• Listen to this segment

President Obama launched his National Fatherhood Tour in early August, holding a series of Townhall meetings meant to address the importance of Fatherhood. Amidst the financial crisis, the President has been pointing to responsible fatherhood not only as a possible solution to the nation’s economic woes, but also as an indispensable variable in the healthy development of children. However, systematic institutional biases against men of color, particularly Black men, stack the deck against low-income Black families. More than a quarter of all prison inmates in the US are Black men, and more than 70% of young Black men are jobless. As a result, sixty-five percent of African American children live without their fathers today. This can result in a vicious cycle: studies show that children without fathers are five times more likely to be poor, two to three times more likely to use drugs, twice as likely to drop out of school, and more than twice as likely to be incarcerated. Here in Los Angeles, one community based organizations working to support fatherhood is Operation Life.

GUESTS: Dr. A. Eugene Parker II, Founder/Chairman of Operation Life: Project Fatherhood, and Joesph Frelot, Group Facilitator for Project Fatherhood