This will be my first Father’s Day without my dad, and I never thought it could be this hard.
Not a day goes by that I don’t think about him, where I don’t miss him, wishing I could talk with him just one more time. But I know part of him lives on. I see him in my brothers, who, like him, are quintessential dads, and that gives me comfort.
He was a fighter, my dad. Every time he got knocked down, even after six different fights with cancer, he kept getting back up. I remember that most of all and appreciate the example it set for me. Lord knows we need it now.
You see, my dad was born in the early 1950s (1952 to be exact) and for a young man born in segregated South Carolina two years before Brown vs Board of Education and 13 years before the Voting Rights Act, the challenges came one after the other while the opportunities were few and far between if they existed at all.
For him, there wasn’t much of a choice. Either you could be a fighter, or you could just give up and resign yourself to a life of poverty, deprivation and worse. Unfortunately, that isn’t much different from the way things are right now. The challenges Black men face today across America are, in some cases, even more challenging than the world he faced.
Think about the fact that, in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed an executive order that banned segregation in federal contracts. But last year, President Trump repealed it.
In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, empowering federal law enforcement to investigate and prosecute civil rights violations. But Trump ordered the Department of Justice to stop those investigations and prosecutions.
Related: Why Black America Isn’t Taking MAGA’s Bait Over These Lies
When my father was 12 years old, Congress passed the Food Stamp Act to build a wall against starvation for American families, but Trump and his allies started tearing it down brick by brick, slashing SNAP benefits for our families so he could give billionaires another tax break.
More than half a million Black men lost their jobs between November and February, and 600,000 Black women are out of work right now. Overall unemployment in America is at 4.3% while the Black unemployment rate is 7.3%…and Trump says, “We’re doing very well with the Black jobs.”
Trump is defunding medical research at every turn, while Black men are 30% more likely to die from heart disease and 60% more likely to die from stroke than white men. We have higher rates of oral cancer, prostate cancer, diabetes and HIV/AIDS, and we’re 75% less likely to have health insurance than white men.
Black farmers have had over $127 million in USDA grants ripped away by MAGA’s war on DEI. They’re whitewashing our history, erasing everything from the horrors of slavery to Jackie Robinson. They’re closing rural hospitals, jacking up the cost of health insurance, keeping poor children off Medicaid, and, since the MAGA Supreme Court decided to gut the Voting Rights Act, Trump launched an effort to wipe majority Black Congressional Districts off the map.
My father’s generation had an obligation to fight, and now my generation has an opportunity and obligation to fight even harder. So, this Father’s Day, let’s take a lesson from my father because it was one of the most valuable lessons he taught me.
Keep fighting, son. Don’t you ever stop fighting.
I know that my father is watching me right now. Just like I know someone is watching you. They’re counting on us to get up even when the bad guys knock us down. They’re counting on us to fight because it’s the only way to win our future. It’s the most important lesson they taught us.
Let’s show them we were listening and have a Happy Father’s Day weekend.
