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Black men receive little information on what it takes to be a good parent. Fathers and their children have special needs and they need special information about parenting that is unique to the circumstances they face. Here are some tips:
Be there when your children are born.
Become financially literate. Teach your children that honest pays and trying to beat the system doesn't.
Be selective about who meets your children. You are responsible for protecting your children from abuse.
Love and discipline are both important. Your need to set standards for how your children behave.
Introduce your children to the spiritual world. A solid religious background can help them in the future.
Teach your children to be proud of being Black. Make them aware of Black history.
Assume responsibility for your children's education. Be there to help them with their homework if they need it.
Set academic standards before allowing your children to play sports. And if they dream of being a professional athlete, insist that they have a Plan B.
Educate your children about racism. Don't allow your children to blame every problem they have on racism, but make sure they know racism still exists.
Teach your children to respect adults. Good manners can carry a person very fair in life.
As important as it is for you to be there for your children, it is equally important for you to know when to let go and allow your children to stand on their own two feet.
I was in Philadelphia last month for the 32nd annual BDPA Technology Conference. There were over 200 young people participating in the conference activities ... many of them young Black boys. I found myself wondering if each of the young Black boys that I saw would be able to successfully travel the obstacles that will be placed in their way over the coming years.
I wonder if each of us should be more direct in our efforts to inspire bolder and brighter visions of what is possible for Black men and boys in America.
Here is a video from the first annual Campaign for Black Male Achievement Transformational Leadership Retreat, which took place last year in Miami, FL. During the retreat, participants were asked to talk about their collective missions to improve the life outcomes of black men and boys. I found the to be uplifting and eye-opening in a number of ways:
"Transformational times require transformational leadership" was the theme for over 60 leaders from across the nation who participate in this retreat designed to raise the bar for participants' personal and organizational leadership in 2010.
I have a 10-year old son. I know that I need to do more to ensure that he and his friends can create bolder and brighter visions of what is possible for them in America.
Anyone else thinking about the future of our Black men and Black boys?
I imagine that going to Hell is something that all of us want to avoid ... and we can't imagine any reason that a child should have to go to Hell. In the United Kingdom it appears that they don't mind if a child goes to Hell more than once.
The United Kingdom is losing children. A recent study found that 55% of child trafficking victims in the U.K. who are identified and rescued eventually go missing. Those children are going to Hell twice in a very short lifetime.
The U.K. is suffering from a guardianship crisis when it comes to trafficked children, namely, that trafficked kids have no guardian and the government isn't providing a good one. One government-run home which lost 77 kids in three years turned out to be a front for a trafficking ring. And Afghan children trafficked to the U.K. have been leaking out of the country faster than BP oil into the Gulf of Mexico. But an issue which before seemed to maybe be a failure of just a handful of agencies now looks to be a system-wide breakdown.
The Home Office's Centre for Exploitation and Online Protection reviewed several local authorities who serve trafficked children and found that over half the kids who are brought in slip through some rather gaping cracks. There are a number of reasons child trafficking victims get lost: they are re-trafficked by the agency or someone else, they run away out of fear of the trafficker, they are deported, or they run back to the trafficker, especially in cases where the trafficker was a boyfriend first.
According to a recent opinion poll regarding this research, 44% of British adults think they way the government is dealing with child trafficking victims is unacceptable. Really? Only 44%? That means over half of British citizens aren't concerned that their government is losing most of the children it rescues from slavery. Can that many people really be ok with the idea of a children's shelter acting as a front for a child trafficking ring? Or the government deporting children who have been enslaved in the U.K. back to war zones? I have to believe the poll response is based on denial that child trafficking exists rather than callous indifference to the suffering of hundreds or even thousands of children.
The U.K. needs to get their act together, and you can tell them to start by stopping the deportation of trafficked children back to Afghanistan. You can also sign the petition created by ECPAT UK and the Body Shop to ask the government to create stronger guardianship guidelines and more comprehensive services for trafficked children.
Human trafficking is the third largest criminal industry in the world and it is thought that 1.2 million children and young people are trafficked every year for sexual exploitation and cheap labour.
Did you know that 58% of Black children can't swim? Did you know that Black children drown three times more often than white children?
These statistics would lead me to conclude that it is important for young Black children to learn how to swim. My two youngest take swimming lessons. They are both in summer programs that include weekly visits to community pool. They just returned from a trip to Jamaica where they enjoyed snorkling, swimming and just playing in the water.
Perhaps I wouldn't have these opportunities if we lived in Philadelphia.
"When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool," Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. "The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately."
"Swimming pools were really the most intensely contested public space," said Jeff Wiltse, a University of Montana historian who studied municipal pools, where deep-seated emotions often created tortured logic to justify continued segregation.
Wiltse found that Blacks and whites routinely swam together in the late 1800s and early 1900s. That changed when the migration of large numbers of rural Southern Blacks to Northern states triggered a squeamishness among whites over sharing a pool with them.
The professed concern appeared to involve hygiene, and a notion that poor Blacks coming from a farming background would have lower standards of cleanliness. Even in public schools, swimming remained segregated long after all other scholastic activities were integrated.
Whatever ... it ain't right and we need to ensure that the folks at the Valley Club in Philadelphia pay a price for unleashing this racist behavior in 2009.
I encourage all villagers to contact The Valley Club. Ask to speak with club president John Duesler. Express your outrage!
Valley Swim Club Physical Address: 22 Tomlinson Road, Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006
We support the 'Am I Not Human?' blogging campaign that lights up the 27th of each month. I encourage all villagers to find a way to support this effort to shine a light on human rights abuses taking place all over the world.
My submission this month was inspired by a television show. I watched the season premiere of "24" a few days ago. I was struck by the use of children as soldiers for the rebels in this show. In fact, the rebels were actually kidnapping children from homes, soccer fields and schools. The fantasy of television is born from the reality of our world.
Boys and girls alike are forced into combat, exploited for their labor, and subjected to unspeakable violence. A UN treaty prohibits the participation of children under the age of 18 in hostilities. But too often, it is not enforced.
Physically vulnerable and easily intimidated, children typically make obedient soldiers. Many are abducted or recruited by force, and often compelled to follow orders under threat of death. Others join armed groups out of desperation. As society breaks down during conflict, leaving children no access to school, driving them from their homes, or separating them from family members, many children perceive armed groups as their best chance for survival. Others seek escape from poverty or join military forces to avenge family members who have been killed.
I rarely compliment President Bush ... but, I'm proud to know that he signed a new law last month that calls for the arrest and prosecution of leaders of military forces and armed groups who have recruited child soldiers.
I encourage all villagers to visit the Red Hand Day website. The folks on that website want us to urge the United Nations to take stronger action to end the use of child soldiers.
The aim of the Red Hand Day campaign is to gather one million “red hands” — the symbol of the global campaign against the use of child soldiers — and present them to UN officials in New York on February 12, 2009, the anniversary of the day the treaty banning the use of child soldiers took effect. Participating in the campaign is easy:
Use red paint to make a handprint on a sheet of paper, and add a personal message about your desire to end the use of child soldiers; organize others at your school or in your community to do the same;
Upload photos or videos of your event to www.redhandday.org;
Send your red hands by February 2009 to Human Rights Watch, 350 5th Ave, 34th Floor, New York, NY 10118
Will you join this effort? What are your thoughts about using children as soldiers?
Globalization has contributed to rising incomes in Canada, the United States, and Mexico but has not improved economic security for many vulnerable children across the three countries, according to Growing Up in North America: The Economic Well-Being of Children in Canada, the United States, and Mexico.Despite rising national income, many poor families in the United States slipped deeper into poverty.
The study completes a series published by the Casey Foundation as a partner in Children in North American Project, which highlights the well-being of children and youth in all three countries. Previous reports have explored health and safety issues and the challenges facing children in an era of globalization.
