檳榔嶼

- Assailed on all sides by a white supremacist culture that stereotypes black females as "welfare queens", by black men who claim they are the victims of these castrating breeders who would rather live off welfare than have a good man support them, and by the shaming judgment of a nation that castigates unmarried poor women who birth children, while idolizing unmarried rich and famous women who choose to parent, single black mothers are increasingly represented in the mass media as harsh, uncaring parents.
- Barbara Omolade, <<The Rising Song of African-American Women>> : "Most black single mothers are the working poor. We do domestic work, sew in factories, and are self-employed as merchants and caterers. We commute daily to city, state, and federal government agencies. As paralegals, aides, and clerks, we are the backbone of the hospital, child care, and nursing home systems. Although the wages are low and the work tedious, black women stay with city jobs for years because they offer stability and benefits."
- When the white supremacist, patriarchal mass media wanted to paint a portrait of pathology, it highlighted black women receiving welfare. Usually the spotlight would focus on an individual black woman with four or more children by different men who was lying to the system to receive more aid.
- Anyone who is not blinded by biases has to face the extent to which negative images of black women on welfare are flaunted as a way to scapegoat them and leave unquestioned issues of class, race, and imperialism when it comes to the allocation of funding.
- In the popular mass media, black single mothers are represented as castrating bitches who want to irresponsibly breed children they cannot support.
- Currently the focus "family values", along with efforts to dismantle welfare, has led to violent condemnation of black single mothers on all fronts.
  - Underlying the attacks on black single mothers is the assumption that patriarchal families are the healthiest.
- Feminist scholarship on family life calls attention to the extent to which coercive male domination erodes family values.
  - Widespread domestic violence and male-perpetrated incest are two indications that the patriarchal nuclear family is no inherently a more positive location to raise children than a single-parent household.
- Many folks choose to believe that the patriarchal nuclear family is best because they imagine it will be a household with a greater income.
  - Today, men who earn decent incomes often gamble wages away playing the lottery or engage in substance abuse or womanizing.
  - Patriarchal men often deploy various strategies to ensure their control of finances.
- Studies of patriarchal white families show that when divorce happens, the male heads of households often withhold economic support from women and children.
  - These facts can be easily ignored by patriarchal male politicians who want to make it seem as if the presence of men in families means more economic resources and greater emotional stability.
- It should be obvious that all children are likely to be more healthy when raised in a home that is, first and foremost, loving.
   - Patriarchal thinking implies that simply by being present, black fathers ensure that black children will have healthy self-esteem and self-love. This is simply not true. A domineering and/or violently abusive father who is present will not be creating a home environment that promotes a child's well-being.
- Scapegoating single black mothers has allowed black men to deflect attention away from a discussion of the meaning of parenting in their lives.
  - Until our society stops blaming single mothers, the necessary scholarship that looks at male motives for fathering children that they do not parent will never be undertaken.
- Significantly, the refusal of our nation to recognize the extraordinary contribution of single mothers who give loving care is tied to the sexist assumption that caregiving is inherently a female trait and not a choice.
- When the men's movement first began, its leader insisted that boys could not be taught how to be men by women, that they needed a male presence.
  - Thess comments were bandied about without any facts to show that male children raised by single mothers suffer some substrantive lack that boys raised in two-parent households do not.
- Until this nation can acknowledge that patriarchal fathers who use coercion and other forms of violence to discipline children do not raise healthy, self-loving children, there will be no clear understanding of the value of any male choosing to be a loving parent.
- Way too many women have internalized guilt about single parenting that has benn unjustly palced upon them by our society, and have sought to bring men into the home and keep them there even when the men were disruptive, exploitative, and cruel. There women are merely following the dictates of a society which tells them that the home is a better place if a man is present.
- No home is a good environment to raise children in if parents are not loving.
- Usually the attack on single mothers who receive welfare is aimed solely at strengthening the position of those political and economic parties that wish to end state aid.