Does Black History Have a Future? is an Acton Institute article by Anthony Bradley. He addresses the need for Black history to recover the pre-1950s heritage of strong men and strong families. Despite slavery and Jim Crow oppression, until the 1960s, over 80% of Black children were born to married couples. All I can say to this article is Amen. Here are Bradly's closing thoughts:
Black feminists such as Bell Hooks in We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity, continue to spew the pathetic myth that much of the impending demise of the black male is due to “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” In Hook’s vision true masculinity has little to do with righteous male leadership in the home. “I don’t need a man” is the feminist mantra that creates a context wherein generations of black male youth go unfathered, unchurched, unprotected from abuse, and left to be raised by law enforcement or the foster care system.
Hooks does not trust the traditional black church, bemoans male aggression, and disdains the free market (even though she makes a living in the market, selling books and lecturing). The solutions to the present crisis, however, begin precisely in those areas Hooks rejects. If black men returned to the black church which has served as the backbone of black people since slavery, and adopted the brilliant and economically liberating “Declaration of Financial Empowerment” developed by Black Enterprise Magazine, for example, it would change America forever.
Caricatured black male aggression is not a problem to be solved but a powerful trait to be directed toward its destiny in love. Wherever black males are lovingly raised to fight aggressively for what is true, noble, pure, and admirable, we will find great marriages, stable families, a love for learning, moral formation, economic wisdom, and a platform of empowerment that would catapult black America beyond the dream of Martin Luther King.
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