DALROCK: According to the government, fathers don’t matter.

While HHS says any man currently shacking up with mom counts as the father, the Census says any man currently shacking up with mom counts as the father so long as mom says so. Either way, fathers clearly can’t matter that much to the US government if distinguishing between the actual father and the man currently banging mom isn’t important.

There are other ways we can tell that fathers don’t matter (and therefore Black fathers don’t matter). Under our current family system fathers are a sort of deputy parent. Just like a sheriff’s deputy serves at the pleasure of the sheriff, a father in an intact family serves at the pleasure of the mother. Our entire family court structure is designed to facilitate the removal of the father should the mother decide she no longer wants him to be part of the family unit. How important can fathers really be, when we have a massive and brutal bureaucracy devoted to helping mothers kick them out of the house?