Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !
I'm still not talking about Black history. I'm still talking about white US history.
Q: Why do Black kids not do well in school? Is it because their dads are uninvolved and uncaring parents? Bill Cosby and Herschel Walker told me that, and they are good and wise men that we should listen to! It's Black dads' fault! Boo Black men!
A: No. Black kids only do poorly in school *in extremely racist countries.*
1/N
Black dads are *more* involved in both early childhood activities like bathing and diapering, and school aged activities. From the CDC:
A larger percentage of Black dads
(41%) had helped their coresidential children with homework every day in
the last 4 weeks compared with
white (28%) dads.
Only 30% of white dads take their own kids to activities every day, vs 42% of Black dads.
71% of white dads talk with their kids about their day, vs 79% of Black dads.
Etc, etc.
But is poor school attainment because so many Black kids are born out of wedlock? The Nick Cannon effect?
No. The anecdotes are Nick Cannon, not Elon Musk, or Larry Bird. How many kids does Larry Bird have? That we know of? How many kids does Elon have? That we know of?
But ignore these ovulation addicts. The data shows that co-parenting is the trend for everyone. And it's fine.
"OK, when Black dads are present, they're involved. But too many Black dads are just not there! Why aren't they there?"
In the US, a Black man has a 1 in 4 chance of going to jail. Most likely for "drug use," even though white folk do more drugs. 🤷🏿♂️
Most Black dads incarcerated have not even been convicted of any crime. They're "awaiting trial," and are too poor to afford bail. You can be waiting for trial for *years*.
Just being falsely arrested will likely cause you to lose your job, and can prevent you from applying for a new one.
The mother of your child will likely need to apply for public assistance while you are locked up. The state will give her financial assistance... and then bill you.😮
You will rack up debt to the state *while you are in jail!*. You will be in "child support arrears."
Most of the time, this is not what the mother wants. Her partner has just been falsely arrested and so can't help with bills. She needs to make rent or she'll be evicted. She applies for assistance not to punish her partner, but to not be homeless with the children.
Even if you are innocent, you've just gone from being an employed, present Black dad...
To a dead beat dad, with warrants for his arrest for failure to pay child support, who can't even apply for many jobs due to the first arrest.
Some of you will remember that Walter Scott was shot in the back while running from police. But do you know why he was running?
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/10/why-was-walter-scott-running
If your definition of "stability in the household" revolves around marital status or cohabitation, rather than this systemic racism minefield presented to the parents, I urge you to reflect on that.
I mean, half of y'all's parents are divorced. 🤷🏿♂️ That's clearly not the issue.
Another comparison is white Europeans, who don't face this racism minefield.
4 out of 10 EU kids are born to unmarried parents. In France, closer to 6 / 10. Lower the marriage rate, the more men participate in childcare!👍🏿♥️
We call them "progressive."
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276802/births-out-of-wedlock-in-the-eu/
So this is where most of the Black dads are: in jail for unjust arrests. A human rights atrocity committed at a genocidal scale. Millions of dads.
But how do some Black kids in this situation manage to overcome this and get good grades anyway? Many factors, but an important one: Black teachers.♥️👍🏿
School in the US is fantastically racist too. A racist teacher cannot teach a Black student effectively. Even teachers that don't think that they're racist, do this:
This can be countered by Black teachers. ♥️👍🏿
Black students randomly assigned to at least one Black teacher in grades K-3 are 9 percentage points (13%) more likely to graduate from high school and 6 percentage points (19%) more likely to enroll in college than their same-school, same-race peers.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w25254
White kids can benefit from this too, and aren't harmed by it. Black kids from privilege benefit a little. Black boys from underprivileged backgrounds benefit the most.
People looking to minimize the impacts of racism, believe that Black teachers help through the "role model effect." That's part of it but not the whole story.
There are few enough Black teachers in this country, that we can literally ask a good portion of them what's really happening. It's not just the role model effect. Teachers are shielding Black kids from racism.
Until they can't anymore...
The typical education experience for a Black boy in the United States, is to have almost all white teachers, mostly women, more than half of whom vote for the most racist candidate on any ballot, and no Black teachers. The teachers have low expectations of you, punish you more than your classmates, and threaten to call the cop who works in the hallway on you at any moment.
I don't know how to explain more clearly, that this is never going to work.
I'm not surprised that Black US kids don't perform as well as white US kids, or as well as Nigerian, Ghanaian, Kenyan, or Caribbean kids. I'm surprised that any Black kids make it through this hellish gauntlet at all.
When you look at how much the US pays to educate each student, and how poorly it does at Black educational achievement, it's clear that the US is the worst country in the world at educating Black students, by far. Because racism. No one spends more to achieve less.
Once you understand white US history instead of Black history, you'll understand why the following interventions will do much more to improve US Black educational achievement than most of the nonsense we're trying today:
• Bail reform
• Fire racist teachers, including the Bill Cosbys
• Retain anti-racist Black, white, AAPI, Latinx teachers
• Get rid of school cops
• Provide all students free lunch. And breakfast. And afternoon snack.
• Transfer police budget to school budget. Bring back art.
Black people know this, and racists know this. The only people that don't know this, are most non-racist Americans. 🤷🏿♂️
I know that racists know this, because if you invert all of these interventions that work to reduce school racism, you have just written a near perfect racist political platform:
• End bail reform
• Keep racist teachers
• Fire anti-racist Black, white, AAPI, Latinx teachers
• Place more cops in schools
• End free lunch programs
• Increase police budgets
• Defund art education
Oh! I almost missed an opportunity to plug Hair Love again!
"Toxic masculinity" doesn't mean that masculinity is toxic, any more than "rabid dog" means that all dogs are rabid. Some masculinity is toxic, and some dogs are rabid.
If you're comfortable with your masculinity, you get to be a better dad.👍🏿
Matthew Cherry. Former NFL player. Martial artist. Black dad. Decided he wants to write children's stories.♥️
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kNw8V_Fkw28
Fair: Though it's still RARE to see examples of "anti-toxic" or "healthy" masculinity clearly stated.
What happens instead is people try to weaselly redefine across the board "good" things into "masculine;" but no, it would have to be something that's generally, but of course not always, more associated with men than women.
Any takers? :)
It's a topic for a whole different thread, but "masculinity" as it's colloquially used doesn't really exist. And it never has. 🤷🏿♂️
It's all just taking character traits we see as good, and associating them to masculinity. But even these supposedly masculine traits are contextual. The exact same characteristic that's seen as more masculine in one context, can be seen as less masculine in another. 🙂🙃
@jrm4
Hmm, see I have a problem with a premise of your question.
Like a lot of people wrestling with the question of what a non-toxic masculinity looks like, you assume that what "masculinity" means is "that which characterizes men". Well, I recognize that trap. As an old feminist, that's got the same problem as defining "femininity" as "that which characterizes women".
That problem with it is that there isn't one right way to be a man, any more than there's one right way to be a woman.
It's better by far to define "masculinity" as "how men choose to be in the world". Which instantly makes it a vastly diverse set of ways one can be.
Really any way of being a man is a good way, so long as you're not an ass about it. And that includes not insisting the way one has decided to be a man is the only right way to be a man.
So,
...if the way one wants to be a man is being stoic, that's fine. If the way one wants to be a man is by being sensitive and emotionally expressive, that's fine.
If the way one wants to be a man is as a good provider for a family, that's fine. If the way one wants to be a man is as a SAHD who nurtures his kids, that's fine. If the way one wants to be a man is by sharing all the duties of a household equally with a partner, that's fine. If the way one wants to be a man is eschewing domestic life and going on adventures, that's fine.
If the way one wants to be a man is by being a protector, or by pursuing excellence, or being dutiful, or seeking freedom, or contributing to the greater good: all those are fine.
It's up to each man to decide what being a man means for him.
A construct of masculinity becomes toxic when it is the only acceptable or valid way of being a man, when it becomes obligatory. That makes it oppressive - to men and to everyone else.
Masculinity is, properly, whatever men choose to do and be. Not what they *should* do or be.
You both *literally* and perfectly did the exact thing I mentioned. No substance, all weasel.
Come ON y'all. Let's do this for real.
Women: When dealing with loved ones problems, generally better at being nurturing and comforting.
Men: Generally better at cutting to the core of the issue, tough love.
LETS GO WHAT ELSE
@jrm4 @siderea But I reject the whole premise of this argument?
And I don't think masculinity is either better at tough love, or getting to the core of a problem. I think those are agendered.
E.g. The core of the "pandemic problem" is that people don't want to wear masks, get vaccinated, or care about other people. The "tough love" is telling folk to suck it up and wear a mask. Women world leaders objectively did that better than men. Core of issue, and tough love.
@[email protected] It's a topic for a whole different thread, but "masculinity" as it's colloquially used doesn't really exist. And it never has. 🤷🏿♂️ It's all just taking character traits we see as good, and associating them to masculinity. But even these supposedly masculine traits are contextual. The exact same characteristic that's seen as more masculine in one context, can be seen as less masculine in another. 🙂🙃
I mean, fair, but to me this renders "Toxic masculinity" (along with the other 3 possible quadrants) meaningless.
And I don't think that's the case. I think toxic masculinity (and toxic femininity and healthy femininity and healthy masculinity) all do exist and are worth (re)considering.
I don't think it's entirely useless to say - - hey relatively predictably often, but not always (men/women) are (better/worse) about X.
(and, of course, no intent to exclude any other gender ids)
@jrm4 @siderea @mekkaokereke I’m sorry but:
“Generally better at cutting to the core of the issue, tough love”
That’s not “men” — that’s New Yorkers.
(somewhat serious, It’s a true cultural difference when moves away from NYC)
@run_atalanta @siderea @mekkaokereke
I don't know, I don't think "not having a filter on ya mouth" is exactly equivalent :)
(tallahassean, married to a new yorker)
@jrm4 @siderea @mekkaokereke (no, not really, my boss is not a NuYawker, and is actually helping me learn to not overrun the introverts on team)
But seriously, that's not a society-enforced gender-role exclusive to men. NY is my example. But I exist to shatter gender, and have people be welcomed to be who they are.
IMHO " gender " roles are all part of *white male* supremacy, forming more boxes to marginalize and label "other" people into.
@run_atalanta @siderea @mekkaokereke
And this strikes me as a good short term idea, that -- in the long run is reactionary and unwise.
Which is to say, yes -- "gender roles" are often over-reinforced by power structures, but also, they do *exist* to some extent. Which is to say "shattering gender roles" and "let people be who they are" sometimes will be in harmony, but will also sometimes conflict.
@jrm4 @siderea @mekkaokereke As a NYer , my HS classes benefitted from gaving a jewish social studies teacher of russian descent teach critical thinking. every year, his class would watch a film on the holocaust that then went to a segment where a Nazi stood in front of a modern synagogue shouting hateful things about the jews, and promotioning genocide. The film ended with the question to the class:
Was that free speech to be protected?
Bullshit.
When you dig into every supposed gender dichotomy like that one, you’ll find that there is far more in common, far more overlap, far more similarity than there is difference. The process is of greatest value to those who will eventually use one of those supposedly distinctive criteria to decide someone just isn’t as capable or worth as much as someone else.
@DavidM_yeg @mekkaokereke @siderea
That's what the "generally" was supposed to take care of. A softer "generally" than most of the time. Not sure if I was clear there, but again, what I'm trying to get at is "lets not pretend that there is zero predictive value in these ideas"
There is SOME, if small.
What I’m trying to get at is “Let’s not pretend that that the small predictive value of these ideas isn’t vastly overwhelmed by the distortions and harm done in wielding them”
You can go mutter to yourself in the corner about your “SOME, if small” differences, and I’ll stay over here and work at building a world in which people aren’t punished or oppressed for having the “wrong” small differences.
@DavidM_yeg @mekkaokereke @siderea
Then you should have said that in the first place.
We can do two things at once.
Well put. Toxic masculinity is a concept of masculinity that insists that a man *can’t* be something, or *must* be something. Toxic masculinity is an image of masculine that requires that I slice and dice my self to fit some established mold, that I be less me and less fully human. And that process is toxic to me, and causes me to harm those around me with those sharp, sheered off edges.
mekka okereke 
Laura Langdon
Scruffy looking packet herder
chiasm
Alex
ScottinSoCal 🇺🇦 🕊 🏳🌈
Brandon Jones
jrm4
pandabutter [I have moved]
Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis
run_atalanta -> beige.party
David Mitchell 
Same guy as last time
grechaw
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