Presiding over what he called a “black dad summit,” host of “The Nightly Show” Larry Wilmore marked Black History month on Wednesday night by discussing the thorny issues around fatherhood in the black community.
Wilmore began the show with a statistic, delivered by CNN anchor Don Lemon, that over 72 percent of children in the black community are born out of wedlock to largely absent fathers.
“Now of course, I hardly believe 72 percent of all the things Don Lemon says,” Wilmore joked.
Rapper Common remarked, “when I hear 72 percent I think, that’s the number of unwed but that doesn’t mean the father is absent.”
New York Times columnist Charles Blow, who recently wrote a column about his own relationship to his son as a black father, addressed some of the root causes of the situation.
“Married black women used to have more children,” he said. “Their rate of childbirth has dropped tremendously, so that leaves only unmarried black women having children.”
The war on drugs is another huge factor, Blow said: “We are sucking massive numbers of African American men out of the community who are marriage age.”
Wilmore and Blow also pointed out that the rate of participation of black fathers in family life is among the highest of any ethnic group.
Watch the clip below, courtesy of Comedy Central:
Thank God Bobby Brown wasn’t on the panel…
This show is on past my bedtime, but i find the photo of the panel really striking. In all honesty, i don’t think i’ve ever seen a panel of black men is suits sitting around a table discussing important matters of the day. One token black or brown person, sure. Never an entire panel. I feel that’s an indictment not only on the media, but also on myself.
Hateful and racist, just as guilty if not worse of everything whites, compile stats on blacks but not themselves. Why?
If whites weren’t oppressing there wouldn’t be a contrast. There would be human statistics that we all worked on in unity. But noooooooooooo, we have whites playing the blame game and doing all the taking, while simultaneously not giving.
If repression is the answer, then we are totally asking the wrong question.
I have been impressed so far. The shows have been really good and a nice new angle on the issues-comedy thing. I’m glad they didn’t just try to reinvent a Colbert/Stewart type shtick, because the discussion format is working pretty well.
He’s on Hulu (as is the Daily Show), and worth catching up on.