|
|||||
|
|||||
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Short Essays on Sociology, Racism, and Imperialism The National Fatherhood InitiativeJuly 26, 2004
("Attack on single mothers not justified," 1, 2, 3)
Special thanks to Prometheus6 Silver Rights (1, 2), inspired by inspired by a series of signs seen on buses in certain large US cities, undertook an analysis of why they were there. Your humble correpondent had seen these ads and wondered if a group associated with public policy research—say, the Urban Institute or UPenn, or perhaps the Child Welfare League of America. These are NGO's that conduct legitimate studies—studies with hypothesis testing, ethical human studies, and other touchstones of methodological legitimacy. You see, if I headed up an NGO with a budget for adverts, I would find out if anyone knew what sort were needed. If somebody showed up and said, "We believe the African American community suffers from under-motivated fathers," I would be skeptical. "Not to be nosy, but is this a hypothesis subject to quantitative analysis? If so, was this a single-tailed or two-tailed test? What was the null hypothesis? How about research on the effectiveness of PSA's?" Strictly speaking, if I were indeed managing director of an NGO, I would know already, but my questions would be much tougher: what sort of adverts work? what sort of language? Using regression analysis of health or educational outcomes on the population of interest, what is the coefficient on parameters for paternal involvement? This stuff is well-known; the research has been done. Much of it is available for the search costs—in other words, a tiny fraction of the cost of the PSA implementation. I suppose some of it would produce results I might find uncomfortable; it has before. I would expect any PSA campaign as large as the one Mac Diva describes to have some serious research behind it. This is because I've never given the matter much thought; long ago I realized that anything associated with advertising, public relations, judgments of beauty, or what-have-you, weren't my forte. I have a tin ear. So naturally I spend my time refraining from comment about matters of public taste or opinion, until it becomes urgently intrusive. But there was something fishy about those posters, as well as others I've noticed that target African American households. "Each Night Millions of Kids Go To Sleep Starving. For Attention from Their Dads." "Dear Daddy, My Mommy Can't Be My Daddy Too."  Billboard Ad for the National Fatherhood Initiative So when Mac Diva wrote that she thought the campaign was directed at Whites, my instinct was to agree. She did some digging and discovered that the National Fatherhood Initiative is supported by some far right "foundations." (Trish Wilson actually wrote about this too). I was a little interested in the story behind the African American man who is the president of the National Fatherhood Initiative, Roland Warren. He has been on the board since 1997; he is also a department manager for Goldman Sachs; he also is a graduate of Princeton University ('83). Incidentally, there is another Roland Warren who is many years older and has actually published urban studies; in addition, there's a third Roland Warren, who is white, and writes historical fiction (b. 1916). As far as I can make out, Roland Warren—the president of NFI—is an expert on the matter of Black fathers and the African American community in the sense that he is Black, is a father, has been married to the same woman for 20 years, and has some spare time. Despite a crushing urge to be snarky, I'll resist, and merely say that I don't believe it's as unusual as the other members of NFI seem to think. There is a large Black middle class, and many of that cohort are college professors who are also experts in public policy research. Mr. Warren may be qualified to discuss the relevant social problems, but he never explains why he is. Mac Diva's conclusions are, as near as I can make out, correct; the campaign was created to promote not participatory Black fatherhood (since PSA's are not likely to have any plausible or measurable effect on the matter), nor share useful information with Black men about how to be good fathers; although it purports to try: The picture is priceless. It features a newborn baby warmly wrapped in a blanket with an instruction label designed specifically for dads. The label reads: “Instructions: Dads, please read carefully before raising. This is a baby. It needs you. It needs your love, your touch, and your time. Spend lots of time with it. Build a bird house. Read a book. Go for a walk. Do homework. Play. The more time you spend, the better chance it has of growing up happy and healthy. It grows very quickly. Pay attention. Never underestimate the difference you make.”Readers may shrug and point out that the article is merely part of a fundraising newsletter (PDF) for the organization; if the world were dominated by ink-blooded wonkazoid dorkwads like myself, then they'd cater to my unforgiving demands for specificity. But let's read on: “Instructions” has been featured in Parade magazine and O, The Oprah Magazine—publications that have a combined circulation of over 75 million. In fact, the PSA has received such a favorable response that individuals in the general public - social workers, pregnancy center staff, labor and delivery personnel, pediatricians, childbirth educators, family literacy program coordinators, and others - have made numerous requests for a poster version of this important message.This really supports what Mac Diva says: ads in magazines that avoid the alleged target audience. Moreover, even if you assume your audience has zero patience with any sort of analysis—someone who is unlikely to stay awake long enough for you to to say, "Oil consumption will increase as long as prices are lower than the long-term average"—you are still going to make a layperson's version of the effectiveness argument. "Studies show that the campaign has had a favorable effect on fatherhood participation rates," or "Many men have told health care providers they were inspired to get involved as a result of the poster campaign." Ample opportunity for sloppiness (no need to define "many"!), no need for explaining the underlying strategy for the morons who are being asked to donate; but, no need for illustrations of a deliberately pointless strategy of advertising to people already convinced Black men are the problem. It's one thing to avoid boring people with too much, or too rigorous, information; but the testimonials I linked above tell people that the campaign is illogical and ill-conceived. All right, perhaps the campaign is merely lame and misdirected; it's financed with donated media. The $200+ million mentioned above is naturally donated by organizations with an enthusiasm for telling Black men to get involved. Why does this have a place in a web log dedicated to fighting imperialism? Why indeed? It's insidious because it's a classic case of the cause rebuking the affected. Ms. Wilson (here again) explains that the men's movement has been harping for years on restoring the father to a central position in the household. But what comes off as a battle to restore traditional values is nothing more than a lobbying campaign for a particular category of plaintiffs. A group of men who are fighting the terms of their divorce are naturally going to become friends and comiserate. Incidentally, Ms. Wilson is incorrect to say that the National Fatherhood Initiative is part and parcel of the Fathers' Rights Movement (FRM). They're foes; indeed, she'd probably be amused to learn that the FRM thinks NFI is a lackey of feminists! That's because the NFI does blame fathers and patronizes them by giving vapid instructions on how to do their job. Most men, especially African American men, would find this insulting in the extreme. Many have pointed out that they are frequently barred by their partner/ex-spouse from contacts with their children. (It's possible for Ms. Wilson's summary of the situation to be correct at the same time this latter point is correct, too. Court machinery tends to be personalized and subjective when addressing the cases of lower-income households. The NFI, for example, is really an attempt to argue that endemic poverty in the Black community is the result, not the cause, of absentee fathers. O[prah], for example, looks like it's stroking women who feel unappreciated and unsupported by "their men" (e.g., "Foreplay all day?"). O, of course, donated space to this campaign. Her readers are women who are likely to feel buttressed by articles that demand that men do more; but they're likely to recoil from articles that are too stridently critical of "traditional values" totemized in baubles, lingerie, jewelrie and traditional weddings. The Cinderella Complex is actually in operation here, but examination of motives is not.) This is part of a general trend under imperialism for using the effects of past imperialism to defend ongoing control. Americans pay a high price for the dysfunctional and beleaguered African American community. A finer-grained understanding of this problem is available, and it's possible to direct public services in ways that really to motivate/enable successful families. It's possible to reduce the cost of aid without turning entire communities in jobless refugee camps. But these organized campaigns such as NFI are designed to deceive American voters (including women and African American voters) into thinking that emotive, faith-based policies are the sovereign remedy; and that opponents like Mac Diva, Trish, Prometheus6, and other, are sirens whose siren song of logic is un-American.
60-Minutes' misguided solicitudeNovember 18, 2004
Sunday night's 60 Minutes (Leslie Stahl) report on the Texas "10% Rule" greatly aggravated your correspondents. This installment on the delusional psychosis of the mainstream media is brought to you by Laura, who watched the program. Shame, shame on you, Leslie Stahl.
On the face of it, Ms. Stahl does have a point, that the 10% Rule stiffed a deserving Ms. Aicklen on behalf of Ms. Torres; but closer scrutiny tells a more complex story.  Laura Torres That Ms. Aicklen graduated from a profoundly competitive high school, and is in the top 12%, redounds to her credit. But Ms. Torres' academic achievements are hardly to be despised either; she grew up in the projects of San Antonio, in a region typically regarded by local government as a crime belt and humanitarian crisis zone—not as a cohort of Americans deserving of adequate public services. Independently of the 10% rule, she was among 79 San Antonio high school students to win the SAHAF scholarship (PDF). There is of course an economic angle to this which apparently Ms. Stahl didn't find worthy of note. Tuition at the University of Texas has historically been lower than at almost any other public school in the United States. The Westlake High School graduate can probably afford to attend another school, whereas someone who grew up in a housing project would have more limited options. Ideally, the University of Texas would be equipped to accommodate Ms. Aicklen and Ms. Torres; and blaming Ms. Torres for Ms. Aicklen's plight is, I would say, the most egregious part of the documentary. There is a mood prevailing amongst state legislators that public education spending is a waste of money, except when it is denied a white student. The real shame is that a student with Ms. Aicklen's qualifications is denied admission, and the 10% rule then scapegoated. But given the fact that school administrators must chose between the needs of the two, Ms. Torres' merit is—to my mind—quite compelling, given her obstacles and prior disservice at the hands of local government. In contrast, Ms. Aicklen's parents are far better positioned to make alternative plans than Ms. Torres' parents would ever be. Ah, yes, Ms. Stahl, you clearly understand that it was an either/or case in this situation...Thanks for demonstrating to us that in fact for every Anglo who is deprived of their heart's desire, there is a person with dark skin sitting back and laughing. She might as well have said, "You know you're only here because you're Hispanic; don't you feel guilty about that?" She seemed picqued when Ms. Torres explained she had availed herself of the on-campus tutoring in order to improve her grades. It seemed as if she felt this was somehow another character failing, another sign that the Hispanic student was unfit for the program. A more realistic observer would see Ms. Torres as a diligent student, putting in the extra time required to compensate for shortcomings in her high school's instruction. Moreover, while part of a university education is repeated testing and evaluation of student performance, it also includes instruction—dissiminating knowledge and analysis skills. There is clearly a demographic issue at UT. The 50,000-member student body in no way reflects the class or racial make-up of the state. I find it hard to believe that this is because non-Anglos prefer other schools, have less of that good ole Longhorn spirit than others, or are not interested in receiving an inexpensive, quality education. (The only bright spot I can think of is that when George W Bush applied to the University of Texas Law School as a graduate of Yale University, he was rejected for not meeting UT's academic standards, and instead went to business school at Harvard. How pleasant for me that making fun of W fits so nicely into my rant.) Perhaps a way of solving the problem is not insulting people who are in fact already students at UT, but providing a higher quality of housing, health care, and public education for more people throughout their lifetimes and not waiting until they are involved in higher education to decide what's fair and who deserves more. Laura K. McFarland, MA, University of Texas, 1990 daughter of Dr. Floyd B. McFarland, BA '57, MA '59, Ph.D. '64, and Beverly Sue Fulkes McFarland, BJ '59, BA '60, University of Texas. UPDATE: Norbizness has a similar response.
|
