Thompson: Project Fatherhood
When writing her excellent Project Fatherhood, the UCLA gang expert Jorja Leap exposed herself to a daunting risk. Leap accepted a degree of physical danger but it was the professional risk that could have been intimidating. Leap defied academic convention and spoke honestly about race, family, child-rearing, domestic abuse and, even, the “P-stuff” or post-traumatic shock.
Much of the credit for Project Fatherhood’s open and candid discussion of some of the 3rd rails of social policy must go to “Big Mike” Cummings, who guided her and the quest they shared with felons and fathers in Watts. Big Mike was exceptionally astute in coaxing the project’s participants into an honest appraisal of the causes and the effects of domestic abuse, as well as fathers not holding up their share of family responsibilities.
Scholars and educators often shy away from the issues tackled by Leap and Big Mike, and correctly argue that it is not just fathers - of whatever backgrounds - who have failed our kids. The horrific conditions of the inner city are a legacy of history, of economic exploitation and oppression, and of abusive political and criminal justice systems. It is often feared that a conversation about child-rearing will be seen as “blaming the victim” or excuse-making.
We cannot improve inner city schools without building trusting relationships, however, and neither can we establish those bonds with students and patrons without dialogues about fatherhood. As Leap writes, “These men – who routinely used guns and dealt drugs and brutalized women and went to prison and had no clue how to father their own children – needed first to be fathered themselves.”
One of the first things that an inner city teacher seeking to build relationships should learn is that students will test them. It should be clear that much of the chronic disorder of urban classrooms is due to high-risk kids acting out their pain. A crucial reason is less obvious, however, and it is made much more understandable by the chapter entitled “Are You Gonna Leave Us, Too?” Teachers aren’t being tested to see if we are tough enough; students, like their fathers before them, want to see whether mentors are “for real.” These fathers also doubt whether outsiders, who may seek to do good, will care enough to stick it out when the going gets rough.
The key lesson of the chapter “Big Mama” should be equally apparent to teachers and social workers, but the way that Big Mike and Leap drew out the fathers produced an incredibly nuanced explanation of why the fathers pass on contradictory attitudes towards the women in their lives. On one hand, the normative mentality was illuminated by the father who observed, “My daddy hit my mama, and my stepdaddy hit my mama, I guess I was used to it.”
But, men (and male students) who perpetuate a cycle of violence towards women have very different feelings about their mothers. Project Fatherhood explains how and why “no one utters a negative word about his mother.” The universal commitment to each person’s own mother is the “protected territory of the hearts, demilitarized zone in lives of conflict.” But, this attitude also helps pass down a simplistic mentality among people in the hood that is the mirror image of the quick fix mentality of too many education and social policy advocates. “What’s really wrong with Watts,” it is maintained, “is we don’t have any more big mamas and grannies to take care of our kids.”
After decades of wrestling with the challenges of the inner city, I still can’t completely understand why sincere education reformers and social activists have been so allergic to open communication about the deep wounds produced by families cracking under the stresses of poverty, racism, and inequality. Teens certainly want to discuss these issues that frighten adults. As Father Greg Boyle This Week In Education: Thompson: Project Fatherhood: