The Erasure of Black Fathers in Procter & Gamble’s “The Talk”

By:  Asher Primus

P&G’s The Talk commercial has shook the white community as they refuse to take responsibility for the PTSD that black people have suffered for centuries.

Granted the commercial has touched the black community, I could not help but notice erasure of a particular narrative.  There are two versions of the commercial.  The longer version reveals brief scene cuts (from the shorter version) that reveals the situations what led to the talk and a black family attending their son’s baseball game.  Even though the father was present, he was mute as the mother explains racial bias.

Short version:

Original version:

I am honestly not surprised that the direct victims of racism cannot school their own sons on the black male experience.  It is not to say that black mothers have nothing to contribute, rather the problem is that rawness of the talk is censored, watered down or just erased due to the stereotype of being a deadbeat father.

I learned about racism when I was a child thanks to my father who did not give me a kiddie version of the talk.  I was also conscious early, so I was never Christian and knew about the black power movement before it became a trendy collection of fake historians and philosophers whom we call “Black Twitter”.  I was shocked that my peers (during my elementary school years) did not know who of Marcus Garvey, Noble Drew Ali or Malcolm X.  Trust me, black people are now being woke.  I remember the reaction my mother had when I wanted to donate my Malcolm X book, she feared those lessons of America’s past would ruin those children.  Black people did not talk about black Muslims, so it took awhile for him to become a household name until BET aired Spike Lee’s Malcolm X.  Malcolm X would be labeled among other blacks as a racist.  Of course, Noble Drew Ali would never get a mention in a traditional history book, but I only heard Marcus Garvey’s name once in class.

Black men have been conscious.  It is nothing to beat our chest over, but our grievances with the system were not taken seriously until now.  Our decisions on racism were discarded as a failed blaxploitation-like attitude that pandered our own personal failures and that is half true; but the acknowledgement of racism is not a personal crutch for laziness.  It took long enough for people to notice that black men were getting fucked over by the police and being denied job opportunities.

Black men and women see revolution differently, hence why there is a rift between black feminism and the conscious community.  Black men are not into feminism or fighting other people’s battles since we often get nothing in return.  What do black people gain in stopping Islamophobia when Arab supremacy reigns over Africans who they do even see as brothers and sisters under Allah.  Black feminists felt some type of way as black men did not defend Korryn Gaine’s after her death and controversial radical lifestyle.  These women threatened to not march for black men again, even Christlyn Karazin of Beyond Black & White took advantage of the situation by collect viewers for Google Hangout.

Unlike, the “take it in the @$$” mentality P&G tried to promote, black men are not or at least should not allow white men to punk them.  What P&G won’t write in the script are black men leading and directing the community to arm themselves, practice group economics and creating legacies.

Whether the commercial was a real presentation of black mothers talking to their sons, then they might as well raise their sons to be professional victims who use religion and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s rhetoric to justify their powerlessness.  Black mothers love their sons, but thet are leading them to a trap that is preventing them from becoming men.  Having sons become the next Christopher Dorner, Gavin Long and Micah Johnson is a death wish, but an effective message.  Sadly.  Black people fall for the ookie-doke as they are shocked that some their own people take revolution too far, since talking noise on Twitter is safer and fun.

White America is itching to find their black domestic terrorist to paint African Americans as the real racist.  It’s gotten damn silly as they whitesplain why they feel threatened by Black Lives Matter.  Truth be told, many of these hot and fiery Afrocentrics and black feminists are too scared for radical change because they will lose the few privileges whites have allowed them to have, like the crumbs of the American Pie.

Black men have no real interest in going to Africa to rebuild the ancient cities that they have studied all of their lives.  They are ill-equipped.  Even black women are not that serious as they do not want to piss off white men too much since white men are their employers and also still possess a juxtapose love-hate relationship as black women love explaining humanity to white people.  The film and Netlfix series Dear White People was made the same way as it depicted racism as black people crying for attention.  We saw black college students that were so pro-black that they did not even try to attend an HBCU.

Sadly, The Talk will do more harm than good as solutions are not being made.