"And if he can't learn to love you, you should leave him
'Cause, sister, you don't need him
And I ain't trying to gas ya up, I just call 'em how I see 'em
You know what makes me unhappy? When brothers make babies and leave a young mother to be a pappy
And since we all came from a woman
Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?
I think it's time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women "--Tupac Shakur
The dawn of the emasculated black male is upon us.
This has nothing to do with sexuality and gender roles.
It has nothing to do with whether a single mother can raise a man.
This is not a commentary based on sagging jeans and a plethora of locks.
We are facing is the erosion of the village. The numerous hurricanes of policy that targeted the dismantling of the black family. We are at the banks of what once was the heartbeat and pulse of the community.
The politically man-made disasters of Nixon, Carter and Reagan for starting and continuing a relentless campaign in the war on drugs that continues to disproportionately target people of color.
African Americans stood and cheered while handing a "platinum hood pass" to President Clinton. In the aftermath of this disaster stood more modern day slave ships that would host more African american men than slavery.Since Brown Vs Board of education, charter schools have become the norm. Public education erodes as tombs that once housed children are symbols of failure to generations of minorities.
Where is the justice?
Ask Kalief Browder. What about Laquan McDonald? Trayvon Martin? Sean Bell? Oscar Grant III? Should I even go on? Yet some white people feel like there is no pattern.
Let me explain this invisible pattern.
Once black males feel hopeless against the system and fear is ingrained through generational struggles multiplied by the absence of males; a behavioral pattern emerges, a sort of normalized trauma. It becomes the expectation that men will not show up. You know what happens when men don't show up?
Women are left to step up!
Grandmothers traditionally become primary caregivers. My grandparents had a healthy influence in raising me, but there was a significant gap in age. Not so much these days.
Very little wisdom is being handed down. Less traditions and more negative generational curses seem to be highlighted than before.
You know what else goes out of the window?
Respect.
Black men and women have a historically American issue when it comes to relating to each other due mostly in part to slavery, I believe. When this respect goes out of the window you have the issues of girls and women end up missing and abused. You see a live Facebook video of a little girl being raped and not one viewer called police.
Where are the black men ready to flood that community and rid that area of these perpetrators?
Black Panther Party? Nation of Islam? Vicelords? GD's? --All groups that would have handed down some type of intraracial justice were dismantled by the government (And no, I'm not saying all of these groups were the most positive at times).
We cannot embrace the notion that we just arrived at this point. There were milestones and markers along this journey.
As I have often said in my criticism of the black church, there are too many storefronts and not enough unified agendas. The church was the social service center in the community, and now it's just a Sunday morning fashion show.
We really need a new village and a new program.