aapf.org/2014/06/woc-letter-mbk/ The above link is a letter from one womens group criticizing President Obamas My Brothers Keeper initiative for excluding non-white girls and women. The link below is a link to a letter from another womens group expressing support for the initiative. I want to start off by saying that we look silly going back and forth about a program that is not institutionalized within the government (so it can and most likely will disappear after this term) and receives no federal funding (so if foundations decide to stop funding it, MBK is SOL). Second, the federal government is not going to solve our problems, no matter what race or gender it claims to focus on (unless we applied a different type of pressure but thats another conversation). Third, Ive heard a lot of conversations about what Black men are not being, doing, stepping up to, accepting responsibility for, showing respect for, etc. Yet a focus on them is labeled as exclusive by individuals who have probably engaged in similar dialogue or at least had similar thoughts. I could be wrong about that. Could be. Last, and this will probably start a debate which Im cool with. We have to understand the context that this conversation is happening in, which in many ways discredits it right out of the gate. The issues faced by Black men that many initiatives like this are claiming/proposing to address, trace back to systems and institutions which have enslaved, injured, exploited, and killed both Black men and women since inception. In this regard, you have to approach the issue with a focus on the Black family because that is the structure that has been and continues to be interrupted and destroyed via a series of angles and strategies. This is obviously not the context this conversation is happening in. This conversation is happening in the context of the present condition of Black and Brown boys and men. Even though, you hear the term of color as if every non-white community is represented, this is not true. Many of these initiatives have of focus on mainly African-descendant or Latino/Chicano/Hispanic,which excludes a lot of people as there are Black and Brown people all over the world. As far as the numbers go (and I say numbers because that is the justification for these gender based foci yet I do not for one second devalue the Black womans status/plight/struggle/condition) and I am not proud to say, if you are going to direct attention on who needs it the most, who leads the league in all the wrong categories, its Black males. I personally believe that many of the issues that Black women are faced with stem from their interactions with the Black men in their lives (and lack thereof) via their aforementioned historic interaction with the white men in both their lives. I say that to say, the better we become as men, the more positioned we are to support our women in becoming better, and the better positioned we are to raise healthy families, communities, nations. Now, I am open to being corrected if Im wrong and I repeat, Im not advocating for this initiative because I believe that these issues are ours to fix and ours only. I could careless who they focus on. Instead of debating that, we should figure out how to team up and take care of our own shit.
Posted on: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 00:54:00 +0000