A production of the South Carolina Educational Television Network.

♪ Adrian Hayes> The American Black family continually is undergoing monumental changes.

Those changes have taken years to evolve.

Politics.

The church, the schools and the economy are just a few of the catalysts.

that have caused those changes.

Today on the Job Man Caravan, we'll investigate where the Black family has been and where it's headed.

♪ Thank you for joining us.

I'm Adrian Hayes.

>> And I'm Bill Terrell.

Welcome to the Job Man Caravan.

The basic unit of any society is the family.

And today on the Job Man Caravan specifically, we're going to talk about the Black family.

With us to talk on that subject, Dr Augustus Rogers.

Dr Rogers is associate professor of social work at the University of South Carolina.

Dr. Tony Gore, who is a psychiatrist with the University of South Carolina Medical School.

And Dr. Wade Nobles, who is a research psychologist, Oakland, California, director of the Black Think Tank Institute and also a faculty member at San Francisco State University or college.

Did I get that right, Dr. Nobles?

>> University, yes.

>> Now when we talk about the Black family unit.

First of all, we need to assess, in your estimation, Dr. Nobles, where we are in 1984 with a Black family unit.

>> I think that you have to, kind of rephrase the question.

You can look at the Black family, 1984, and you can talk about the Black family in terms of our condition.

And, and look at the fact that some of the Black, some Black families, changing their structure in terms of becoming more and more single parent households.

You can look at the fact that some Black families are living below the poverty level and there's, you know, various statistics.

One third of all Black families live below the poverty level.

So that's an important piece of information to understand how we do what we do in the family.

41% of our families are now being headed by one parent.

That's an important statistic in terms of looking at how we do what we do as a family.

You can look at the unemployment rate and use that as a measure of where the Black family is.

And you can look at, the way in which certain communities are changing in terms of those areas where people engage in productive activity.

ie, That the society is moving from a labor intensive society to an information intensive society.

So as we look at our skills, in terms of what we do to support our families, that's rapidly changing.

So you can look at the Black family in those ways.

But that's just one piece of the equation, because just talking about the condition of Black families, you have to also look at those other variables that go into making up life space activities like the psychology of people, the value orientations, the cultural base of people.

When you look at those kinds of things in terms of the Black family, what you see is that the Black family is pretty much doing what it knows how to do best.

And in recognition of the awesome kind of power that we have undergone, given the racism given economic exploitation in the society, given the premeditated attempt to exclude Black folks from access to those things that benefit life.

So when you look at those, the whole variable look at condition, look at culture, look at, the consciousness of a people.

Then you begin to see that the Black family is struggling as it has been.

I always like to point out that when people talk about the Black family, United States, and they ask and they look at, you know, where we are and this, this devastation is there, you know, problems in the Black family.

I have to ask people to look at the long side, do the long side view, because the fact of the matter is that when we look at our history, what you see is that, three, four, five, 6000 years before the birth of Christ, Black families had worked out what it was to be a Black family.

I mean, all the kind of development of human civilization that was created by Black folk was not created by individuals as created by folk living and families working out that dynamic.

And so when you look at that kind of perspective, if we've been doing this stuff for 6000 years before the birth of Christ, and then we were kind of put into another kind of Western Hemisphere, and we've got 300 or 400 years here, in another kind of condition, then you put those in balance.

And so you have to ask, what are the kinds of changes where the critical changes that have occurred in Black family dynamics, given the 6000 year part of it versus the 300 year part of it?

And so it's not just where we are today, but it's the whole long side of, perspective.

And I think that in general, we are struggling with some very serious problems in our family dynamic.

Some families are suffering more in that struggle and losing more in the struggle.

Some families are doing fairly well in that struggle.

And so it's a larger picture.

Hayes> What does anyone here think is the most serious problem affecting the Black family today?

1984 >> One of the most serious problems that, Black families and Black people are experiencing in 1984, in my opinion, and based upon various studies with which I have been, acquainted, in my teaching, is related to economics.

The Black family is growing and undergoing tremendous economic stress, in America today.

And, as a consequence or as a result of this over- whelming economic stress, we see symptoms being evidenced in many other aspects of our lives.

There's a higher relationship or higher correlation based upon research between economic stress and the rising incidence of mental illness, and other illnesses that might be associated with stress.

As Dr. Nobles pointed out a moment ago, still, in America, or even at this time in America, we still have one third of the Black population that is officially, according to governmental statistics, defined as poverty stricken individuals.

And that number is just it's believable.

I was going to say that is unbelievable.

But it is believable... because there are the facts to support it.

And what I want to say is that it's a it's a high disproportionate figure of Black folk comprising that those poverty statistics.

It is it is much too high.

I think that we ought to be concerned right now in terms of a major challenge of coming up with innovative ways and ideas by which we can we can diminish or lessen, you know, the level at which we are now, impacted upon by these, poverty conditions and these poverty statistics, if you will.

But aside from there, I wanted to sort of follow up on one of the ideas that Dr. Nobles mentioned a moment ago relative to the historical, implications of the Black family.

And I think that this is an idea that we should certainly stress as much as possible whenever we're involved in this kind of dialog.

The Black family, if you will, is one of the oldest institutions in the civilization of man.

It has a history that far advances that of the birth of Christ, if you will.

And if we think about and look at that history in terms of where the Black family began and where it is now, we would have to, we would have to agree that it is one of the most viable institutions.

In the history of civilization, from a spiritual or theological point of view, we can say that the Black family has been that mechanism through which we have come from where we began to where we are now, and it has been so viable that it has brought us through many stresses, many storms, many difficulties and problems over the past that had that has allowed us to be a part of this kind of an experience in 1984.

>> Dr. Gore's strength has always been a hallmark of the Black family, and seeing the high poverty level of Blacks today, the female headed households of Blacks today.

How would you describe the psychological effect that these conditions have on the Black family today, or members who are it, below the poverty level and also the female headed households and trying to struggle to keep a family unit together?

>> I don't know about a, you know, like an exact specific answer.

I think we have to look at some of the things that Dr. Nobles initiated, and that is how we know what we know now.

And maybe to introduce, another aspect of it, some of our stress is related to what we've learned and how we've been educated and as now, this is maybe a process to share some information.

But other than this, most people get their education from watching TV or looking at the news.

And so that if you watch on the news and you might remember in the 60s, they told you you should be depressed if you lived in a ghetto.

Well, if you hear that a thousand times, obviously you will become depressed, because if you can think if a 60 second commercial can affect your mind for a lifetime.

I talk to young lady, 60 some years old, and she still knows, although she's never smoke, that a certain cigarette tastes good like it should, and people listening might know what that cigarette is.

Yet that advertisement has been gone for some time.

So for 60 seconds repeated, this can occur, imagine what can happen if someone has told you over and over that if you live in the ghetto, you should be depressed.

And if you're depressed, what should you do?

If you're depressed, you should either commit suicide, run away from your family.

And I think a lot of the stress we experience is based on ignorance, that we have a choice not to obey what we've been trained to do.

And I didn't say educated.

I said trained like little dogs are trained to fetch a bone.

We're trained to respond with knee jerk response if someone says something negative, then you get mad.

Someone says that Black is inferior.

then you're taught that and you believe it.

And that was trained and taught to people, in the not too distant past.

Hays> Dr. Gore, how can we as a people rise above this?

>> One of the mechanism is to become educated but not educated in the classical sense, to be an educated but educated in the sense of how our emotions work, how our minds work, and bring that down on a level where it can be explained and not maybe in chemical concepts, but in a simple concept that religion, to a certain extent tells people.

And as a man thinketh, so is he.

And to have mechanisms to show people that this is the case, which would be some positive show some things that are on audiotapes, or to listen to a program and find out that, you know, we started in Egypt and that as a matter of fact, medicine started there, which is not taught in hotel.

It was the first person who had medicine and religion in the same category, and he separated the two, which most people will attribute it to someone else, and that he was high priest to King Professor who built the first pyramids, to know that we have this type of history so that it didn't start when you just get the pyramids that everyone else see.

But there were pyramids built that preceded them, and it was by a Black man to know that we have that type of heritage, to have that information, to get that confidence and pride inside.

>> Now, when you speak of our heritage and of course, Dr. Nobles, you first talked about our heritage.

When you think about the things, the values of Black people, and as we go back to the cradle of civilization and, the Black family unit, what have been some of the values that Black people have had that have helped to sustain them?

But even these values have been under assault for a long time.

And and how do you see these values today, these same sustaining values for Black people?

>> One of the things that we've tried to do at the Institute is to, is try to explicate these values and to understand the historical development of them, and at some point try to, talk about how those values operate in our day to day lives.

It seems to me that out of that work, that the most fundamental value has to do with a people's belief about the nature of their being or the nature of existence.

And when you look at African, communities and African culture going back as far as you want to go, you find that the fundamental value is a value about spirit.

Or in contemporary terms we talk about spirituality, our religiosity, but it really is the belief and it is a technical term for it is called the ontological principle of consubstantiation.

Now that consubstantiation means literally that spiritually or the essence of humans is to be of the same spirit or power or force or energy.

So you can talk about a spirit that spirits the value of force or power energy.

And depending upon your physicist, you may say energy.

If you're in this, you may say spirit.

But the issue here is that Africans believe that the essence of being, the essence of life, was this guiding force or this guiding power, or this guiding spirit.

That value is the very thing that you can begin to see as, as a rule governing our behavior.

As you come down the historical pike, you begin to see that notion of spirit that we are all one people, that we are one as a guiding principle that motivated and defined the movement in terms of this country, of Marcus Garvey or the Nation of Islam.

You look at all the, all the Civil Rights movement, all were really based upon the spiritual connection of Black people.

You take that inside the family.

You see the same thing, that Black families operate out of an assumption that we are all the same thing, that my children are the same regardless of their achievement.

That that, you know, mothers, Black mothers would say that you're my son, no matter whether you are a pimp, a preacher or a minister or whatever, that you're still my son.

They may not take pride in the fact that you chose to be a crook.

But the fact of the matter is that, you know, Black mothers will fight you tooth and nail over that crook because the issues that we have the same spirit, the same essence.

So that's the that's the initial value.

And then you begin to look at other values that, that permeate in the Black family, and you see the notions of that come out of that.

You see a behavioral style, for example, the what we define as mutual aid or mutual responsibility that the Black community and Black families have operated under this value, orientation of mutual aid or mutual responsibility, that is our responsibility to aid each other, particularly in times of crisis or ceremony and that mundane middle you don't see you don't see that because our job sometimes force us to act, not in a an African or Black way, but in those ceremonial terms that we have control over.

And in the crisis times, you see the what we call the "Africanity" operating in the Black family.

So the value orientations are very clear and they come out of this fundamental position, which is that, which is a spiritual position or the notion of, consubstantiation.

Hays> Dr. Rogers, the Black family does not operate in a vacuum.

We are part of a larger society.

And as a social worker, I'm sure you must have some ideas on how we interact with the other community.

How has this affected us as a people and the traditions that we hold dear as a people?

>> I would agree, certainly, with your statement to the effect that the Black family does not operate in a vacuum.

And in response to the question and in relation to something that, Dr. Nobles mentioned a moment ago in terms of basic values, he talked about the sense of spirit, having a profound, meaning, relative to the Black experience.

I think a basic value, that we have as a people is a sense of family.

Nuclear, if you will, as well as extended family and, in terms of, of the notion that you've suggested that we don't operate in a vacuum, I believe that we relied upon family in many instances as a means by which we have been able to negotiate, develop strategies by which we have been able to negotiate the environment on a day to day basis in meeting basic needs, survival needs.

Whenever there's been crises in the Black family, we've had the benefit of being able to rely upon and call upon members of the clan, if you will, kinsmen outside of the immediate family who have been able to come to our aid and to our assistance.

In many instances, you find that we've had a pattern of migration when it has come to the notion of trying to improve our, our economic and social plight in life, migration from many instances from the in many instances from the rural community to urban settings.

We find that as we examine this pattern, we see where, a family member, for example, some years ago may have moved from a rural community, established domicile, and job stability in, in an urban setting.

And what is he done or what is that family member done?

That family member is in many instances served as a link whereby he is enabled other members to follow and to, to gain employment and, and to also make connections with other institutions that have allowed those family members to establish themselves in more economically and socially viable communities.

I think that, I think that examples of this nature, serve to, to help us see how the Black family has been very functional in terms of helping its various members to cope and also to survive, and not only to cope and survive, but in many instances to excel.

>> I would like to add to what, Dr. Rogers pointing out is that we had a, if you will, a philosophy or a cultural orientation that allowed us to successfully negotiate in spite of the racism, in spite of the oppression in this country, to negotiate our environment so that the great migratory movements that the Black Americans engaged in were successful simply because folk could come to the North and just find somebody who was from the same place in the South and not have any established blood ties, but have family.

And that's because of that principle of oneness or the spirituality that we see each other.

We see ourselves as one family.

Hays> But are we getting away from that?

Are we getting away from the traditional family?

>> For sure we are.

I think that the society, in order for the society to continue to oppress Black people and to exploit Black people, it has to create in us ideas that says we are not one people, that we are separate, that we are individual.

Because in doing that and it's just it's the same old silly, divide and conquer kind of strategy in doing that.

Then your condition, what happens to you becomes no concern of mine.

But as long as we are bonded and we are one, then what happens to you?

It is my responsibility to assist in you doing that.

And so it's a it's a political tactic to try to create the ideas in Black people that, you know, the big the first split was that Black people had no connection to Africa.

So that was the first kind of thing to try to separate us from the African connection so that we would see no source or substance in our African connection.

Then the next tactic was a separate us from ourselves.

And then, they did that for us by trying to separate the North from the South.

And was all these little silly things about northern Blacks were more intelligent than southern Blacks.

And so, if we start believing that then we start having this, this tension between ourselves, and then from that, they went to individually trying to separate the men and women Black women from Black men.

So it's all been that same strategy.

Terrell> This is the Job Man Caravan, and we're talking about the Black family It's already been pointed out that the hallmark of this society, the individualism, is alien to the culture of Afro-Americans in terms of the spirit and the belief.

And we all know that, people every day are bombarded by the idea of, to thine own self be true and those kinds of things.

Dr. Gore, the question to you is knowing the kinds of things that have taken place and are taking place at the demise or causing the demise of the Black family.

What can be done to implant once again in Black people's mind, that of the kinship and togetherness and working together, and that this has to be done if the Black family's to survive?

>> The first thing is to tell them that, probably there are myths that are generally planted in our head, and one is that the Black family is demising.

If you really look at the statistics, I don't have the numbers he has, but the last time I looked at them, there was not this great demise in the Black family.

And it's the statistics how they are used too because they talk about the, single household in Blacks, but they don't tell you there are more single household White female women in California, for example.

But you don't hear that.

So if you don't hear that, you don't know that.

And if you don't know that, you don't have to process that through your brain.

So the first thing I would say is there's no particular reason to discuss the demise of the Black family, because that's based on the inference that it's dying.

I don't think we should based on an emphasis that it's dying.

I think one of the things that I particularly see, almost any Black family that comes to the hospital, you see the absence of what Dr. Nobles is talking about and I tend to see a high population of people who are attempting suicide or grossly out of touch with reality.

And a lot of times a difference could have been made if the mother had listened to that son, if the wife had listened to that husband, that would have made the difference between the person maybe being disabled from trying to kill themselves disfigured, or having to go to the point of having his job disrupted after an attempted suicide.

All of his friends thinking he's crazy now he's trying to kill himself, his employer, and everyone afraid of him now because you never know what he'll do now if he's tried to kill himself, you next, and then he'll kill himself after.

These are the type of ideas I think we have to get out of people's mind that, you know, you can help each other and it's not based on.

We're going down the tubes, Terrell> Okay, we got about five minutes, and we're going to try to offer as many positive kinds of things to our viewers as possible.

Dr. Nobles, what would you suggest in terms of interactions, maybe exercises with families in communities, Black communities and families that should be done and continue to do to help strengthen the Black family.

>> So I think that we have two, two things.

One, we have to, in a very disciplined and methodical way, begin to study and reclaim our cultural base.

So we should make we should make a study of self meaning to ourself as a people, a celebration in the Black family.

So I think that what we do is we make study a job and a responsibility and sometimes a punishment.

We should make study of ourself a celebration and studying to the point of understanding ourselves.

The other, so that's one thing to methodically reclaim our cultural base in the context of reclaiming our cultural base, I think we should have a concept of cultural prerequisites.

The cultural prerequisites are those things we should see that are important to maintain in order to guarantee our cultural identity.

So we need a family to begin to talk about.

There is something of value in Black folk that we want to be conservative about, that we want to say we will not negotiate.

We will not compromise on these cultural prerequisites.

And I think there are several of them that we can identify.

The sense of spirituality is clearly one.

The sense of family is one, the sense of history.

If you think about it, Black folks have benefited from understanding the historical processes and therefore knowing who is we and who is they and who is the enemy and who is not the enemy.

So the sense of history is an important one.

Our language orientation has to do with our creative use of signs and symbols as a cultural prerequisite that we should begin to try to guarantee and to, to maintain.

Hays> Dr. Rogers, can you add anything to that?

>> One of the things that like to inject here, given the many demands and stresses that are imposed upon us by more than technological society, we know that there are many transitions occurring not only within Black families, but in all families and among people.

I think one of the things that I believe we should be begin to do more of and make a conscious effort to do, is spend more time together as families, parents and children together.

And if I think in terms of the assessment that I've done recently, I've come to realize and I'm having to make more of a conscious effort just to spend time for the purpose of talking, you know, to children and to my wife and as I, as I, as I've observed and as I've talked and conferred with fellow colleagues, spending time together for the purpose of education and sharing other kinds of experiences is something that is taking more and more of a conscious effort in order to accomplish.

Terrell> Dr. Gore give us a couple of positive kinds of things that first of all, parents can do with their children to help, to create and to buffer that good self-image, and also to form the kind of person that is going to continue the values that are needed in our society today.

>> Piggybacking so to speak, one, to have a positive self-image, or winning image, if you would, of yourself to think that you are valuable because children watch their parents, that the parents act submissive, or act in a manner that show they are less than others then the children will pick that up.

The other, specifically, in spending time, you can spend time reading stories, and almost all children have stories, but you can pick stories.

For example, although you may not want a certain beer on your label, there are the kings of Africa.

Just reading that to your child does something.

And you say you have the same blood in your vein and tell them that the same blood flows through your vein as Malcolm X and... You got the White House and all these things that came from it.

You tell that to your children, they start having some pride and say, yes, I'm Black, and they will have that.

And you express that same practice.

That's something you can do.

Turn the TV off and I'll let them watch shows that depict negative images.

And the other thing is there are audiotapes, and there's a specific series with cartoon characters that tells the child every day, you're responsible for yourself, you are a wonderful person, and you begin to program them.

You programmed them with that rather than have them.

And every morning- Hays> Constant re-enforcement?

>> constant, constant.

Tell them they are terrific, they are wonderful, and they will believe that themselves.

So then when the world attacks them, their shield is there.

They are not dummies.

Terrell> Okay, you got about 30 seconds Dr. Nobles.

What would you say?

>> I would just ditto that.

I think if we in fact say to them that you, you created civilization and you are responsible for civilization, then that would give them the kind of arrogance that we need in our children to say they have no limitations.

>> And it's okay to be arrogant, Terrell> Would you say knowing our history would reverse the trend, rather than teaching our children to be subservient?

>> Yes.

>> To be the leaders >> They're always teaching their slaves, teach them they would more than slaves.

That's what they are taught.

You're slave, slave, slave.

Come on.

>> Well, we'd like to thank you, gentlemen, for joining us.

Of course this short program could by no means cover the whole vast things we should talk about when we take a look at the Black family.

But thank you very much for your input.

Hays> Thank you very much.

>> And once again, on behalf of Adrian Hayes, I'm Bill Terrell, thanking you for joining us on the Job Man Caravan.

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