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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Black Fathers Are Getting A Bum Rap

Donna Britt Washington Post

For Reggie Sanders, the connection to his kids started long before 1992, when his newborn daughter, in her very first act, gave him what he now calls “the look.” It began before the miscarriage two years earlier, when a doctor told him and his wife, Jackie, the impossible news that the baby they had celebrated for weeks was no longer there.

The bond between Sanders, 38, and his children began when he was 25 - years before he was prepared to actually have them. “Having a family was my number one goal,” says Sanders, who works in media relations for MCI. “But I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t be a guy who went to work, made millions, but never saw my kids.”

The millions are still a coming attraction. But on the November afternoon when his new daughter, Jessica, emerged from her mother and locked eyes with him, Sanders knew he was ready. The infant “caught me, eye to eye, with a look that said, ‘What is going on?”’ he says. “It’s the same look she has now sometimes when she wakes up.”

And for all his readiness, admits Sanders, “I lost it.”

Still, Sanders, whose son, Aaron, is 7 months, realizes that he and millions of loving, supportive black fathers are all but invisible in the media. The focus, says Sanders, is on African American men who are bad or absent fathers.

“But I think if you took a poll of all black men, you’d find the thing they want most to be able to do is take care of their families,” he says. “The brothers on the street … are overwhelmed. They look at their white counterparts, at black guys who are doing better. … What they think they should do versus what they can do - it’s too much. They back out.”

But so many don’t. My observation of African American fathers - from strangers at malls to male friends to the stepfather who hugs my own sons good night - suggests a never-acknowledged truth:

In some ways, black men have never been better fathers.

Actually, fathers of every hue today seem involved in their children’s lives in ways their own dads were not. While fathers once shouldered traditional paternal responsibilities - providing a paycheck, discipline and a home - many balked at full participation in their children’s everyday and emotional lives. Mothers handled the squishy stuff.

Fathers today seem almost as kid-immersed as their wives. Even those who lack sufficient time with their offspring offer more physical affection and “I love you’s” - proof their own dads seldom, if ever, provided.

Most great dads are underappreciated. But the lack of acknowledgment is especially hard on black fathers, who’ve never had a worse rap.

I think of my husband’s best friend, whom we never see because his weekends are a whirl of karate, piano, drama and even golf lessons for his kids, 8 and 5. I think of my writer pal, Michael Tucker, whose son, Christopher, 8, is mildly autistic. Says his wife, Geri: “Michael castigates himself … for losing patience. But I have a brother who’s retarded - my dad’s way of dealing with it was not really acknowledging my brother was there. Michael is always there, 100 percent.”

I think of my friend Jeff, 41, whose father always was at work or away. Sometimes, says Jeff, “my son (age 2) will come upstairs and just sit with me, watch me. I think of how I must have missed that without even knowing it. … I have no memory of my father ever kissing me.”

Fifteen-month-old Sydney Parker, of Upper Marlboro, Md., will have a plethora of kiss memories of her dad, who wakes up three times nightly to check on her. “I watch her sleep, wonder what she’s dreaming about,” says Ralph Parker, 29. “You never know what capacity you have to love until you have a child.”

The only time Parker ever saw his father hug one of his three sons was at the youngest’s graduation. “But I knew he loved me.”

Sanders works hard with his children to counteract the culture’s oft-negative perceptions. “I’ve spent a lot of time affirming my daughter … making sure she knows she’s on an equal plane regarding race and gender. When her little boy cousins come at her aggressively … I let her know she needn’t back down. And she tears their noses off.”

He aspires to what many black parents hope to achieve: raising children who are aware of the culture’s biases but who don’t shut themselves off, because “there are some wonderful people out there.”

Fathers, too. Sanders says that learning about the astronomical number of black men who die prematurely made him resolve to take better care of himself, “so I could be here.”

Now, he jogs regularly at a local high school. He isn’t alone. “I see all these brothers running around the track.

“We all want to make it to grandfathers.”

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