Commentary
COMMENTARY: Fathers Being Present, Keeping Word Most Important to Children
WASHINGTON INFORMER — While it is often noted that no guidebook is available to women on how best to be mothers, the same holds true for men who enter into fatherhood. In addition to providing nurturing support for offspring, traditional roles dictate that men also financially support, provide protection, instill mental and emotional anchoring for their children. However, many young adults in the District found the lessons their fathers instilled through example far more powerful than words they imparted.
By Sharon Washington, Tedarius Abrams and Elae Hill
While it is often noted that no guidebook is available to women on how best to be mothers, the same holds true for men who enter into fatherhood. In addition to providing nurturing support for offspring, traditional roles dictate that men also financially support, provide protection, instill mental and emotional anchoring for their children. However, many young adults in the District found the lessons their fathers instilled through example far more powerful than words they imparted.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2015 report on the role of American fathers in family life, which noted the critical roles fathers played in the health and development of their children, defied stereotypes about Black fatherhood by documenting both their traditional and non-traditional involvement in daily childrearing — even when the fathers were not living in the same home.
“There is an astounding amount of mythology loaded into [the] stereotype [of Black men as derelict fathers], one that echoes a history of efforts to rob Black masculinity of honor and fidelity,” New York Times commentator Charles M. Blow said in a 2015 piece. “Now to the mythology of the Black male dereliction as dads: While it is true that Black parents are less likely to marry before a child is born, it is not true that Black fathers suffer a pathology of neglect.”
The Pew Institute estimates roughly 67 percent of African-American fathers who don’t live with their children see them at least once a month, compared to 59 percent of white fathers and just 32 percent of Hispanic fathers.
“My job is to ensure that my children grow into healthy, productive, God-centered men and women,” said Vaughn Willis, a 27-year-old mechanic. “That cannot happen with me acting like a man-child, hanging with friends instead of with my kids.”
Willis that while he may have been short on financial support for his two children on occasion, he provided them with the tangible things they needed.
“My sons didn’t want to hear that business was slow and I couldn’t pay for new clothes or shoes, they just wanted their dad to be there to read to them or to walk them to school,” he said. “They need to know that they matter to the man who gave them life.”
Sharon Washington, Tedarius Abrams and Elae Hill are interns for The Washington Informer as part of Chevrolet’s Discover the Unexpected (DTU) Journalism Fellowship program.
This article originally appeared in the Washington Informer .
Activism
Oakland Post: Week of April 24 – 30, 2024
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 24 – 30, 2024
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Activism
Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024
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Commentary
Opinion: Surviving the Earthquake, an Eclipse and “Emil Amok.”
Last Friday, a 4.8 magnitude earthquake shook New York City, reported as the “biggest earthquake with an epicenter in the NYC area since 1884” when a 5.2 quake hit. A bit bigger. The last quake similar to Friday’s was a 4.9 in 1783.Alexander Hamilton felt it — 241 years ago. That’s why New Yorkers were freaking out on Friday. They were in the room where it happens.
By Emil Guillermo
I’m a Northern Californian in New York City for the next few weeks, doing my one-man show, “Emil Amok, Lost NPR Host, Wiley Filipino, Vegan Transdad.”
I must like performing in the wake of Mother Nature.
Last Friday, a 4.8 magnitude earthquake shook New York City, reported as the “biggest earthquake with an epicenter in the NYC area since 1884” when a 5.2 quake hit. A bit bigger. The last quake similar to Friday’s was a 4.9 in 1783.
Alexander Hamilton felt it — 241 years ago.
That’s why New Yorkers were freaking out on Friday. They were in the room where it happens.
And it just doesn’t happen that often.
Beyonce singing country music happens more frequently.
When I felt New York shake last week, it reminded me of a time in a San Francisco TV newsroom when editors fretted about a lack of news an hour before showtime.
Then the office carpeting moved for a good ten seconds, and the news gods gave us our lead story.
On Friday when it happened in NYC, I noticed the lines in the carpeting in my room wiggling. But I thought it was from a raucous hotel worker vacuuming nearby.
I didn’t even think earthquake. In New York?
I just went about my business as if nothing had happened. After living near fault lines all my life, I was taking things for granted.
Considering the age of structures in New York, I should have been even more concerned about falling objects inside (shelves, stuff on walls) and outside buildings (signs, scaffolding), fire hazards from possible gas leaks, and then I should have looked for others on my floor and in the hotel lobby to confirm or aid or tell stories.
Of course, as a Californian who has lived through and covered quakes in the 4 to 6 magnitude range, I tried to calm down any traumatized New Yorker I encountered by taking full responsibility for bringing in the quake from the Bay Area.
I reassured them things would be all right, and then let them know that 4.8s are nothing.
And then I invited them to my consoling post-Earthquake performance of “Emil Amok, Lost NPR Host…”
It was the night of the eclipse.
ECLIPSING THE ECLIPSE
In New York City, the eclipse was about 90 percent visible. Good enough for me. Though a full solar eclipse is a celestial rarity, blockages of any sort aren’t generally celebrated. My one-man play is about growing up with the eclipsed history of American Filipinos and how I struggle to unblock all that.
For example, did you know the first Filipinos actually arrived to what is now California in 1587? That’s 33 years before the Pilgrims arrived in America on the other coast, but few know the Filipino history which has been totally eclipsed.
I was in Battery Park sitting on a bench and there was a sense of community as people all came to look up. A young woman sitting next to me had a filter for a cell phone camera. We began talking and she let me use it. That filter enabled me to take a picture of the main event with my iPhone.
For helping me see, I invited her and her boyfriend to come see my show.
Coincidentally, she was from Plymouth, Massachusetts, near the rock that says the year the Pilgrims landed in 1620.
In my show she learned the truth. The Pilgrims were second.
History unblocked. But it took a solar eclipse.
Next one in 2044? We have a lot more unblocking to do.
If you’re in New York come see my show, Sat. April 13th, 5:20 pm Eastern; Fri. April 19, 8:10 pm Eastern; and Sun. April 21st 5:20 pm Eastern.
You can also livestream the show. Get tickets at www.amok.com/tickets
About the Author
Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He does a mini-talk show on YouTube.com/@emilamok1. He wishes all his readers a Happy Easter!
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