#57. Father's Day

Black people love holidays so much, that they have created a number of them that are only for Black people. Kwanzaa, Juneteenth Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and of course, the entire month of February, are all events and holidays that Black people love to celebrate.

One holiday exists that Black people do feel uncomfortable with and by and large tend to skip celebrating it entirely: Father's Day.

Like the shunned Black kid who tries hard in class and is deemed "acting white" by his peers, Father's Day is a holiday that many Black people deem "too white" to celebrate.

These statistics illustrate why Black people don't like Father's Day:

"In 2001, according to the U.S. Census, 43.3 percent of black men and 41.9 percent of black women in America had never been married, in contrast to 27.4 percent and 20.7 percent respectively for whites. African American women are the least likely in our society to marry. In the period between 1970 and 2001, the overall marriage rate in the United States declined by 17 percent; but for blacks, it fell by 34 percent."

President Barack Obama wrote an entire book dedicated to his deadbeat father, Barack Sr., and he recently came under a lot of fire in the Black community for taking deadbeat fathers to task for being, well deadbeats.

Statistics show that more than 70 percent of African-Americans are born out of wedlock.

June Perry tells us that:

"Many black women don't have a large pool of candidates for marriage due to social realities." Reasons for the limited pool include lack of employment, incarceration rates, and the general reluctance of black women to marry outside their race are highlighted."

Bill Cosby, America's favorite fictional sitcom father who helped create the (fictitious) image of the loving Black family in the 1980s, has got in a lot of hot water with the Black community for daring to criticize Black men.

Casey Gane-McCalla writes:

"Just like Jackie Robinson, Bill Cosby has paved the way for America to accept an African American in their household, and even the White House. The Huxtables not only humanized African American families and showcased professional African Americans, but it allowed Americans of all backgrounds to admire a black family...

In 1982 ... the images of African Americans in the media were mostly criminals, raunchy comedians, and blacksploitation movie stars. TV shows like Good Times and the Jeffersons showed Africans Americans as hard working and funny but without any professional polish."

The problem, outside of the largely media created image of Barack Obama as the perfect emblem of fatherhood and manliness - for whites as well as Blacks - Black people are largely defined by criminality, raunchy comedians and movie stars that are movie stars because they are black.

With a nearly 75 percent out of wedlock birthrate, Black people are raised primarily by their mothers. Cosby - who created the false image of a happy Black family - took Black people to task over their hatred of anything that can be deemed "acting white":

"No longer is a person embarrassed because they’re pregnant without a husband...No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child...Ladies and gentlemen, listen to these people. They are showing you what’s wrong … What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans. They don’t know a damned thing about Africa— with names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed, and all that crap, and all of them are in jail.”

Dr. Huxtable was attacked by the Black community for daring to bring to the light the idea that Black people aren't good fathers, and that Black people don't care about their community. How dare he do such a thing!

Black people care about their communities a lot. The Atlantic Monthly magazine reports:

"Blacks are 13 percent of the population, yet black men account for 49 percent of America’s murder victims and 41 percent of the prison population. The teen birth rate for blacks is 63 per 1,000, more than double the rate for whites. In 2005, black families had the lowest median income of any ethnic group measured by the Census, making only 61 percent of the median income of white families.

Judging by the state of the Black father in the Black community, one can only conclude that Obama was talking to Black people in a recent Parade article:

"Our children can tell. They know when we’re not fully there. And that disengagement sends a clear message—whether we mean it or not—about where among our priorities they fall."

Stuff Black People Don't Like obviously must include Father's Day. It's a holiday that is just too white, and Black people do everything possible to refrain from acting white. Thus, the reasoning behind not liking Father's Day.. it's too white a day.