The Politics of Fatherhood

Stephen Baskerville

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 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 the 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 Sylvia 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 are to rise or fall,
be saved or lost, together."

... 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.

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 that 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 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
constitutional rights of individuals and minorities. Yet for fathers and
families generally, the judiciary has not only failed to protect
constitutional rights; it has become their principal violator.

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 funneling 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.

The arm of the state that undeniably reaches deepest into the private
lives of individuals and families today is the family court. Malcolm 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 up 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 funneling 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 an 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
redound to the honor of the scholars or cover them with shame."

What we are now seeing, to paraphrase Douglass, is an authoritarian
power advancing, "poisoning, corrupting, and perverting the institutions
of the country." In fact, what we are witnessing today may be the most
massive institutionalized witch hunt in this country's history.

Seldom before have we seen, on such scale, mass incarcerations without
trial, without charge, and without counsel - while the media and civil
libertarians look the other way.

...what we are witnessing today may be the most massive
institutionalized witch hunt in this country's history. Seldom before
have we seen, on such scale, mass incarcerations without trial, without
charge, and without counsel - while the media and civil libertarians
look the other way.

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 who 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 persons.

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 miniscule 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 apolitical - poses a serious threat to a
democratic society. Nowhere is this more poignantly 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 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 incompatible 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 are now growing up in
a society and 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".

For presentation at the plenary conference on "The Politics of Fatherhood", Howard University, Washington, DC, 23 March 1999.


Stephen Baskerville is a professor of Political Science at Howard
University.