A New Look At Black Families
Charles Vert Willie; Richard Reddick
Willie and Reddick’s rigorous, thought-provoking, and meticulously outlined critique of the Moynihan report, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (United States Department of Labor, 1965), often emanates an untrodden path revealing to the reader rich, detailed case studies, personal histories, and testimonies of everyday black women and black men on the governance and organization of family life in their respective socio-economic strata, all while simultaneously confessing and denouncing the notion of an ubiquitous, one-dimensional, single black experience. After disposing the outdated lense of the one-dimensional black experience, a staircase of vibrant rhetoric producing a chain of depictions of black middle class, working class, low-income, and lesbian/same gender families emerges.
The inclusion of case studies in this book denounces the disparate treatment of the black family; rather, Willie and Reddick show all families of each income level as equally possessing an equalitarian family structure and a substantial reliance on religiosity and spirituality for self-identity, communal building, and armor in the face of defeat, grief, and unfortunate life circumstances. The family case studies in part two all give ample flavor for insightful discourse on the impact of socio-economic status on black families. The analysis commences with ‘two middle class families, both residing in very racially integrated, affluent neighborhoods which allows them to purchase and invest in their own social and human capital.’
Using Robert Merton’s typology of modes of group adaptation, Wille and Reddick show middle class families as adopting a more customary, idealized, westernized life trajectory. For instance, pursuing higher education was seen as the ‘breath of life’ and a bulletproof vest shielding them from racial injustice, and marriage often preceded childbearing. Of particular importance is the analysis of children in middle class families; children are seen as an investment firm in which parents continuously deposit teachings of accountability and responsibility, all while fostering pride in the African heritage by celebrating Kwanza. Compared to working class and low-income black families, children in middle class families are also more socially ingrained into academic, athletic, and artistic extra-curricular activities. Working class families’ capability to disguise themselves as ‘living betwixt and between’ middle class and lower-income families often creates a peculiar ambiguousness regarding how they govern familial responsibilities.
Embedded in the analysis of working class families was the ingrained notion of familial sharing and mutual assistance, especially for family members who are ‘down on their luck.’ Their uniquely woven experiences of steady, tedious, and strenuous labor, coupled with their infrequent interaction with neighbors and minimal distrust in social institutions, often provide minimal opportunity for advancing their social capital. The life trajectory of working class families is best symbolized by ‘whatever is God’s will, will happen’; while they often hoped and desired that things would go right in their life, they believed that the life chances afforded to them were a peculiar mix of God’s work and human intuition.
Part two ends with a case analysis of low-income families; the case study of low- income families gives a story of two families plagued with a barrel of societal dilemmas: unemployment, family death, teenage pregnancy, temporal housing frequently occupied by two and three generations, and limited health care coverage. Specifically, low-income families were shown as bearing the burden of an ever diminishing social capital due to their minimal stake and inclusion in ‘mainstream’ social institutions and socio-political discourse. Part three takes a more rebellious, combative, and abrasive tone, as it dismantles one of the most prominent propositions put forth by sociologists, ‘The black matriarchy’; in the process of dispelling this myth, Willie and Reddick refer to the black woman in the middle class family as reconstructing and redefining the traditional definition of womanhood, by which collectively the black family acts as a proponent for equalitarianism in which neither wife nor husband is given total dominance or authority.
While the inclusion of other studies purporting the illustration as black women championing womanhood only partially cleans the lense of a clouded reader, the complexity of the argument of the ‘black matriarchy’ as a fallacy isn’t examined wholeheartedly, as studies supporting its existence are often easily rubbed over and not extensively examined as a result of Willie and Reddick’s unrelenting stance on the issue. Willie and Reddick’s embracing of black lesbian families delivers a seemingly esoteric and misconstrued topic of homosexual families and artistically transforms it into a cinematic masterpiece sharing all the same assets as it’s resident, ‘the heterosexual’ black family. The equalitarian decision-making style, the view of children as the centerpiece of the family, and the emotional attunement of family members to each other’s needs all appear to be unifying themes amongst heterosexual and gay/lesbian parents.
While Willie and Reddick’s primary attention was to uncover how lesbian parents collectively govern familial relations and responsibilities, a discussion on the complexities of lesbian and gay parenting with respect to the dissemination of information on gender roles and behaviors from lesbian parents to the child appeared to be missing in this chapter and in our dialog on black homosexual parents and child rearing as an entity The book concludes with a discussion on the family life of President Barack Obama, presenting the Obamas as both the archetype of black family equalitarianism and embodying the complexities and characteristics of the multi-dimensional black experience. Obama’s humble beginnings, coupled with the experiences of an absentee father and reliance on extended family for guidance and child rearing, gives a tangible illustration of the content discussed in the book. Operating with Robert Merton’s proposition, it is undoubtable to conclude that the Obamas have attributes of the aforementioned middle class black families.
A New Look at Black Families offers a new lense for looking at the social reality of black families; for that reason, inquisitive young scholars can only help but wonder whether or not this fashionable critique will resurface amongst the immense outdated jargon and dialog on contemporary black families. Can we move from typologizing the black family as monolithic to treating it as a multi-layered and multi-dimensional institution? It is this question that not only motivates Willie and Reddick, but also should motivate our dialog and our research endeavors to move towards a more progressive stance. Equally important, this book calls to treat the black family as a socio-political institution, requiring a dramatic eradication of employment and educational inequities, all while acknowledging the black family’s contribution of service, sacrifice, suffering, and the modeling of family equalitarianism as an intricate fabric of the total American experience. ~ Ciera Graham, Journal of African American Studies, Vol. 15, No. 4 (December 2012), pp. 557-559
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Details
| ISBN | 9780742570078 |
| Genre | Autobiography/Biography; Black Interest; Family; Parenting & Families |
| Publication Date | 16-Mar-10 |
| Publisher | Rowman & Littlefield |
| No. of Pages | 230 |
| LoC Classification | E185.86 |
| Language | English |
| Rating | Great |
| Subject | Biography & Autobiography |
| BookID | 8791 |
