(ThyBlackMan.com) I thought about my daughters, who don’t need yet another image, song or slogan that makes them look forward to becoming somebody’s baby’s mama, without giving a second thought to doing the hard work necessary to create a stable and sustainable family structure (we also had long conversations when Fantasia’s Baby Mama song came out a few years ago). My biological father ran for the hills when I was a baby, but my mother never gloated over the fact that he was gone or acted as if he was irrelevant. During World War II, when white men were off fighting for their country, Hallmark didn’t create a Father’s Day card for white woman. While millions of single black mothers do a wonderful job of raising their children, the last thing we need to do is to institutionalize and immortalize the crisis of the black family in America.
I couldn’t help but notice that Hallmark has issued a Father’s Day card for black women. I’ll admit to being taken aback by the sheer thoughtlessness of this endeavor, while studying the image of the strong and defiant black 
woman standing on the cover of the card, taking pride in the fact that she’s holding it down while those “trifling ass negroes” are out there doing only God-knows-what.
I’m not sure who runs the Racial Decision-Making Department at Hallmark, but this is certainly a decision that should be reconsidered. Black women are already painted by America to be aggressive, hyper-masculine creatures who are unable to create productive families. Black men are portrayed as shiftless, lazy buffoons who sprint in the other direction at any sign of accountability. While both of these stereotypes hold true in too many contexts, we must always seek out a higher purpose and never give up on our families.
Memo to Hallmark: Father’s Day is a holiday for fathers. A father is defined by Webster’s Dictionary to be “A man who has begotten a child.” It is not defined as “The woman who raises the child when there is no man around.” As a father myself, I am offended that Hallmark would simply write black dads out of the equation and hand the familypenis over to the mother. Sure, the mother’s hard work should be celebrated, but perhaps the company can engage in its standard corporate opportunism by creating another holiday that focuses on single mothers of all racial backgrounds, not just African American women.
The problem of fatherlessness in black America is not simply some cultural phenomenon that black people suddenly and inexplicably decided to embrace. Half a century ago, most fathers were present in the homes of their children. The problem of fatherlessness is directly related to the joint crises of mass incarceration and unemployment that has hit the black community, making it difficult for many men to provide for their families – these conditions bred a set of cultural norms in which we were all somewhat complicit in accepting the status quo, rather than fighting the systemic obstacles that led to the demise of our community.
Economic struggles are no excuse for not being there for your children (as I expressed in my Father’s Day article), but we must also realize that many young men today are being raised without a father to show them the responsibilities of being a dad, and many young girls are being raised to believe that you can do everything on your own without dealing with a man or a relationship. So, while personal irresponsibility certainly plays a role in the lack of fathers in the home, we can also point to broader institutional constructs such as the prison industrial complex (and even Hallmark’s perceived celebration of the missing black father) as prominent factors in this sad state of affairs.
While the loyalties of black mothers to their children is nothing short of heroic, we must also get away from buying into the notion that black men are subhuman animals who love their children less than white men do. Millions of black dads like myself, as well as the mothers of our children, find offense at the idea of writing the father out of the equation altogether, as if we aren’t meant to exist. Also, there are fathers who don’t have the opportunity to be in the home with their children who don’t enjoy having their role minimized by having to give away equity in a special day that was designed for them. Hallmark’s decision to create a Father’s Day card for black women engages in the act of celebrating a dysfunction, increasing the likelihood that the dysfunction eventually becomes the norm. Suddenly, it’s cooler to be a single black mom than to be a married mother raising her children with a partner – I want my girls to plan their families with a higher purpose in mind, and Hallmark isn’t helping with that endeavor.
Staff Writer; Dr. Boyce Watkins
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition. For more information, please visit http://BoyceWatkins.com.