E-mail a friendLeonard Pitts Jr.
airdate June 19, 2006
In '04, nationally syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. He was awarded for his 'vibrant columns that spoke, with both passion and compassion, to ordinary people on often divisive issues.' Born and raised in Southern California, Pitts started at The Miami Herald as a pop music critic and later began writing about pop culture, social issues and family life in his own column. His book, Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood, was a best-seller.
Leonard Pitts Jr.
Tavis: Leonard Pitts, Jr. is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the 'Miami Herald' whose twice-weekly column appears in more than 200 newspapers across the country. His 1999 book about what it means to be a father in today's society is now out in paperback. The book is called 'Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood.' Leonard Pitts, nice to have you back on the program. And in person.
Leonard Pitts, Jr.: It is nice to be on the program and in person.
Tavis: How you doing, man?
Pitts: I'm good. How about yourself?
Tavis: I'm doing well.
Pitts: Good.
Tavis: My first thought when I picked this up and remembered that this first came out in 1999, the first thought to hit me was whether or not you think anything has changed with regard to being a father, just in the span of time from '99 to '06. Is that a dumb question?
Pitts: No, no, there are no dumb questions. No, I think more people are talking about it now.
Tavis: Yeah.
Pitts: Much as would love to take all the credit, I think a lot of the credit also goes to some of the issues that Bill Cosby's raised over the last few years. But I think more people are talking about and really dealing with the importance of Black fatherhood, and the ways that we need to sort of return to our communities
Tavis: Before I return to your book, since you mentioned Cosby first, what do you think Cosby contributed, specifically, to the conversation about Black fatherhood?
Pitts: Well, when I think whenever you're talking about the failings of Black children, which is basically what we're talking about, you're talking about Black parenting. And I think by implication, Black parenting is Mom and Dad. So I think that what he is essentially doing is calling us back to the importance of Black family. The importance of rearing children.
There were things that I was taught in my, we had what we called home training. And things that you just don't do out that are now done out. And I think that by implication, he's talking, that's how I interpret it. He's talking about both. He's talking about Mom and Dad.
Tavis: Yeah. Let me talk about your childhood, if I might.
Pitts: You might.
Tavis: And I raise this only because what's fascinating for me about your story is that you write so poignantly and so passionately about being a father, as you are now. And yet, it's written by a guy who didn't have a great relationship at all with his own father.
Pitts: Right.
Tavis: Talk about that.
Pitts: Well, my dad was an alcoholic. I tell people my dad drank for a living. And when he was not drinking, he was the sweetest guy in the world. But he was seldom not drinking. And when he was drinking, he could be pretty abusive. Particularly my mother and me, we got sort of the brunt of it. And I think with me, it was the fact that I was not the son that he had anticipated having.
I was not the guy he wanted as a son. My father was a farmer's son with, like, seven years of formal schooling. And his idea of a man or a boy is out there, rough and tumble, and playing ball, etcetera, etcetera. I was basically born with a book in my hand. (Laughs)
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs)
Pitts: I said when I was five years old, I'm gonna be a writer, which is a weird thing for a child to say at five years old, when you're supposed to be saying I'm gonna be the sheriff or I'm gonna be a fireman, or whatever. I wanted to be a writer. So I really think that at some fundamental level, he really did not know how to deal with me. This kid whose idea of a fun time, 'Daddy, let's go to the library,' was not something (laughs) he really knew how to deal with.
Tavis: I wonder to what extent, then, you think that the disconnect between fathers and sons has to do sometimes with that very fact? That a father ends up having a son who turns out not to be the kind of son that he wanted. I have aspects of that. I love my father dearly to this day, and we get along much better now than we used to, but there are aspects of that in my own childhood, as you and I have discussed before, that sometimes, you're not the kind of son your father wanted you to be. Now, over a period of time, you can get past that, but how much of that disconnect you think has to do with that?
Pitts: I think a lot of it has to do with that, not just in African American fathers, but fathers and sons in general. There's sort of this whole thing of Dad's looking to you as somebody he's gonna live vicariously through. Or somebody that is gonna be what he wanted to be, or do the things that he wanted to do in life. And I think sometimes parents, fathers or mothers, fail to understand that's a whole separate human being there.
That's a separate human being with his or her own make-up, personality, the desires, aspirations, etcetera, etcetera, and you have to honor that as opposed to trying to make him or her into what it is that you think they ought to be.
Tavis: How does being a father in Black differ significantly from being a father of any other color?
Pitts: Well, I think it's funny you should say that, 'cause whenever people ask me that question, I go flash back to an old Richard Pryor routine where he's in a bank, trying to cash a check or whatever. And somebody calls him the N word. And I'm paraphrasing, 'cause it's been a long time since I heard this routine. But Pryor's basic thing was I gotta go through everything else that you guys gotta go through.
I gotta pay my bills, I gotta fight with my wife, I gotta argue with my children, this, that, and the other, plus this. That's how race impacts being a father. I gotta deal with all the other things that any other father has to deal with, in terms of kids, clean up your room, in terms of kids, what who you hang out with. In terms of kids growing up to be a good person.
But I've also gotta teach my sons this is what you do when the police pull you over, because they will. And this is what is expected of you by your teachers, or in the wider world. And it's not really what you need to be expecting of yourself. I have to add all that stuff onto the things that you ordinarily are teaching as a father.
Tavis: A couple of things that strike me as fascinating about this conversation that we increasingly have in the country about fatherhood. On the one hand, and I wanna get your take on this. On the one hand, we've seen people decrying all the time the fact that there aren't enough fathers present in the home. And that conversation is a legitimate conversation.
On the other hand, though, how do I wanna phrase this? One could come to believe that fathers don't have to be there anymore because there are, in fact, so many single parent families. So many single mothers who are heading households today. What's the case to be made that a father still really does need to be there for this child to be there for this child to be raised successfully? ‘Cause there are a lot of single moms who are doing it on their own.
Pitts: It's in the statistics. The whole thing about the single moms thing is I think we bought into a false belief with the feminist movement. We came to believe that men and women are interchangeable. We were taught that men and women are equal, which they are, but men and women are not the same. There's a difference between the same and equal, okay?
And we, as men, bring different strengths and weaknesses to the table than women bring. I think that's where we've sort of fallen down, and the thing that we have sort of missed. If you look at these statistics, the child who was raised without Dad in the house, biological Dad, which is fascinating to me. Not just stepdad or father figure, but biological dad, child who's raised without a biological dad is more likely to be a teenage parent, more likely to go to jail, more likely to do poorly in school.
Obviously more likely to live in poverty, because the income is not there. I think 40 percent, if I'm not mistaken, of Black single mothers are trying to get by on $25,000 or less a year. I mean, without Dad, a child is heir to all of these problems and all these challenges and all of these dysfunctions. And yet, we never really have talked about that. We always quantify Dad, his value, as bringing home the bacon.
But there's all this whole other universe of things that Dad brings into the household that somehow doesn't get valued like it should be.
Tavis: I'm not a scientist, obviously, and for that matter, wasn't even a good science student. So maybe that's why I just missed your point. (Laughs) I missed the point about the connection of the biological father being in the house. That's fascinating to me.
Pitts: That was a study that I saw which really kind of broke my heart, and frankly, I don't know if I want to believe it. 'Cause I am a stepfather of two kids. But the study which came out a couple of years ago said that contrary to what you would intuit, what you would believe, that having a stepfather in the home, it was specifically talking about the likelihood of the young men of going to jail, does not alter the likelihood that that young man's gonna go to jail if his biological father's not involved. As a matter of fact, it said having a stepfather in a home slightly increases the likelihood that that young man is gonna go to jail.
Tavis: All right, so as a stepfather with two boys, what'd that do to you?
Pitts: Luckily, my kids were adult at the time (unintelligible).
Tavis: (Laughs) You might have just thrown the towel in, huh?
Pitts: (Laughs) I think I would have just said oh, God, I'm doomed here. That really kind of shook me up, though. But what it reinforced for me is this idea that we all have this need to know where we came from. We wanna be seen by that man that we came from. I think the idea is that as children, I think we think Mom has no choice. Mom's gotta be here. But Dad, I think, in our conception, has a choice. And I think we want him to choose us.
Tavis: Stepfather or biological father, given what you did and did not have with your father, how did that impact how you went about fathering these two boys? In your own way?
Pitts: Yeah, actually, I got three boys.
Tavis: Three boys, right, yeah.
Pitts: Including the other stepchild. It was difficult, because you're constantly looking for a model as to what to do. In terms of teaching them things that I think are moral and values that I think are proper, I can go to my mom's teachings, and there's a bunch of stuff there. But in terms of teaching them how to walk like men in this world, that's a whole different challenge, because that's the one thing my mom couldn't teach me.
And I found myself literally looking from every source from friends that I knew. This is how they do it; maybe I should do it like that. Men who were like father figures or mentors to me when I was growing up. Bill Cosby on the 'Cosby Show.' Mike Brady on 'The Brady Bunch.' Whoever seemed to have a clue.
And that's really kind of sad, 'cause basically what you should be able to, your first model should be that man who brought you into the world. But I had to make a conscious decision to reject that, because if I hadn't, it'd be a completely different book, and we'd be telling a completely different story. (Laughs)
Tavis: Speaking of the book, you talk about no-fault fatherhood, which is a fascinating concept. Share it with me.
Pitts: I talk about this whole idea that we've sort of evolved a no-fault society, where Dad can leave the house, and there's no stigma attached. There's no sense of shame attached to the fact that a man has children, but then has no relationship with them. And I think that's very troubling. If Mom leaves the household, we're gonna look down our noses at her.
We're gonna, what was wrong with her? But if Dad decides to walk out on the household, it's somehow sort of become okay. Several of the people that I interviewed in that book told stories which I found very gripping. One young lady that I know had her first child and at the hospital exit interview, the nurse said, are you married?
And the woman said, a young Black woman, she said yes, I am. And the nurse said, 'You're married? Wow, that's odd.' And that just tells you how we have normalized this whole idea of the father is not there, is not supposed to be there.
Tavis: How would we go about putting that kind of public shame, if you will, on a father, never mind color, for walking out on his or her babies?
Pitts: Again, it's the kind of thing, when we talk about these things, we want quick answers. And the fact of the matter is it took us a while to get here. It took us some work to get here. It's gonna take us some work to get out. But the way that we get out is deciding that as a society and as a culture, we're gonna do men the honor, 'cause I consider it an honor, of being held accountable.
Nobody does Black men the honor of holding them accountable. Black women do not often hold Black men - do not do us the honor of holding us accountable. I say often, and I've been married 25 years now this month, but I remember what it was like trying to get the attention of the girl that I was attracted to, let's say. And I know that wherever she set the bar, that's how high I'm gonna jump. And we don't have African American women setting the bar like that for us, as they once did.
Tavis: That's a fascinating formulation, though. I've never heard it put that way. The honor of being held accountable.
Pitts: When somebody's holding you accountable, they're saying, I have expectations of you. I believe that you can be here.
Tavis: 'Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood,' by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Leonard Pitts, Jr. Now out in paperback. Leonard, nice to see you.
Pitts: It's nice to see you, too. Thank you.
Tavis: Happy Father's Day, belated.
Pitts: Thank you very much; appreciate it.
Tavis: Up next, the little-known story of the last African American jockey to win the Kentucky Derby. A fascinating story. Stay with us. (Laughs)
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