A single mother cannot raise a boy to be a man!

I know some people are not going to like this post but I am compelled to write it nonetheless. As always my intent is not to create a divide between men and women but to offer a constructive perspective that can take us forward as @Africanindiaspos.


Some time ago I made the statement that ‘a single mother cannot raise a boy to be a man’ to a group of @Africanindiaspo brothers and sisters and typically as well as understandably got some serious backlash for it. One of the people who sharply disagreed with me was a lady who was and still is a great (single) mother of four children. 'My children are turning out alright', she said, 'I don't need to be with their father for me to raise my sons', she added. Another brother who had an absent father, like many typical African children, also chimed in and added that although he had been pretty much raised by his mother he had turned out okay, thus implying that my statement/conviction was as redundant as UK call centre employees.


I was not (in any way, shape or form) trying to insinuate that single/widowed mothers are intellectually incompetent individuals when it comes to the task of raising male children. Neither was I trying to implicate that the only suitable conditions in which a young boy can become a man are when his parents are happily married or living together. Although that would be ideal for producing stable citizens of tomorrow, it is an unrealistic feat in today's society in which children proudly born out of wedlock and one in which women hold divorce parties. What I was trying to communicate instead was that in the event that a mother has sole custody of her male child following the death of her husband/partner, divorce or a night of passion with a stranger, etc. she needs to ensure her son has a manly male role model who will be an authority over him, disciplining and teaching him how to be a man. Failure to do so will lead to the upbringing of an effeminate, intemperate and indecisive mummy’s boy. Whilst the father of that child is always the best person to be tasked with this responsibility, in my opinion, if he has passed or is disinterested in being involved with his son then a trustworthy/dependable and willing uncle/grandfather is always a good substitute.


Why do I feel this way? Well I could attribute that to my upbringing and the traits I have witnessed amongst the many families and friends I have been acquainted with in my short time on earth. Growing up my father only beat me once whilst my mother, on the other hand, seemed to have a keen interest to make up for him not doing so. However, as much as she did not spare the rod, my father is the one I feared (even as a child) and whenever my mother wanted me to behave all that she had to say was 'I am going to tell Dhedhi (daddy)'. Just the mention of my father would bring any nuisance behaviour to an abrupt end as I understood that this man who loved me as his own could easily kill me. It must have been the depth of his voice or his soberness that made me fear him the most, I don’t know but as they say ‘still waters run deep’. Anyway as I grew older the belt and shamhu (twig) as well as many other weapons of choice employed by mother to correct me stopped to hurt me to the point that I began to even laugh whenever my mother disciplined me. All the while whilst the fear of my father remained. This is not something I was taught to be and yet many of my male friends developed in the very same way.


Whilst this fear/respect of authority as a child seems harsh/abusive to the hippie children of today I believe it was beneficial in my life at ensuring that I lived according to the rules of our home. This in turn has made me a good citizen of society as it is has been easy for me to submit, for a lack of a better word, to the authority of my teachers, the police and government. This is a characteristic that is not prevalent in the countless young people of today and with greater consequences among the countless young black American men who have died at the hands of the police. Many of these young men were not sober-minded but emotionally-charged like women. Thing is; in the real world men receive greater punishment than women for the same crimes so for a man to behave like his mother is to be left immensely exposed. Although many of the @Africanindiaspo male children/youth, raised or being raised by single mothers, that I have encountered have not been murdered by the police they too have been very emotionally imbalanced as well as unambitious. It becomes more apparent as to why this is so when you spend time in some of these single mother households and realise how their mothers have speak down to them - something that has happened to them all their lives. Mothers would do such a thing (in order to maintain control over a child who would otherwise end up behaving wildly) without realising how this type of speech could damage that child as a boy/man which is why women need to control how they speak to their spouses/partners. Although my mother tried to do this with me as a child from time to time my father was always there to stop and correct her as well as keep her from dressing me up like a pimp doll. Do you not see this happening? The lack of masculinity in the home has bred the metrosexual/fashionista male. That is not to say that I only needed my father once I got past a certain age - because the presence of my mother in my life taught me many virtues to seek in a future partner. She was also very useful at pleading with my dad to be a bit more merciful when he was too firm. I have found and continue to find that balance to be extremely helpful at producing a man out of a male child.


As I mentioned earlier many young men raised by single mothers are typically unambitious and one benefit I have enjoyed from having my father in my life is accountability – something that the best of mothers usually cannot hold their sons to. Throughout my life (that is from when I was in primary school until I finished university) my father always sat down with me scrutinising every report I brought home, comparing it to the previous one. Although I know that some children, such as Ben Carson, may thrive or have thrived academically without their fathers' input I would venture to say that they are exceptions and not rules. I am not, by any scratch of my imagination, the brightest bulb in the box but I have shined well because my father said I could and also because he expected me to do so.  


Also there are many age-appropriate things that fathers push their sons to do which mothers struggle with such as when to fly the nest, become financially independent, etc. And whilst it may be okay to infantilise young women, such behaviour has greater consequences for a young man in the feminised 21^st century.  I have learned that men thrive when they are obligated to survive and most fathers understand this which is why they challenge their sons to set out just like lions do. We all know that lions live in prides which consist of a few lionesses, a dominant lion and some younger male lions which are typically the offspring of the dominant lion. I say typically offspring because when a lion takes over a pride, it displaces or kills the dominant male and also kills any cubs in order to bring the lionesses into heat. Once the lion has taken over the pride it has to defend the pride from other roaming males and produce its own cubs which when they are taught how to hunt and fight before they are evicted from the pride for them to go and take create or takeover their own.

 

 

‘It may take a village to raise a child but only a man can raise a man out of a young boy’ - @Africanindiaspo

Why do black/African men and women embrace music that destroys them?

This post has been on my mind for a while and I am glad it has finally come to fruition. I was not planning on writing it this soon into my blogging but I was on Twitter the other day when an @Africanindiaspo sister I follow wrote something on her feed that triggered a response from me. Her tweet was about how she cannot help but enjoy and dance to music she finds derogatory towards women due to the overwhelming talent of the artists. I was amused by this sentiment which is shared by many @Africanindiaspo sisters but never owned up to by @Africanindiaspo brothers who are also often insulted by many songs they consume.

 

As I said this is something I had been thinking about prior to this incident. I had been reflecting on the lyrics of Western/Caribbean/African black people's songs, lyrics such as:

 

1.      'Catch you slipping I'mma kill you, I aint playing hear what I'm saying homie I aint playing' - Heat - 50 Cent'

2.      'I just got rich took a broke n****'s chic' - Loyal - Chris Brown

3.      'That's why I f****d your b**** - Hit 'em up - Tupac

4.      'I stay flossing in that candy paint, Blowin dank, Sippin drank on 84 swangers, Tearin up the lane' - Flossing - Mike Jones

5.      'Wanna put my fingers through your hair, Wrap me up in your legs, And love you till your eyes roll back, I'm tryna put you to bed, bed, bed' - Bed - J Holiday

6.      'All I want is your waist' - Ur Waist - Iyanya.

7.      'So f***in inna wata f***in inna sea f***in inna bushes and f***in inna tree' - Dutty wine - Tony Matterhorn

 

This list could be much, much longer but I am sure you catch my drift?

 

Although, I have always known that black music/culture to be predominantly geared towards either promoting violence, taking each other's women, showing off to each other, the objectification of black women or the mass sexualisation of young black minds I had never thought of one thing. I had never thought of why black people embrace this imagery so much whilst white people do not - at least not to the same extent. After all this very music is available to whites as it is to blacks. In fact in the past I had even passionately debated with friends and colleagues about how the powers that control mainstream media are responsible for projecting certain behaviours onto blacks by constantly bombarding them with debased music and films as an acceptable way of life but here I was now asking myself whether it was fair to absolve black/African people of their part in this mess. To do so would be to suggest that black people are incompetent/mindless individuals who can be involuntarily programmed to behave in certain ways would it not?  

 

I know some may argue that it is typically the instrumentals and catchy choruses that lead to garbage music being widely accepted by our brothers and sisters and to a certain extent I think it is a fair thing to say but even then why does ‘white music’ not promote the same level of animosity towards your like-skinned brother/sister as black music does? It also has catchy choruses and well-produced instrumentals but how often do you hear a white RnB gangsta artist sing about how he wants to take the significant other/b**** of another white man who is not in a great financial position today but is probably one of the many that supported him to be who he is today? How does that even compute? I helped you Chris Brown to become a celebrity by buying your CDs/MP3s when you were a little boy with dreams of looking after your single mother and now all of a sudden you are calling me broke and taking my woman? My @Africanindiaspos is it still the white man's fault when I continue to buy tickets to go to Chris' show to listen to him remind me of how horrible my life is and risk having him take my new girlfriend backstage? I really have to be under a spell to do that don't I? At this juncture it would be expected of everybody to hate Chris (lol) or at least boycott him and yet the opposite happens as artists like him gain even greater followings amongst black. Also, as a side note, how does a man who hits such high notes as he does still maintain a respectable thug image? Imagine Justin Timberlake being embroiled in a thug lifestyle after singing cry me a river. I do not think his fan base would remain intact and yet we as black folks (although we may be stirred) do not seem shaken by the behaviours of people like Chris Brown and Usher.

 

Heck when we are not at threat of losing our better halves to Chris Brown and his other coloured friends (let it sink in) we are being threatened by the likes of 50 Cent and his G-Unit crew or whatever it may be these days. Picture a stadium packed with white people listening to an esteemed white gangsta person and his friends (who have genuine criminal records) singing to the crowd about how they will kill them and the crowd dancing away. This is what our brothers and sisters do, we buy into this culture of provocation and terror. Therefore it comes as no surprise that at times there are fights and/or shootings at these live shows as black men kill black men. Notorious B.I.G and Tupac died over a long-standing feud, T.I and Floyd Mayweather fought over insults, The Game beat up a man called Glocc 40 and was a victim of physical abuse himself at the hands of another thug who ended up being murdered. But hey it is not our fault though, it's them damn white folk and these good beats that have put weapons in our hands and sown dissension amongst us from the days of slavery. We have no choice in this. Yes we do not, because if the KKK released a mixed tape about lynching blacks and how they love slavery we would dance to it if the chorus was catchy and the instrumentation was ‘popping’. If not then that suggests to me that we (independently-minded and intelligent blacks) love the behaviours/lifestyles promoted by the songs sung/rapped by brothers and sisters, not just the beats. Now that is food for thought. To add, when have you ever seen white celebrities shooting at each other or fighting in public as I just previously mentioned?

 

I wish this culture was restricted to black Americans (who I no longer admire like I did as an impressionable teen in Africa) but it is also promoted here in the UK in places like Manchester, London, Birmingham, etc. by some pathetic Grime musicians and unfortunately this cancer has spread and affected African music/youth culture too. I have experienced, first-hand, young black men fighting over territories and school crests in order to live up to the fallacious, egotistical personas propagated by hip hop music which they know to be deviant based on their cultural values and religious upbringings. It seems then that the conscious attraction to this demeaning music subconsciously yields behaviours consistent with the messages it promotes. And unfortunately we cannot ignore how over-sexualised we as blacks are made to be from the sleazy R&B music that also forms part of our culture. Which other race of people has a genre of music they call baby-making music. Which other group of people has all of its teens rubbing themselves on each other in the name of dancing (Jamaicans are the worst at doing this)? This combined with the lack of sexual health education makes for a ticking time bomb with soaring rates of HIV affecting blacks more than whites. HIV may have been developed in a lab as some conspiracists believe, but we willingly spread it amongst ourselves with such music that measures a black man’s manhood not by his ability to provide for his family or to be the head of his home/clan but by how many women he can say he has slept with.

 

My dear @Africanindiaspo brothers and sisters let us boycott such destructive culture if we desire to be different. One thing that helped me was to realise, as an adolescent, that most of the rap music I was being influenced by was being written/produced by unintelligent thugs who have absolutely no care for the effects their music has on their own kind. Since then I have discovered more sophisticated genres of music such as jazz, neo-soul and I have even reverted to my traditional music heroes such as Oliver Mtukudzi, Leonard Dembo, etc. This music inspires me to be and to do better in life. It does not seek to rot my moral fibre and neither does it drive me to kill my brother nor push me to prove my manliness through infidelity.

 

‘The ‘demise’ of the black race cannot be entirely blamed on white supremacy but rather due to the lack of self-responsibility’ - @Africanindiaspo

Why have @Africaindiaspo kids turned away from Christianity? - Part 1

Growing up in the motherland I observed how religion underpinned much of life, from praying before meals, praying before/after travelling to praying and singing at weddings, funerals and of course religious gatherings. Christianity was and still is the widely-held belief in Zimbabwe and the religion I have been exposed to, thus it makes sense for it to be the only one I comment on.

 

As a youngster church attendance was not optional, no. In fact even as a young adult staying at home (here in the diaspora) with my parents it remained a compulsory family ritual to the extent that I felt really bad if I ever missed a Sunday service. One could say I was deeply religious at the time and when people at school asked me what my beliefs were I would often respond, ‘Pentecostal Christian’ without any hesitation at all although my ‘lifestyle’ reflected no semblance of my professed faith. It was only when I got a little older and started to develop my own understanding of life, holding what the bible says against church practices, that I realised not only how hypocritical I was but also how overwhelmingly hypocritical the majority of @Africanindiaspo Christians and churches were. I realised then why Christianity did not appeal to me and many of the @Africanindiaspos who were my age at the time.

 

You see children in Africa, just like African adults interact with national politicians; do not ask any questions that challenge the status quo as such insubordination can lead to serious disciplinary action. Consequentially, African children (and in some instances adults) typically do not appear to have minds of their own, that is how a grown man’s parents can influence him to leave his spouse for another more suitable/subservient woman – a woman they prefer really. Am I lying? Au contraire (on the contrary), western and @Africanindiaspo children raised in the diaspora are taught to question everything that they are taught by their parents, although they never seem to question the evolutionary theories and propagandised fallacies drummed into their heads from a young age. I personally feel a balance is critical but where is Kermit when you need him?

 

Nonetheless this critical mind-set of @Africanindiaspo children is something that many parents have not made adjustments to accommodate. Whilst many of us who grew up as Christians in the Motherland found it easy to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin mother, was the Son of God and that He resurrected from the dead, these are facts that your typical @Africanindiaspo descendant just cannot understand (How I could just kill a man, lol). The lack of empirical evidence combined with the fact that it just doesn’t sound plausible makes the bible/anything written in it sound like folklore. I suppose faith is difficult to possess when you have never needed to trust God for your next meal or the healing of a loved one, only the national health system and evolutionary theories (not facts) from a man just like you and I.

 

Whilst the factors mentioned above are worthy of consideration, I believe hypocrisy is really the stroke that breaks the camel’s backs for most children and for the purpose of this post I will stick to hypocrisy in the home. I have found Christianity amongst @Africanindiaspos and even amongst our brothers and sisters in the Motherland to be centred primarily on church and/or bible study attendance and long prayers which are preferably made in incomprehensible tongues. Insofar as these conditions are met one is considered a bona fide believer worthy of much commendation in the church. Oh silly me I forgot to mention that they must give their tithe faithfully, of course, lest they attract a curse from God then they are a bona fide, hell-raising Christian. Of course it does not matter how this believer conducts him/herself in their home and this is when the stumbling block for children is mounted in my opinion.

 

Many faithless @Africanindiaspos youths struggle to reconcile bible verses of how men should love their wives and be patient with them when their church-esteemed fathers are drunkards, overbearing, money-hungry, short-tempered and even at times physically abusive to their mothers. Even worse some struggle to understand how their fathers can be observed as elders/deacons in the church when they are players, yes some of these men even engage in adulterous affairs, despite public knowledge of their deeds. In other instances some youths also fail to reconcile their mothers’ inabilities to submit to their fathers or their strong-willed behaviour against them with the verses in the bible about how women should respect and submit to their husbands and should love and raise their children. This is especially true as many of these children often feel neglected by the very same church uniform-wearing mothers who possess very little dignity and are serious gossips and slanderers, etc.

 

My dear reader, if you have been around @Africanindiaspo families, have you seen parents treating their children with the love, gentleness and kindness (that the bible they believe teaches)? In my experience, I have not seen this; instead I have seen parents relentlessly shaming their children and stripping them of all dignity - even in front of people. This does not win souls, it destroys and hardens hearts. According to the bible that I grew up being taught to believe the family (children) is the second, most important institution for mankind after marriage. Therefore, before @Africanindiaspos who believe in Jesus tout their religion to their ‘lost’ Western friends, how about they take the bible seriously and authenticate its message by actually living out what they believe and raise children who are convinced of their fruit. How about they teach their children the word and pray with them every day rather than leaving that responsibility to the Sunday school teachers. I think that only after doing that can any good news they have make sense to anyone else.

 

Hopefully in Part 2 of this post I will focus on the hypocrisy of the church, which according to the bible is the 3^rd most important institution for mankind, and how the hypocrisy that exists in it contributes to these ‘wayward’ children that many @Africanindiaspo parents are ashamed of.

 

Until then, let us share let us grow!

 

‘Children are the mirrors of the homes, communities and societies they are nurtured or abandoned in’ - @Africanindiaspo