Transcription
What's good, people? Welcome back to the Onyx Report, black masculinist news for the day. Hope everybody's well. Like, share, subscribe, join, donate, hit the hype, support the show so we can continue to bring you this independent black male thought.
All right. So, today I want us to talk a little bit about the family court and the impact of it. This is something I don't hear talked about enough. Uh, usually, I you hear about it in terms of child support and alimony, which is important and we're going to be talking about a little bit of that, too. But, I don't hear it talked about enough in terms of its role in dismantling the black family. Um, now, I don't think it, it in and of itself is responsible for it, but I do believe it became a tool. A tool that black women had access to that allowed them to live out the fantasy of the independent woman, uh, the idea that white women, you know, put forth on a regular basis. And I think because of that, um, you know, the fantasy really kind of captured black women's imagination.
And shout out to AC. Uh, he talked about this yesterday, I want to say, in one of the shows he did, and he was talking about how uh many of his family members used to watch *Stories* every day. He said they planned their days around watching *Stories*, and this is important because, as he pointed out, this was where uh many women got the idea of how white women lived, you know, wealthy white women at that, but for the most part, how white women lived. And and he talked about the ways in which that form of media excited black women's imagination about how they should be living. Then they began to measure black men against these kind of fictional ideas. So, I thought that was a very important point because we see that in media in general, but that was a media that was targeted specifically at women. And then eventually in the 1990s, it became about reality TV and it kind of it's kind of metastasized from there.
But, between consuming that kind of media and in the corporate or, you know, government workspace working alongside white women, we, you know, I've got a I've seen this happen where they they were directly influenced by how white women lived. They often didn't know the inner workings of how white families could afford certain things, but they did see the lavish, you know, example of it. The clothes, the jewelry, the trips. I remember my wife, um, when I was a graduate student working at the Claremont Colleges, she would occasionally get jobs on one of the campuses. And one at one point she worked for the office of major gifts, I think it was at Scripps College, which is a women's college in the Claremont network. And, you know, it was all middle-aged, well-to-do white women. And here she is living in a cottage with her husband who's a graduate student. So, you know, we were, you know, scrimping and, you know, trying to get through best we could. I'm holding four jobs. I'm in grad school, you know, she's trying to decide whether to go back to get her bachelor's. And, uh, at that point in time, she'd come back every day from working with these rich white women. So, you know, you know, they would come back talking about trips they took and we couldn't afford to go anywhere, you know, much of the time. So, you can't tell me these kinds of, you know, influences didn't play, uh, against, uh, the black family itself. And that's one of the things I want to talk about today.
Now, the first thing I want to show you an example of is one way the breakdown of the black family begins to happen in terms of social expectations of black women. Now, let's check this out.
>> I'm in a black woman for going on, uh, almost 50 years now and been able to reproduce for almost 40 of those years. And, uh, despite having a great amount of upward social mobility in my life, uh, both, uh, is ranked by educational attainment and economic attainment, I have never ever ever ever ever ever ever had anyone encourage me to have children. And as long as that is the case, that our concern uh, about birth rates is a conversation only being had with white women or women with proximity to white mice in the case of some ethnic minorities, I would say that anytime someone wants to have a conversation about pronatalism, they really want to have a conversation with you about white supremacy. No one is encouraging black women to have more babies.
>> Well, yeah. Nobody is. Um, we know there are other issues that go with that, but I wanted to start with that. Nobody, you know, pressuring well-to-do, especially upwardly mobile black women who are in their 30s, 40s, and 50s to have babies. All right? And and a lot of that is because of how feminism, you know, socialized women to think about families. Families were an afterthought. Career and independence came first. And once you secured that, then it was suggested that you go ahead and have a family, have babies, right? But black women themselves double down on this idea, and I've seen this from older women to younger women. You know, they've told they've told these younger women over and over again, "Don't have kids. Don't get married. Don't get into relationships until after you finish your degree and you've gotten your career together." This kind of thing. So, yeah. People have stopped, you know, there's there's very little social pressure for women to black women to have babies, and we know in terms of the abortion rates since the 1970s, we're talking over 20 million abortions in the black community. Black women initiated that. That's higher than any other demographic of women. All right? So, it's not surprising to me, but it still speaks to the breakdown of the black family.
Now, again, that's happening on a social and a cultural level, but I want to take it back to the family courts' influence because this became a tool that black women could regularly use. And they did. You know, they did. All right? It was I think was instrumental in breaking up the black family because it was the the vehicle through which they could do it. Right? The social shaming about whether or not to get married, whether or not to have kids, that's one thing. The passing down of certain ideas and worldviews about what women should do in situations uh, in regard to the family production, whether or not they should be independent, whether or not they should get married, those are practices that are handed down, but the family court was a very unique kind of situation going on. And that was that, you know, older women especially used to tell younger women that it could be used as a punishment if a man did not give her the lifestyle that she wanted, it could be used as a means to an end, it could be used uh, pre- in a predatory fashion to identify men who are well-to-do beforehand, trick him into believing that you cared for him, have a couple of kids, and then depending on the state and what its laws are about divorce and property after divorce and so on and so forth, take at least half his [ __ ] at a certain point in time. This is This has been used in predatory fashion, preemptively. Right? The the popular story is that women just grow unhappy or the relationship just falls apart because he's boring, he doesn't attend to her emotions, and then she has to divorce him to to find her freedom, to find her agentic voice. Like, this is the kind of narrative that we're given about how divorces take place, but nobody wants to talk about how and when it's used in predatory fashion. Right? And that's one of the reasons we have to talk about the family court because this was the vehicle whereby, you know, poor women, wealthy women, uh, frail women, sturdy women, it didn't matter. You know, they all had an equalizer in the government in regard to uh, family court that allowed them the capacity to overwhelm, underdevelop, and completely obliterate their husbands at a whim. This is you know, this is not a product of black girl magic. This is a product of black girl subsidization. You know, they were subsidized in this particular way and given a certain amount of power and I've talked about this for the longest. The issues in the black community as it relates to family formation and and predatory uh, you know, treatment by black women in regard to access to institutions that black men don't have the same kind of access to. This has been the most devastating uh impact on the black family. It's being torn apart from within by giving one demographic power over another. Right? This is what we're This is what we're going to look at today. And I think it's underestimated and downplayed, but it's unilateral use against black men is to me is the foundation of the breaking up of the black family. Right? And this is what's contributed to the diminished uh, birth rate, marriage rate, uh, especially over decades, and uh, what's what's been happening with traditional family formation, right?
So, let's take a look at something. So, this is a blog piece that I wrote a little while ago. This is September 11th, 2025. Um, and it's entitled the 16-point policy foundation of the black gynocracy. And what I talk about in this piece is how the black gynocracy has managed to sustain itself. Right? Now, it is again subsidized by the state and that is where it has always gotten its power. So, this is not some kind of natural biologically or cultural feature where black men and black men are dominated in some fashion by black women. These are resources, right? And you can see the the 16 points there in regard to the different aspects of what has empowered what I've argued for years as a gynocracy. Right? Now, I'm not suggesting that black men are wholesale servants to black women, but I am suggesting that when the state subsidizes one demographic against another, it can be extremely difficult to maintain standing in the midst of it. Right?
So, we know that black men suffer more aggressive experiences with racism in terms of outright violence. That's not something you're supposed to say in professional company. It's considered uncouth. And there are feminists who will argue with you about it, but if you look through the majority of the history, you know, black men have and and still are dying at the highest rates in regard to just outright racist violence, white supremacist violence, violence from the state. It is what it is. Right? So, you know, when you talk about the rise of the gynocracy, you're talking about how, you know, the average woman can function, average black woman can function dealing with less extreme acts of racism on a day-to-day basis, especially ones that don't take her life.
Number two, female excused military drafting policies. Right? We haven't seen these used in a while, but we know it can be used at any point in time. And as long as women have not historically and do not contemporarily have to worry about being drafted and put on the front lines, cuz that's what they did with black soldiers. When you look at you know, Vietnam, you look at different war, what they did is they put black men on the front line. Black women aren't experiencing that. And this is actually what written would let led to some of the independence movement in the 1960s and '70s in the black community is because many black men went to war. And many didn't come back and some who did were damaged. But the point was women independently because they didn't have to go to war. Right? And that has a dramatic impact on how the black community functions. It just does. It's a policy-based. And most of these are policy-based, but that's what I mean when I say they're subsidized by the state.
Number three is the gynofocal welfare practices. Gynofocal welfare practices means that when it comes to welfare welfare resources, historically women have had greater access. Now, by law, it's gender neutral. And we know there was a policy, you know, regarding the man in the house rule that that meant that if she was caught living with a man, she could lose her resources. Which also meant that men didn't get the same kind of access. But those practices continued after those laws were formally dismantled. And that just means that to this day, when it comes to welfare access, women have a greater uh uh greater access to it than men do just on a basic level. This has a dramatic impact on survival, survivability, and just the overall kind of sense of having a safety net. Most men do not believe they have a safety net because they don't. Women function a little differently. Whenever I've met women who've lost jobs, uh, who've had difficulties with housing, women are a network, man. They're almost an an encyclopedia. Even my mother, I've seen this. They they know what resources are available, where to get them, and they talk to their girlfriends. They have a network, an information-sharing network. I'm tempted to say, "Well, men need to do the same." But what I found is it's not feasible because those resources are not often available to men. Right? The information that I hear these women exchange, even if you try to apply for them, you won't get them. Not only because they're not even written with you in mind, but it's often women who are facilitating the distribution of those resources, and they do not prioritize men across race, but especially black men. So, that's a practice.
Number four, gynofocal family court policy. And that's what we're going to deal with. I'm going to come back to that cuz we're going to actually go to that section. You got gynofocal reproductive pharmaceutical technology. All that means is that women got the pill. And women had complete control over their reproductive capacity. Now, we got a piece of rubber. We got the abstinence I mean, we got we got abstinence, we got a piece of rubber. I mean, we're over here, you know, lighting fires with sticks, and they have nuclear technology. That's essentially the difference. I'm not saying it's comfortable for them. You know, we know that some of the medication used over the years has caused pain, has caused all kinds of problems. But in terms of reproductive control, the emphasis has always been on women. Imagine what would have happened if men had access to a pill that could take away their capacity to reproduce, and then, you know, by simply stop taking it, they can have it back. And imagine that pill was given to men in 1960. How different do you think the situation would be? You know, I think it'd be a dramatically different situation.
Number six, gynocentric gynocentric Title IX. Right? And all of these you can click on to and read in more details. Just go to newblackmasculinities.wordpress.com and look for the 16-point policy foundation of the black gynocracy. You could probably Google it. Uh, but anyway, you know, so you can look in it at in more detail, the Title IX differences, the difference in treatment and pedagogy and curriculum from K through 12 as it relates to boys versus girls. And this is one you can see across uh race. But of course black boys are often at the bottom in every in every capacity. They're usually in a race at toward the bottom with Native American boys. But because there aren't as many Native American boys, you know, it tends to be black boys that are at the bottom K through 12. And of course that impacts whether or not they're able to even go to college. And I know many people are pushing for trades, but if you want to go to college and you know that there's a systemic mistreatment of black boys that prevents it, that's a whole different situation than making a conscious choice to not go to college. It's being the choice is being taken from you. Right? And that's something that needs to be grappled with, but it has a direct impact on black male quality of life in the black family. Right?
More access to need-based financial aid, right? Of course, due to, you know, historically higher rates of incarceration, this has dramatically impacted black males' access to financial aid and of course college graduation rates. Uh, black gynocentric affirmative action hiring, I talked about this um repeatedly. Whether you're talking about DEI, whether you're talking about affirmative action back in the day, it was still rooted in a practice that made black women double minorities because they were women and because they were black. And in 2026, you now have to add on sexuality. So, if they're queer, women, and black, they have greater access or at least they did prior to Trump. When Trump began to remove these DEI practices, of course it had a backlash against black women even though I'd say it had a wider impact in terms of raw numbers to white women, but it dramatically impacted black women. Not black men so much because we weren't being prioritized by DEI or affirmative action anyway. We didn't check as many boxes, right?
The black gynocentric media, you know, just like uh I mentioned with AC talking about *Stories*, talking about uh uh, you know, uh reality TV, media that's focused on prioritizing women's narratives, right? This is a problem. You know, I just uh got through watching a couple episodes of Tyler Perry's *Divorce Sisters*. It's one of the most chaotic shows. A group of women who are friends and have husbands and boyfriends and every episode is nothing but pure drama. Pure drama. I watched one scene where a pastor's wife told a black man that he was the devil incarnate while two of her best friends that very same day murdered two other black men. She had nothing to say to them on behalf of the word of God, right? But these are the narratives that are being distributed in popular media and they cater to women. So, women love it, have no problem with it. Y'all know how Tyler Perry gets down. He prioritizes them because they pay his you know, they pay his bills. But what do you think the long-term impact of these these these narcissistic stories that fixate on their worldview, their feelings, their reactions to any given phenomena, and men being second fiddle, if at all. Right?
Greater access to nonprofit industrial complex, that's been dramatically reduced in the last year and a half, but that the long-standing access, at least since the 1980s that I witnessed, meant that many black women had access to resources, sometimes millions of dollars, jobs that black men couldn't get. Many black men couldn't even get access to those resources to set up not, you know, nonprofits. All right?
Lower unemployment rates. You know, black women have traditionally had lower unemployment rates. Even in 2025, there are only two spike moments or so where theirs exceeded black males, and then it went back to normal. And nobody had anything to say about how long-standing black male unemployment rates have been in the position they're in. Right? Not even in the black community. It's only an issue when black women start losing jobs, but when black men start, you know, losing job and usually they're losing jobs the most, but before, during, and after black women had those couple of spikes in 2025, nobody had anything to say about it anymore. There were no more CNN article, you know, CNN pieces on it. There were no more you know, think pieces being written on how many black men were losing their jobs, because it didn't matter. It only mattered when black women did. Even within the black community. Right?
Lower incarceration rates, that means if they're not going to jail like black men, that that means they're available to other opportunities. Even if it's welfare, they still have access to other opportunities that many black men don't have the same kind of access to. And I'm not talking about men who are going out and necessarily committing crimes. I'm talking about men who are even accused of it. I just covered the other day, you know, the the percentage of exonerations in this country that are black male. Over half the exonerations through the Innocence Project are through are black males. So, this is not just a, you know, you hear hear people talk about incarceration strictly in terms of black men committing crimes, going out and doing this intentionally. That does happen, but it happens in every group, especially those who are the most impoverished. But when you actually have a system that has made you the face of criminality and decided upon your guilt before you were even a citizen, then we have to be honest about how that that system treats black men. And how you're treated before the situation even takes place. What's assumed about you. Right?
Lower criminal sentences. We know across race women get served 60 They're They get 63% less sentence time for committing the same crimes as men. Now that's across race. And if black men are the most incarcerated per capita, then sounds to me like criminal sentence length is an extremely important facet of this conversation. And if black women, even when committing the same crimes, are getting less time than black men strictly on the basis of gender, then that's a significant difference in the quality of life, because it means you don't have to go to jail. You don't have to deal with the long-term impact of having that on your record. It's a different quality of life that becomes available to you, even if only minutely.
Female familial headship, this is a product really of number four, family court policy, which we're about to get into. And then of course, the last one, limited access to DNA testing. I'm I'm making the argument that DNA testing is doing for men what the pill did for women in the 1960s. I'm not saying of course that it's the same thing, but I am saying that the impact that it's going to have is going to have the same kind of nuclear explosive impact on the black family. Right? Between the pill and and the abortion uh in the '60s and '70s, women have had a dramatic amount of control and impact over the black family. Now due to DNA testing, the potential is there for black men to have an incredible impact, especially if we're successful in making DNA testing mandatory. But even if we develop a culture of being unapologetic about getting tested, you know, even if you have to go behind your wife or girlfriend's back to get the child tested, it doesn't matter, especially before you sign the the uh, birth certificate. If you can manage to get a DNA test, you you you can set yourself up for success over the long term.
But let's look at number four more particularly. Gynocentric family court policy. It says no-fault divorce e.g. no-fault divorce. Since the 1970s, black women learned that upon divorce or in relation to questions of child custody, the family courts belief that women were naturally better parents put them in a position where they could presuppose success in court. For significant subsection of them, they began to prey on men by planning pregnancies and marriages intent on fleecing men for resources a priori. This contributed greatly to the increased rates of divorce initiated by women as opposed to men in in America since the 1970s. In many states, a man may be ordered by a judge to pay child support for a child that isn't his as long as he signed the birth certificate, even if it's been proven he was manipulated by the mother to do so. And one should not underestimate how prevalent false accusations of abuse or child molestation have been has been in terms of securing the court's empathy for the wife {slash} mother of the child as victim. In fact, lawyers have motivated their female clients to file such charges to secure successful court outcomes, right?
Um, now I played this video before, you can go play it yourself. This is a an Austin, Texas DA, you know, um explaining to lawyers how to abuse how to use abuse claims to help secure uh women successful judgments in family court. Not going to play that again right now, but uh, feel free to do so. You can go check this out, right? Because this is happening all across the country and it's been happening for some years. But we're talking about the family court for a reason because we're actually going to watch um a section of a show and shout out to Jawanza who sent me this uh dealing with family court bias. Now this is actually going to deal with it um across race in a way but it's a conversation on a show uh called *Counterpoint* and this episode came out uh April 22nd of this year and they're going to deal with this whole question of the family court and its impact on family. There is one brother um and you'll notice throughout this discussion that his experiences are a little different from everybody else's, a little more aggressive. But let's uh, let me check the volume here. Let's check this out.
>> The court system is biased against fathers. We'll start by bringing up everyone that agrees now.
>> I'm not so
>> Okay. Oh.
>> Okay.
>> Obviously every case is is different but in my scenario I got divorced in New York and in New York laws if the mother doesn't want joint custody the father's good luck. So basically I had to fight to even get you know some sort of visitation, some sort of you know anything and basically my daughter or most people's you know kids will graduate college at 22. But the law is 21 in New York to pay child support. My exact lawyer's words were if my ex-wife does it such a I would agree to 22. But the law's the law.
>> For example early on like my daughter's mom was able to get a protective order that was based on like meritless like actions. Like there was no evidence of me doing anything that she was talking about and they just gave it to her and when I was like what's I'm going to get a protective order then and they didn't give me none of my stuff or whatever at all and I was just like okay and I just thought that was just kind of tasteless to be able to just get something that had no evidence behind it cuz anybody can just come up with anything and say whatever.
>> Uh based off my situation uh there was a scenario where I had to put or chose to put a protection order in and got denied but I did it for the right reason. It wasn't to be hateful or spiteful. It was because there was you know psychological abuse going on. It didn't always have to be physical. And with that being said, when I was trying to get approved, the judge denied it and the very next day my ex was able to go in and get approved right away. I was like, "Man, what the heck is going on?" Because I'm like I'm I'm getting damaged, too. Um and I I realized that there has to be a victim and a villain. And I'm not sure how this correlates. There's going to be a lot of opinions about it, but I was trying to play me. I was trying to play a victim or villain. I was trying to say, "Hey, I'm getting stuff happen to me. Like, help protect me." And I couldn't get that protection.
>> Yeah, so in in my situation, um we had our falling out. My girlfriend at the time moved out and she was doing her drinking thing and going on all the time I had my daughter for like 4 months straight, full custody. She didn't ask to see her at all. She was just out doing her own thing. Well, I received a thing in the mail one day that she filed for full custody. So, we go to court and I'm like, "I've had her for 4 months straight." And uh the judge, we had all this evidence and stuff. He literally opened up the folder that my lawyer handed him, shut it, set it down and goes, "Uh 50/50 custody and you guys figure like the extracurriculars out." He goes, "Here's child support, 50/50 custody." He's like, "Done."
>> Yeah, this goes back to the tender years doctrine. The whole idea that women are naturally the the the you know, the primary parent. Uh, this is a this is an old idea, but it wasn't always the case, even in Europe. You know, at one point in time men were actually the custodians of children in the eyes of the law. But, this shifted and now people believe that this is some kind of natural thing that's existed since the advent of of human existence, but it's not. It's a policy idea that shifted at a particular point in time. So, even when men are demonstrated to be the better parent in a given situation, I've seen countless cases where judges will just overturn it, give the child to the woman, even if she's a threat. You know, we know that that's not what's supposed to happen. You know, the law will say that, you know, that's not what they do, but it it happens nonetheless. And yet, nobody has much to say about it.
>> Didn't even Yeah, even like I think Nebraska has notoriously been known as like a mother first state, but okay. I'm curious to hear why you guys think it's biased against fathers.
>> I'm kind of on the on the fence with it. Uh, I do agree from talking to many friends of mine that have are men that that have dealt with it that they've gone through many situations where they feel that it's for the women. Um, my case is different, however, as I I was speaking earlier offline that uh I moved here from a another state and bringing my decree from another state to Nebraska, I would not say that Nebraska is for women. Um and just [music] an example, something simple as you know, living in a different state and having to fly the kids back and forth. I wanted to take it to where instead of us meeting halfway, which would have been Oklahoma City, that we just pay half and half, like half of the flight for the two kids and the court system did not go for it. They had me paying for both flights for them to see their father. So, I've heard many situations where
>> Yeah, but you had custody of the children. You know, I think the court is looking at it like if you're choosing to allow the father access, then you're going to have to help pay for it. But you're the one with custody.
>> It's normal for one parent to pay half and the other parent pay half, but in my case I was paying the full flight for two kids there and back two to three times a year. And you know, that to me is not fair. I used to work in the child
>> So, it's not fair that you have to pay for two to three times a year, but you have the kids the entirety of the time other than those two to three times according to what she's saying. So, it's interesting that she saw that as the court prioritizing fathers when in actuality they were prioritizing her having full custody and they're saying if you're going to allow them to go, then you're going to have to pay for that. Interesting judgment, but it doesn't prove a priority for fathers. It actually still illustrates a priority for mothers.
>> with the family services system and I saw a man get completely hosed, completely taken advantage of. Shoot, there's even something on the news recently, entertainment news in the last week. They canceled *The Bachelorette* because of a domestic situation with involving a child and they have her on camera hurting the man, yet she came out and the child, yet she came out and said, "I'm speaking for women that are silent or usually silenced." I I I was offended as a woman. Like, you're not speaking for me. A man isn't always the villain. And the courts, for some reason, make it that way. I think it's a very archaic way that the court works nowadays.
>> They don't really take domestic violence the opposite way as serious cuz like I had stuff in my records. I was like, "This is She bit me." I was like, "I scratched my arms. They're paw marks." I was like, "And they're just like, "No, whatever."
>> Yeah, let's be honest. It's Taylor Frankie Paul. Yeah, right. Yeah, she's still
>> Yeah, fair use, by the way. Uh, but yeah, you can definitely see how even even uh intimate partner violence, and they're white, still doesn't absolve uh uh uh well, it doesn't allow for the uh men to actually get uh access to their children or treated well or fairly in the family court, even when you have abuse on the table. Cuz again, if you look at the tradition of the Duluth model, the fundamental idea is that all violence stems from patriarchy, and on a practical level, that means even when a woman is being violent, the man is still responsible. Anyway.
>> I mean, yeah, she did hit her. She did hit her daughter in the head with a bar stool, and she also did get 95,000 likes on her last uh Instagram post yesterday. So, um and that's just me stating fact. I'm not saying that in any way. It's just what happened. So, now I think that's a great time to bring up everyone that disagrees. So, uh, which of you would like to start?
>> I think it depends upon what judge you get. Uh, I have helped women over 250 women write protection orders for domestic violence situations, and still have serious adequate reasons as to why their husband should not be anywhere near the children, and they still get 50/50 custody. So, my argument is
>> There are individual cases where either the mother or the father shouldn't be anywhere near the kids. So, to break it down in that way is just a bit disingenuous. You know, there there there's just cases across the board where it not only mothers and fathers, but hell, friends of the family, and a lot of people shouldn't have access to the kids based on their behavior. But to suggest that this is somehow some widespread systemic thing by looking at the individual judges and the individual cases, it's a disingenuous argument to me.
>> It's not that it's biased towards men. I think it's biased towards 50/50. I think we're moving to a day and age where they immediately want to do 50/50 and they want to remove the court system from the decisions and that they're pushing it more towards that.
>> I don't know how much of a problem I have with that.
>> direction. So, we're seeing more and more custody battles and things like that where it's just 50/50 and I don't know if any of you have ever been in a domestic violence situation before, but when that happens, like they remove you. In most states, it's different state by state, case by case, all of that. And even in custody battles and things like that cuz you guys multiple multiple of you talked about like protective orders and things like that. Um, but they have to remove one of you. Um, if the the police show up or whatever, but then the police say, "Oh, that's none of That's not my problem. That's something that you do in family court. You have to go to the courthouse and do all that nonsense." But, what I will tell you is that in situations where women really really needed that because that person had more money, I firmly believe that if you have the more money, you're going to win your your custody battle.
>> [ __ ] It is because if that was the case, uh, you know, uh, you wouldn't have these issues impacting men across race and across class. It's not the but that's not what we're hearing. In terms of divorce judgments, in terms of custody judgments, in terms of you know, no. If it was just about money, then men would not be having these complaints about access to their children.
>> It depends upon how much you spend on your lawyer, what you do, all of that situation. That's what actually matters. I don't really think there's a bias. I think it's more along the lines of it sucks because if you don't have the pocketbook for it, you're going to lose.
>> And so, something we don't that we haven't touched topic on with everything is okay, fathers, mothers, custody. I don't think uh they're biased towards dads. I understand what you guys are saying with the bias towards dads. It used to be that way. Like in the '50s and things like that. Nebraska's actually more of a father state now. It really is. But,
>> Biased against. Biased against dad.
>> Yeah. Well, here. How about fighting the courts, period, for your kids? Where are you biased there? They're biased against everybody cuz I'm dealing with it. I've dealt with it and I'm dealing with it.
>> They're not fair. They're not for the people. They're against everything. They want to fight and take their people apart because it's happened and it keeps on happening.
>> I would hate to be a judge. I would hate to be in that situation because I feel like it's hard to make a decision what needs to be done based off of what you're seeing right in front of you. I mean, because anything can be construed however a person wants it to be displayed. I mean, I can be made to look crazy and they can be made to look like they're a great person. And so, the decision I think is hard for a judge. But, with that being said, I do believe that just because of the nature of people, there's a lot of bad people on both sides. And so, with people making bad decisions [music] or you know, not so great decisions, it makes it hard to, you know, have a one for all for everything.
>> And the other thing that is like so frustrating and it's so frustrating when you're sitting in the courtroom and you're like watching it. Not an attorney or anything like that. I just really care about people. Um, is when you have an attorney that might be greener and they have like hardcore evidence of something and they don't the attorney doesn't put it in properly. Uh, which this happened to me by the way. And then you're screwed. Like you have everything that you like in my situation, I had everything
>> You know, I got to say, one of the things I notice when they have these cross-gender dialogues is that I think men in many ways have been socialized to be very uh, deferential to women. Even when women are off the point, even when women are uh, making points that are abstract, that are that are far too particular and not necessarily systemic, men give up way too much ground and stay quiet out of deference to women and far too many cases. Uh, and then they, you know, when you especially when you start to hear people make hear when you start to hear people making that it happens to everybody, it's both of us [ __ ] argument. No, it's not. It's really not. Women are making over 70 They're choosing divorce at a clip over 70% and most of the time they're getting access to their kids. This is not happening to both of us the same way. But, they're allowing her to say this and not really contradicting her. But, let's see let's see if anybody throws something at her in a minute.
>> thing that was in the place that at the time was best for the kids. Do I think what's best for my kids now is different? Absolutely, because time has passed and things have gotten better. but at the time like things were really bad, right? And because I had a green attorney, basically the way that they admitted some of my evidence, it got just thrown out, and they didn't look at it. And so, basically that judge didn't get to see that evidence because it wasn't put in properly. And this I'm not the only person that this has happened to. And so, when it comes to family issues and stuff like this, like I'm a firm believer that the court should have absolutely nothing to do with it, but the problem is is when y'all can't get along, right? Who do we go to? We go to the courts. And because marriage and things like that and custody is a legal thing now, like it's up to them. And it's very complicated, but I personally don't think there's a bias. I think a judge can have a bias. I think if you look If you get a judge, right, um in those situations and you look at how they've ruled in the past, which if you have a really good attorney, they will tell you exactly what they have done in the past, so you know whether or not there's going to be a bias.
>> See me and all my me and all my homey situations were biased, and we all take care of our kids. We all, you know what I'm saying, we're doing all right financially, and she did all right financially, too, but it was still biased as hell. Like she got to choose when I get to see my kid and everything. They didn't even give me my input on like, "Hey, what day works for you?" No, it was just like whatever he said, like uh basically they gave her the chance to be like, "Hey, I want him to be able to see his kid this day and that day or whatever like that." They didn't give a [ __ ] about what my gender was or what I had to do.
>> Did you have an attorney?
>> Yeah, well, yeah, I had an attorney. I I dropped like five to eight racks on an attorney. They didn't give a [ __ ] about that. They just cared about what the mom wanted to do.
>> Your attorney, did he push?
>> Yeah, they don't care. Like they It was all they cared about was what They automatically assumed me was the bad guy. Like everything was my fault cuz I'm the dad. That's what they assumed. Oh, what did he What did he do now? You know what I mean? Like that's all that's what they assumed.
>> want your opinion. Obviously every state is different, but in New York, if the mother doesn't want joint custody, the father's out of luck.
>> It don't matter if you're a millionaire or a billionaire. Period.
>> Basically my lawyer said be prepared to spend a crap load of money or take it as it is. So, I mean, obviously you have your opinion. I'm, you know, respectful of that, but I would love to know your opinion on that aspect.
>> Well, like I only know about Nebraska.
>> We should look it up. We should look up the the statistical number on like which which cases are favored more in the mother than the father in Nebraska. I always thought it was like common knowledge that the women always get the children. Is that not a true thing?
>> Back in the day that cuz that's old time, you know, that's how it was. That's old time. That's how it was. I'm not that old, okay?
>> She's always trying to push this argument back to the 1950s, but that's [ __ ] It's still happening now.
>> I know I know I know I know you're not representing [laughter] you. I just mean like
>> Like just like like back in the 50s. Like you know back then and I I use that example for my grandparents 50-style housewife because that's how it went. Mothers are mothers. They're supposed to be the mothers. Men are men. They're supposed to be masculine. That's originally how it all goes.
>> But it shouldn't be that today.
>> I'm not saying that.
>> Yeah, it's just saying that's how That's where everybody's thinking that.
>> You know I would never say there ain't cuz there's men that don't take care of their kids that ain't [ __ ] And I don't hang out with those type of
>> Women that don't take care of their kids though, you know, even if they have their kids.
>> I was also going to say, you know, I know that people talk a lot about domestic violence, which of course is bad, but I feel like there isn't enough emphasis on the um mental health part of it because you have a lot of people that are dealing with narcissism or, you know, any other type of mental health or uh personality disorders. And it's, like I said earlier, it's easy to play a part for a short amount of time in front of a judge.
>> I worked in that system and and I saw men not even be given the opportunity, not even be given the chance to get their kid. I mean, I had cases where women were gone and the men were like, "I'm here. I want to do this." And they weren't even allowed to. It's a bias against everybody.
>> One of my like really really good friends
>> Well, that's real interesting. She just made an argument that this is happening to men. The woman next to her immediately tried to shift it to it happens to everybody. That's not what she said. And you've provided no data to suggest otherwise. No, well, nobody is really in this particular discussion, but still to see her take that argument and flip it to everybody with no kind of qualification, no additional information to rationalize why she was able to successfully shift the argument. I find that oof, that's problematic.
>> And he's like very checkered past, you know, so is his baby mama, right? Um, but she ended up in prison. Well, she got out of prison, okay? And now she's
able to fight for custody for the kid and stuff like that in those situations. And in that situation, he just got a really bad judge because the judge that he had was one of the judges that knew him from his priors, right? But he has since gotten sober, changed his life, done everything possible. So like I personally believe that it's not necessarily a gender bias from a father to a mother where it's just the court is just effed up. And nobody wants to do anything about it. Or they want to do something about it, but because it's so convoluted and like the foster care system. Because it's so convoluted and already messed up.
>> Well, like we talked about like we talked about earlier though, it's like it's a lottery pool. It's like what judge am I going to get?
>> Right.
>> Am I going to get a judge that sides with fathers, or am I going to get a judge that just says, "Ah, 50/50." Or you get a weekend and every other Wednesday or something.
>> I genuinely feel that if you can afford like a $800 an hour attorney that's been is killer, like you'll win every time.
>> So, it's pay to play?
>> I get into this with my students too. When they start giving me I feel answers, you know, if I'm like if we read an assignment and I asked you, "What did the assignment say?" We we'll get into the deeper thought aspects of it, but I first have to know that you actually read it. When I ask you what the assignment was, what did it say, and you start talking about, "Well, I feel." No, that to me is a def is is a deflection. You're you're you're trying to get away with making about how you feel, which really to me is a cover for you not actually doing the assignment. I don't want to I don't care about how you feel about what the author said. I want to know that you know what the author said first. That's kind of what I think has happened in that little moment right there. I feel like if you got $800 an $800 an hour lawyer, you'll be good. No, that's your feelings. That has nothing to do with reality.
>> for your children?
>> Well, yes. Yes.
>> I would say from personal experience like having having more money than the mom, they were like I've had lawyers be like, "You know, we can drag this out until she has no more money if you want." I was like, "No, I want to like I want to move I want to move on with my life. I don't want to drag it through the court system." But that is true.
>> But I know that they witch hunt men. I've seen it because they even did it to my ex-husband who has never had a record. He's never had any bad thing. And I remember my my son was a toddler, and he had a birthmark right near his behind. And they changed his diaper, and they were like, "Is that a bruise? Did daddy spank you?" And he said well, he was like, "Yeah, daddy spank." He could barely speak. And CPS got called. I got interviewed. It was And the first thing I said was, "That's a birthmark." And they had to go to his doctor's records, look, yep, it's a birthmark. They wanted to just throw the book at swatting a kid's behind over a birthmark.
>> But do you cuz it was at like daycare?
>> That was at school.
>> That was at school. Mhm. Do you think that just throwing it out there, do you think cuz you know, teachers are mandatory reporters, right?
>> Right.
>> Do you think that if [music] you were just a single mom and dad wasn't involved that they would have come after you because I think they would have come after you.
>> I don't think so. I think they would have looked at it as a birthmark because it didn't even look like a bruise. I'm going to be honest with you. I think the reason why it can't necessarily be fixed is because there's so many different situations. Every single situation is different. Obviously, in a perfect world, if you had a a couple that is uh cordial with with each other, that everything would be, "Okay, let's just do it this way. Everything is fine." But, since you have all of the different things that some that you can show up and prove, some that you can't, you know, uh a judge might be not feeling 100% that day, you know, might have their mind some half out
>> They keep trying to individualize the situation. This is the the thing I notice. When women advocate for other women or for womanhood and women in general, they have no problem seeing the connections on a wider scale. When it comes to men, too often what I find is women will try to distill it down to a judge, distill it down to the particular couple and how that divorce went. And it's not to say that those things don't have impact. But, when you all of a sudden could can't can't even conceive of the notion that this is something that may impact men as a whole differently than women, then we have to go we have to get into the minutia of walking through the woods and arguing about every individual leaf. Well, maybe it was just the judge that day. You know, maybe the judge had a bad morning, they weren't feeling well, and they just decided you couldn't have access to your children. Really? This often, across states with different laws in play, and this is your conclusion?
>> Okay.
>> out the door because of something else that they have going on in their personal life. I mean, there's so many different variables variables that go into it that you know, and then of course you have them trying to make a formula to make it, you know, cover most bases when it doesn't.
>> I went out I I out on a date and the and the girl asked me and I have with that
>> Okay, I'm not going to get into there. They're moving to a different subject. I do want to show you this though. Right? So Um this is another uh blog piece I wrote years ago. This is uh dated 2018. Why was black black generation X fatherless? A brief statement on why many black men left the family in the 1970s. And you notice that's in quotation marks because black men are the most involved parents I'm excuse me the most involved fathers across race. Uh I will say that there have been a lot of black men that have been pushed out of families. But in this particular piece I try to explain early on some of the issues that led to black men finding reasons to marry less. And we're going to look at some of that in the moment. But the reason I bring that up here is because I think there's something important to talk about uh in relation to these judgments that they were you know debating about back and forth. And that's here. If you look at this section here you know on this whole question of child support. Right? Um The issue of child support is incredibly important. And and and as it relates to how these judgments are treated, I kept hearing them talk about well the one gentleman said, well yeah, you know if you have more money you can you know the lawyer suggested I could just wait around until she goes broke. And I'm not saying that doesn't happen. But let's put some [ __ ] in context please. Right? 20% of the people in the system shouldn't be in there because they're too poor. Says David J. Pate, an associate professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Those $10,000 earners, the government according to Pate is owed $115 billion in child support. But 70% of that money is owed by Americans who make less than 10,000 a year. Now who are the major which which gender is in the majority as far as paying child support? You tell me. So if that many of them are in are owed you know that many of them owe child support and a lot of it has to do with how much they're earning. Then how many of these stories are we going to follow where 10 and 20,000 dollar earners are are out-waiting their wives in family court because they're paying lawyers until their wives go broke and can't afford to fight back. That's stupid. If you look at the data, we're talking overwhelmingly about mostly poor people. This is not something that men in general are able to out-wait women on. Maybe some white men can do that, some black men can do it, but the overwhelming majority of people are not balling. I wanted to show you this before we get into a few charts that put some more things in context. This illustrates the marriage rate, you know, in the black community. This is pretty straightforward. I figure most people in this circle the internet probably know this, but the marriage rate in the black community has declined significantly over the past six decades, falling by roughly half. In 1960, about 61% of black adults were married. By the early 2010s, this rate had bottomed out near 29-30%. Today, that percentage has seen a modest rebound hovering around 33 to 35%. Right? So just to kind of put some things in context, um you can kind of see that there. Now, moving on, this is from blackdemographics.com. Shout out to them. I am a paid paying you know, subscriber to their their website. I suggest you do so. I think it's only like $2.99 a month, but it will help them keep their information up to date. Now this is an older chart. It deals with 1890 to 2010, but it does highlight marriage. And and you know, we're going to look at a couple more charts, but this is for black men. Black men more likely to be married than white men until 1960, and then you see a shift. Right? So whether you're talking about employment issues going on in 1960, whether you're talking about the early stages of uh know, uh the uh incarceration rate issue, right? That's I mean, this would be earlier than that. That That doesn't come about till the 1970s, but there's always been a long-standing practice of it on a lower level. There's a number of things going on in 1960 that could have played into this, but we notice in 1960, we actually start to see the the crossover between white and black men. And the rates of never married men that you see in red going up and up all the way to 2010, you know, are black men. Right? Well, for us, it begins in 1960. Now, for black women, it's different. Black women more likely to be married than white women until 1970, and it shifts for black women a decade later, where they start to get married less than white women, and that goes all the way up to 2010. The percent of never married The percent never married among women age 35 and older by race, 1890 to 2010. Same time frame, they start to pull away from marriage about 10 years after black men. This next chart, you know, all three of these are coming straight from blackdemographics.com. So again, shout out to them. This chart kind of charts the whole shift in marriage in relation to the war on drugs, right? Most particularly in the 1980s and '90s, but you can see it goes from 1890 to 2010 as well. And it basically argues that from 1980 to 2000, the Reagan-Bush-Clinton era, you saw the highest rise in, you know, black folk pushing away from marriage, right? With the highest rates of incarceration for black men, the war on drugs, all these things happening at critical junctures. Right? And you can see it play out here. So, you know, just some things to put the whole question of marriage in context. Right? But, these are also happening alongside the same time frame in the 1960s and 70s where women begin to gain power in family court. They begin to gain access to the nod as it were from judges and from the courts itself in their favor as far as custody, child support, and alimony. Right? So, this next these next two slides are going to be the last ones I show and this is going to talk about family court as we understand it and what the data shows around it. So, on the left you have custody statistics. Right? Who ends up as the custodial parent more often according to the most recent US Census Bureau data 2022, 78.2% of mothers and 21.8% of fathers get custody. In other words, four out of five custodial custodial parents are mothers. Right? Now, we also know that there have been long-standing social practices that go back making the argument that women are the you know, kind of standard parent. So, there's a lot of factors that go into this. But, there have been numerous documented cases of fathers who you know, have proven that they were the better parent. They actively fought for custody but were often dismissed and turned down. Right? Next one over, has this changed over time? Fathers as custodial parents. We see from 1994 to 2022 fathers as custodial parents went from 16% to 21.8%. Right? So, they've gained some some grounds but mothers are still the primary custodians of the children. Right? When custody actually goes to the courts the bottom left, one major study of disputed custody cases found right? That sole mother custody is about 57% when custody goes to court. Joint custody is about 27%. Sole father custody is about 7% and even other exceeds sole father custody. Now, I obviously I'm a widow but I was a single father so I have a open space in my heart for single fathers in particular because there's a particular struggle that nobody talks about when being a single father, especially in the black community. One of the things that would happen on a regular basis is I would find myself in spaces around mostly mothers, you know, whether it's the PTA, whether it's birthday parties for the kids, whether it's a daycare, and talking with other parents and administrators, after school programs. In most of those cases, I found myself to be in a very small population of men. It was mostly women who, you know, were the majority in the space and were, you know, in leadership positions. Even as teachers and principals and whatnot, these these were primarily female-led spaces. And yet in those spaces, when they begin to share resources on how they could get help for different things, one, very few would allow me to participate in those conversations. In fact, they would go so far as to whisper out of earshot so that I wouldn't be able to gain access to the resources they would share with one another. When I did find out about those resources, they often didn't apply to men because the assumption was as a man, I was well-to-do. I had more money than they and therefore didn't need any help. All right? Even with a doctorate and and a professorship, it was really difficult and I often didn't have it. And that and not just by the time I was a single parent, but throughout my adult life, there was much of the time I was I was broke. I was a student, you know, I was you know, all of that. Even when I was out of school and working, broke. But those resources weren't available to me. They were shared in a network of women to women, but I wasn't allowed to participate in those discussions even though I was broke and I was a single parent. So, I had to just struggle through by myself and many men find themselves in those scenarios. So, the the the strange case of being a single father is you often don't get much help, right? Bottom right, child support statistics. Because mothers are far more likely to be custodial parents, men are much more likely to pay child support. Among custodial parents, mothers receive child support at a 79% clip, fathers a 30% clip. Interesting Interestingly, custodial fathers are actually less likely than custodial mothers to receive the full amount ordered. I had a friend of mine in the 1980s that was successful in getting child support a child support judgment from the court, meaning that his ex-wife had to pay child support to him, which was unheard of in the 1980s, especially from a black male who got custody of his kids successfully. She never once paid child support order. And there were a couple of times when they went to arrest him, and one cop explained it. He said, "Oh, well, we just saw the name and we saw child support, and we just assumed that you were the one that hadn't paid." They literally tried to lock him up a couple of times if I'm not mistaken mistaken, and he had to walk them through the paperwork so that they actually realized that she was the one that was supposed to be arrested for not paying child support, and they never arrested her once. Not once. But they were ready to arrest him, even though he was the one that should have been getting child support payments. All right, this is the last chart. Historically on the left, this is about alimony statistics. Sorry, I got cut off at the top there. Historically, men paid the overwhelming majority of alimony awards. Women were generally assumed to be economically economically dependent till the 1970s, many laws explicitly reflected a breadwinner homemaker model. Yeah, unfortunately, they have they really haven't sufficiently updated that in my opinion, but let's see. Modern laws are gender neutral. [ __ ] They're gender neutral in terms of how they're written. Doesn't mean they're applied that way when people actually start making judgments. But anyway, but men still pay most alimony because men typically earn more income after divorce. Modern estimates generally place alimony payers at 90% plus of awards. The exact percentages vary by state and there is centralized national data on alimony. Um there's less central centralized national data on alimony than on custody or child support. But so far from what we get from the Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines 2023 is that men pay alimony at a rate of 90% in an era where uh women working is as common as anything else. Plenty of women that out that outearn I mean you hear what women bragging about outearning men and owning more property than men, much of it facilitated through divorce, but still and yet the majority of alimony payers are men. Structural argument, a chain of statistics. Number one, mothers are custodial parents in roughly 80% of cases. Two, fathers therefore become the overwhelming majority of non-custodial parents. Three, non-custodial parents, mostly fathers, bear most support obligations. Four, enforcement tools such as wage garnishment, license suspension, tax intercepts, passport restrictions, and contempt proceedings are directed primarily at non-custodial father non-custodial parents, mostly fathers. And five, fathers with reduced parenting time are less likely to remain engaged and less likely to remain compliant with support obligations. Right? So, fathers who don't get as much time with their kids are less likely to remain engaged and and you know, be compliant with support obligations. All right. The point though that much of this these last two slides you saw, which is actually one document, what they what it illustrates is that men are definitely mistreated by family court practices. And if this is happening across race, then the impact on the black community is that much more dire. And thus the impact on black men is that much more dire because we are a community without wealth And any significant way. We do not have wealth, especially in comparison with other groups. And so when you apply policies that even appear to be gender neutral but have an an inbred bias against men, it's going to have an an adverse effect on black men on a whole 'nother scale. Because we don't come from wealth. And that's the reality of it. Wealth is not just money. I mean, you can make a 100,000 a year or more and still come from a family that has no wealth. If your wealth If your If your income is If your money is based on income, it's based on a check, that's not the same thing as wealth. We come from no wealth. So these practices have an adverse effect on black men and they definitely highlight the extent to which the family court has adversely impacted black men in general and thus the black family. And this is what I mean when I say family court and the fall of black America, the institution nobody wants to discuss. This is at the foundation, one of the major pillars of the black gynocracy. Is that they have access to this. And what they can do to black men, even just removing them from families, making it so difficult to the point where they can't see their kids for such a long period of time that black men find themselves basically exiled from the family. The only reason she has the power to do this is the family court. Even when he's paying on time, even when there are agreed upon pick up times that's confirmed by a judge, she can still withdraw and not have him have access and often not even get a slap on the hand. This is what I mean by the exile of men from families. This is the breakdown of the nuclear family. It's not deadbeat dads. It's mothers that have to that have the resources do the the family court to expel men from the family. And then turn around and call black men deadbeat dads, put it in still Steven Spielberg led black feminist film since the 1980s and tell the world that black men are horrible fathers that don't care about their families. This is what we're talking about. This is how it impacts black men. All right? All right? I look forward to hearing your stories, hearing your thoughts about what was presented. And I'm looking forward to finding out what you guys think. I'm looking forward to it and I will holler at y'all soon. Peace.