San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
‘Absent black father’ myth obscures modern realities
There’s a 16second, hastily shot video that’s been circulating on social media over the past year showing dozens of Black men happily pushing strollers along a sidewalk in Oakland. It’s been viewed more than 700,000 times.
The footage is from February 2020’s Black Dads of the Bay Meetup near Lake Merritt. San Jose native Louis Ceaser created the event with the initial hope that a couple of Black fathers like him might be interested.
Ceaser said 150 showed up.
The video went viral because Black dads in America, simply by existing in public spaces with
their kids, are contradicting the problematic myth of the “absent Black father.” The myth is so pervasive that it has obscured a new generation of progressive Black fatherhood.
“There were dudes who saw us out there and asked what we were doing. When they heard what it was — just a bunch of Black fathers connecting with each other — they would just join us,” recalled Ceaser, who became a father for the first time in
“I didn’t have a blueprint for how to be a father. But so many of us Black men are functioning off this innate gift, this natural ability to be great at it. The country just doesn’t acknowledge us.” Prentice Powell of Oakland
2019. His wife, Vivien, is pregnant with their second child.
“It was emotional for me, for a lot of us.”
Black men have long been excluded from America’s portrait of the care economy, despite evidence that they play a central role in it. In a 2013 study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 70% of Black dads living with children under age 5 bathed, clothed and changed the diapers of their kids, compared with 60% of white fathers. And 35% of Black fathers read to their children on a regular basis, a little more than the 30% of white fathers who did the same.
“The work (Black fathers) do on a regular basis is looked at as an anomaly,” said Prentice Powell, who spoke in a whisper as his newborn daughter, Shai, napped beside him. “I didn’t have a blueprint for how to be a father. But so many of us Black men are functioning off this innate gift, this natural ability to be great at it. The country just doesn’t acknowledge us.”
Shawn Ginwright, a professor of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University and the father of two children in their 20s, says the country’s Black father narrative is mostly devoid of such “intimate beauty and love.”
“My son has seen me cry. I have seen him cry. These are intentional spaces where I engage with my children,” Ginwright told me. “I’m trying to expand their notion of what it means to be a Black man, to be a Black father.”
The absent Black father stereotype is a product of systemic racism — fueled by economic disinvestment, mass incarceration, media portrayals, and antiquated views of marriage and living arrangements.
The number of imprisoned Black men in America exploded from the 1970s to the 1990s as a result of the war on drugs. Pew Research Center data show Black people still account for more than 30% of prison populations. Decades of overpolicing took a toll on Black families in America and removed countless Black fathers from the lives of their kids. According to a 2015 report by national nonprofit Child Trends, 1 in 9 Black children in the U.S. has had a parent in prison.
According to 2019 CDC data, the nonmarital birth rate among Black women was 70%, compared with 28% for white women. A 2017 census report showed that 53% of Black kids live with one parent. People have ignored the broader systemic inequities that put Black families under greater pressure and used a surfacelevel view of the data to perpetuate the absent Black father myth. In doing so, America has disregarded Black men’s ability to successfully coparent outside of marriage or a shared physical address.
Daytime talk shows in the 1990s such as “Maury” stoked the flames through paternity test segments often featuring Black guests. Bill Cosby, before he was accused by 60 women of rape and convicted of felony sexual assault in 2018, spent years publicly excoriating Black fathers. As recently as 2015, during the Baltimore protests against police violence, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky blamed some of the unrest on “the lack of fathers” in Black communities.
While working on this column, I called my two older brothers, Kyle and Blair. Both are in their 30s. Each has two children. Neither had time to talk.
Kyle was clothes shopping with his daughter, which is something my mom did with my grandfather when she was a child. Blair was taking his son out for a “dad lunch,” which is something my dad did with me growing up.
“If you think about it, we’re taking the things older generations did right and we’re building from that,” Blair said. “Our focus is just more on the emotional connection. It’s different than the past, but in a good way.”
Each day, Black men in this country are reframing the conversation around Black fathers. It’d be a nice Father’s Day gift if America started to listen.
California’s paramount landscape of fire and ice, Lassen Volcanic National Park, is projected to be fully open for summertime activities by June 25. All the park’s roads, campgrounds and trailheads will likely be open for the first time in seven months, with some highcountry trails in sunshielded sites still covered with patches of snow.
Lassen features a landscape built primarily by volcanic blasts and lava flows, with the last series of major eruptions from 1914 to 1918. Its high country is cut by ice and snow. The park’s 106,000 acres is a matrix of lava peaks, basalt flows and geothermal basins that are set amid forests, lakes and streams. The centerpiece, 10,457foot Lassen Peak, has just an inch or 2 of snow left on portions of the switchbacked trail that leads up from the parking lot. It is expected to melt off soon.
As a national park, Lassen is like Yosemite’s little brother — it gets about 500,000 visitors each year compared to Yosemite’s 5 million. It is a unique destination for camping, hiking, trout fishing and wilderness treks. The Pacific Crest Trail also runs through much of the park. With summer fast approaching, here’s a quick guide to Lassen, with ideas on how to enjoy the park’s greatest hits.
Camping
Along the Lassen Park Highway, you can find major campgrounds and camping cabins at Manzanita Lake (multiple loops, 179 sites, 20 cabins). Or check out Summit Lake, with two separate campground areas and 94 sites, which opens June 25. Near the southern entrance station, Southwest Walkin has 20 sites, first come, first served.
In the park’s more remote regions, the campground at Butte Lake (101 sites) is located across the entrance road from the cartop boat access.
Camps are also available at the distant Warner Valley (17 sites, firstcome, firstserved) and the even more remote Juniper Lake (16 sites, first come, first served, opens June 25). Access to these spots is along dirt roads, and SUVs are advised to reach them.
For campsite availability, check www.Recreation.gov.
Three easy hikes
The park’s most popular hike, the Bumpass Hell geothermal area (named after a guy who accidentally fell in), is likely to open in the next week or so, rangers say. It’s a 3mile round trip: a short climb and then a descent to a basin filled with boiling pots, hot springs, steam vents and hydrothermals. A series of boardwalks provide access in the basin. From Hat Lake along the Lassen Park Highway, there’s a pretty hike along a creek, past a waterfall (a short cutoff on the right provides the best view) to gorgeous Paradise Meadow. It’s 2.8 miles round trip, with a 700foot climb on the way in. The meadow is nestled in a mountain bowl at 7,100 feet, where visitors will find an explosion of wildflowers. It’s now neon green and absolutely pristine. Mill Creek Falls, a gorgeous 75foot chutelike waterfall, is a 3.8mile round trip. The route starts near the southwest parking area (near the park entrance, behind the amphitheater), then is routed through forest with a few small stream crossings. In the past two weeks, there has been increased bear activity in the area, likely brought in by campers at Southwest WalkIn.
Two tougher hikes
The park’s signature hike, the Lassen Peak Trail, is rapidly becoming accessible for hiking as the snowmelts off the southfacing switchbacks.
It’s a 5mile roundtrip with a 2,000foot climb on the way up to the rim. Then it’s a short jaunt across the caldera to the plug dome summit crag. As you approach, the best route up to the pinnacle is on the far side on the left. From the trailhead at Butte Lake, the park’s most unusual climb is the 2mile trek to the rim of the Cinder Cone (4.5 miles roundtrip). It’s somewhat of a slog through volcanic rubble, but the reward is a view inside the collapsed caldera of the cone and views of the Spectacular Lava Beds and also to Lassen Peak. A trail rings the rim of the cone, with a cutoff spur that plunges to the bottom.
Lakes
The park’s most famous lake is Manzanita Lake, located a short distance from the Highway 44/89 entrance station.
With a kayak or canoe, you can paddle across the lake with a backdrop of Lassen Peak. Kayak rentals (and excellent ice cream cones) are available at the Camper Store. The lake is also a destination for flyfishers, with special regulations in effect for catchandrelease wild trout.
Summit Lake, ringed by conifers, is also popular for kayaking, with best access on the northern shore; no rentals.
Remote Butte Lake has a designated area to launch cartop boats, and from here, you can paddle amid a backdrop of pine forest, volcanic crags and shoreline rubble. The lake has fair trout fishing, no stocks, with fish up to about 12 inches. No motors are permitted at any of the lakes at Lassen.