Monica Potts asks if promoting responsible fatherhood is really the best way to lift families out of poverty:
Of the many biographical details that shaped Barack Obama as a political figure, perhaps none is more prominent than the absence of his father during his upbringing. The president’s public effort to understand Barack Obama Sr. began with the publication of his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, shortly after he finished his term as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. In the book, Obama describes how difficult it was to grow up without a relationship to his Kenyan father, the man who gave him a name and a heritage but was not around to help him navigate America’s complicated racial divide. In The Audacity of Hope, written after he became a senator, Obama describes his own struggles as a political father who is often physically separated from his family.
At the height of the Democratic primary in 2008, Obama gave a Father’s Day address at a predominantly black Chicago church. Single-parent homes are more common in the black community, and his speech encouraged young men to grow up and to take responsibility for their children. “We need to show our kids that you’re not strong by putting other people down — you’re strong by lifting them up,” he said. “That’s our responsibility as fathers.” After the speech, the Rev. Jesse Jackson excoriated Obama for “talking down to black people.”