black fathers
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What Juneteenth and My Father Taught Me About 'Expectations'
I wouldn’t know Juneteenth without my father. He’s the Texan. He grew up celebrating the holiday that started on June 19, 1865, when slaves on Galveston Island, Texas, finally learned they’d been freed under the Emancipation Proclamation two years prior. Even though he now lived in St. Louis, he’d always make the same jokey reference…
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Netflix's Uncorked Reminded Me of a Fun Story About Unconventional Support From My Father
Since we’re all stuck (or should be) inside the house for the foreseeable future (despite various projected goals for peak contagion and flattening curves—shoutouts to the homies Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx, y’all some real ones), the amount of movies and television shows being watched is about to put Netflix on par with Earth, Wind…
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For Colored Dads Who Have Considered Kindness When French Fries Wasn’t Enuf
I planned to explain my leave of absence from The Root before it happened. Then, during my wife’s routine doctor’s visit on the last Friday of August, everything went to shit. We thought we had a week and a half before she would give birth but she was on the phone telling me that the…
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Watch: The Hair Struggle Without Mom Is Real in This Clip From Matthew Cherry's Hair Love
Oh, dads. A black girl’s relationship with her hair is special. As is her relationship with her dad. Put those two things together and shenanigans can follow. Luckily (for my tiny ego), my dad had his mother around to take over my hair duties. Really, I legit grew up in the same apartment building with…
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Daughter of Rodney King Launches ‘I Am a King’ Scholarship to Celebrate Black Fatherhood Just in Time for Father’s Day
For residents of Los Angeles, April 29 is a day that lives on in infamy. Twenty-seven years ago, the streets of the city I now call home descended into chaos in the aftermath of the Rodney King verdict, in which a jury acquitted four LAPD officers of charges related to his brutal assault, which was…
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Daddy’s Girl, Daddy’s Critic: Finding Peace With My Father’s Flaws
I have three dads. But I have a biological dad, whom I met over eight years ago. Then there’s my adoptive dad, whose last name I share. And then I have my stepdad, who came into my life when I was about 9 years old. My relationship with each one varies, and accordingly, every year…
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I Reconnected to My Father, Only to Disconnect From Him Again
My father has never really been a major part of my life. Not having a father around was pretty much a normal thing throughout my childhood. My birth mother passed away from breast cancer when I was 3 years old, which left my brother and sister and me to be raised by family. My aunt…
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How the Book of Ryan Became My Therapy and Helped Me Understand Fatherhood
When I’m in the studio, I sometimes have these visions of conversations I’d like to have with my father. It leads me to think what it would be like if he and I could communicate on a higher level because there’s always been this barrier between us. Not even just us—everybody in our family. In…
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I See My Dad When I Look in the Mirror, and I’m Terrified I’ll Repeat His Mistakes
I was 34 years old when I could no longer escape the man I never wanted to see again. For the past 30 years, the day designated to celebrate men’s investment in their children has not brought me a great deal of joy. In 1988, just two weeks after Father’s Day, my dad was convicted…