The War on Black Masculinity: How Anti-Black Misandry Starts in Childhood

What's good, family? Welcome back to the Onyx Report, black masculinist news for the day. Like, share, subscribe, join, donate, hit the hype button, support the show so we can continue to bring you this independent black male thought. And please make sure you support because I think YouTube is throttling my numbers and definitely unsubscribing folk. Um, so, make sure you're still subscribed and all that good stuff. Appreciate your support. All right.

So, today before we get started, y'all know I like to do the hashtag sacred black masculine series and it kind of comes, you know, as it comes. Um, and I was sent this, uh, this appreciation for the late director, uh, John Singleton. And there were two actors in conversation talking about how much he has meant to them and what role he's played in their lives, and I wanted to, uh, wanted to acknowledge that. So, let's go ahead and check this out.

I knew that John had a reputation on the campus of USC. He was talking about like this guy, he's something special. So, you, so I'd always kind of wanted to run into the something special guy. And I had this gap between doing 227 and auditioning for Boys n the Hood when I couldn't even get an audition for anything. People just said only. And I remember that time period 'cause I grew up watching her on 227. Um, you know, she was a few years older than me and, uh, saw her career blossom. But after 227, there was a gap and I was surprised to see her, uh, come back out under John Singleton and Boys n the Hood and to play that role, you know. So, uh, shout out to John for allowing her her way back in. And I can say, just, you know, as an aside, I've watched her career develop over the years. I'm impressed with what she's done, um, from the films to The Boondocks to all that good stuff. And I can definitely say every time I've seen pictures or video interviews, um, she really need to stop looking at me like that. But anyway, here we go.

Could see me as Brenda. And so, Jackie Carmen Brown was the casting director. I'm auditioning for Jackie. I do a couple lines and she was like, "Oh, okay. I'm going to bring you back for the producers, John and Steve Nicolaides." And she said, "I just want to see if you could be ghetto." I was like, "I'm an actress." And so >> [laughter] >> I came back at the end of the day to audition again for John and Steve. And I've always been told by my acting teacher, as soon as you finish an audition, you get out of there. Don't hang around 'cause it just doesn't leave a good impression. So, I finished, and the audition was like upstairs, and you had to walk down these steps. And from the balcony of those steps, you can see, you know, the whole floor behind you. So, I'm trying to make a beeline out. And all of a sudden, I hear, "Regina! Regina!" I turned around, and it's John at the top, and he was like, "You got it. You got it." And that's where our relationship started from there, and he, He told you. He told you on. He told me on my way out. You got it. Yeah. Saved you all of that, all of that, all of that in my head. That actors go through. Yeah, it's beautiful.

My story is not as glamorous. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, I first, I first, I'm going to be honest. I first met John. I had a buddy, Faheem, who's from Sixty-Fifth and Wall. We, we played football together. And then me and him became, became real tight. And when I got in the, when I got accepted in the film school, I didn't have anywhere to live in LA. You know, so I just kind of came down and I was couch surfing and trying to figure it out. And I spent a lot of time living with Faheem and his family. He was helping me learn LA 'cause it was, you know, it was a tough place to be on your own, you know. It is. It's, it's a lonely place, too. I was actually, I was actually very fresh. Wasn't used to, you know, wasn't ready for, for that, for that aspect of it. And I stopped playing football, too. So, you know, you know, I lost a lot of identity and, and, and structure. And, and Faheem would hit me up and say, "Hey, man, let's go to the, let's go work out. Let's go to the gym." And we was at some gym, man. We was in there going through the workout. And we was fresh. You know, college football players. You got all your routine and everything. Faheem was doing, doing a set of pull-ups, and I'm working in with him. And then, and then I look up, and I see John Singleton like walking over to us smiling. And he's like, "Hey, what's going on, man?" He was like, "Are y'all, He was like, "Are y'all on a team or something?" You know what I'm saying? Like he's like, "Can I work in with y'all?" >> [laughter] >> I'm like, I'm like, "Y'all, you're not going to." I'm like, I'm like, "Yes, you can work in with us." But like, but like number one, I just got in the film school here. And bro, you're like one of my heroes. I can't believe this is happening. You know what I'm saying? Like, like. And he was like, "Oh, he was like, "You got to let to actually like take my number. If you need anything, man, let me know while you're working out here." I didn't think it was real. You know what I'm saying? 'Cause it, 'cause it was, you know. And then I got to the, I got to the school and I met the, I met the dean and she was like, "Hey, John said he met you." And I'm like, "What? How you remember this?" And she was like, "Yeah, John." I'm like, "Maybe, maybe that was his real number." And then she was like, "Don't wear it out though, you know what I mean? Like only hit him if you, you know, if you need him." So, so I would text him when I was working on films or when I had something done to show him at a screening. And he would always hit back. You know, he was always, always there for support. And I got to my thesis project and that's when he would, that's when he would kind of call in and, and, and, and check in.

Yeah. Check in with the dean, make sure I was, make sure I was good, you know. He would, he would give me feedback on, on, on cuts. And then when I started filming Creed and Panther, he would come to the premiere. He put me on this tradition where whenever we would like filmmakers release a movie in theaters, he would send a picture with the tickets. And like with John, his movie was the first movie I remember watching in theaters, like Boyz n the Hood. And so I met this guy. I would run into him in the gym. Like accidentally. Accidentally. He would be that kind and hit me up whenever. He was always there. I felt like it was like God, like an ancestor looking out. You know what I mean?

But something about John that I must say, that just hearing how you met him is just indicative of John's character. When John believes in the artist, he invests in that. That is something that I think is rare for a person to be that giving. I know from him telling me he saw my potential to direct before I saw it. >> [clears throat] >> And I never knew that that's what was happening until like in hindsight. He would always, he would invite me to so much of his preparation for Higher Learning, his preparation for even Poetic Justice. And that, I believe, is because he saw something in me that I didn't even see in myself. So he would not have checked on the dean to see how you were doing if he didn't seen something in one of those shorts or just in the way you spoke about film. Probably sparked a chord in him. You know, when he sees something, he's like a dog with the bone. He doesn't let it go. Shout out to John Singleton. I've appreciated his work for years, especially from the beginning. I've taken many a student to see some of his films and it was good to hear him talked about in this way. And, you know, as an aside, I've often, you know, urged brothers to do the same kind of thing John did, um, you know, with Ryan, you know, to mentor cats that you see who have potential and, you know, are not going to get much support, especially if the, it's, you know, anything like the way many of us came up, uh, but to take that responsibility to, to mentor a young brother that needs it. So, shout out to him for that. And, uh, #sacredblackmasculine, straight up.

Um, so anyway, so today we're going to talk a little bit about anti-black misogyny and we're going to look at the ways in which it, um, it can manifest as early as childhood and tends to be fairly consistent and repetitive in its presence. And we're going to look at how it, it impacts black men, um, what ways it comes at us and for what long periods of time we can see it persisting and doing so. So, check this out.

This is two daycare workers in their, uh, care of a young black boy toddler. Video that is a part of a police investigation shows a young boy being hit and bit by employees at Cool Kids Academy. Fox 5's Tierra Rucker joins us live from that daycare tonight and Tierra, you spoke to the mother of that young boy. What did she tell you? Well, Christine, the mother tells me she was disturbed by the way employees here were treating her son. He's not even 2 years old. Tierra Whitehead's son, Mason Woodward, has been going to Cool Kids Academy for the last few months. Whitehead says she used to trust the daycare until last week. >> DFACS came to my house 10:00 p.m. at night asking me was I informed that there was an incident at the daycare and I'm like, "No." And they said, "Yes, a staff member had bit my child." Take a look at this video inside Cool Kids Academy that is a part of the Snellville Police Department's investigation. In the first video, you see what appears to be an employee biting the young boy before he walks away. Whitehead says in the second video, another employee hits the young boy while he's crying. She says she can't believe what happened to her son at a place that she trusted to take care of him. >> I'm sitting here crying and hurt with his head down and then getting hit in the head. So, that's just very disturbing. Very shocked and more hurt and like confused as has this been happening? Whitehead says her son started acting different about a week before she found out what happened at the daycare. >> He started crying every day for like the last week when I was dropping him off and I'm like, like maybe he just wants to stay home more. >> According to the Snellville Police Department's report, Teresa Blackwood faces charges of simple battery and cruelty to children in the second degree. Treasure Cross also faces a simple battery charge. >> That makes me feel good because I know at this point hopefully it sticks on their record and they will not be able to be around any other children. Whitehead wants the employees held accountable. Listen to the signs of your baby when if their their attitude changes. And I spoke to an employee here at the daycare. She told me that both of the people involved have been fired. Police say right now that there are warrants out for both of their arrest. Reporting live in Snellville, Tara Jabour, Fox 5 News.

>> Is just so, uh, disturbing, Tara. Uh, thanks so much for bringing us the story tonight. Yeah. Fair use. This kind of thing unfortunately is quite common for young boys. There's a lot of documentation out there about how young boys are treated like they're older at at ages than any other demographic, young black boys in particular. Um, but that doesn't, uh, that that breaches into violence as well. I mean, look at right here. She's, she's checking to see if she left bite marks in his skin. And the first thing she did when he walked in is bite him in the shoulder and then go from there. And I've seen this happen not only in general, not only in terms of the research, but also with my own son. Um, I, I had to move him to like six different daycares in multiple cities because I found that between white women and black women, there was a, a noticeable and palpable contempt, contempt, uh, for black boys. You know, uh, one center that was run by a black woman that I had him in when he was about, uh, two, a little under two, um, she said he had gotten kicked out because he hit a little girl and took the toy that she had taken from him back. And I went to just pick him up for the day and she was letting me know, "Well, he can't come back here." I said, "Well, what happened?" "Well, he hit a little girl and he took, uh, he took back a toy she, she took from him." And I said, "Okay." And I, you know, I'm just looking at her like, "He's a kid. I mean, what, what, what's the problem?" She said, "Well, he hit a little girl and she was only two." And I said, "He's two." And she just kind of looked at me. And I said, "No worries. He doesn't have to come back here." And I, and we've never been back since. But it, you know, I, I've seen him kicked out for less in other places between where I was, uh, in the LA area and moving to Fresno. And it took a Nation of Islam run daycare that, uh, really, you know, before he was treated well and I could actually trust him there. He didn't have any apprehensions about going. He was excited to go every day. That's how I knew he was okay. But I've seen places that will stick, you know, stick your kid in a playpen and leave them there all day and then change their diapers 10 minutes before you get there. Uh, just turn on a TV and leave them there. And I've seen places that abuse kids. Uh, but when it comes to black boys, unfortunately, this is quite common.

The, the problem is we see a transition from child care into school, right? Kindergarten, you know, through 12th grade. I've seen how black boys are treated. I've taught at every level. I've watched how it happens and again, I've seen it with my son. You know, I've had him in, he, I've seen him in elementary school classes where he was the only kid sent to the back of the room every day to, in, in to the point where they didn't have to send him. He, that was his assigned seat. Separate and in the back of the room from everybody else. And he was the only black male child in many of these classes. And when I would go sit in, I would actually watch how all the kids, or I should say a good number of them were doing the very thing she had punished him for, but those kids were never punished. So, I got to watch this kind of thing happen over and over again. And if I went and sat with administrators, they were quick to call security. So, these are the kind of things I observed not only in what he experienced, but what I experienced, you know, advocating for him. You know, and this is a kid who was reading the entire Harry Potter book by the first grade. By himself. You know, but I've seen this with black boys repeatedly. So, there's a, there's an ongoing contempt that is often mislabeled or ignored outright. And I think it's because it's become such a feature, especially within the black community, but in the larger society as well, that it's just par for the course. And asking people to observe that anti-black misogyny is like asking a fish to explain water. They, you know, it's just, it's just the, it's the environment they thrive in. They, they can't often do it.

But let's look at how it can also impact black men as adults. Let's check it out.

Is that why you used clothes? You ripped my shirt. Talking about you're going to leave. I am leaving. The [ __ ] You ain't going nowhere not after all this time I've [ __ ] put in investing in you. [ __ ] you. I'm getting the [ __ ] out of here. You ain't getting no [ __ ] way. I'M GOING TO SEE. [ __ ] YOU. You a weird ass [ __ ]. You've been playing with me this whole [ __ ] time. And I bet you, I bet you your family knew that [ __ ] too while they in my face kumbaya kiki kiki. Yeah, come on. Yeah, she knows. She, I told her. She, this is her idea. It was her idea? Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, REALLY? YEAH. STOP. STOP. THAT KNIFE. WHAT YOU DOING? [ __ ] CRAZY. [ __ ] crazy, bro. You going to have to make your decision right now. What you going to do? You try to leave? Just know it's going to be bad for you. You [ __ ] crazy, bro. >> [music] >> What the [ __ ]? What the [ __ ] bro? Stop. What the [ __ ]? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

This is again, this happens far more often than most people would admit to, especially when I get brothers who, you know, reach out to me on a regular basis and share with me what they've experienced, sometimes minutes after the, after the occurrence. And, you know, women, you know, will often, I've hear, I'll see them online high-fiving each other about how she's treating him, you know, putting him in check, having some kind of power over him, you know, how, you know, this kind of attitude like she's, she's, you know, this is how he should be treated. And, um, it's, it's just reached the point that I think it's too far gone, you know. It's rooted in a contempt that I've seen passed down. Um, and, and in many ways this is perceived as this is how he should be treated. This is how black men should be treated. When all he really wanted to do was leave. And I've seen a preponderance of this, especially since COVID. I, and I've talked about these cases on my show. There are numerous cases of men wanting to leave relationships, and this is when they're attacked and killed. You know, I've seen this repeatedly. I've, and I've talked about these cases. One case, you know, there were cases where men were stabbed for wanting to leave, they were hit with items, or they were shot. One case, a man walked in, found his wife in bed with another man, didn't threaten them, didn't attack them. He started packing a bag. She pulled out a gun and shot him because he wanted to leave. And he got, by the time he got out of the hospital, she was already out of jail. This is the kind of thing that I've seen.

Because part of the problem here, and this is something that women like her know, is that the state operates on her behalf. Police, uh, law enforcement will often tend to believe her, right? Because, because when this policy was created, it was feminists who were framing the dynamic. They weren't saying domestic abuse is when one or more partners are physically abusive to each other. They were, they framed it as domestic abuse is when men beat women. And as long as that's the dominant frame, right? It's not a surprise that you see the statistics the way they are and how they're interpreted, even though there are plenty, there's plenty of data to show how abused black men and men in general can find themselves, but the dominant narrative is what men do to women. And so often when it's in the reverse, it's ignored. So he can actually be in the situation, the police can show up and still put cuffs on him. All she has to do is cry. And, and I've talked to repeatedly on the show about, uh, crying with no tears. You know, it's a performance. And I, I actually caught ex-girlfriends doing this in retrospect. Where they'll cry in the middle of an argument, and it takes me years to figure out, "Wait a minute, she didn't actually have tears." You know what I mean? But this is the tactic. And many of these kind of women know that they can do this. You know, if he tries to protect himself physically, >> [music] >> even if it's just to hold her in place, you know, she can use that against him. A lot of this was commonplace when it was his word against hers where they would lock him up, especially until at least we got to the point where we had easily accessible smartphones. And when men started at recording women's actual behavior like you see here, this is the kind of thing when men would tell these stories from the, from the '60s onward, people wouldn't believe them. Not only in the larger society, but even in the black community and especially amongst black women. Knowing full well how black women can act, black women themselves would say he's lying. But when you started to see more and more, and you know, video coming out showing women's poor behavior, well, something interesting happened. It switched from, you know, no woman would attack and these are lies that men tell to get to get away from being accountable. It switched from that to, well, what did he do? The only reason she would act like that is because of, is in self-defense. That's the only way. He would, that's. And what they found or what we're starting to see is that that's not, that's not the case. It doesn't have to be in self-defense. It's not the case. Right? All he wanted to do was leave. And this is considered acceptable behavior. And it's a problem. It's a problem because it's so common and so many women know how to miss you to how to manipulate the system on their own behalf. All they have to say is he attacked me, he hit me, he threatened me, he put hands on me, even if he didn't, especially if he didn't. Right?

>> [clears throat] >> But it also downplays even when there is mutual violence or bidirectionality. They will often downplay that they initiated the fight. They started the violence. But the clock doesn't start on domestic violence until a man responds. Everything before that is ignored. So, if she comes at him with a weapon, if she attacks him, nobody cares about that. It's the moment he responds. So, if you're intelligent like this gentleman here and you don't respond back, this is really your best defense. Because when you actually do defend yourself physically, you run the a huge risk of finding yourself incarcerated behind it. Or you might do far more time and have much more reputational damage than she for defending yourself. So, I did a show a few years ago with attorney Dennis Burley and he actually outlined some strategic and intelligent ways to withdraw from a relationship. Often, you know, waiting till she's not home, having friends show up with a truck, getting your stuff out in, in one fell swoop, so on and so forth. Being very strategic about how that happens. And of course, leading up to and after your withdrawal, recording and documenting everything that happens from emails to texts to video, phone messages, keeping all of that documented. And I would say to do it even if you've made the mistake of getting back with a woman, uh, later in life, keep the old documentation and when necessary, definitely add to it. Yeah. But yeah, these are the kind of things that we're looking at.

So, we're talking about misandry and we can see it, it starts very early on in childhood and for many black men, it continues on, um, almost indefinitely. And I think there are three major sources that we can look to for where this comes from, right? One is the culture in the black community and particularly amongst black women. The culture of misandry is accepted as normal. It's accepted and sometimes it's even supported and high-fived amongst women. She's strong. She don't take no mess. No, she's an abusive person. But that's actually applauded by other women, right? So you have to be careful because these are the women that you know, bear the children and are their first teachers. And if you're not extremely active in your child's life, they will walk away believing that this is actually acceptable behavior in regard to how to treat men and sometimes their own sons. Especially if he looks anything like the father when she's upset at the father. So my point here is that when you talk about anti-black misandry and now there are multiple sources we can look to for how to fix a black male's life, but we're going to look at three. So the first is in the family and what's passed down. The second is in regard to policy. And even though there's a lot of policies we can talk about, the one I just gave you in terms of how intimate partner violence is treated by law enforcement is an example of how policy operates on their behalf. Because when the policies were created, they were framed in a narrative that made men evil monsters and women innocent victims. Right? Even though when you look at people like Erin Pizzey who've been activists on behalf of women for decades and they can talk to you about how feminists have abused this narrative, she'll tell you straight out when she opened the very first domestic violence space for women to come to and stay when they had to leave their homes in Europe, she talked about the extent to which those women were also and often as violent as the men they were leaving. And would often go back to them and do as much damage as was claimed the men did to them. Baseball bats, knives, you name it. As a matter of fact, she talked about it in her own family and in her own life, she was as abusive as the men she dealt with and, and saw it in her parents. But we don't talk about the mutuality of the of of violence. We don't talk about the bidirectionality of it. We only talk about it the way feminists framed it. It's unidirectional for men to women to be considered violence in too many people's imagination. Often you'll hear people say when it comes to men's violence, that is considered domestic violence. When it comes to women's violence, it's interpreted as a response to whatever he did. And yes, among many women, leaving is considered an offense. Even in casual com- casual conversation in social media, infidelity is treated like, um, a defense, I mean, treated like a, uh, a crime sometimes worthy of death. If a woman shoots a man for cheating on her, you'll find when you hear that discussed online, women have a very passive attitude about that. Like, "Oh, really? He died?" Hm. So, it's not that you have women, you know, with street signs in a protest talking about how women should be able to kill men if they cheat on them, but it is to say when a man does commit an act of infidelity and he dies at her hands, you'll have many women that are not very passionate about doing much about that. They actually think it's okay. But if it's the reverse, it's a problem. If a man takes a woman's life for cheating on him, it's a problem. That's considered a crime. Right? And that's one of the things we noticed. Right?

When it came when it comes to intimate partner violence, uh, before you had, uh, the rise of smartphone, uh, easily accessible smartphone recording, um, what you often had happen was his word against hers. And more often than not, it was considered, um, optimal to believe her word. Once that, once you actually started to see more and more video made public in social media, all of a sudden all the stories that men have been telling for generations now were starting to seem real. Because men for years would say, "No, she's crazy. She did this. She did that." And people would ignore him. But now it's the, the switch with that would take place is it moved from he's, you know, he, he pointed out that something crazy had happened. She said it didn't happen. So we're going to believe her. It moved from that to, well, what did you do to hurt her? So people right now will look at this video and say, well, he must have done something. He must have done something to her to make her act like that. And that's the key component, make her act like that. But when it comes to men's behavior, God forbid if he hurts her or deletes her, there's nobody talking about what she made him do. The clock doesn't start until he responds. So if he responds in violence, then the abuse didn't start until he started doing something to her. If she was violent beforehand, that's not part of the discussion. And if there's video of it, again, what did he do to her? Right?

So, so far we talked briefly about two. All right, we got policy and we got what's passed down in the family. The other one is media-based. And although we can talk about many different forms of media-based misandry directed toward black males, we're going to talk about one sent to me by Kevin. Kevin, shout out to Kevin. This article from The Root. Right? Where you see Colman Domingo playing Joe Jackson from the recent movie Michael. And it's the article is entitled, "These Are the Worst Black Dads in Film and TV." It says, and I'm only going to read the first sentence, but I will take you through the fathers that they picked out here, right? It says, "Thanks to the new film Is God Is, which follows a set of twin daughters on a quest for revenge after their own father burned them and their mother in a house fire years prior, there's been renewed conversations about bad black dads on screen." Renewed conversations. Of course there've been renewed conversations. That was the goal. 'Cause the heyday of this type of film and this kind of film, this kind of aesthetic, this film aesthetic in cinema was of the rise of Oprah Winfrey and her ilk. The women she supported, the filmmakers and authors that she supported that would contribute to these types of projects. Right? That was a big part of her platform. She was, she became the basis and the fund, the primary financier behind a lot of these kind of projects and it created a new film aesthetic that is still trying to thrive today. Thankfully, this film didn't do very well. So, hopefully this doesn't signal that the genre is, is rebuilding, but it did come out. It made it to the screen. And there's so many independent black male filmmakers, some of whom I've had as students in the past that can't get a film, can't get a film barely on social media, let alone in the theaters. But, these kind of projects get greenlit. And I think the ultimate context for this is what Oprah was successful in doing decades ago.

Now, some of the film, film characters, the TV characters they point out, I'll just go through real quickly. Here you have Monster in the film Is God Is. This is played by, he's played by Sterling K. Brown. They don't give him an actual name. In the film he's called Monster. If you actually go to the IMDb and look at the film, his character is identified as man. And I think what's so interesting about that is it kind of highlights for you that in the, in the mind of the writers, the film producers, those who put this film out, Monster becomes synonymous with man. There's not one good man in the film. Very reminiscent of Color Purple. All men are a problem. And this goes hand in glove with the treatment and perception of men in general, particularly on the left in this society. Men in general are considered toxic. And that's been in the last 10, 15 odd years, but black men have considered or considered ain't [ __ ] going back to the 1970s at least. At least. Obviously, the, the, the bile and the contempt raises up by the time you get to the 1980s. But, yeah. So, black men have gotten a double dose in the last 15 years of contempt on the basis of them being male. And so, these kind of characters play a different role because they magnify the contempt and the misandry already present in many black households. And because they magnify it, it normalizes it even more than it already is. I know each of the men or the majority of the men listening to this podcast can tell me that they've met a family full of women and that have multiple generations, and you might even be a, be, be in one. Multiple generations, great grandmother, grandmother, you know, daughter, granddaughter, right? None of them have a man. They have kids, but they don't have men. They're able to seduce men, they're able to have sex with men, they're able to have children by men, but there are no ongoing relationships on multiple generational levels. And if you come in dating one of them and witnessing this, take notes. 'Cause more than likely you'll find yourself on the outs with this person when she walks away with your seed. And you have to, at least for the next 18 years, deal with this woman in regard to this child. But you noticing that the same dynamic has happened with her sisters, her mothers, her aunties, her grandmothers. It's a reoccurring issue, and the only framework that's acceptable in the black community for explaining this is black men are trifling, they're deadbeat dads, they're ain't, they ain't [ __ ] all of that kind of stuff. But we don't talk about the counter narrative that is rooted in our understanding of the gynocracy, and more than that, rooted in an ongoing cultural contempt that is acceptable in the black community. And unfortunately, these kind of films reinforce those ideas.

Now, Joe Jackson, it didn't take this Michael movie before Joe Jackson would be hated. Joe's been hated, uh, yeah, at least the, the entirety of my lifetime I've heard discussions about Joe. And really when I began to research him, unless there, and I'm, you know, I'm sure just because we're human beings there are things that happened that didn't make the news. I'm not doubting that. And I'm not doubting that, you know, amongst the kids, the wife, the whole family, there were things that happened that didn't make the news, not just Joe. But one thing that I do know, you can't have eight to 10 kids in the middle of the hood at that time in the '50s and '60s. Now, just before the rise of the war on drugs, you can't have a family that big and not have a firm hand if you're going to be instrumental in getting them out. And Joe actually got them into international stardom. There is no way to make an argument to suggest that the Jackson family would have been just as successful if Joe wasn't there. And not beyond the logistics of him being present to, you know, to physically have sex with the mother and produce all these children. But after the last child was born, if he, if he left and he wasn't present, there's no way in the world you can argue that this, this family would find the kind of success they found if it weren't for Joe. Right? But the contempt for Joe is so hot, you know, and it speaks to what this article really talks about. It's not just the contempt for men, and I talked about this in a previous show this week. There's a, a specific contempt for black fathers. The father is the exemplar of the teacher, the director, the protector, the guide, the support mechanism, and he creates the space for the mother to make home. You know, any space is a space. Traditionally, the idea is that it's through the woman that a house becomes a home. But what a lot of people don't want to give fathers and men the credit for is usually they create the space for the house. Otherwise, we're all out in the street. And this was an era where that happened. Because even though black men and women have always worked, especially after slavery, right? There were families like this where the father worked at a factory. He actually, Joe had two jobs for years and supported the entire family. Right? But he's not credited for that, let alone taking his own experience with his own band, which he no doubt had to give up to support his family, and making sure his children benefited from it. But he's hated. And, and they played him accordingly in this film in regard to that. He, his character was meant to be hated from the beginning. Yeah?

Then you have John Harris, Waiting to Exhale. You know, um, Michael Beach, whom as an actor I've always liked. Michael is, is a tight actor. I dig him. In this char-, in this role he plays here, of course, in Waiting to Exhale, he is the face, he becomes the face of black men who once successful leave black women for white women. Right? And of course you have, um, the ever lovely Angela Bassett who plays his wife. And this film becomes popular because she throws all his stuff in his Beamer, I think it was, and blows it up in her driveway to the point where the fire department show up and she doesn't care. She's oblivious. Right? Car on fire, all his stuff in it. So he becomes the face of this dynamic of successful black men leaving to find, you know, white women. Yeah. So Michael Beach in Waiting to Exhale.

You have Troy in Fences, played brilliantly by Denzel Washington, but I've seen him played by multiple people. I've seen this as a play a couple of times in college before, you know, this 2016 film ever came out. And the acting in it is brilliant. I'm just going to say that straight up. Viola Davis, Denzel Washington, they did a brilliant job with the acting. I wrote a blog on this, this particular play, this particular film even. I wrote a blog on it, blog article. I, it pissed a lot of people off because I said, you know, it's interesting this character who is hated for committing an act of infidelity and have a child having a child out of wedlock, um, I said despite the fact that he's hated as much as he is, I didn't think it was appropriate that he be punished for the rest of his life in his own household and his own marriage. As if forgiveness doesn't exist for black men. And the reason I wrote that piece is I went to the theater and watched it and I came home and I was thinking about it, turned the TV on, was flicking the channels around and got to Tombstone. And I was watching this movie about Wyatt Earp with Kurt Russell. And in that film his wife plays a drug addict. She's high on laudanum much of the time. And by the end of the movie she just disappears and leaves him. I can't remember if she leaves him or she dies, but she leaves, I think. And he ends up getting with another woman that he's been kind of flirting with the whole movie. And he ends up riding away in the sunset happy. His brothers are gone, family's gone, he's all by himself and they reconnects with this woman. And they ride off into the sunset as it were. Not literally, but that's the end of the movie, they, they leave happily, get married, so on and so forth. And then the prologue says that he continues as, I think he has family with her, the whole deal. And I said, why is it that, you know, in film and many times in real life men can actually be happy, black men can be happy. Or, or excuse me, white men can be happy in film. Sometimes in real life black men can be forgiven, but when black men in film commit atrocities like infidelity, they have to stay punished for the rest of their lives. And I say that because I've actually seen families where men have committed acts of adultery 10, 20, 30 years ago and they're not frozen in time. Their relationship either continues or they move on. People break up, get divorced, have new relationships. But the idea of the black father who's committed an atrocity, an emotional atrocity against the mother has to be frozen in amber. It has to stay there. Because he has to be punished for hurting her. And this is in line with the stereotype about, you know, especially in the South, right? The old man who when he passes, you show up to his funeral, he's got one or two other families that look just like you, like you. You know, that, that popular trope. And I'm like, if you're going to talk about tropes, then you might as well be honest about it. You know, at least point out the fact that with each woman, two or three of those children out of the seven or eight they had didn't look nothing like him. And both parents were aware of what both people were doing. But we don't, we don't, we don't want to go there. Right?

But I'll tell you this. In this era of DNA which is allowing for men to have far more say on how they've been treated and even manipulated as it as it pertains to paternity fraud. It has the, the likelihood or the possibility of playing a similar role for black men that the pill played for women in terms of empowerment based on pharmaceutical technology. Right? The pill, uh, fortified women, gave them the power to control their bodies, but what it also did is it also at that era, I should say, did, it gave women the power to point out via the family court who the father was. And you had to go with that. But in the rise of the era of DNA testing men have a lot more power than they've ever had to actually figure out whose child is whose and who should not be, you know, left with the burden of a lie. And we're starting to see families unraveling across race behind, you know, DNA testing technology. We're finding out in retrospect how many grandmothers lied, how many mothers lied, how many people miss, were misled kids and men behind the lie. And it's starting to reveal female nature. And some countries and states are trying vehemently to avoid this because the, you know, to reveal female nature in its rawest form, women don't even want that. They want to maintain the lie that they are above human so that they can justify resources and treatment that grant them access that men don't have. But if you re-reveal too much of female nature, which is basically human nature, then the logic of giving them priority no longer makes sense. And they end up having to be treated like men. And that is the last thing women want. Despite for calls for equ-, and for equality, they do not want to be treated like, like men. Women get 63% of the time when they're charged for crimes as the men who committed the same exact crimes. Women do not want equality. They want selective equality. They want equality as CEOs, they want equalities as six, seven, eight figure earners, they want equality in terms of access to, to areas that were overwhelmingly male, but not all areas, just the areas that have a lot of status and, and, and pay well. You know, you really don't find women fighting left and right to become equal as it pertains to, um, you know, truck driving, you know, deep sea fishing in the winter in Alaska. They, they're not fighting for that. You don't hear women throwing protest marches to be for there to be as many female janitors as there are male. They're not doing that. They want very specific, uh, high-status positions. Right?

Uh, you got Mister in Color Purple. Now, this is Danny Glover. And Danny Glover in many ways became the face of the trifling black man, particularly in the '80s. And he played that well, so well, that role so well that my grandmother-in-law, bless her soul, hated Danny Glover till his death, till her death. Now, she didn't hate Mister. She hated Danny Glover. And she told it, she told my wife this. My wife was sharing that with me. She hated Danny Glover. And that was reminiscent of some of the things that happened in her, in her own lifetime. But I'm wise enough to know, having only heard from her side of it, even my wife had only heard from her side of it. Nobody actually sat down with the father and talked about it. Right? But anyway, when it comes to The Color Purple, this is the OG film that became the framework for, right, anti-black misandry in film. This is why I call it the, the misandrist film aesthetic, anti-black misandrist film aesthetic. Because these were, there are a line of these films that came out. I mean, you had the black exploitation era in the '70s. A lot of people don't talk about the fact that in the '80s and '90s you had the rise of this anti-black misandrist film aesthetic. Much of it filtered through Oprah Winfrey's purse. You know. And you had a number of key black feminist authors, key.

Know, who helped create this genre based off of often novels they had. And this is how they engaged that. And they got worldwide platforming. You know, Steven Spielberg directed this film. They had worldwide platforming to tell the world that black men were monsters. And they were successful to that extent.

Uh you have Ghost in Power, right? James Ghost Saint Patrick, you know, who uh see here how he's holding the gun to his I'm not going to play cuz I don't want to get hit with any more copyright possibilities than I already get. But uh and that's his his his on-screen son Tariq, whose character I hated so much I didn't even want to watch Power after this this series was over. Um but he's depicted as one of the problematic fathers, even though he did actually a great deal and and and sacrifice for his children, a lot of that was downplayed for the surface of it, the hatred of it. And then even in the show, his son and wife conspire not only to hate him, but to kill him. Because I think 50 Cent understood that when you start to employ misandry as a feature, you're going to get women that will support it, black women in particular.

You got uh um Lucious in Empire. I didn't really watch Empire. I knew of it. I've seen scenes, you know, literally throwing your son in the trash when he doesn't act the way you want him to is the epitome of the ain't-shit father, right? So, they love the ain't-shit father cuz that's going to bring women in to support the show.

You got to Lou in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Ben Vereen, right? This is the famous scene that everybody talks about. You can't talk about The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and not talk about this scene, where his own father leaves him yet again for no clear reason. You know, abandons him. And even though Uncle Phil was a father figure, who's who's lauded and respected in popular culture, you know, people come back to this because this Ben Vereen in this context became the face of black men. I would argue more so than Uncle Phil, even though we a lot of people like Uncle Phil more.

When they talk about the deadbeat dad, that stereotype, it remains prominent. But we never we never actually talk about women's uh ability to push men out of the family and control the narrative and even control which men can be present and to what extent using resources extended to them by the family court. We don't talk about that. So, the popular trope of the deadbeat dad is what we discuss, but we ignore that women have the power to push men out of the family. Men couldn't do the same. Even if she was a problem, even if she was abusive, even if she was an addict, men could not take their kids and just push the woman out of the family and then control the narrative and tell the child whatever they wanted to. That was not something men could do. Cuz we were not backed by the state. So when she was a problem, she controlled the narrative. When he was a problem, she controlled the narrative. When he was a good man that she no longer wanted, she controlled the narrative. And the courts backed her far more often than not. And this is the face of the current black family. It is the result of women having carte blanche power to decide the structure of the family and how it shows up. And often she chose for him to be out. Many of those men left and started families over again or even left the country to do so because they had no standing as it related to the courts and law enforcement. Law enforcement were the teeth. The courts were the brain. And they acted on behalf of women. Because it was lucrative for them to do so. Child support is is many states benefit from that. Title 4D, they benefit from that to an extent that it works hand in glove with advocating for women and prioritizing women even when they're wrong. And if you give any demographic unchecked power, human nature is going to say is going to basically say that they're going to abuse it. And they have. But we just can't talk about them abusing it. We have to blame black men.

You got Rowan Pope in Scandal. You know, um I didn't watch Scandal, but I've seen this scene and a couple others on YouTube. Brilliant actor, the brother who plays the father in Scandal. I like him as an actor. But of course, he's you know, he's controlling, he's domineering, all of these things. He's menacing. They love to attribute these kind of characteristics solely to black men. Right? So, you know, black women ate that up.

You got Frank Mitchell and Moesha. I didn't watch Moesha, but of course I've seen a few episodes of the over the year years. So, I didn't know what he did, but I did hear about this and this this reminded me. Apparently, he lied about having a son for a long period of time and you know, there you go. Yeah. So, this is the scene where he's confronted for that. But, he was considered a good father up until that and that's that's Sheryl Lee Ralph playing his wife, you know. But, yeah, he's still a deadbeat in the sense that he had a son he didn't talk about. And there you go.

Then, of course, you can't have a discussion like this without including Beau Willie for colored girls. It's the man that threw his kids out of a window. Mainly because, you know, after serving in the military, had PTSD, threw his kids out the window. And then, of course, when you look at the Tyler Perry made film, which is what this is, you have the scene later with Janet Jackson's character and her husband who gives her HIV because of his philandering. Right? So, all of these kind of things contribute to the narrative that black feminists love to engage about black men. They're monsters, they're abusers, they're rapists. The whole kind of deal. Hell, the first time I saw For Colored Girls performed on stage in a play, the fact that he had been he had suffered PTSD in the military didn't even it it it was so uh under pronounced. I walked out not knowing what the rationale was. It was ridiculous. They downplayed it so well, but anyway, this is the pop another popular trope as far as black men being willing to kill their kids. But, when you actually look at the data, it tends to be women who are most around the kids, whether they're mothers or caretakers, who actually do the most damage. And of course, um kill at the highest degrees. And I pointed out in other shows that when you really get down to the gender of the children, it's black boys who die more often at the hands of women than black girls. And this I think it's the same as when you see teachers in the classroom in K through 12 where women girls do better than boys, women see their mirror see see girls in the same mirror. You know, they see themselves in girls and advocate for them. They don't see themselves in boys. Doesn't work that way.

Anyway, you got Kanan Power Book II. All right, kills his own son is played by 50 Cent. Same thing as Ghost. You know, 50 Cent understood. He understood if you want women to watch cuz women consume more media. So if you want women to participate, then you know, you got to get them in there. And you get them in there with abuse and misandry.

Snowfall, Alton's intense argument with Franklin. This isn't a show I watched a lot of um, you know, but I didn't really find it that the main actor believable and when I found out he was from Britain, I was like, okay, that makes sense. Didn't strike me as But anyway, that all that aside, I've been told to watch it. I'll get around to it. But you know, yeah, these are the kind of popular tropes that you hear most about black men and this is of course the root which loves to celebrate, you know, the idea of the demonic black male father, right? To suggest that black men are errant, right? To justify the contempt for black males in families and in society, which leads us back to this chart here about who dislikes the opposite sex more. You see 55 to 60% female, women's views of men, you know, versus 25 to 30% men. Now this is this is white and I want to say this might be the study in Britain or in the UK that looks at this. And I haven't run across any direct data on the black community in regard to, you know, misandry's contempt for men, but I think black men can speak to their own life experiences and the things they've seen. Um, and we can actually have a a conversation about how normalized contempt and misandry are in the black community. And it didn't take leftist politics uh to spawn it to to spark it. This was something that was a feature of the culture long before that happened. The contempt for men has been deep and we can talk about it going back to reconstruction. I mean, this goes back. You know, where especially white feminists played on uh >> [music] >> black women's emotions by highlighting and and instigating uh a contempt for black men. The idea that black men were were second slave masters to black women it it's become popular and was popular even then. You know, these ideas about black men being monsters. So, whether you're talking about, you know, policy, whether you're talking about media, or whether you're talking about handed-down practices in the black community, contempt for black men is reoccurring.

And what I'm ultimately saying is that you, as a black man, if you're listening to this, not only do you have to remain vigilant about protecting yourself from ongoing anti-black contempt misandry and contempt, you have to advocate for the boys in your care. And ideally, the boys that you might have contact with because very few others will. Right? Because not only is this contempt fairly widespread in general, it's very much directed in the black community in a way that's highly problematic for black boys. And we reach this. Nobody checks on a man to see if he's okay. They check to see if he's still useful. The contempt for men is such that the only thing some people see the value of in black men are the resources they bring to bear. And unfortunately, will not check on you, will not care for you, will not extend love to you unless there are material resources that you bring to bear. And the moment you don't have them, you're irrelevant. But here's the problem. You're irrelevant when you have them. You're just expected to continue to give them. And these are problems that black men are starting to attend to by consciously and actively seeking out partners who reciprocate and appreciate what they bring to the table. And they're willing to go to other countries to do it. And some are willing to dis- to completely avoid relationships altogether if they can't have some modicum of humane treatment. Black men are not asking for the world. They're asking for very human things. To be appreciated, to be cared for, to be reciprocated to. And if we reach the point where you you got to make seven figures for that, and even that doesn't work, then the blame is no longer on him. The blame then has to be on the state of affairs and the extent to which men have decided to go elsewhere to find the peace they need.

Let me know your experiences with this. Let me know what kind of things you've seen, witnessed, you've gone through. And let's have a discussion about what solutions you suggest black men engage to combat this ongoing misandry and actually reaffirm their humanity in ways that we may not already be talking about. All right? Looking forward to it. See you in the comment section. Peace.