupted focus should be for study and homework. Once homework is finished study begins. African Americans watch more television than any other group, just over 4 hours and 40 minutes per day. IMAGINE IF OUR CHILDREN STUDIED 4 HOURS A DAY.
TV facts
2. THE STUDY OR HOMEWORK ROOM should consist of no other sounds than jazz, cultural, classical music or silence. Give your child the choice. Listening to Jazz allows African American children to master their own musical heritage and focus on their work, not the music they would choose to listen to. Try to include a world map, globe, paper, writing utensils, glue, crayons, flashcards, calculators, etc., to make this room the official study room. The homework room can be any room in the house but dedicate it to your child’s education. Money is not a barrier as dollar stores have all of these items and lets be realistic how much money do we waste in athletic shoes, video games and designer clothes.
Study Skills Links & Resources
Fact Monster - A fun site with study tips, games, and more; Study Guides & Strategies - Tons of useful information; Academic Skills Center - Another site ...
3. DON'T RELY ON THE SCHOOL to provide all the education for your children. It is not the schools responsibility to love your child it is yours and love means priorities, discipline, goals, rules, manners, boundaries, respect. It is not you teachers job to raise your child, it is their job to teach them, if you have not given your child the basics, they are not teachable. When your children tell you they have no homework give them homework yourself; discuss a topic you and they share interest in and have them write a paper about it, then discuss it together. Use the Internet to locate learning activities that are both fun and educational. Ask the teacher to provide more homework in the future especially in areas that your child struggles in. SAT test can be taken over the Internet for free to increase your child's score and assist with college scholarship opportunities. Make sure you have your teachers email and be proactive, if you are only in contact with your teacher when their is a problem then that is a problem.
Super Teacher Worksheets - Free Printable Math Worksheets, Grammar ...
Free math worksheets, printable grammar sheets, multiplication facts practice, ... This page also includes reading comprehension activities. ...
4. FIND YOUR CHILD'S NATURAL APTITUDE because every child has a gift. Below is a general guide to various forms of intelligence. Give your children the chance to develop and cultivate these skills. When a child finds their gift's and you as a parent cultivates that gift it creates natural immunities because a high self esteem for your children protects them against peer pressure, premature sex, gangs, drugs and poor academic performance.
Multiple Intelligences
This page provides general background information about the theory of multiple intelligences, practical strategies for using the theory in learning and ...www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.htm - Cached - Similar -natural
Linguistic intelligence ("word smart"):
Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")
Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")
Musical intelligence ("music smart")
Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")
Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")
Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")
5. SEND YOUR CHILDREN TO BED as early as 8:00am - 8:30pm for elementary students, 9:00pm - 9:30pm for middle students and 9:30pm - 10:30pm for high school students. My son and daughter missed 5 days total between them from the 1st through the 12th grade not because they are any healthier than any other children but because they simply got enough rest. This is critical for optimal mental and physical development. Lack of sleep is detrimental to learning and interferes with concentration and memory (which is why so many AA children are prescribed Ritalin.) Lack of sleep also weakens the immune system, can lead to higher occurrences of health problems and cause accidents.
The relationship of sleep on academic performance in adolescents
Jun 10, 2009 ... According to a research abstract that will be presented on Wednesday, June 10, at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated ...www.news-medical
6. SET GOALS AND EXPECTATIONS for your children that include weekly incentives and rewards. Do not wait on report cards to reward or discipline your child. With email there is no excuse in not communicating with your child's teacher. Provide weekly incentives for them. The rewards can include weekend use of Internet, video games, bowling, skating, allowances, etc. Have all of your child's teachers phone numbers and email addresses posted in a visible area in your home so that you can contact them biweekly.
goal setting for kids
We have produced a range of goal-setting sheets to appeal to all age-groups and hope you will find one to appeal to your children. Goal setting cards ...www.activityvillage.co.uk/goal_setting_for_kids.htm - Cached
7. A PEACEFUL HOME is mandatory for providing children a safe, secure and structured environment that allows your child to focus on his higher needs. Homes that have loud conflicts, domestic abuse, alcohol and drug use and a constant group of negative people in and out of the home reduces the ability of the child to succeed on any level. My youngest child is a special needs child* and operates at his best (like most children) when he feels safe, secure and valued. All positive behavior should be praised internalizing peace which creates the immunity of high self-esteem within your child.
Creating a Peaceful Home
A fresh look at this classic from which many self-help books were taken. ... What are some steps we can take to ensure that our home is as peaceful as possible? ... Establish rules and consequences for
8. A SPIRITUAL FOUNDATION must be established as early as possible for the above variables to work. Children and adults who have a spiritual void most often fill that void with materialistic addictions, negative peer assembly, premature sex and apathetic scholastic descent. I have two young adults who are currently finishing their college careers at two of the finest colleges in the country. I make this point with them; educational pedigree's, six figure salaries, vocational titles and luxury automobiles can't heal broken hearts, loss of loved ones, loneliness and illness. Unless you recognize an acknowledge that you have a creator and that it is you mission to honor him by daily deed, your world anointed certifications will be blown away leaving you naked when storms come. This is what I offer them, this is what I offer you.
Religion and Academic Achievement Among Adolescents
... demonstrates
9. BONUS HABIT, OUR SPECIAL NEEDS CHILDREN. As I mentioned, my youngest son is special needs, he operates between 3 and 5 years of age in intelligence and will always need an adult with him. To fathers of these children especially if they are boys I say this, if you abandon them they will not make it and it will severely impact them. If I am not working my special needs son is with me all the time and he is the greatest joy of my life. In brief, these children should be exposed to everything, malls, swimming, skating, music, family, bowling, movies, computers. Your special needs child has a talent it is your job to find it.
The 8 habits below are the same habits I executed in my home with my 3 children. My oldest son is currently in a PhD program for Electrical Engineering / Nanotechnology. My daughter, a Spelman College graduate has been accepted to every medical school she has applied to and is pursuing medicine. My youngest son is a special needs student who will require parental care all of his life. I have added a bonus on caring for special needs children. I don’t share the information about my children to brag but to tell every parent ALL OF OUR CHILDREN ARE MASTERPIECES waiting to be developed. As my running narrative has maintained, what we do with our children daily for 18 years or 6,570 days as I constantly talk about determines their success. Our children are our canvas you as parents are the artist. Below are 8 steps to painting your masterpiece.
A world class education does not come from overpriced private schools, vouchers, designer clothes or gated communities. It comes from homes were love is defined as sacrifice, discipline, high expectations and frequent inspections. It demands an investment of daily regimen, constant nurturing and giving more of a commitment to our children than playstations, X boxes and our jobs. Below are the 8 Habits of Excellent African American Students and attached to each habit is a comprehensive resource guide for each topic.
Although this guide is user friendly to all children I have dedicated this to African American children due to the epidemic statistics they suffer nationally in our school systems.
8 HABITS OF EXCELLENT AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS
1. NO TV AT ALL between Monday and Thursday, none. A child / teen gets home between 3:00pm and 5:00pm. A snack and dinner will require 1 hour. Give them 1 hour of down time but structure this time with choices of play. This free time could consist of activities such as checkers, reading, puzzles, writing, drawing, chess, board games, etc. I personally do not like video games but if you must a 30 minute limit should be in place. Two hours of uninterrupted focus should be for study and homework. Once homework is finished study begins. African Americans watch more television than any other group, just over 4 hours and 40 minutes per day. IMAGINE IF OUR CHILDREN STUDIED 4 HOURS A DAY.
TV facts
2. THE STUDY OR HOMEWORK ROOM should consist of no other sounds than jazz, cultural, classical music or silence. Give your child the choice. Listening to Jazz allows African American children to master their own musical heritage and focus on their work, not the music they would choose to listen to. Try to include a world map, globe, paper, writing utensils, glue, crayons, flashcards, calculators, etc., to make this room the official study room. The homework room can be any room in the house but dedicate it to your child’s education. Money is not a barrier as dollar stores have all of these items and lets be realistic how much money do we waste in athletic shoes, video games and designer clothes.
Study Skills Links & Resources
Fact Monster - A fun site with study tips, games, and more; Study Guides & Strategies - Tons of useful information; Academic Skills Center - Another site ...
3. DON'T RELY ON THE SCHOOL to provide all the education for your children. It is not the schools responsibility to love your child it is yours and love means priorities, discipline, goals, rules, manners, boundaries, respect. It is not you teachers job to raise your child, it is their job to teach them, if you have not given your child the basics, they are not teachable. When your children tell you they have no homework give them homework yourself; discuss a topic you and they share interest in and have them write a paper about it, then discuss it together. Use the Internet to locate learning activities that are both fun and educational. Ask the teacher to provide more homework in the future especially in areas that your child struggles in. SAT test can be taken over the Internet for free to increase your child's score and assist with college scholarship opportunities. Make sure you have your teachers email and be proactive, if you are only in contact with your teacher when their is a problem then that is a problem.
Super Teacher Worksheets - Free Printable Math Worksheets, Grammar ...
Free math worksheets, printable grammar sheets, multiplication facts practice, ... This page also includes reading comprehension activities. ...
4. FIND YOUR CHILD'S NATURAL APTITUDE because every child has a gift. Below is a general guide to various forms of intelligence. Give your children the chance to develop and cultivate these skills. When a child finds their gift's and you as a parent cultivates that gift it creates natural immunities because a high self esteem for your children protects them against peer pressure, premature sex, gangs, drugs and poor academic performance.
Multiple Intelligences
This page provides general background information about the theory of multiple intelligences, practical strategies for using the theory in learning and ...www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.htm - Cached - Similar -natural
Linguistic intelligence ("word smart"):
Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")
Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")
Musical intelligence ("music smart")
Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")
Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")
Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")
5. SEND YOUR CHILDREN TO BED as early as 8:00am - 8:30pm for elementary students, 9:00pm - 9:30pm for middle students and 9:30pm - 10:30pm for high school students. My son and daughter missed 5 days total between them from the 1st through the 12th grade not because they are any healthier than any other children but because they simply got enough rest. This is critical for optimal mental and physical development. Lack of sleep is detrimental to learning and interferes with concentration and memory (which is why so many AA children are prescribed Ritalin.) Lack of sleep also weakens the immune system, can lead to higher occurrences of health problems and cause accidents.
The relationship of sleep on academic performance in adolescents
Jun 10, 2009 ... According to a research abstract that will be presented on Wednesday, June 10, at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated ...www.news-medical
6. SET GOALS AND EXPECTATIONS for your children that include weekly incentives and rewards. Do not wait on report cards to reward or discipline your child. With email there is no excuse in not communicating with your child's teacher. Provide weekly incentives for them. The rewards can include weekend use of Internet, video games, bowling, skating, allowances, etc. Have all of your child's teachers phone numbers and email addresses posted in a visible area in your home so that you can contact them biweekly.
goal setting for kids
We have produced a range of goal-setting sheets to appeal to all age-groups and hope you will find one to appeal to your children. Goal setting cards ...www.activityvillage.co.uk/goal_setting_for_kids.htm - Cached
7. A PEACEFUL HOME is mandatory for providing children a safe, secure and structured environment that allows your child to focus on his higher needs. Homes that have loud conflicts, domestic abuse, alcohol and drug use and a constant group of negative people in and out of the home reduces the ability of the child to succeed on any level. My youngest child is a special needs child* and operates at his best (like most children) when he feels safe, secure and valued. All positive behavior should be praised internalizing peace which creates the immunity of high self-esteem within your child.
Creating a Peaceful Home
A fresh look at this classic from which many self-help books were taken. ... What are some steps we can take to ensure that our home is as peaceful as possible? ... Establish rules and consequences for
8. A SPIRITUAL FOUNDATION must be established as early as possible for the above variables to work. Children and adults who have a spiritual void most often fill that void with materialistic addictions, negative peer assembly, premature sex and apathetic scholastic descent. I have two young adults who are currently finishing their college careers at two of the finest colleges in the country. I make this point with them; educational pedigree's, six figure salaries, vocational titles and luxury automobiles can't heal broken hearts, loss of loved ones, loneliness and illness. Unless you recognize an acknowledge that you have a creator and that it is you mission to honor him by daily deed, your world anointed certifications will be blown away leaving you naked when storms come. This is what I offer them, this is what I offer you.
Religion and Academic Achievement Among Adolescents
... demonstrates
9. BONUS HABIT, OUR SPECIAL NEEDS CHILDREN. As I mentioned, my youngest son is special needs, he operates between 3 and 5 years of age in intelligence and will always need an adult with him. To fathers of these children especially if they are boys I say this, if you abandon them they will not make it and it will severely impact them. If I am not working my special needs son is with me all the time and he is the greatest joy of my life. In brief, these children should be exposed to everything, malls, swimming, skating, music, family, bowling, movies, computers. Your special needs child has a talent it is your job to find it.
The Ultimate Guide to Special Needs Teaching: 100+ Resources and ...
Jun 25, 2008 ... Teaching Strategies and Pastoral Care: This detailed guide goes over ... Toys for Special Needs Children: Use
The writer, Ray Davis is founder of Fatherhood6570 and can be reached at this blog or by contacting Raydavisgroup@aol.com.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Fatherhood6570, Fatherhood and the Single Mother
Single mothers raising male and female children alone is obviously a problem. Single mothers raising sons alone are a disaster. This is not a condemnation of women but a call to action for the men who are the fathers of these children. The rise of gangs, high school drop outs, teenage pregnancies, incarceration rates and African American homicides are all evidence prime fascia that fathers need to be in their home for their children. Even though daughters suffer tremendously without their fathers they have the template of their mothers to model behavior after. Their son’s however have no such model and in having the mother as the only parent left to raise them are left to develop their psyche based solely off of their mother's model. This causes tremendous confusion in the very young male as his adoration of his mother places her at the center of her universe and simultaneously builds a subconscious resentment towards her for not providing him his father.
The daughter of course also suffers from her fathers absence. She needs to see her mother loved properly so that she builds trust in men and is able to choose a healthy male for herself one day. She also needs her fathers physical and emotional love which reduces her need for premature sex behavior, low self esteem and teenage pregnancy. Single mothers that have a revolving door of men in their homes guarantee that their daughters will permanently distrust all men thus lowering their standards. Their daughters will eventually become their mothers regenerating a cycle of fatherless homes. Children rarely do what we say but most often do what they see. Again, the child witnessing 6,570 days or 18 years of modeling of positive or negative behavior determines our children's fate. Their sons will treat other women as they have witnessed their own mothers being treated and eventually imitate their own father 's by preying on women spawning children they will abandon just like thier father's.
Without the father the daughter has no immune system for male predators. She often will seek daddy through men older that will take advantage of her sexually. Pregnancy at an early age starts the 15 year cycle where the child is 15, the mother is 30 and the grandmother is 45. Ironically, many times these women in the same family compete for the same man as none of them have entered adulthood because the prerequisite of maturation can only be taught by healthy parents. The insert below illustrates this example.
Mother and daughter fight over man who was sleeping with both ...
Oct 15, 2009 ... Mother and daughter fight over man who was sleeping with both ... mother and her daughter
The fatherhood deficit which in many cases is multi-generational has created homes and communities where we have normalized the unthinkable. My cousin who teaches school in one urban community has four students who are brothers that attend his elementary school. The brothers are all borderline special need students. Their legal names are Grand Marnier, Hennessey, Courvoisier and Bacardi. The tragic comedy of this spectacle oscillates the reader between laughter and despair. Projecting the future of these boys one is condemned to silence. Comprehending the motivation of the mother who named her sons after premium alcohol induces weak attempts of humor to the most sober reader. The boys are already compromised because of their special needs and a mother that apparently has has an unhealthy dependency on alcohol. With no sober father present and her chemical dependency we witness a recipe for disaster for why so many African American children fall victim to the system. Indeed, on any given day nearly 23 percent of African American males who have dropped out of school between the ages of are in jail, prison or a juvenile justice system according to the Center for Labor Market Studies.
Males without fathers often stay in a suspended animation of boyhood for the rest of their adult lives defaulting to selfishness, sex without commitment and will become the fathers that their father were; absent, inattentive and reckless. These males project their own self-hatred because of their fathers absence onto the children they will have but never raise effectively destroying self vicariously through abandoning their own children. The maintenance of denial requires single mothers to believe they can raise males alone. Unfortunately, especially in the African American community, we make myth of the great single African American mother who has beaten the odds with her children. If this myth was the rule and not the exception the African American child would not be at the bottom of all leading danger indexes.
Single mothers can and must help their sons even without their fathers present. Some strategies they can take are to:
Only date men who have committed relationships with their own children
Do everything in your power not to end the relationship
Join churches that have male mentoring
Place children in activities that have male adults
Never criticize their fathers in front of them
Use media to let them watch males who are positive role models
Encourage when possible that the father talks to them daily and sees them at least once a week
Use the Internet for strategies
The job of two parents together is very difficult, with one parent it is often overwhelming.We first must admit and acknowledge to ourselves that our children are missing half of what they need. In acknowledging that we are more moved to do something about it. There are stories of success among single mothers and single mothers have an obligation to find what the ingredients of those stories were and duplicate them for the success of their own children. Most of all this again is a call for men to be present every day in the lives of their children relieving our women of single parenthood and eliminating the massive love deficits we have created in our children. Fathers are the only solution.
The writer Ray Davis Founder of Fatherhood 6570 can be reached at this blog or at Raydavisgroup@aoil.com
The daughter of course also suffers from her fathers absence. She needs to see her mother loved properly so that she builds trust in men and is able to choose a healthy male for herself one day. She also needs her fathers physical and emotional love which reduces her need for premature sex behavior, low self esteem and teenage pregnancy. Single mothers that have a revolving door of men in their homes guarantee that their daughters will permanently distrust all men thus lowering their standards. Their daughters will eventually become their mothers regenerating a cycle of fatherless homes. Children rarely do what we say but most often do what they see. Again, the child witnessing 6,570 days or 18 years of modeling of positive or negative behavior determines our children's fate. Their sons will treat other women as they have witnessed their own mothers being treated and eventually imitate their own father 's by preying on women spawning children they will abandon just like thier father's.
Without the father the daughter has no immune system for male predators. She often will seek daddy through men older that will take advantage of her sexually. Pregnancy at an early age starts the 15 year cycle where the child is 15, the mother is 30 and the grandmother is 45. Ironically, many times these women in the same family compete for the same man as none of them have entered adulthood because the prerequisite of maturation can only be taught by healthy parents. The insert below illustrates this example.
Mother and daughter fight over man who was sleeping with both ...
Oct 15, 2009 ... Mother and daughter fight over man who was sleeping with both ... mother and her daughter
The fatherhood deficit which in many cases is multi-generational has created homes and communities where we have normalized the unthinkable. My cousin who teaches school in one urban community has four students who are brothers that attend his elementary school. The brothers are all borderline special need students. Their legal names are Grand Marnier, Hennessey, Courvoisier and Bacardi. The tragic comedy of this spectacle oscillates the reader between laughter and despair. Projecting the future of these boys one is condemned to silence. Comprehending the motivation of the mother who named her sons after premium alcohol induces weak attempts of humor to the most sober reader. The boys are already compromised because of their special needs and a mother that apparently has has an unhealthy dependency on alcohol. With no sober father present and her chemical dependency we witness a recipe for disaster for why so many African American children fall victim to the system. Indeed, on any given day nearly 23 percent of African American males who have dropped out of school between the ages of are in jail, prison or a juvenile justice system according to the Center for Labor Market Studies.
Males without fathers often stay in a suspended animation of boyhood for the rest of their adult lives defaulting to selfishness, sex without commitment and will become the fathers that their father were; absent, inattentive and reckless. These males project their own self-hatred because of their fathers absence onto the children they will have but never raise effectively destroying self vicariously through abandoning their own children. The maintenance of denial requires single mothers to believe they can raise males alone. Unfortunately, especially in the African American community, we make myth of the great single African American mother who has beaten the odds with her children. If this myth was the rule and not the exception the African American child would not be at the bottom of all leading danger indexes.
Single mothers can and must help their sons even without their fathers present. Some strategies they can take are to:
Only date men who have committed relationships with their own children
Do everything in your power not to end the relationship
Join churches that have male mentoring
Place children in activities that have male adults
Never criticize their fathers in front of them
Use media to let them watch males who are positive role models
Encourage when possible that the father talks to them daily and sees them at least once a week
Use the Internet for strategies
The job of two parents together is very difficult, with one parent it is often overwhelming.We first must admit and acknowledge to ourselves that our children are missing half of what they need. In acknowledging that we are more moved to do something about it. There are stories of success among single mothers and single mothers have an obligation to find what the ingredients of those stories were and duplicate them for the success of their own children. Most of all this again is a call for men to be present every day in the lives of their children relieving our women of single parenthood and eliminating the massive love deficits we have created in our children. Fathers are the only solution.
The writer Ray Davis Founder of Fatherhood 6570 can be reached at this blog or at Raydavisgroup@aoil.com
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