Ideas for Black Parents
Using discarded traditional cultural practices and values to enhance and strengthen parenting practices: using Jamaican Afrikan cultural heritage as an example
“Culture is for people as water is for fish, invisible, omnipresent and essential.”
Professor Wade Nobles
Everyone has a culture, the question is, are we in the right culture?
Introduction
This document is designed to provide practical tips and advice for Black parents looking to improve their parenting practice. Parenting is a trade that is taught and learned within a cultural context. It is the author’s belief that black children must be raised within a black culture if they are to become fully developed human beings (emotionally, psychologically, spiritually and physically) and it is the abandonment of traditional African cultural practices and values that is a contributing factor. important to the inability of black people to effectively resist the belief system known as racism or white supremacy that controls so much of what happens in the world today.
This paper sets out examples of cultural values and practices, drawn from Jamaican Afrikaans culture, which, if reinstated, would lead to an immediate and significant improvement in parent-child relationships in the Afrikaans community in the UK. Although taken from Jamaica as an example, these values/practices are African cultural holdovers that survived the Mangalize (sometimes called the Black Holocaust) and can be found throughout the African world.
ADVICE
o Your children are not your private property – ‘It takes a whole village to raise a child and many compounds to make a village’ (African proverb). Any adult should be able to talk to you or your child about your child’s behavior without automatically receiving a hostile response, since what your child does affects the community at large; Not only you.
o Big people’s Talk: certain conversations are not suitable for children/young people. As the Jamaicans say: “Mature strength is never good.”
o Me an yu ain’t Quabs/Size – Don’t give up your responsibilities as a parent with liberal notions of treating your kids like little adults. The tail is not moved by the lion and your children will never be the size with you. Parenthood is not a democracy.
o If you are one day older, you have a responsibility to the younger: this idea comes from the African cultural practice of age classification. Our culture is to teach the older child to take care of the younger ones.
o Proverbs and Parables: Africans around the world teach morals and values through proverbs and parables. The Anancy stories that originated in West Africa and crossed the Atlantic are prime examples. He uses proverbs, parables, and stories to teach ancient wisdom. For example, ‘Patient Man rides a donkey, the fool will always walk’.
o Aunt, Uncle, or Mr. and Mrs. – Why do our children now call adults, even older ones, by their first names? Africans believe in age classification and respect for elders. We believe in non-biological aunts and uncles. Let’s reteach these principles.
o Eat together: Families that eat together (with the TV off) stay together. Everyone is busy, however we need to find some time to meet and talk.
o Bedtime: Children need more sleep than adults. This includes teenagers. A five-year-old needs about 13 hours of sleep a night. If a young person is still growing, he needs more sleep than an adult.
o Bad company: parents should know their children’s friends and the parents of these friends. Be sure to introduce yourself to the parents of your child’s friends. Children are always in communication with each other, parents also need to talk to each other. Remember ‘The fruit never falls far from the tree’.
o Extended Family Reenactment – Remember when family and friends used to show up and be welcomed and there was food in the Dutch oven for them? Let’s try to visit family and friends more often, go on group vacations together, and rebuild our extended family (both biological and non-biological).
o Chores: All children should have age-appropriate chores for which they should not be paid. It is about Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility). Children are not to be excused from household chores.
o Control of the media: there is a media onslaught promoting a degenerate ‘black’ subculture. Don’t put TVs in your kids’ bedroom, it’s hard enough to control their media diet without adding to the problem. Watch your favorite shows with them and decode pictures with them. Don’t let them watch particular movies just because their friends have seen them. Your friends’ parents don’t necessarily share your value system. Listen to your child’s CD collection. Do not allow ‘laziness’ to be played in your house even if they hear it outside. Hold on to what is acceptable within your home. Reconsider your own media diet and the values you are being exposed to. Try listening to conscious black media, for example internet radio stations like http://www.libradio.com http://www.innerlightradio.com
