Profound response from

DINIZULU GENE TINNIE

Grandmothers of today are much younger than in past generations. Many are faced with having been single mothers and are now single grandmothers. Their grandchildren live in a world that requires them to have more material things than did those of past generations. Without fathers and grandfathers there to support them, grandmothers may experience undue stress and pressure.

Hey Joan,

I don't know if there are any "studies" on this, but I do know that there are an awful lot of very knowledgeable people who know what you know from life experience.

Where are the fathers? They are away on the battlefield, fighting in the war. They are not all winning. They are not all heroes. They are not even all aware that a war is going on. But whether they choose it or not, like it or not, or know it or not, war is being made on them. No different from the history of the past 500 years -- only the names have changed: civilization of the savages, slavery, colonization, pacification, criminal justice, free market economy, good business, FTAA, etc., etc. -- "Nigger (or Injun, or Gook, or whatever else), you ain't got no family to care for that is more important than you working for us -- in one way or another: give us your labor, your land, your money, your life, your wife, your children, or we'll just take it.

I have called it the Asshole-in-the-alley syndrome: Here you are, taking care of business, working, on your way home to your family, with problems enough in your life, when out steps an asshole from an alley to stop you and take whatever you have, including, maybe, your life. What are his qualifications? What gives him the right? Why is his life any more important than yours? He has no education, no knowledge, no purpose, no direction, no positive contribution to make to humankind. But he has a gun and you don't, and that is basically the kind of war that's going on. And bear in mind that a huge number of these aforementioned assholes are the very ones who are supposed to be preventing crime -- they have badges, uniforms, mace, stun guns, handcuffs, and, in case you get the best of any one of them, radio and unlimited backup.

In this war, the gun is only the least of weapons. Miseducation, a sick "popular culture" that glorifies violence, chemical warfare (addictive drugs), AIDS, and, the most controlled substance and the most effective weapon of all, money. (Ain't no accident that Christ saw the need to run the "money changers" out of the Temple of God). This war has been going on for a little while. In Europe itself, the assholes had lifted themselves out of the alleys into the halls of government and positions of "respect," where they maintained themselves by the (legal) enslavement of other people's children as 14 hour-a-day laborers taken from their "unfit", poverty-stricken parents. This is the mind set of the same individuals who orchestrated the slave trade and began the settlement of America. Prominent among the settlers were debtors (some of them poverty-stricken parents), either deported as punishment or, perhaps, even more often the case, escapees from their creditors. These got here not only with the deadbeat mentality but also the aspiration to be like the original rich assholes, at the expense of Guess Who? "Move on, Injun!" "Get to work, nigger!"

The stories of the barbarism that was resorted to to make those commands a reality has been told many times and has hardly been told enough. I just read an excerpt from an overseers diary, where he boasts of punishing a recaptured man who had attempted to escape, by flogging him, "pickling" his wounds with salt, vinegar and hot pepper, and having another man "shit into his mouth," to which a gag was quickly tied so he would have to wear it "with his mouth full for four or five hours." This is for the "crime" of seeking the freedom that is a person's birthright as a child of God. The same overseer's journal is full of records of his sexual encounters with enslaved women, or -- far more probably the case -- girls, who sometimes also get "flogged well."

Barbaric to us, maybe, but, like it or not, this has become the ideal of American "manhood": the guy who has power over other men and can have any woman he wants, when, where, and how he wants, and he's not squeamish or afraid to do whatever it takes to get it. These are the values of the richest and most powerful people in the country. They control the levers of government. They are glorified by Hollywood -- from fictional "action thriller" movies to (equally fictional?) TV news reports. The psychotic inmates have seized the asylum and imprisoned their healers. None dare question the head man, the chief of surgery or any of the other title holders. They have ways to teach you about sanity.

The wonder, the miracle, the Gift of God in all of this is that we are still here at all, with any of the mental or spiritual wherewithal to be parents or to raise families at all. True enough, it might not take but "a moment's pleasure" to create a lifetime of parenthood and responsibility, and it is, of course, the mothers who bear the brunt, even as they have to fight the same war as the men. The sexual act may not require a whole lot of intelligence on the part of the participants, but its consequences sure put people to the test, and one of the great untold stories of heroism is the number of parents -- particularly mothers -- who have passed that test, delivering beautiful, gifted and promising children to this world at God's behest. Problems there are, and problems there will be, but we must never forget to count our blessings and to be aware of what we have, as much as we are of what we don't have. That is just the mental grounding we need to keep our wits about us. Beyond that, it is a constant struggle.

Malcolm X, much glorified in fond and imagined memories, was not a very comfortable individual to be around or to have around, while he was alive: He was not above challenging the manhood of supposed "men" (the playuhs, the hustluhs, the all-important bourgeois title-holders, the preachers, etc.) with a very simple and direct question: Can you protect your woman from the white man? Yeah, Bro! The same galling question that ate your insides out and bit through your lip while you lay in the filth of the slave ship hold, praying and pretending that those were not HER screams you were hearing through that solid barricade, above all the other wails and curses. Malcolm gave the dope-slap that woke us right on up out of the temporary relief we thought we had from the knockout drops of modern "Civilization" (everything from cars to lipstick, from liquor to gambling, even [mis]"education"). He took us right back to that stark reality of being naked Africans in chains that has been ["white"] America's founding definition of us, and dared us to be men, alive, awake, and conscious.

Kwame Nkrumah once famously said that "The political maturity of a nation can be measured by its women" (or something close to those exact words; the meaning is clear). "Our" women (much like the Native American women, and, truth to be told, Irish women and many others who bear the burden of being wives and lovers in politically conquered nations) have earned respect beyond words for their ability to have been keepers of true love for the men in their lives, whom they have often had to nurture almost as much as the children they bore for these men. In Kwame Nkrumah's own nation of Ghana (which sage observers tell me has backslid considerably from the heady days of independence and greater national pride), I have observed a mother, baby wrapped around her back, working on a construction site, carrying buckets of cement up a bamboo scaffold to the workers. There was no sense of complaint or bitterness or self-pity in her demeanor. She was a woman with a job to do, taking care of business, and when she left, there would be other things to do. She was taking care of another young life, another gift to the planet. Now, it seems to me that there is a meeting place somewhere in here, where that kind of strength and purposefulness combines with political consciousness and creates a world in which "our" men, in this country, start seeing a different way of being and thinking.

Some of us have long contended that when women lose interest in Cadillacs and Saks 5th Avenue, a lot of men (who depend on that as their game) will have to regroup and rethink. The violence, the hypersex, the deadbeatedness, the irresponsibility, the problems that men have with their roles as fathers and spouses are all deeply rooted in the political reality of "conquest." They are "covers" for what guys know (or think) they can't do -- and still be men. The dominant cultural misconceptions of "manhood" derived from the corrupted powers of the slavery era, is no help either. Our schools and schoolteachers that conspire to derail the boys with too much promise cannot be overlooked.

All of these things are reasons, but they are not excuses. They help us understand and see clearly, but understanding and vision without any concrete action is useless. I focus on the male side of the equation, but I do so knowing that the female side is equal. The torment of the brother in the hold of the slave ship is just the other side of the torment of the sister who can no longer contain the scream she prayed he would not hear, even as her lustful, cowardly tormenter took satisfaction in it. There is no innocence. There are no innocents. We are all in this. We have a whole nation to build from the ashes of devastation. Undue stress and pressure are everywhere, on all of us. We must not worry about our imagined perceptions of unequal burdens. We are exactly as Malcolm said we are, and we might as well face it with purposeful, step by step action, to save one baby at a time and leave none behind, regardless of who the parents are.

Somewhere, in all of this, Joan, arises the personal question of creativity, and what we do with it. Ultimately (and I hope this doesn't sound just abstract and philosophical), the best way to defeat oppression is to be who we really are in spite of it. I think it is the legacy of EXAMPLE that we leave our children that is the most valuable and inspiring of all. They might not hear or listen to or absorb the wise ideas we try to implant in them with all of our love and energy, but, by God, they know that if they saw you actually do something, and make it happen, successfully, somewhere deep inside, they will know that they have that ability. So, as much as you can see that I have given thought to general and global political and social patterns, it seems like it still comes down to what we do with the knowledge, and it is here that I had to wrestle with the notion for a while of whether "art" is just a cop-out from the struggle. (After all, does my art feed my baby, today? And tonight? And tomorrow? I conclude that that is not the right question).

What I have learned is that in every sport or combat or competition, it is extremely difficult to win if your opponent dictates the terms and the rhythm. If we think this is about "race" or "gender" or "us against them," we have already bought into "their" paradigm and their definition of terms. If we recognize ourselves and each other as persons unique and here for a purpose, no matter what, we find ourselves engaged in what our people have done for centuries: asking at childbirth "Who is this child and why has (s)he come amongst us?," so we know what to do to nurture that child into the fulfillment of his or her purpose. In our situation, it seems that we need to let "charity begin at home" by nurturing our own "artistic" gifts, since they are part of our purpose, as thoroughly as we can, until they become a real instrument of power. In doing so, we are bound to inspire others, including the little ones around us.

This is not to ignore the other stuff. I do not forget Malcolm's challenge. I do not try to hide from the inadequacies that his challenge exposes in my own life as a father and as a man. At the same time, I do not give in to the stress and frustration that would have me beating my fists and brains bloody against the wall of a very well organized (albeit psychotic) system of violence and oppression. My sister once reminded me of the extraordinary gift that it is to actually have the ability to create something, as an outlet, as a response, as a contribution. Everybody, she reminded me, does not have that. I therefore should be grateful and show my gratitude by producing.

We are all the children of our parents and the parents of our children. The children who are abused grow up to be abusers -- unless the village intervenes. The children of deadbeat dads may well grow up to be deadbeat dads -- hell, what do they know from fathering? Believe it or not (it took me a while to get to this), the "village" today, I believe, is not so much the churches, the political leaders, or the various "experts" full of advice; the "village" is the artists. Think about it. Who else really has the responsibility for putting "truth" out there where it can be shared. This is not the "cultural truth," that a few insiders can dig and agree upon, like a klavern of rotten-toothed klansmen agreeing that we are lower animals and swearing it to be true, for example. The truth of beauty and the beauty of truth is what sustains the human soul, regardless of culture. The truth will make you free. I have heard you hit more than one "true" note in your time, and the image of you doing it has stuck with me for a long time afterwards.

I began this with the intent of writing two sentences and saying "hello". The ramble just came and kept on coming, so forgive the length and take it as inspiration inspired by the Truth you had to share. I imagine it was as much for myself as for you that I had to let this run its course. Our situation is an oppressive one; that cannot be denied, and, as such, undue stress and pressure are built in to it. Our inherited ability to handle it at all is a gift for which we need to pause and give thanks, even as we face today's new daunting challenges and unexpected crises. Yet, I also remember the words of artist Stanley Pinkney (Babaluaiye S. Dele) in Boston: "Have you ever stopped to think, that in our situation -- in OUR situation, mind you -- we actually dare to say that we are going to create something, that we are going to be artists. Have you ever stopped to think about that?"

Peace and Love to you always, and to your single Mom daughter and the grands

DGT - More from DGT

Jeffery

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How do you find time for this wide array of sites, issues info? I try but find myself a  real loss.

Now, as to incarcerated fathers, it is my opinion somewhat systemic (Rove gets off while the bro w/ a nickel bag does 5-15). I have never understood the logic of incarcerating " dead beat dads" because how the hell can you care for someone if you are in JAIL (maybe a work program or more opportunities within the system could help to resolve this issue)

The system, for most brothers is a JAIL.They are berated by everyone  and often lacking opportunities that even immigrants can take advantage of.

Don't get me started. This does not excuse dead beats or those who legitimately need to be behind bars but it points to questions about how our society treats fathers and people in general.

modaddy