When I can, I try to catch the MSNBC program “Morning Joe“. This morning they briefly had on as a guest former NFL Super Bowl winning coach, Tony Dungy, who was promoting his new book “Mentor Leader” or words to that effect. Barely a minute into the interview, out comes the trope about fatherlessness in Black America, and what to do to stop it. Dungy’s response?-I call it the modern day iteration of the Old Jedi Mindtrick…

Why do I say that? Because Dungy trotted out the same old “morality ploy” that Obama trotted out back during his campaign for the presidency on Father’s Day, 2008-that somehow, it was a Black Man’s “responsibility” to “Man Up” if he got a Woman pregnant and be a dad.

What utter rubbish.

I say that because we wouldn’t even fix our mouths to tell Women that, because they got pregnant, they had a “responsibility” to be a mom. In fact, we do all we can NOT to say such a thing.

But that’s not the biggest insult to a Brotha’s intelligence.

The even bigger insult to injury is in just how downright intellectually dishonest the Dungys and Obamas of the world truly are. In Obama’s case, a Man who unabashedly supports Planned Parenthood, has nothing to say about the “moral duties” of Women who get pregnant-in fact, he so supports the legal right of Women to determine their own reproductive lives, that he wants his own daughters to be able to have access to PP.

Of course, he’s silent on the matter of seeing to it that Men, Black, White or otherwise, have the same reproductive rights enshrined into law. But then again, Obama’s never been much of a spokesman for Black Men anyway.

But that’s another discussion for another day…

As for Dungy, he ought to be ashamed of himself. After all, he was one of the leaders of one of the best teams in the history of the NFL, a sport that doesn’t rotate or rely upon on “morality” but on RULES. In other words, LAWS. Everyone knows just how complex football is, and a big reason for that is because of the many rules/laws that apply to any given situation over the course of the game. Moreover, and think about this very closely before you answer-did Dungy’s Colts win their Super Bowl on the basis of being good guys with hearts of gold, or, by being the better team in large part, by knowing and applying the rules/laws of football to their advantage?

If your answer was the former, my response is quick, name me a NFL team that has won its highest honor on the basis of being morally good guys? In fact, name me a time in ANY pro sport where a “moral victory” won the day? I’ll wait.

The real truth here, is that we as American society, are deeply ambivalent about fatherhood. It remains a big, amorphous, legal, social and political grey area, one that can be twisted and subverted and demagogued to serve the interests of everyone BUT fathers themselves, and especially poor Black ones. Nor is this ambiguity accidental. One gets the specific sense that those who either bang the drum for the fostering/protection of Women’s Rights, and/or those who bang the drum of putatively populist furor over “deadbeat dads” actually likes the idea of an ill-defined concept known in our time, as American Fatherhood. So long as there are no laws in place that clearly lays out, in specific terms, what a father is and what his rights are, both groups are free to play fast and loose with the debate at will. Meanwhile, those most impacted by such craven displays at left to the mercy of the mob.

The rights that Women enjoy today, didn’t come about by appeals to anyone’s sense of “morality” and certainly didn’t come about by attempting to shame Women into “doing the right thing”. Womens’ right to be, or not to be, a mother, came as a direct result of changes in the LAW, that is vigorously enforced. If you doubt me, just head on down to your local Planned Parenthood clinic and try to prevent a Woman from entering the place, and report back the results. I believe they still allow you one phone call from the lockup.

If guys like Dungy and Obama and the umpteen thousand million folk out there who blather on and on about “fatherless (read: Black) homes” are really serious about seeing to it that things change on that front, they can prove it by pushing to make changes in the LAW that govern such things. We can start with publicly and enshrining into law what we all already know to be true in actual fact of everyday life-that just because you screw someone doesn’t mean you intend to be a parent. Nor does it mean that because you didn’t use birth control, that you have defaulted on your right to say, “no thanks”-after all, we don’t do that to Women. We have to get deadly serious on exactly what, in legal terms, a father is, what his duties are, and most importantly, what his RIGHTS are, under the law.

Anything other than doing this, is really a weak attempt to deploy the Old Jedi Mindtrick.

Finally, as I close out, I would just like to mention again a film I noted in my recent Black Gen Xer post, a highly acclaimed film called Kramer vs. Kramer. The dad in that movie still lost custody of his son, despite the fact that he cared for his boy while the mom left to go across country for a year or more. Keep in mind, the film focused on the inner lives of a White, upper class couple in New York’s more tonier side of Manhattan. Yet, look at the result. That film was and still is, considered to be one of the most important in modern American life to date. “Morality”, in the end, didn’t win the day for the character played by Dustin Hoffman.

Now adjourn your intellectually dishonest asses…

The Obsidian