The miracle of the Afro-American community is the strength of their women. I have extensive experience with them and know them as inspiringly resilient, competent, generous, sacrificial, deeply religious, emotionally intelligent, good humored, long-suffering, serene and courageous. But by themselves they cannot adequately compensate for the absent father. In an "Amazonian" world of women without men, mothers seamlessly, fluidly hand on their spiritual/emotional riches to their daughters. But they cannot do so for their sons; that belongs to the father. Without a father figure, the young man becomes a wimp or a thug. He gets entrapped in the Culture of Poverty Matrix: anger, violence, crime, addictions, unemployment, apathy, weak study and work habits, poor health, isolation, insecurity, despair, and lack of masculine confidence.
Ideology of Anti-Racism
Almost three years ago, May of 2020, the American psyche was assaulted with the horrific, nauseating image of George Floyd's killing: helpless, on the ground, calling for his mother, suffocated by a strong white man in a police uniform. For much of our society this event was traumatic. It recalled a history of violence against blacks. It elicited shock, rage, hysteria, indignation...and a rush to judgment. Across the cultural/political left we had the eruption of Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police, and Critical Race Theory. The foundational belief of this new Anti-Racist Ideology is: the continued, pervasive, systemic oppression of blacks by whites.
In the first letter of this threesome, I argued that this accusation is false; that the systematic racism of 300 years was decisively overturned by a new system of anti-racism. In the second letter I argued that the troubling persistence of racial inequality was not due to contemporary racism or the moral weakness of the victims, but by consequences of prior racism, our class structure and above all the Culture of Poverty which enslaves without attention to skin color. This third and last letter will consider the impact of the ideology of anti-racism upon black fatherhood, family and culture.
Narrative of Emasculation
The simple story line at the heart of this ideology is that the black male is always/everywhere overwhelmed by the more powerful white, "The Man," epitomized in the vicious, racist white policeman. Due to a pervasive, overwhelming, largely invisible and camouflaged system, the black man is incapable of defending himself, of providing for and protecting his women and children. Now we ask: How does this narrative impact a young black man? There can be two effects: impotence or rage.
One can hardly imagine a story line so accurately aimed to emasculate or enrage the black man. This is a Satanic deception, straight from hell! If God destines every man to eventually be serene, confident, strong, chaste; than Satan intends every man to be agitated, insecure, weak, impure.
Imagine two young black men driving 75 mph in a 60 zone. The one is a confident-student athlete with little racial antagonism; the other has digested this narrative and is anti-racist. The first probably has a father (or surrogate); the second probably not. How does each respond to the State Trooper? The first is trusting; aware that he broke the law; contrite and compliant. The second is suspicious, sure he was targeted as a black; enraged; defiant. Which would you want for your son?
Psychologically we know that trauma victims may reenact their wounding event. Oftentimes, child abusers were themselves abused and are compulsively repeating the pattern. With this in mind, we can understand the anti-racist allegation as a generational ritual: a recall of the violence of the past. As Catholic, in the mass, we reenact the torture and murder of the victorious Risen Christ. In the BLM-CRT narrative there is no such victory; the black man is violated in a vicious, eternally recurring cycle that never ends.
Skin color has nothing to do with becoming a good father. What do Afro-Americans need? Reparations, preferential treatment in employment and college acceptance, cross-city busing of children, effusions of white guilt and pity? Of course not! All of that will make things worse. The black man needs what we all need: To pray, work hard and get help to be sexually chaste and faithful. To go to Church and inhale the strong, tender Fatherhood of God through his Son Jesus in the Holy Spirit. To bond with other men in giving and receiving mentoring, support, affirmation, correction. Rigorous habits of study, work, prayer.
This is not moralistic, "pull-yourself-up-by-bootstrap" individualism! This is knowing that we all are weak sinners, desperately in need of the graces that only come from prayer, worship, confession of sin and immersion in a faith community. Regardless of class, race or ethnicity.
Another Assault on the Family
The integrity of the traditional family is the foundation for security, prosperity, and human flourishing, even in conditions of financial scarcity. The best economic decision possible is to remain married; to not divorce. Divorce is financially catastrophic for all but the very wealthy. The primary cause for black poverty is the damage done to the family structure over three centuries.
In 1970 24% of black babies were born to single women; by 1990 that had risen to 64%. That fact does not allow for abortions: in NYC about 66% of black unborn babies are aborted. Clearly, after 1970, precisely when racism was defeated, the black family went into severe decline. The causes are debated and there are several. Liberals see the decline of non-skilled jobs (manufacturing, etc.) as hurting the black male. Some studies find about 10% of the change as due to that. Conservatives see two causes: First, the elaboration of a welfare system that encouraged dependency and entitlement and discouraged marriage and strong work habits. Secondly, more importantly, the sexual revolution, in tearing sex away from marriage, wrecked havoc on the lower classes, of all colors. So we see that the damage remaining from those earlier three centuries was aggravated after 1970, despite the success of Civil Rights, by an axis of toxic dynamics. With that in mind, how does anti-racism, specifically BLM, impact black life?
The originators of BLM were strong sexual revolutionaries: two of the three black women who originated the movement identify as queer. The original manifesto and subsequent activity includes, beyond racial justice, advocacy of the LGBTQ+ agenda including a diverse, diffuse understanding of marriage and family. This involves deconstruction of the traditional Dad-and-Mom family and of the maternity/paternity binary. There is an obvious failure to speak about the role of the black father in the community and actually an implicit misandry (hatred of men.) In this in can be understood to express a resentment against the absent or toxic father that is understandable in the light of Afro-American history. But it serves to further weaken the paternal self-confidence of the men, to emasculate them, to feed toxins of rage and powerlessness.
Black Lives Matter, clearly in its originators, is itself an additional assault on the already weakened family structure. We see here an interior connection between racial identity politics and sexual/gender ideology. Logically, the connection between the two of them is not necessary: a social justice advocate might strongly endorse one of the ideologies (anti-racist and sexual) but not the other. But in practice the two work closely together in allegations of "intersectionality" which sees various dynamics of oppression (racial, sexual, etc.).
We look back to the 1960s to see the roots of this unhappy union. We now know that the Civil Rights Movement, a moral crusade of impeccable, admiral integrity, was compromised interiorly by the sexual promiscuity of some of its prominent leaders. The abuse of women is the denied secret of that movement. What emerged out of that era was a new Democratic alliance of the black community with sexual liberationists. The large Catholic contingent in the Party was not smart enough to resist this new coalition. And so we see over the last 50 the unwavering allegiance of Afro-Americans to a liberal agenda of sexual license, male infidelity and abortion; an agenda that continues to devastate to black underclass and keep it entrapped in the matrix of the Culture of Poverty.
Defund the Police: Scapegoat
The knee of Derek Chauvin on the neck of George Floyd became the defining icon for this new, political but also religious movement of anti-racism. A rash judgment (violation of the 8th commandment) was declared against the police in general. This was unfortunate on many levels: it is not true; it is unfair to the police; it has hurt poor black neighborhoods more than anyone else.
Each police department is its own world, its own culture. There is no pervasive, systematic police system. We might speak of a corporate culture in the US Army, Amazon or the Catholic Church. But not for our local police, fire or municipal systems. I will speak only for my own locality (of 50 years), the most diverse in the nation, Jersey City: in almost 14 years of operating two residences for low income women, we have had well over 100 visits from police, fire, emergency and crisis units. Unfailingly these units are diversified ethnically and by gender; they are professional, courteous, helpful, supportive. When I consider all these who serve with generosity, consideration and courage I become very angry at the blanket condemnation "defund the police."
There are some systemic patterns which prevail across police departments, but racism is not one of them. Since the police, along with the military, are the only legitimate users of violent force, it attracts inevitably an inordinate number of sadists, sociopaths, and violent personalities. That is in the nature of the work. These undesirables are not always recognizable. We can assume that many local squads harbor such. They can be strong personalities, very effective policeman, and exercise strong influence. This is heightened by another systemic pattern: men working together closely in life-threatening situations understandably develop intense loyalty for each other. In itself this can be a good thing. But it can also override countervailing values, such as the rights and wellbeing of the alleged criminal. So we have the infamous "blue wall of silence" whereby police habitually refuse to report abuses by fellow officers. Some years ago I myself sat on a jury in which we found a policeman guilty of excessive violence against a group of teenagers in Jersey City. This was white/on/white crime. This violent misbehavior is largely color-blind.
The suspicion and rage directed to the police after the summer of 2020 has had a negative affect on our police, across the nation. Early retirements; fewer recruits; poor morale; passivity in enforcing the law. As a result the crime rate, especially violent crime, has surged over the last three years, especially in cities and pronouncedly in poor neighborhoods. The black community suffers the most. Anti-racism, including BLM, have made things worse for the poor among us.
Limousine Liberals
This expression refers to the affluent, privileged, liberal elite who live sheltered lives, far removed from the real urban poverty and violence, but congratulate themselves self-righteously as they "virtue signal" their support of politically correct causes like BLM, LGBTQ, and others. In the months of the explosion of BLM, in the black areas of Jersey City where I lived and worked, I saw no BLM signs. But when I drove through affluent suburban Essex County, I saw one on every third lawn. The poor and working classes in the cities are fighting to survive and have no use for ideology. Those in the upper economic brackets of our class society find it quite comfortable to allege racial and sexual injustices that do not threaten the class system from which they benefit. A BLM, like an "All Are Welcome Here" or a "Save the Planet" sign, costs nothing.
Critical Race Theory
CRT is an elaboration of the classic Marxist belief that human history is always the story of an oppressor dominating a victim: capitalist over proletariat, male over female, cisgender over trans, and white over black. This idea has perennial appeal because since original sin there is, among other dysfunctions, the dominance of some over others. In every family, group, organization, and relationship there are such violent dynamics. It is pervasive in human life. It is salutary for us to be sensitive to such as they infuse family, friendship, class, gender, sexuality, economics, politics and every human domain.
The Marxist belief system is atheistic and denies any transcendent order, Goodness, or destiny. And so this power struggle becomes the singular, defining drama of human life. It is a dog-eat-dog world; it is always the war of all against all; we are always oppressors or victims. The singular moral imperative is to resist the dominator and assist the underdog.
The Catholic, by contrast, recognizes this reality, but not as absolute or defining. Rather it is a subplot within the larger story of God's deliverance of us from enslavement to sin, death, violence and the Satanic Kingdom of hell. Along with this dialectic of violence, there is a greater Drama at work: that of God's consuming love for us and his descent into our very violence to suffuse it with His pardon, gratuity, extravagance, serenity, and promise. And so combat, resistance, systems of evil, and action for justice are all real. But as part of greater whole: that we are all of us already lifted out of the dark into the eternal light of Triune Love.
Conclusion
Barak Obama was elected President easily (electoral vote of 365-173) in 2008; I opposed him, especially for his support of partial-birth abortion, which is actually infanticide; but with many I celebrated the election of an Afro-American as president as the definitive conclusion of white racism in America. Surprisingly, his time saw the eruption of a new anti-racism. This was far from the evangelical, wholesome appeal of Dr. King. It was a perverse inversion of it: resentful, aggrieved, defensive, indignant, entitled, and raging. It is itself a convoluted racism.
Our society is toxic, sinful, dysfunctional on many levels; but pervasive white-on-black racism is not one of them. The allegation of systemic racism is untrue; a rash judgment; emasculating of the black male; destructive of the family; an intensification of the violent Culture of Poverty; disruptive of good policing; polarizing of white against black; dismissive of the actual class and cultural causes of poverty and injustice; fallacious as a Marxist mythology; and self-congratulatory for the privileged, liberal elite. It makes the racial inequality that much worse.
We need to work across class, racial, political and religious lines to develop economic policies to help the underclass, of all ethnicities, to climb out of poverty. This is a difficult task. The left favors a system that fosters dependency and entitlement; the Republican establishment resists government action. My hope is that a Post-Trumpian populist (economically as well as culturally) Republican Party will cooperate with the traditional Democrat concern for the poor and working class to enact positive policies (e.g. child credit).
More than anything, we all need men who aspire to be strong, faithful, humble, prudent, sober, chaste, responsible, steadfast. We need families...Dad, Mom, kids, extended family...that are stable, serene, mutually patient and forgiving. We need faith communities that are supportive, inspiring, exuberant with praise and thanksgiving. We need God's grace to teach us to love and to be a light to others.
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