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Do you think this song will have a positive or negative affect on young black females? Personally i have mixed feelings on this issue. the mother of civilization has been reduced down to a 'baby mama.' post your thoughts. - 3X
Commentary: New Nominee for Grand Prize in the Stupidity Sweepstakes? Fantasia's 'Baby Mama' Date: Wednesday, April 06, 2005 By: Gregory Kane, BlackAmericaWeb.com There’s a Stupidity Sweepstakes going on in black America, and some folks are determined to win the prize. First we had Destiny’s Child, those pulchritudinous but apparently daft lasses who gave us a song about their beloved “souljahs.” A brother “had to be street if he’s looking at me,” the trio told us. If the guy’s status wasn’t “hood,” they “weren’t checkin’ for him.” Not to be outdone in the Stupidity Sweepstakes — there must be one heck of a prize for the winner — we now have Fantasia putting in her bid for a victory. Her latest song, now stinking out airwaves near you, is called “Baby Mama.” Fantasia, winner of last year’s “American Idol” contest, dedicates the song “to all my baby mamas.” Being a baby mama these days, Fantasia tells us, is a “badge of honor.” Those “single mothers trying to make a way,” she goes on, should have their own holiday. And I thought that Destiny’s Child had dredged the depths of doofus with their song about “souljahs.” As I listened to Fantasia caterwauling about how great it is to be a “baby mama,” I was reminded once again why I hate the show “American Idol.” It’s not just that it has those with no talent judging the minimally talented (I exclude the gorgeous AND talented Paula Abdul from that assertion). It’s that any of us can go to any storefront church in black America and find better singers than the ones that appear on the show. That’s bad enough. But now we have one of these marginally talented “winners” running around the country extolling the virtues of making a mistake? Let’s face it: that’s what many “baby mamas” have done. They got knocked up by some loser who couldn’t or wouldn’t marry them. That’s a mistake. You don’t go around singing songs praising your mistakes. You correct them. But let’s assume -— and believe me, this is only for argument’s sake -— that Fantasia is right, and that “baby mamas” do deserve praise. Why do they deserve more praise than the sisters who decide to get married and then have children? Why do “baby mamas” deserve more praise than those sisters who decided to wait before either having children or getting married and decided to attend college and get a career and degree first? And isn’t Fantasia ignoring the wealth of problems single motherhood has brought black America? If I’ve heard one person involved in juvenile justice matters tell me once, they’ve told me a score of times: most of the young black men in “the system” come from homes with a single mother. No father around. In a town like Baltimore, where 75 percent of black boys don’t graduate from high school, you can bet most of those dropouts are the sons of “baby mamas.” Speaking at Morgan State University two years ago, author Jawanza Kunjufu told a room full of black folks that “the greatest demon in black America is fatherlessness. The common variable for the black dropout rate, the incarceration rate and drug use is the daddy didn’t stay.” Kunjufu noted that 90 percent of black families had a father in the home in 1920 and 80 percent as recently as 1960. Today the figure is 32 percent. “Slavery did not destroy the black family,” Kunjufu correctly concluded. It took a value shift of seismic proportion among black Americans of the latter part of the 20th century to do what slavery, white racists and white racism couldn’t do in the hundreds of years before. And now we have dimwitted people like Fantasia celebrating that value shift in songs extolling the virtues of being a “baby mama.” She’ll have her defenders, I’m sure. There’ll be folks saying that some baby mamas do wonders for their children, struggle against overwhelming odds and have it going on. But included in the baby mama numbers are those teen-age girls -— poor, uneducated and unemployed -— who do neither themselves nor their children a favor by giving birth too soon. It also includes those baby mamas on crack or heroin who shouldn’t even have thought of conceiving a child. And Fantasia’s song was a tribute to all baby mamas. “All” is one of the least ambiguous words in the English language. It doesn’t mean some. It doesn’t mean most. “All” means all. ------- It's incredible how the people that know the least are the first to offer advice.
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