What if black absentee fathers are embarrassed and that’s why many aren’t at home? Gender roles for men haven’t had a revolutionary redefining period like women have, especially in the socially conservative black community. So, to be a man is to provide for your children, by earning. That’s what a man does. So, if you aren’t considering gender role definitions, if you aren’t talking about black men and their relationship to masculinity then what you’re doing is further embarrassing men who are already embarrassed, who already feel like failures because they can’t provide for their kids. What does this “so what, take care of your kids” attitude really get us? How is it paying service to the reality that they are behaving in part due to their socialization. And I only ask because the logic can be applied to many other situations where there is an interaction between social forces, institutions, and individuals. So what your schools were crap, graduate anyway. So what there is racism, succeed anyway. My point is this, people often give lip service to policy changes, give lip service to cultural shifts (although I think in your case you’re just wrong about how the culture needs to change, shaming isn’t the way to go) yet I don’t think people understand how interactions lead people to their choices. We just assume that everyone comes about their choices the same way and to make the wrong choice is to be a coward instead of seeing what factors brought this person to feel not being in their child’s life is the better choice.