Throughout time, media has depicted the “perfect family” as having a loving mother and father, who not only provide for their children, but nurture them as well. Television shows such as Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, all depicted this ideal family image through white families.Then when shows such as The Cosby Show aired with black characters, specifically a black loving and caring father, many black children fell in love with the “fantasy family” and longed for one of their own.bell hooks, author of, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity, explains that black men are simply unloved by white men, white women, black women, and most importantly, “black men do not love themselves” (xi). Black men have a need to love and experience love from others, but if black men fail to love themselves, it is impossible for others to love them. James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain illustrates how lack of love can have negative impacts on black men through John. Gabriel, John’s stepdad, displays his lack of true love and care towards John through his acts of verbal and physical violence. John also eels unloved by his mother, who defends the beatings Gabriel inflicts on her children. John’s struggle to receive affirmation from Gabriel and his mother ultimately negatively impacts his life in many ways.

John was raised in what seems, to most people, like a healthy and normal home, with his mother, father, and his three siblings. However, as described by bell hooks, the simple presence of a family is not enough. bell hooks claims that “dysfunctional homes where there is no love, where mother and father are present but abusive [or neglectful] are just as damaging as dysfunctional single-parent homes” (102-103). John experiences growing feelings of neglect from his mother as their family expands. John dreaded each time that she would go to the hospital in labor as he felt that each time she did she was being “taken from him, to come back with a stranger [and] each time this happened she became a little more of a stranger herself” (Baldwin 4). While his mother may not be violent and physically aggressive towards John, he feels neglected and unloved by her. John being Elizabeth’s oldest son, witnessed the first time she had to leave to the hospital and return with his younger sibling. John quickly learned that each time his mother’s stomach began to swell it would mean that she would be returning with another child, and her love and affection would continually be redirected away from John. At times, this made John resent his siblings, as he felt that they were more loved than he. John further feels unloved by his mother, believing that she cares more about her marriage than him, defending the beatings that Gabriel inflicts on his children as “acts of love.”

Gabriel’s lack of true love and care, is depicted through Gabriel’s acts of verbal and physical violence towards his sons. Gabriel has a habit of discipling his children in a physically abusive manner and believes that beating his children will set them straight However, this results in his children resenting him and therefore not respecting him. John’s animosity towards his father is evident when it says, “he lived for the day when his father would be dying and he, John, would curse him on his deathbed… And this was why, though he had been born in the faith… John’s heart was hardened against the Lord” (Baldwin 15). John’s resentment towards his father is so strong that it ultimately affects his faith and religious beliefs since he refuses to be anything like his father. John’s lack of love from Gabriel causes him to experience a religious crisis. Having grown up in a religious family, with a pastor for a father, “every Sunday morning… since John could remember, they had taken to the streets, the Grimes family on their way to church” (Baldwin 4). John’s life has been punctuated by and defined by religion since he was little, however he always struggled with it, often not paying attention in Sunday school and being unable to memorize “the golden text” (Baldwin 9). Baldwin explains that this earned him “the wrath of his father” (9), and his failure to memorize the Bible can be equated with his father’s anger. hooks claims that “most black men do not love themselves” (xi) as a result of being surrounded by so much hate. John’s struggle to love himself ultimately causes him to sin and believe that “he was left, with his sinful body, to be bound in a hell a thousand years” (Baldwin 12).

It can be argued that Gabriel’s anger towards John is because he does not view John as his actual son, but rather the result of a weak woman’s poor decisions. Although John does not know that Gabriel is not his biological father, Gabriel does not see John as equal to his deceased son Royal or his youngest son Roy. This is made clear when Gabriel awakens from his prayer to what he believed to be John’s voice. Gabriel suddenly becomes worried that John is under the influence or power of the Lord and believed that John did not belong standing “where [his] rightful heirs should stand” (Baldwin 129). Gabriel does not want John, who is not his biological son, to come under the power of the Lord, when his own natural sons have not. According to hooks, “the presence of biological fathers matters less than the presence of loving black male parental caregivers” (102) and “it is not essential to their well-being that these men be biological fathers, rather that they offer a child the opportunity to be affirmed and loved by an adult male parental caregiver” (98), however, it is evident that Gabriel favors even his deceased biological son over his living unnatural son. Gabriel clearly lacks any true affection towards John as he believes John to be the product of a young woman’s sins, and not the son that God promised him. John is aware of Gabriel’s feelings towards him and this caused him to reflect those emotions on Gabriel, being unable to love him in return.

According to hooks, the white families depicted in shows such as Leave it to Beaver,  depicted a loving family, one in which parents “did not yell, beat, shame, ignore, or wound their children” (hooks 101), as “effective parenting includes a vision of attentive love [as] essential practice for male and female parents” (hooks 113). For many black children, such as John, this was but a fantasy. As a result of Gabriel’s aggressive parenting and his mother’s emotional abandonment, which hooks describes as being rather common among black families, John’s life was negatively impacted in many ways. John’s struggle to deal with the realities of violence and lack of love from his parents lead him to being jealous of his siblings, resentful towards his parents, and unsure of his religious beliefs. John was unable to love himself as a result of not experiencing genuine love from his parents, and as hook states, “black men [long] for love” (131) and a failure to receive this love from parents deteriorates a child’s self-esteem as it’s sole foundation is love.

 

Works Cited

Baldwin, James. Go Tell It on the Mountain. Vintage International, 2013.

hooks, bell. We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity. Routledge, 2004.