|
Stephen Baskerville
Department of Political Science, Howard University
Paper presented at the plenary session of the conference
on "The Politics of Fatherhood",
Howard University, Washington, Dc, March 23,1999
When we first conceived the idea for a conference on "The
Politics of Fatherhood" not everyone was sure precisely what it
meant. And perhaps we were not sure ourselves. We knew that the
fatherhood crisis had been addressed by several disciplines and that
political science was not one of them. As a student of political
thought, I knew that most major political theorists have had
something to say about the place of fatherhood in civil society and
the role of father as preparative for that of citizen. We also knew
that any social movement inevitably involves politics, both
internally among various strands and externally in connection to the
wider society and the public state.
We knew as well that one very politically-charged issue was
central to this, as to every problem of American society (if I may be
the one to be so direct): race. While the fatherhood crisis has long
been felt most acutely in minority communities, it can no longer be
dismissed by the majority. As Cornel West and Sylvis Ann Hewlett
write, "When it comes to ..dads, the African-American experience
prefigures the contemporary mainstream experience-and the results are devastating."
Indeed, given the gravity, of the fatherhood crisis, perhaps
what we are seeing here is an unexpected validation of the prophecy
of Frederick Douglass, who said that "the Negro and the nation
rise or fall, be... saved or lost, together."
If this prophecy is indeed still valid, it means that the
stakes are high for all of us. It means that in addressing the
destruction of fatherhood in the minority community we are
simultaneously addressing it for the majority and throughout society.
It may also mean the the experiences of the minority in recent
decades are applicable here. Among the lessons of the civil rights
movement that might be profitable for those of us to see our task as
creating empowerment for fathers is that no people can be empowered
by others; by definition the only way to be empowered is to empower
oneself. And that power means politics.
This has not been the central approach thus far in the
fatherhood movement. Yet sooner or later it is one we must confront.
If for no other reason than the rather startling fact that, with the
exception of convicted criminals, no group in our society today has
fewer rights than fathers-not unwed fathers, not divorced fathers,
fathers. Even accused criminals have the right to due process, to
know the charges against them, to a lawyer, and to a trial. A father
can be deprived of his children, his home and life savings, and his
freedom with none of these constitutional protections.
It will come as no surprise to some here that the line between
fathers and criminals is now becoming thin. This is sometimes owing
to what fathers themselves have done. More often it is the result of
what our social, political, and legal system has done.
Nowhere is the criminalization of fatherhood more evident than
in the politics of the judiciary. It is the courts which, from the
days of the civil rights movement, we have looked to as the guardians
of the constitututional rights of individuals and minorities. Yet for
fathers and families generally, the judiciary has not only failed to
protect constitutuional rights; it has become their principal violator
The arm of the state that undeniably reaches deepest into the
private lives of individuals and families today is the family court.
Malcom X once described a family court as modern"slavery".
and more recently West and Hewlett have written that "the entire
process seems to bypass most constitutional protections." The
very notion of a "family court"-now backed by a vast army
of family police-should alert us to danger. Yet far from scrutinizing
these bodies, we give them virtually unchecked power. Shrouded in
secrecy and leaving no record of their Proceedings, they are
accountable to virtually no one. Robert W. Page, Presiding Judge of
the Family Part of the Superior Court of New jersey, writes that
"the power of family court judges is almost unlimited."
Predictably with unlimited power, the family courts, of this
country are now out of control. They are not tribunals for redressing
injustice; they are more of a racket for plundering fathers and
funnelling money into the pockets of lawyers. Though their lips are
dripping with the words "best interest of the child," they
are in fact using our children as weapons and as commodities for the
increase of their own power and profit.
We have in our history seen the consequences of treating and
entire class of citizens as if the Bill of Rights did not apply to
them. We have tried to live in a "house divided"- in a
political system that operates "half slave" and "half
free". And we have found, as Lincoln warned, that sooner or
later it must be all one or all the other.
As a society we are always in danger of forgetting what we
have learned, and I think it is the appropriate role of this
University, with its role in the history of civil rights, to remind
us. For it is the responsibility of scholars, perhaps more than
others, to point out and criticize the abuse of power. "The
neutral scholar is an ignoble man," wrote Frederick Douglass.
"The future public opinion of the land... must rebound to the
honor of the scholars...or cover them with shame."
what we are now seeing, to paraphrase Douglass, is the authoritarian
power of the courts advancing, "poisoning, corrupting, and
perverting the institutions of the country." In fact, what we
witnessing today may be the most massive institutionalized witch hint
in this country's history.
Never before have we seen, on such scale, mass incarcerations
without trial, without charge, and without counsel-while the media
and civil libertarians look away.
Never before have we seen, the spectacle of the highest
officials in our land-including the President of the United States,
the Attorney General and major cabinet secretaries, and leading
members of congress from both parties-using their office as a
platform to publicly vilify private citizens who have been convicted
of nothing and have no opportunity to reply.
Never before have we seen government officials walk so freely
into the homes of private citizens who are accused of nothing and
help themselves to whatever they want, including their children,
their life savings, their private papers and effects, and eventually
their person
. Not since the days of Communist Eastern Europe and Nazi
Germany have we seen the regular use of children as informers against
their parents.
Never before have we seen the stealing of children
systematized to a bureaucratic routine. To find the forced separation
of children from their parents on such a scale we must go back before
the days of Communism and Nazism. Though both these regimes routinely
took children from their parents, they did so on a scale that was
minuscule compared to what is now practiced in the United States.
Indeed, we must return to the days of American slavery to find a time
when state power was used to forcibly break up families on a scale
comparable to what is taking place today.
It is not lightly that I invoke the slave system. It is to
illustrate our experience that any system of domestic dictatorship-no
matter how apparently "private" and political -poses a
serious threat to a democratic society. Nowhere is this more
destructively seen than in the impact on our children themselves.
Politically, the decisive argument against slavery was not so much
its physical cruelty as the corruption it wrought in the political
system and in the minds and souls of what should have been free
citizens. It fostered tyranny in the slaveholder, servility in the
slave, and moral degradation in both. Such habits of mind were said
to be incompatable with the kind of republican virtue required for a
free society. The abolitionist Charles Sumner warned of the impact on
the development of white children growing up in slave societies.
"Their hearts, while yet tender with childhood, are necessarily
hardened by this conduct, and their subsequent lives bear enduring
testimony to this legalized uncharitableness," he wrote.
"Their characters are debased, and they become less fit for the
magnanimous duties of a good citizen." Something similar is at
work with the children who we are now growing up under a state that
forcibly destroys their families and their fathers. No people can
remain free who harbor within themselves a system of dictatorship or
raise their children according to its principles.
This too is "The Politics Of Fatherhood". |
|
