(ThyBlackMan.com) Whenever I go out in public, I often see the African kids being mostly raised by single African mothers in this country and that’s a huge problem in our community that personally needs to be addressed so that we can come up with and implement solutions so that we can once again rebuild and strengthen our family structure.
These days, our family structure is portrayed in a very negative, dysfunctional light by the mainstream American media where on shows like Maury and Jerry Springer, and even Empire where they always show images of our families being dysfunctional and often portraying African men as “baby daddies” and “deadbeats” and portraying African women as “baby mamas” and “drama queens” and mainstream America constantly embraces and promotes these negative, destructive stereotypes of us and especially our family structure in this country.
I would say for over the past several decades in this country, mass incarceration and The War On Drugs are the two main systemic agendas that the colonial power structure has used that has severely crippled our family structure by systemically removing so many brothers from the home and it has created single families as well as making our kids vulnerable to being sexually assaulted by the Eddie Longs of the world, kids becoming psychologically poisoned by negative role models and even the streets that will only lead them to either the morgue or the pen.
I will even say the reason that 72% of African kids are born out of wedlock in this country is also the fault of the brothers and the sisters.
Part of the reason why it’s the fault of the brothers because a lot of them are “man child” and that means that many of them grew up in homes without a strong father in the household and because of that, they get their masculine “cues” from listening to rappers on the radio that are basically poisonous to our community from Lil Wayne to 2 Chainz promoting and glorifying extreme sexual promiscuity amongst young African men that tells them to have sex with as many women as possible without thinking about the consequences that will come out of those situations. Also a lot of brothers don’t have the mental capacity nor the maturity to be a strong, productive father to be active in their child’s life.
The other part of the reason why it’s the sisters fault is because they get their feminine cues from listening to Nicki Minaj on the radio also promoting and glorifying sexual promiscuity amongst young African women by telling them “when the brother is counting stacks on the table, give him a blowjob”. And also, some of them don’t have the mental capability nor maturity to be a doting, responsible mother to their children because some of them willingly allow The System to use them as pawns against these brothers by giving them free housing, section 8, etc on the condition that the man not be in the home at all.
The terms “baby mama” and “baby daddy” were first used in a rap song in 1997 called “My Baby Daddy” by a rap group called B-Rock and The Bizz that became just a one-hit wonder. And then those terms in our community however reached its peak in 2004 when a rap group called Holla Point did a song called “Baby Mama” in which the chorus of the song from the male rappers was “I Hate My Baby Mama” and the chorus from the female rapper in part 2 of the song was “I Hate My Baby Daddy” and the track was very hot on the radio at that time and it forever solidified the constant glorification of the terms “baby mama” and “baby daddy” as well as the stereotypical image of the dysfunctional family in our community that’s often perpetrated by the mainstream American media.
The Conclusion – To brothers and sisters, we need to heal and work together to rebuild our family structure so that it can be healthy and strong again.
Staff Writer; Kwame Shakir (aka Joe D.)
