Black Fatherhood is Not the Solution

Black Fathers Matter—But the Narrative Is Broken

Black fathers matter. There is no debate about that. The data consistently show that children raised without a father are more likely to struggle with poverty, behavioral problems, incarceration, and dropping out of school. National data reveals that more than 90% of youth in juvenile detention grew up without their fathers and that children in single-parent homes face higher risks of depression, teen pregnancy, and drug use. Fatherhood is just as powerful as motherhood, and its absence does create challenges.

With all that said, the popular narrative about “absent Black fathers” is outdated and deliberately misleading. It’s the go-to for conservatives who want to ignore Black issues and liberals who want to weaponize them. For decades, The media has reported “1 in 4 Black children grow up without a father.” That number has been weaponized to shame Black families and pathologize our community. 

Yet, in 2023, it was reported that over half of Black children lived in the home with their fathers, and among those, 78% of Black dads were more involved in daily caregiving than white or Hispanic dads. The myth of the missing Black father crumbles under the weight of facts.

And yet—despite father presence being higher than ever since the 1970s—our community still faces some of its harshest challenges: low literacy rates, high poverty, disproportionate crime, teen pregnancy, and limited economic mobility. These realities can’t be pinned on family structure alone. They point to something deeper: economics.

The media has weaponized the absent father trope since Reagan’s “welfare queen” days, painting Black families as broken while ignoring how single mothers raised high-achieving children—even without fathers in the home. Many of us are living proof. The real crisis isn’t fatherhood—it’s economics. Our dollars don’t stay in our communities. Our institutions have been dismantled. Our wealth has been siphoned away. Until we confront that, no statistic about fatherhood will save us.

The Reality of Black Fatherhood

For decades,  the story has been told: Black fathers are absent, Black men don’t raise their kids, and the collapse of the Black family is the root of our struggles. It’s been repeated so much, people treat it like gospel.

But when you stop recycling outdated narratives, the truth tells a different story.

• In 2023, over half of Black children lived in the home with their fathers. And even more were active in their children’s lives whether in the home or outside of the home.

• Of those fathers, 78% were actively engaged in daily caregiving—a higher percentage than white and Hispanic dads.

That’s not the story you’ll hear on the evening news or from conservative pundits who weaponize the myth of fatherlessness to shame Black communities. Why? Because the truth dismantles one of the most effective tools of blame-shifting. If Black fathers are present and active, then the cause of Black struggle cannot be pinned solely on “bad families.” It forces the nation to look at the real systems of oppression—economic exclusion, educational sabotage, mass incarceration, and predatory policing.

The myth is outdated, harmful, and strategic. It distracts us from confronting the real issues that keep our people in cycles of poverty and despair and convinces us that we are broken, immoral, unethical, uneducated, overly perverse, and not as civil as White people, when in reality, the real issues were engineered.

Black fatherhood is alive, strong, and present. It’s time to bury the myth once and for all.

The Power of Black Mothers

Here’s something else to chew on. When the importance of fatherhood gets discussed, why

are Black mothers often erased from the conversation? Are Black mothers just standing in the background, playing no role in the lives and success of their children? History proves otherwise: during the height of single motherhood in the Black community, mothers carried entire generations on their backs—and still raised high achievers.

Black mothers have always been more than caretakers. They’ve been forced to be builders, teachers, strategists, and protectors. Even in the most difficult seasons—working multiple jobs, fighting through poverty, raising children alone—they produced high school and college graduates, professionals, athletes, and leaders who serve their communities, and shape Black culture.

This isn’t anecdotal—it’s collective memory. Every family tree has stories of a grandmother who stretched pennies into meals, a mother who made sure her kids stayed in school, or an auntie who took in children that weren’t her own. These women not only survived systemic sabotage but created excellence out of scarcity. The point is that even when the community suffered from a lack of men, the women of the community picked up the slack and took care of business.

That’s why the stereotype of single motherhood as synonymous with failure is a lie. It’s propaganda. It was designed to shame, not to reflect reality. Because if single motherhood was the death sentence they claimed it to be, we wouldn’t see the lawyers, doctors, teachers, entrepreneurs, and leaders who grew up in single-parent homes. You might argue those same children would have been even better off with their fathers around, but someone could also argue they’d have been worse off depending on the mental and emotional state of their father. 

While Black motherhood is a force of resilience, resilience should not be romanticized as a permanent condition. Black mothers have done the impossible for generations, but that does not mean they should have had to do it alone, nor does it mean they should keep doing it alone. 

The “Good Old Days” Lie

You know what’s interesting about the whole “father in the home” narrative? When conversations about the Black family come up, someone always points back to the 1950s and 60s as the “good ole days.” They’ll say, “Back then, more fathers were in the home. That’s why things were better.” It’s painted as a golden era—a time when Black families were supposedly stronger, more intact, and more prosperous.

But let’s tell the truth about the generation of children raised in those “good old days” of intact households. What did so many of them become? Your granny’s generation became the crack generation of the 1980s even though they had present and active fathers. Fathers were in the home, mothers were holding the family together, yet, by the time those children reached adulthood, many of them were swept into the devastation of mass addiction, mass incarceration, and mass unemployment.

So what led to the demise of the generation if it wasn’t family structure?

Drum roll, please…

It was systemic sabotage!

• Jobs disappeared through deindustrialization.

• Integration redirected the Black dollar into white economies.

• Drugs were funneled into our neighborhoods, followed by the War on Drugs which led to mass incarceration.

• Redlining and disinvestment destroyed our schools and housing.

The nostalgia for a time when fathers were in the home ignores this reality: family structure cannot protect a community from deliberate economic and political sabotage. We know this because the Black family–although strong and powerful–was not able to stop it before. The strong family was not even able to sustain through redlining, urban renewal and gentrification. 

The 50s and 60s weren’t a golden age of Black liberation because it had strong Black families. They were a time of strong Black economic liberation. Then, they became a time of sudden Black economic destruction. No matter how many fathers were present, a community without an economy is still vulnerable to destruction. 

The Real Problem: Economics, Not Fathers

Now we’re getting closer to the root of the problem with Black America. For too long, the absent father myth has been used as a convenient scapegoat. But even today—when fathers are present and engaged—our community is still bleeding. Why? Because strong families cannot fix the issues that only economics can.

When integration came, it didn’t strengthen us—it stripped us. It pulled the Black dollar out of Black-owned schools, banks, hospitals, businesses, and neighborhoods and poured it into white-owned institutions owned by a community who had spent centuries excluding us and gatekeeping their dollars which were largely passed down from advances from slavery. This resulted in the collapse of the very institutions that once held our communities together.

The numbers tell the story loud and clear:

• The Black dollar circulates for only 6 hours within the Black community.

• Compare that to the Asian dollar, which circulates for nearly 30 days in Asian communities, or the Jewish dollar, which circulates for 20+ days in their community.

• White dollars circulate indefinitely. 

Now you have to ask the question: “Where is the money going when it leaves our community?”

Dollars that once paid Black teachers, supported Black banks, and sustained Black businesses are now gone before they even touch the hands of our children. In other words, we are not generating wealth for our Black children, yet we are funding everyone else’s children’s college tuition and mortgages and their children’s children’s college tuition and mortgages. 

Asians, Jews, Whites, Arabs, and Hispanics are keeping the majority of the dollars they earn and the majority Black dollar given to them. 

Ready for the hard truth?

• Black fathers are in the home today, and our kids are still illiterate.

• Black fathers are in the home, and our youth are still going hungry.

• Black fathers are in the home, and we still don’t have an economy.

Family matters—but family without an economy is fragile. Until we rebuild systems that keep our money circulating among ourselves, we will keep watching our communities crumble while believing we have to blame our own families and criminal, immoral nature.

How the Narrative Benefits White Supremacy

Not only is the myth of the absent Black father lazy storytelling, it’s also a weapon for white supremacy. By pathologizing Black families, the system shifts blame away from itself and onto us. If we’re convinced that our struggles come from broken homes, then we won’t point to the policies, structures, and deliberate sabotage that have actually kept us down, and the policy makers can keep ri

ght on doing it.

This is how white supremacy works—it doesn’t scream; it whispers. It whispers that if you’re poor, it’s because your daddy wasn’t around. It whispers that if you didn’t finish school, it’s because your mother failed you. And while we’re busy internalizing the shame, the system can just keep stealing from us in plain sight.

The “absent father” narrative has kept the focus off of:

• Redlining that kept us from wealth-building neighborhoods.

• Mass incarceration that ripped fathers away.

• Job discrimination that denied stable work.

• Disinvestment in schools that sabotaged generations.

• Urban renewal that bulldozed our neighborhoods.

• Miseducation that stripped us of our history.

• Loan Discrimination that allowed non Blacks to build shops in Black neighborhoods

• Forced Integration that brought assimilation into White society and removal from Black culture and community control..

This goes beyond misinformation and enters the territory of psychological warfare. It convinces Black people that our failures are personal, when in reality, they are engineered. It’s gaslighting on a national scale: the system burns down the house we built from scratch, hands us a bucket of water, and then blames us for not putting out the fire fast enough before it spreads.

The absent father myth keeps White America comfortable. It lets the nation ignore its crimes while convincing us to blame ourselves. And until we tear that lie apart, we’ll keep fighting shadows while the real enemy goes unchecked.

Black Fatherhood is Not the Solution

The solution to our struggle isn’t simply “better fathers.” Fatherhood matters, but even the best fathers can’t outwork a broken system. What our community needs is economic power—group economics, ownership, and self-sufficiency. We don’t need to fix the system. We need to recreate our own. 

When we circulate our dollars among ourselves, we create real safety nets that protect families regardless of who’s in the home. Strong economies mean stable schools, thriving businesses, and jobs for our youth. Community-owned banks mean capital for Black entrepreneurs and homeowners. These structures are what shield families from collapse, not just individual fathers trying to hold everything together.

We’ve seen this model before. In Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Hayti in North Carolina, and Bronzeville in Chicago, Black wealth wasn’t just individual—it was collective. These communities funded their own schools, built their own hospitals, ran their own businesses, and created opportunities that protected entire generations. That strength didn’t come from individual households alone; it came from an ecosystem of Black dollars working together.

That’s the blueprint we need to return to. Not the false hope of proximity to white people and their institutions, but the proven model of circulating our resources within our own hands. Group economics is how we reclaim not only our wealth but also our dignity, our agency, and our future.

The PYOC Mindset

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Black fathers matter. Black mothers matter, too. Together, they are a force of power and one of the greatest assets to our community. But without an economy, even the strongest families are left vulnerable. That’s why the fight forward must be about building systems of self-sufficiency, including family, but not neglecting economics.

That’s the heartbeat of Pick Your Own Cotton. We don’t wait for handouts, we don’t beg for inclusion, and we darn sure don’t wait for White people to decide to lead and organize us. We don’t keep running to the same system that has historically profited from our oppression. We build our own.

Our ancestors laid the blueprint. From Greenwood to Hayti to Jackson Ward, they showed us what happens when we circulate our dollars, own our businesses, and educate our children in schools we control. They showed us that liberation isn’t granted by outside validation—it’s seized through collective ownership and building.

The PYOC mindset is simple but radical: we are builders. We were builders in slavery, forced to create wealth we could not keep. We were builders in segregation, crafting economies from scratch in hostile environments. And we are builders today—if we choose to put our dollars, our energy, and our faith back into ourselves.

Fatherhood matters, yes. But family is secured when the community is secured. The greatest gift we can leave our children isn’t just present parents—it’s an economy that no one can take from us. That’s the real inheritance. That’s the real revolution.

Conclusion: From Fathers to Foundations

The absent father narrative has been a convenient lie—a scapegoat to explain away generations of systemic theft and sabotage. Yes, fathers matter. But Black fathers are here. They are present. They are engaged. And still, our children face hunger, illiteracy, poverty, and broken schools. That alone proves the crisis isn’t about who’s sitting at the dinner table—it’s about who owns the table.

The real crisis is economic. Integration pulled our dollars from our hands and placed them in someone else’s. Our banks closed. Our businesses collapsed. Our schools weakened. And while other groups built wealth by circulating their money within their own communities, we were told to measure progress by proximity to theirs. The grass just seems greener when a White person owns the land. 

The way forward is clear. Stop scapegoating fathers. Stop recycling outdated lies. Start building an economy that no one can take away from us. Circulate our dollars. Support our businesses. Rebuild our institutions.

Because the truth is, we’ve always been builders. From the cotton fields to Black Wall Streets, we built this nation’s wealth under conditions designed to destroy us. Imagine what we can build now if we choose ourselves first.

That’s liberation. That’s legacy. That’s how you pick your own cotton.

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Pick Your Own Cotton is more than a metaphor—it’s a call to reclaim our economic power and choose ourselves. For too long, Black dollars have flowed out of our communities, supporting other economies instead of our own. Integration gave us the right to choose where we live and spend, but far too many of us are still choosing to support systems that don’t prioritize our liberation.

Every purchase, every business decision, is an opportunity to invest in Black communities and create generational wealth. It’s time to recognize that the economic injustices of slavery are still felt today, and without ownership, we're not far from that slave status. We must take responsibility for our community—supporting our own businesses, guiding our own youth, and uplifting our own people. 

It’s time to pick our own cotton, not as laborers for someone else, but as creators of our own economic future, ensuring that every dollar works to rebuild what was lost and create a thriving, self-sustaining Black economy.