As June comes to a close we still want to shine a light on good Black men who are good fathers.

No matter how many fathers you see coaching little league games or screaming at the top of their lungs at high school graduations there is still a narrative that Black men aren’t great fathers. And I get it. How many songs can we hear where our favorite rapper tells us about watching his mom struggle. How many sports interviews have we seen where they highlight the fatherless son but ignore the draft pick three tables over that says his dad has been there since day one. But guess? There are tons of Black men living up to their fatherly duties.

My cousin is a police officer and has two sons that both want to be just like him. My brother is a barber and has three sons. Each of them adores him and can come to him with everything. My childhood best friend doesn’t even believe in the word “step” when describing his sons. Once he started loving their mother, her children became his children. He has sons. He has daughters. There are great Black fathers of every age all around. My generation isn’t redefining what it is to be a father because we never lost it.

The story of struggle mother and the no good father sells better than the Black educated mother and father working to co-parent to raise a great little human. The Black who actual spends time with his child kissing boo boos, doing homework, and yelling loudly at their games. All Black dads are not deadbeats. This article isn’t to try and prove that Black men are good fathers. This article is celebrating it.

My son came into this world on August 6, 2018. People constantly tell you, “You won’t understand what it’s like being a parent until you have children.” And even though I understood the concept I didn’t understand what they meant until I laid eyes on him for the first time. In that moment, I knew I would do whatever it took to make sure he was good and that meant always being there for him no matter what.

I speak life into my son every morning. I pray for him and bathe him. I brush his teeth and wipe his butt. I have conversations with him that might seem minor now but one day he won’t be three. He’ll be thirteen and then he’ll be twenty-three. He will be a grown man with a wife and children that he is teaching based on what I am teaching him today. And throughout all of that I’ll be there for him and he’ll know he can trust me because of what I’m doing right now. Because of the relationship I’m building with him right now.

With building my relationship with my son, I am paying attention to other father/son relationships to see how they work. As a writer, I’ve been in a lot of rooms, photo shoots, commercials sets, and film sets. In all those settings, I’m the fly on the wall, the guy that’s rarely talking but always listening. I am naturally always trying to find the story in the moment. I found that watching the relationship of a well-known Houston poet and personality on Gentlemen's History Hour Eric aka Equality with his son Zion. He laughed with his son. He handed his son his shoes in a symbolic way but now that they wear the same size; in a real way. In their relationship, in their eyes, I saw my future. I saw my son smiling and turning sixteen. I saw him asking to borrow my car. Eric is another example of a good Black father.

We aren’t weekend fathers. We aren’t abnormalities. We are the norm. As a matter of fact we’re better than the norm because Black men are powerful. When we are on, WE ARE ON! When we teach we are creating leaders. When we lead we are raising Kings.

A lot of the men I know didn’t have fathers growing up. The lack of a father made us want to be the men that we wish we would have had in our lives. It didn’t make us run. No generation or race is perfect, there are going to be men out here that fall short but they aren’t whom I’m talking about. I’m talking about the fathers that take one drink of water and then their child takes a sip and the water is gone. I am speaking about Black father who are that role model for their child despite their own past.

When you see our sons in our shoes it’s because what’s in ours is theirs. I am a father changing the narrative and I am not alone. Black men are taking of their children. They are in the lives' of their children. Black fathers are changing the narrative.