“In
such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit
thereof is uncertain, and consequently, not culture of the earth, no
navigation, nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no
commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things
as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account
of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all,
continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man,
solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
—Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
By The proverbial ink was barely dry on my column discussing the travails of Ray Rice
when another NFL star, this time Adrian Peterson, was taken out to the
metaphorical woodshed for his literally doing the same to his four-year
old son; as a result, he was temporarily benched by the Minnesota
Vikings franchise (which has since been lifted/UPDATE: it appears that I
might have spoken a bit too soon).
Of course, the Cathedral will attempt to spin this as yet another
example of the NFL’s (Black) male personnel running amok, gratuitously
violent, out of control, and in need of being put in a veritable Phantom
Zone for somatic reconditioning. No doubt, Peterson’s and Rice’s
actions are troubling; but they only foreshadow a much, much deeper set
of problems that beset the Black community in the United States, and
that threatens the rest of the country as a whole, if not brought up to
the light of day for honest examination, forthright discussion, and an
earnest desire to heal these wounds for the Good of All, and not just
the Selected Few.
In last week’s column discussing former NFL running back Ray Rice, I made the case that it would be a mistake to assume that the violent episode that formed the basis of his career being prematurely ended was simply a matter of (Black) Men Behaving Badly; I strongly argued that what we saw in the Rice episode was just the tip of the iceberg in the state of things in Black America. Indeed, even Feminista Jones has said as much in a recent article she has written for TIME magazine online—Black men are far from the only actors when it comes to domestic violence, nor are their actions in any way unique; indeed, it starts much, much earlier in the lives of Black children of both sexes.
And the leading perps are Black Baby Mamas.
As a recent post appearing on the popular blog Very Smart Brothas clearly illustrates, the Black community has long had a tradition of routinely visiting violence on its kids, often with the Biblical justification of “sparing the rod and spoiling the child.” The column, written by one half of the VSB duo Panama Jackson, even has this theological line as the title—and just take a look at the comments—the ones most in favor of “popping” their kids are Black women themselves. (Note how the ones most in opposition to the same are those written by VSB’s Black male readers.) This anecdotal evidence alone is enough to suggest that what I’ve said last week about the Black woman’s capacity for violence and aggression would be more than enough; but, since I promised last week that I would return with more smoking gun evidence of my charge that Black women writ large can be and often are every bit as violent and aggressive as their menfolk, today I am going to offer that evidence.
Exhibit A: The Cleveland Bus Driver
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X-2JtbZqmW0&has_verified=1&client=mv-google&layout=tablet
Exhibit B: A Day at the Beach With an Abusive Baby Mama
Exhibit C: Shootout on SEPTA
Exhibit D: Let’s You and My Baby Daddy Daughter Fight
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pylicDuWPI4
Exhibit E: Get On the Baby Brawlin’ Bus
(Video footage and excellent commentary courtesy of Mr. Tommy Sotomayor; also, check out this post by yours truly for many, many more links posted back to Sotomayor videos documenting ad nauseum the aggression and violence that is sadly all too common in today’s Black women writ large.)
To be sure, Not All Black Women Are Like That—but even those who aren’t would be hard-put to deny that Enough Black Women ARE, Indeed, “Like That”—and they are more numerous than we’d like to publicly admit, especially within earshot of White folks. But, the damage—metaphorically and otherwise—has been done a long time ago, and we are only now really beginning to see the results of these seeds being planted. The simple truth of the matter is that Black America is dysfunctionally violent in a way that makes other communities look askance with equal parts fascination and revulsion—and unless or until Black America is willing and able to call it out for what it is and where it comes from, only then can there be any hope whatsoever of addressing it.
Violence—Like Charity—Begins at Home
Of course, like so many things, behaviors are shaped during the formative years of our lives; for so many Black Americans, the relationship to and with violence is ingrained at very early ages. It is well known and documented that African Americans are much more likely to adhere to the aforementioned Biblical injunction of child-beating, held constant regardless of class or SES status; and it is not at all unusual to hear Negroes talking, often reverently, how they got “beat to within an inch of their lives” and credit it with their “turning out to be alright” citizens and the like. What is often left out of the discussion however, is WHO, more often than not, is actually doing the “beating to within an inch” of so many Black Americans’ lives while still minors, even four-year old toddlers (or younger!):
Black Women Baby Mamas.
By now, it shouldn’t even have to be a matter of debate or even discussion—out-of-wedlock rates in Black America are well known and empirically verified. Moreover, additional research by credible scholars have noted that one of the “unintended” consequences of the feminist agenda has been both the wholesale weakening of the institution of fatherhood (read: patriarchy) on the one hand, while on the other strengthening motherhood to the point of tyranny, being as how it is propped up by the state, the Cathedral, and social/cultural norms (recall Fantasia’s ode to Baby Mamas—literally—as just one of a plethora of examples). Said scholars have documented, albeit they were a bit reluctant to be so candid, the ways in which de facto matriarchies in Black America’s most vulnerable sections have created a miasma of violence, aggression, and downright mean-spiritedness in so many of its citizens—the same citizens who create warped and perverted subcultures such as “Stop Snitchin’” and so forth. As Stefan Molyneux has pointed out, studies have been done where White, solidly middle-class, and at least moderately educated women have been shown to beat or otherwise abuse (i.e., verbally, psychologically, et al) their children as young as infants, sometimes to the tune of dozens of times a day—-what do you honestly think happens in the ’hoods and inner-city cores of Black America? Well, if the prison population is anything to go by—where, again, it is well documented that its inmates hail from Baby Mama–headed households—gang-bangers, rapists, home-invaders, malcontents, anti-socials, you name it—came from environments and homes where Baby Mamas are the sole authority in and out of the home. They determine how the baby/child/teenager is to be raised, with the father, at best, playing the role of a “useful complement”*. She determines where the child will live, how it will be educated, what if any, ethics it will be taught, etc, et a.l—and we can see (and, in truth, have always seen) the results for themselves: Black America is, in a very real sense, a failed matriarchal state, a social experiment in the grand ideals of feminism that has crumbled under its own weight—much like the Communist Soviet Union and the Marxist ideology it was founded on and that inspired feminism’s biggest names and best-known theorists, Black and White alike. That so many Black men, in the form of Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson, now “act out” says a heck of a lot more about Baby Mamaism in Black America than it ever will about the men themselves.
But What About the (Black) Dads?
Well, what about them? As alluded to above, for the most part they have been all but excluded from the lives of their progeny, and this is especially the case on the lower socioeconomic rungs of the American pecking order. Poor and working-class Black men have it the hardest when attempting to play a meaningful role in the lives of their own “seeds,” and more often than not they are literally at the mercy of their Baby Mama, who can and often does decide, sometimes on a whim, to literally cut him out of his kids’ lives—with the full backing and support of the state, from the family courts to the Po-Po and everything in between. As the same scholars noted earlier in this essay document in a separate study, poor and working-class Black Men desperately want to father, to be involved in the lives they helped to create, and are often shunned and rejected for not being “man enough”, i.e., having money and resources and other traditional and oftentimes limiting and even harmful forms of “masculinity” that their Baby Mamas not only desire but demand. Contrary to the notion of “hit and run” dudes that sire dozens of kids by as many women, many of these Black dads struggle in a big way against the very real social, legal, and even political forces that conspire to keep them from being involved—and often lose. This, too, is yet another side of the story that almost never gets to be told or heard, and it is time that it has its Day in the Sun—for every charge that can credibly be made of a “deadbeat dad” there can be a credible claim of what Fathers 4 Justice, a UK-based advocacy group, refers to as “Crummy Mummies”—and Lord knows that the number of them in Black America are legion—measured in hurtful and even hateful welts, bullet wounds, and carcasses of Black bodies (many of them male), and quite a few at the behest—and sometimes direct involvement—of Baby Mamas themselves.
For those reading this who are likely rolling their eyes and coming to a conclusion (if you haven’t already) that I am seeking to absolve Black men, like Rice and Peterson, of any and all personal responsibility for their actions, let me disabuse you of such woefully wrongheaded thinking—not only do I think they can and should face whatever music the NFL and law enforcement agencies deem appropriate, I also defy any of my detractors to cite for me the chapter-and-verse quotations of me defending the following Black men:
Tiger Woods
Michael Vick
Chris Brown
C-Murder
Suge Knight
And that’s just for starters. My position has always been “do the crime, get pinched, do the time—NO EXCEPTIONS.” You see, my views in these and related matters always have been, and always will be, consistent—and I will not allow anyone to attempt to pigeonhole me or the issues I wish to examine into some ideological cul-de-sac, because of “Who-Whom?”ism.
Is that clear?
Baby Mamaism: Mean, Brutish, and Short
It is time to acknowledge publicly what we all know to be true and only whisper to others when we are sure of our company: that Baby Mamaism, my rhetorical shorthand for what can only rightly be described as a de facto matriarchy writ large in Black America over roughly the past half decade in particular, has proven itself not only to be a massive failure—despite all the propping up of the culture and the state, and despite the never-ending efforts on the part of their apparatchiks to the contrary—but also the chief driver of the very cultural norms that form the background on that which we are currently examining. That both Rice and Peterson hail from homes and “communities” where backward, retrograde norms of “masculinity” are lauded and valued, promulgated by their very own mothers, is by no means unusual or unknown to the rest of us—we’ve all known of the very long history of professional sport leagues like the NFL and NBA, to be populated with the sons of Baby Mamas. Indeed, some of its most problematic figures have been such men—a number of them have served prison time themselves. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, but one of the reasons why such figures as Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, and Robert Griffin III were so lauded was because of their rather unusual familial histories when compared with their peers, all of whom hailed from intact families where the father played an active, if not pivotal, role in their lives—and it should also be noted that none of them have been known for engaging in acts of violence either. Coincidence?
The large swaths of Black America where Baby Mamaism reigns supreme are places where anarchy, crime, and violence are easily seen in evidence. Contrary to romantic notions on the part of the professional left, Black America’s current state shows the world what happens when the role of the father has been demeaned, disempowered, and just plain ole dissed (a.k.a. “a useful complement”*)—life becomes much more dis-ordered, uncertain, unsafe, and downright dangerous. And contrary to the hype and propaganda of the feminist lobby and their allies in the Cathedral, boys who hail from strong father-led homes are the least likely to engage in all acts of violence, where kids are least likely to be beaten to within an inch of their lives, and where, yes, women themselves are the safest. No one who has any say in the matter wants to reside where Baby Mamas are the norm—where trash is strewn everywhere, where random violence and a “code of the streets” ethos is the “order” of the day, where Black women themselves are unsure of their own safety. Baby Mamaism has proven itself utterly incapable of raising boys into men, of ensuring safety and prosperity to women and children, of forging the basis of stable and productive communities—the ONLY things Baby Mamaism has been able to consistently produce is a never-ending onslaught of deeply dysfunctional people, men and women both, whom the rest of society has to protect itself from.
So, yes, the NFL does indeed have a problem these days—but it goes much, much deeper than we are all led to believe. The cult(ure) of Baby Mamaism is what plagues the National Football League—and, if we’re not careful, the rest of us.
*“Among the middle class, the couple relationship is at the heart of family life, with the children as desirable complements. Middle-class couples place great value on enjoying each other first before having children, perhaps because they anticipate what statistics show, that marital satisfaction declines precipitously after a couple has children. But among poor women, the mother-child relationship is central, with the father as a useful complement.” (Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage, Kathryn Edin & Maria Kefelas, p. 209)
Mumia
Ali, aka "Obsidian" is a Men's Issues blogger from Philadelphia who
focuses on Sexual Politics, Class, and Race, from the male perspective.
He is a cofounder of the Men's Issues blog collective known as Just Four
Guys.
Source
In last week’s column discussing former NFL running back Ray Rice, I made the case that it would be a mistake to assume that the violent episode that formed the basis of his career being prematurely ended was simply a matter of (Black) Men Behaving Badly; I strongly argued that what we saw in the Rice episode was just the tip of the iceberg in the state of things in Black America. Indeed, even Feminista Jones has said as much in a recent article she has written for TIME magazine online—Black men are far from the only actors when it comes to domestic violence, nor are their actions in any way unique; indeed, it starts much, much earlier in the lives of Black children of both sexes.
And the leading perps are Black Baby Mamas.
As a recent post appearing on the popular blog Very Smart Brothas clearly illustrates, the Black community has long had a tradition of routinely visiting violence on its kids, often with the Biblical justification of “sparing the rod and spoiling the child.” The column, written by one half of the VSB duo Panama Jackson, even has this theological line as the title—and just take a look at the comments—the ones most in favor of “popping” their kids are Black women themselves. (Note how the ones most in opposition to the same are those written by VSB’s Black male readers.) This anecdotal evidence alone is enough to suggest that what I’ve said last week about the Black woman’s capacity for violence and aggression would be more than enough; but, since I promised last week that I would return with more smoking gun evidence of my charge that Black women writ large can be and often are every bit as violent and aggressive as their menfolk, today I am going to offer that evidence.
Exhibit A: The Cleveland Bus Driver
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X-2JtbZqmW0&has_verified=1&client=mv-google&layout=tablet
Exhibit B: A Day at the Beach With an Abusive Baby Mama
Exhibit C: Shootout on SEPTA
Exhibit D: Let’s You and My Baby Daddy Daughter Fight
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pylicDuWPI4
Exhibit E: Get On the Baby Brawlin’ Bus
(Video footage and excellent commentary courtesy of Mr. Tommy Sotomayor; also, check out this post by yours truly for many, many more links posted back to Sotomayor videos documenting ad nauseum the aggression and violence that is sadly all too common in today’s Black women writ large.)
To be sure, Not All Black Women Are Like That—but even those who aren’t would be hard-put to deny that Enough Black Women ARE, Indeed, “Like That”—and they are more numerous than we’d like to publicly admit, especially within earshot of White folks. But, the damage—metaphorically and otherwise—has been done a long time ago, and we are only now really beginning to see the results of these seeds being planted. The simple truth of the matter is that Black America is dysfunctionally violent in a way that makes other communities look askance with equal parts fascination and revulsion—and unless or until Black America is willing and able to call it out for what it is and where it comes from, only then can there be any hope whatsoever of addressing it.
Violence—Like Charity—Begins at Home
Of course, like so many things, behaviors are shaped during the formative years of our lives; for so many Black Americans, the relationship to and with violence is ingrained at very early ages. It is well known and documented that African Americans are much more likely to adhere to the aforementioned Biblical injunction of child-beating, held constant regardless of class or SES status; and it is not at all unusual to hear Negroes talking, often reverently, how they got “beat to within an inch of their lives” and credit it with their “turning out to be alright” citizens and the like. What is often left out of the discussion however, is WHO, more often than not, is actually doing the “beating to within an inch” of so many Black Americans’ lives while still minors, even four-year old toddlers (or younger!):
Black Women Baby Mamas.
By now, it shouldn’t even have to be a matter of debate or even discussion—out-of-wedlock rates in Black America are well known and empirically verified. Moreover, additional research by credible scholars have noted that one of the “unintended” consequences of the feminist agenda has been both the wholesale weakening of the institution of fatherhood (read: patriarchy) on the one hand, while on the other strengthening motherhood to the point of tyranny, being as how it is propped up by the state, the Cathedral, and social/cultural norms (recall Fantasia’s ode to Baby Mamas—literally—as just one of a plethora of examples). Said scholars have documented, albeit they were a bit reluctant to be so candid, the ways in which de facto matriarchies in Black America’s most vulnerable sections have created a miasma of violence, aggression, and downright mean-spiritedness in so many of its citizens—the same citizens who create warped and perverted subcultures such as “Stop Snitchin’” and so forth. As Stefan Molyneux has pointed out, studies have been done where White, solidly middle-class, and at least moderately educated women have been shown to beat or otherwise abuse (i.e., verbally, psychologically, et al) their children as young as infants, sometimes to the tune of dozens of times a day—-what do you honestly think happens in the ’hoods and inner-city cores of Black America? Well, if the prison population is anything to go by—where, again, it is well documented that its inmates hail from Baby Mama–headed households—gang-bangers, rapists, home-invaders, malcontents, anti-socials, you name it—came from environments and homes where Baby Mamas are the sole authority in and out of the home. They determine how the baby/child/teenager is to be raised, with the father, at best, playing the role of a “useful complement”*. She determines where the child will live, how it will be educated, what if any, ethics it will be taught, etc, et a.l—and we can see (and, in truth, have always seen) the results for themselves: Black America is, in a very real sense, a failed matriarchal state, a social experiment in the grand ideals of feminism that has crumbled under its own weight—much like the Communist Soviet Union and the Marxist ideology it was founded on and that inspired feminism’s biggest names and best-known theorists, Black and White alike. That so many Black men, in the form of Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson, now “act out” says a heck of a lot more about Baby Mamaism in Black America than it ever will about the men themselves.
But What About the (Black) Dads?
Well, what about them? As alluded to above, for the most part they have been all but excluded from the lives of their progeny, and this is especially the case on the lower socioeconomic rungs of the American pecking order. Poor and working-class Black men have it the hardest when attempting to play a meaningful role in the lives of their own “seeds,” and more often than not they are literally at the mercy of their Baby Mama, who can and often does decide, sometimes on a whim, to literally cut him out of his kids’ lives—with the full backing and support of the state, from the family courts to the Po-Po and everything in between. As the same scholars noted earlier in this essay document in a separate study, poor and working-class Black Men desperately want to father, to be involved in the lives they helped to create, and are often shunned and rejected for not being “man enough”, i.e., having money and resources and other traditional and oftentimes limiting and even harmful forms of “masculinity” that their Baby Mamas not only desire but demand. Contrary to the notion of “hit and run” dudes that sire dozens of kids by as many women, many of these Black dads struggle in a big way against the very real social, legal, and even political forces that conspire to keep them from being involved—and often lose. This, too, is yet another side of the story that almost never gets to be told or heard, and it is time that it has its Day in the Sun—for every charge that can credibly be made of a “deadbeat dad” there can be a credible claim of what Fathers 4 Justice, a UK-based advocacy group, refers to as “Crummy Mummies”—and Lord knows that the number of them in Black America are legion—measured in hurtful and even hateful welts, bullet wounds, and carcasses of Black bodies (many of them male), and quite a few at the behest—and sometimes direct involvement—of Baby Mamas themselves.
For those reading this who are likely rolling their eyes and coming to a conclusion (if you haven’t already) that I am seeking to absolve Black men, like Rice and Peterson, of any and all personal responsibility for their actions, let me disabuse you of such woefully wrongheaded thinking—not only do I think they can and should face whatever music the NFL and law enforcement agencies deem appropriate, I also defy any of my detractors to cite for me the chapter-and-verse quotations of me defending the following Black men:
Tiger Woods
Michael Vick
Chris Brown
C-Murder
Suge Knight
And that’s just for starters. My position has always been “do the crime, get pinched, do the time—NO EXCEPTIONS.” You see, my views in these and related matters always have been, and always will be, consistent—and I will not allow anyone to attempt to pigeonhole me or the issues I wish to examine into some ideological cul-de-sac, because of “Who-Whom?”ism.
Is that clear?
Baby Mamaism: Mean, Brutish, and Short
It is time to acknowledge publicly what we all know to be true and only whisper to others when we are sure of our company: that Baby Mamaism, my rhetorical shorthand for what can only rightly be described as a de facto matriarchy writ large in Black America over roughly the past half decade in particular, has proven itself not only to be a massive failure—despite all the propping up of the culture and the state, and despite the never-ending efforts on the part of their apparatchiks to the contrary—but also the chief driver of the very cultural norms that form the background on that which we are currently examining. That both Rice and Peterson hail from homes and “communities” where backward, retrograde norms of “masculinity” are lauded and valued, promulgated by their very own mothers, is by no means unusual or unknown to the rest of us—we’ve all known of the very long history of professional sport leagues like the NFL and NBA, to be populated with the sons of Baby Mamas. Indeed, some of its most problematic figures have been such men—a number of them have served prison time themselves. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, but one of the reasons why such figures as Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, and Robert Griffin III were so lauded was because of their rather unusual familial histories when compared with their peers, all of whom hailed from intact families where the father played an active, if not pivotal, role in their lives—and it should also be noted that none of them have been known for engaging in acts of violence either. Coincidence?
The large swaths of Black America where Baby Mamaism reigns supreme are places where anarchy, crime, and violence are easily seen in evidence. Contrary to romantic notions on the part of the professional left, Black America’s current state shows the world what happens when the role of the father has been demeaned, disempowered, and just plain ole dissed (a.k.a. “a useful complement”*)—life becomes much more dis-ordered, uncertain, unsafe, and downright dangerous. And contrary to the hype and propaganda of the feminist lobby and their allies in the Cathedral, boys who hail from strong father-led homes are the least likely to engage in all acts of violence, where kids are least likely to be beaten to within an inch of their lives, and where, yes, women themselves are the safest. No one who has any say in the matter wants to reside where Baby Mamas are the norm—where trash is strewn everywhere, where random violence and a “code of the streets” ethos is the “order” of the day, where Black women themselves are unsure of their own safety. Baby Mamaism has proven itself utterly incapable of raising boys into men, of ensuring safety and prosperity to women and children, of forging the basis of stable and productive communities—the ONLY things Baby Mamaism has been able to consistently produce is a never-ending onslaught of deeply dysfunctional people, men and women both, whom the rest of society has to protect itself from.
So, yes, the NFL does indeed have a problem these days—but it goes much, much deeper than we are all led to believe. The cult(ure) of Baby Mamaism is what plagues the National Football League—and, if we’re not careful, the rest of us.
*“Among the middle class, the couple relationship is at the heart of family life, with the children as desirable complements. Middle-class couples place great value on enjoying each other first before having children, perhaps because they anticipate what statistics show, that marital satisfaction declines precipitously after a couple has children. But among poor women, the mother-child relationship is central, with the father as a useful complement.” (Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage, Kathryn Edin & Maria Kefelas, p. 209)
About Mumia Ali
Mumia
Ali, aka "Obsidian" is a Men's Issues blogger from Philadelphia who
focuses on Sexual Politics, Class, and Race, from the male perspective.
He is a cofounder of the Men's Issues blog collective known as Just Four
Guys.
Source
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