A New Opportunity for African American Fathers

The Academy of African American Fathers was founded and established by an African American Brother named,Antonio Celester,of Boston Massachusetts. This training academy was designed to address the "unique issues" of African American fathers,who are in need of assistance and new contemporary approaches to becoming more successful in facing and dealing with their parental responsibilities.

These unique issues included,but not limited to, violence against each other,family abuses,poverty,negative images of Black fathers that distort our children's' ability to want to succeed or reproduce their own like kind,high homicide rates against each other with a code of silence,drug and alcohol abuse,high incarceration rates of fathers,disconnectedness of family, and high rates of negative lifestyle choices,leaving families without a responsible male role as essential elements.

There is no other race of people that meets all of these categories in excessive numbers. The numbers are the same no matter what city you are in and there are a significant number of African Americans present. This is the reality and this reality needs a real solution The Academy of African American Fathers is taking a new approach by addressing the need of African American fathers by approaching the fatherhood initiatives through the eyes of and from the African American experience of fatherhood.

We believe that fathers could make better choices when they learn more about those choices from those who made those choices and from those who use those choices under the same conditions as they may find themselves. We want to train African American fathers in the best practices for African African fathers and do so from a legacy point of view that enlightens fathers to new levels of consciousness in their responsibility as a parent. An examination or survey of the current fatherhood initiative programs around the country,purported to help fathers, are actually doing fathers a disservice.

First, most of those programs focus on the financial aspect of parenting. Most fathers are mandated to attend,which means they are "forced" by the courts or some other agency having the power to enforce child support laws. second,childhood educators are not being specific about their reasons for developing parental involvement initiatives targeting fathers and positive male role models.

Finally,the programs do not meet the Department of Health and Human Services mandate to be "culturally competent" to the people that program serves. In my personal view, "cultural competence" means that you must be "culturally qualified" in the program that serves that ethnic group;in this case it would be "fatherhood". The department of HHS use of the term "cultural competent" is the same as saying that they recognize that parenthood is "cultural" in nature and therefore to help people within that frame work you must be cultural competent. However, the department of HHS is not in a position to enforce such a theory.

It would amount to mandating programs to adjust to each cultural background of each diverse participant in each community in order to obtain such an objective. This ,of course, is impractical as applied in fatherhood programs. The practical solution would be to form ethnic based programs that address the needs of those ethnic groups,which everyone seems to agree is so diverse ,outside of the legal implications to all fathers. In short, the legal implications decide how you pay and that you pay and to whom you pay,but do not address how to become a better parent so that you feel good about paying and taking your responsibility as a father and can maintain that without legal force.

This was left to the department of HHS where fathers wanted help and the government had to respond, once fathers are held accountable and responsible for fathering children. The question then arise...who is more culturally competent than those from that culture. I submit that in this case, African American fathers are culturally competent to run African American fatherhood programs and agenda. Who is better experienced in African American fatherhood than African American fathers that have been positive roles, no matter what their circumstances dictated. Fathers should demand nothing less than someone cultural competent.

This shows that the program respects their legacies. If African American fathers truly want to change their situation and be counted as real fathers securing the future of all of our children,than we must look at the obvious way to do it. Learn from each other using our own family legacies and experiences,that we may have a chance to make better choices and at the same time change our negative mind set about how we look at each other and our family lifestyle choices.

We need to promote and produce more positive images of African American fathers and their children relationships and include our incarcerated fathers in the overall plan and new order for our family lifestyle choices. We can do this by establishing Academy training centers across the country. They will be set up as "pilot programs" with an African American legacy and experience approach to our fatherhood issues.

If you are a 501(c)(3) non profit organization or an existing fatherhood program or a program practitioner,or an agency that serves the African American population and you want to start or sponsor a pilot program in your area for the African American population, contact us: Academy of African American Fathers, 617-825-AAAF or sent us an email at blackfathersinc@hotmail.com.


Antonio Celester Founder/Director of Programs