FI Testifies for NYC Council on Young Men’s Initiative
Why Should You Care About Fatherlessness and Black Male Achievement in New York City Communities?
By Kenneth Braswell
Executive Director of Fathers Incorporated
Testimony before the New York City Council
Oversight: Examining the implementation of the Young Men’s Initiative.
November 2, 2011
Good Afternoon Chairs Recchia and Fidler and members of the Finance and Youth Services committees. I am Kenneth Braswell, Executive Director of Fathers Incorporated. On behalf of; our board, volunteers, partners and constituents, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts in allowing us to speak to you with regards to our support of the Young Men’s Initiative.
We were elated to hear about the private-public partnership between Mayor Bloomberg and George Soros of the Open Society Foundation’s Campaign for Black Male Achievement as well as the overall investment of $127 Million in Educational, Employment, Justice and Health Initiatives specifically targeting Black and Latino Males. It was also a pleasure being one of the experts involved in the early planning of this initiative. It’s awesome for me to be a part of making a difference in my hometown.
As someone who was born and raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, attended New York City Public Schools and lived most of my young life in a one bedroom apartment with my single mom, brother, sister and dog; I can appreciate the promise that this investment can have on the men of New York City. Many of which are growing up in the same communities that impacted and developed my growth as a black boy growing up in a fatherless home and more importantly a fatherless community.
Fathers Incorporated (FI), a not-for-profit organization, serves as a leader in the promotion of Responsible Fatherhood and Mentoring. This International, national, and local focus raises the awareness about, and combats the impact of father absence. Currently we are in the midst of a 5-year cause marketing campaign entitled “Ties Never Broken.” The term speaks to the all too real connection between a child and their biological father. Estranged, deployed, deceased or otherwise, there is a tie/connection that is never broken between parents and their children. We believe that the symbol of a blue bowtie expresses this reality. Recently we announced ESPN Analyst Chris Broussard as our National Spokesperson; and you can see him daily donning the Ties Never Broken lapel pin. We were also pleased to see New York Knicks Executive Allan Houston, wearing the TNB lapel pin in this week’s Hip Hop Weekly magazine. We appreciate champions of the work.
The stories are compelling; the outcomes are heart wrenching, the statistics are unconscionable, the impact is absolutely devastating and the emotions are painfully unbearable. It is a silent killer and destroyer of children, families and community. We stop short of calling it an epidemic, yet its presence can be found prevailing in any African American community in the United States. It is absent from community dialogue, rarely heard in sermons, missing in academia, non-existence in community solutions and though to be irrelevant in comprehensive family planning paradigms. It is the source of almost every negative social ill our children face today; yet the very mention of the term repels the brightest of minds and the most liberal and conservative of hearts. Fatherlessness!
Imagine for a moment if Fatherlessness was a disease. How compelling would the statistic be that 73% of Black babies born in America today are birthed into out-of-wedlock households? Let me be clear that being born into a non-married home doesn’t mean you are fatherless. However lets also be clear that research says many of them will spend a significant portion of their lives absent their biological fathers and after five-years-old are more than likely not to see him at all. Would that matter to you?
What would be your reaction to the disease of fatherlessness be if you knew that 63% of youth who commit suicide are from fatherless homes? Would we debate it is a disease? Or maybe it’s just a condition that impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms? Call it what you want, it doesn’t change the impact on children. How about this? Is it compelling to know that 70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes? Would it matter to you to know that it’s not lack of desire that keep most fathers from their children, particularly low income black fathers? Hard to hear but, true!
In 1965 Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan published a report entitled: The Negro Family: The Case For National Action. The report later became known as the Moynihan Report. By most accounts, it is probably the most poignant collection of statistical analysis, combined with social commentary in the last 45 years; not because of what it revealed, but because of how close it has come to the truth.
In the report, Senator Moynihan described the state of African American families. His point of view took great measure to frame the argument with the realities of current events; to include the civil rights movement, racism and poverty. In President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 State of the Union message he said, “For a century we labored to establish a unity of purpose and interest among the many groups which make up the American Community. That struggle has often brought pain and violence. It is not yet over”. It was a turbulent time in 1965 filled with diverging, often conflicting and contradicting thought on what America should do about the Negro (African American).
The Moynihan report said it another way; “Being Americans (negroes), they will now expect that in the near future equal opportunities for them as a group will produce roughly equal results, as compared with other groups. This is not going to happen. Nor will it happen for generations to come unless a new and special effort is made.”
Many things did not change; one significant event did. In 2009, America elected its first African American President, Barack Obama. As a result, many have raised the question whether or not that is the change needed to combat the future the Moynihan Report predicted. Maybe not, but it is at least an indication that for social change — anything is possible.
In 2011, we are still grappling with the daunting statistics of 1965. For instance, in 1963 out-of-wedlock births for African Americans stood at 23.6 percent; nearly one quarter of all black births. Fast forward forty five years and we find that as stated before, over 70 percent of all births to Black women are to unmarried women.
For the past 45 years these statistics have driven us to provide services and support for mothers and their children. As an unconscious (some may say, conscience result), the father has been invisible in both the cause and the solution.
The tragedy of black men/boys today is that society seems not to really care what we think. Further and more arresting, is the fact that it also stop short of taking into account what we have to say either. I watched with great interest and focus; Tavis Smiley’s “Too Important to Fail,” show on PBS about the education of young black men. The special report did a great job in allowing the narrative to be told through the voices of today’s youth experience. I often find myself when watching shows like this caught up in the repetition of the problem and wrapped up in mounts of statistics, research and implied assumptions. Tonight was no different until I began to hear the issues made plain by the young black men who were not talking from what they may have read, heard or captured on TV. These young men are living testimonies of the social ills plaguing the very existence of black men and families in urban communities across the nation.
Voice after voice screamed the raging spirit trapped in the hearts of black boys seeking a place of safety and comfort. Far reaching is their search for identity. Further and more so out of their reach is the answer. Unfortunately, for many of our boys they find their comfort and answers in the arms of young black girls or in the negative influence of their peers. New York City’s young black male population is stumbling under staggering unemployment rates. Some reports like Dr. Mincy’ Black Males: Left Behind notes that In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20′s were jobless — that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts. Even when high school graduates were included, half of black men in their 20′s were jobless in 2004, up from 46 percent in 2000. These facts also written in the 2006, New York Times article Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn by Eric Eckholm. This is a hard hitting reality; but as Brooklyn hip-hop legend Biggie Smalls stated so eloquently, “it’s real in the field.”
I happen to be one of the fortunate black males to emerge from the struggles of growing up in a low income, single family home; many don’t return home healthy, fulfilled and able to contribute. The reality of that life still resonates in my soul everything I visit my daughter in the same building I grew up in and in the East New York projects where my mother still resides today, knowing that most of my childhood friends are dead or locked up. If not for the grace of a caring mother and the men of St. Anthony Baptist Church I might not be sitting here before you today.
If we are to impact the force of fatherlessness; Mentoring must also be at the center point of the solution. In January 2012, Fathers Incorporated will launch our weMentor!tm campaign. The weMentor! concept embodies the african proverb; “It Takes A Whole Village To Raise A Child” by embellishing the fact that it takes more than “I” to make a difference in the life of a child. Thus the campaign will highlight the need for “ALL” (African American men in particular) men to be accountable for filling the gap of fatherlessness.
As part of the weMentor, we’ll engage in a yearlong set of national activities, partnerships and events designed to increase the number of African American male mentors. These activities will be part of the TIES NEVER BROKENtm campaign. weMentor! activities will include social marketing and traditional media campaigns, product development, mentorship recruitment drives, website presence of activities, repository of mentorship organizations and creation of a “mentor” referral network. Certainly there is a critical rolls for YMI to play in this endeavor.
We understand that while fatherlessness is a social ill we must attack; New York City also has a wealth of able bodied men who can be encouraged to step-up to the plate to serve as mentors to thousands of children on mentoring waiting list across the city. Our working relationships with mentoring organization like; Mentoring USA, Mentor, The Sledge Group and others; fatherhood organizations like SEEDCO, Youth-at-Risk, Forestdale, Real Dads Network, can be networked in a way that can serve YMI in this capacity.
Everybody has an individual horror story to tell about child support, baby mama/baby daddy drama, racism, courts, lawyers, social services, family members, system; etc. They all might have some measure of truth and reality in your parental situation. However at the end of the day, none of that will matter to your child. The question is, when asked by your child “what did you do to stay in my life or what did you do to keep my father out of my life?” you better have a better answer than your personal horror story. For whatever reason the father is not active or for whatever reason the mother is serving as an obstacle for access; real or unreal, legit or not, fair or not, reasonable or not; this work must work toward creating safe environments for healthy and safe family development.
The statistics don’t lie and the reality of fatherlessness is real; especially for black families. Scores of organizations around the country are working to address the issue of responsible fatherhood. Yet the resources are few and the appeal of the cause, even less.
The debate can be endless if we find ourselves marred in conversation over the validity of research, reports and statistics. There are advocates and detractors of every piece of research, policy, legislation, intention, assumption, opinion, practice, program, idea and dream realized to-date on black boys. Yet, the situation gets worse.
Often we celebrated minor reductions in statistics as if, we have solved the problems of black boys; and in its extreme, and we even convince ourselves that the problem doesn’t exist any longer.
I want to close my testimony by stating that for Fathers Incorporated, this is unfinished business that must be completed. The reality of the urgency is locked in my own struggles with the fact that I’m a black man raising black boys. A reality made clear to me every time I hear the struggle and experiences of black boys whose voices are minimized by the trivial priority to which society value them. It is further realized for me every time I look into the eyes of my 2 ½ year old son, 4 year old nephew, my church full of young black boys and a community of young black and Latino boys dotting the cornering of every borough in this city; Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Bronx and Staten Island. All of which will be impacted by the work we do moving forward.
When I started Fathers Incorporated in 2004 and began to move around the country working to build the capacity of agencies seeking to do this work; I never knew that it would bring me right back home to New York where I would be hired by Commissioner Robert Doar at NYS OTDA — that relationship would lead to my working relationships with Frances Pardus-Abbadessa, Deputy Commissioner of the NYC HRA Office of Child Support Enforcement, Cindy Colter; Assistant Commissioner at DYCD and a host of other individuals and agencies. We have done incredible work and I am proud to be a part of New York City’s effort to address the issues, concerns and solutions for Black and Latino males.
As the title of Tavis’s show stated, “Too Important to Fail,” should be the overarching mantra of communities devastated by the impact of fatherlessness, poverty, crime and resource neglect. Somebody has to care enough about black boys and girls to do something other than debate and challenge those who are doing something in the way saving our communities.
We must do better! We believe that this Initiative for Black and Latino boys and men of New York City is a GREAT start.
“We are the leaders, we’ve been waiting for.”
Thank You.
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Testimony Given by Kenneth Braswell
Wednesday, November 2nd at 1pm
to the New York City Common Council