Fatherhood: Teachable Moments and Uncomfortable Truths, Part 2–Accountability

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Barack Obama chose the setting of the other African American Chicago mega-church to deliver his Father's Day conversation about dads and accountability. He had held his own spiritual father, the man who guided him to his faith, at long last accountable and walked away.

Some say he waited far too long. But letting go, as we see in many venues in the world as well as our own lives, can be a hard thing to do, no matter how difficult the circumstances.

Consider the many families where the dad, beset by alcoholism or chemical dependency, falls short of what he could be as a father and a man, and still the family rallies around him, organizing treatment, doing whatever they can to try to help him heal. We see it in the tabloids, but it's a too-harsh reality in too many families. Made worse by recession and joblessness and catastrophe and loss.

Did you know that Fedex Ground truckers are independent contractors and it's coming out of their pockets at the gas pump...not Bushie's, you know, base. Dads, working long hours, rigorous jobs, carryin' on their shoulders the burden so the corp executives don't have to trouble their beautiful minds worrying about their stock options.

Obama spoke of Accountability for fathers who abandon their children. "Any fool can make a baby." It takes a man, said he, to raise one.

And he spoke with authenticity, too. For he is a man raising two daughters in a strong family and marriage. A man who knows what it is to be abandoned by one's father, to lack the connection to half your life, half your heritage. A man who, on graduation day, could not look out across the audience and see a dad's beaming pride.

Obama speaks to all of us, not just the black community, although that is where the statistics say the greatest problems are. But if you are a child being raised without a dad, it doesn't matter the color of your skin.

Some say, well he's just a political opportunist havin' a Sister Souljah kinda moment. Sorry, that won't wash. It's the authenticity, man. And the reality that his life's work has resonated with the community activism which builds strong families.

Or, Bill Cosby was saying the same thing and he was castigated for his pains. Maybe it was the wrong voice. Maybe he lacked the street cred because of his own shortcomings about family, maybe the time was not yet ripe.

Surely, for problems so great, many voices, many hands, many hearts must draw together to make change happen. And if the best leader to achieve that change is a younger man, in the fullness of strengthening his own family while building strong community, rather than the older man, so be it.

Change won't come easy. Not on this problem, not on too many of the other problems this great nation faces. America is the abandoned child of a self-indulgent ideologic drunk-on-power father these days, a man who blithely ignores the havoc he has created in the American family fabric as he parties on. It will take the rest of us to nurture up the child and guide her to greatness despite the father.

With the guiding hand of a loving man who values and understands all the realities of this nation and says, we can do better.
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