John McCann writes today about Rites of Passage, an organization of black men who mentor black youth. Such racial mentoring is needed, McCann says:
So what we’re talking about is kids seeing gainfully employed black men.
But is there really a need to emphasize “black” men?
Dennis thinks so, citing as proof the short documentary “A Girl Like Me.” That film, by a high school student, recreated a 1940s psychological experiment wherein black children were given a black doll and a white doll and asked which one was better.
The white doll reigned supreme, and it suggested that black kids develop a self-hatred somewhere along the way in their short lives.
McCann, who is The Herald-Sun‘s race columnist in the same way that Barry Saunders is The News & Observer‘s race columnist, never mentions the real issue: the shortage of responsible fathers in the black community. To his credit, Saunders hit that problem straight on in his column yesterday:
The next time you see some kid standing on a street corner at 1 a.m. — pants sagging, BVDs showing, looking “up to no good” — follow him home.
I guarantee you there won’t be a father there. Or if there is, his pants’ll be sagging, too.
Too many black fathers — “fathers,” my eye; sperm donors — are shirking their duties, leaving the streets or equally rudderless peers to teach their sons how to become men.
Both of these columns give a whole new meaning to “it takes a village.” It takes a village to raise too many children only because their parents are not doing it.
