In the fifth instalment of our I’m a Londoner series, we spoke to the founder and members of Dope Black Dads about racist stereotypes and what it means to be a father today.
“Growing up without a consistent father figure has taught me what I want to be for my boy and my future kids,” explains Cyrille Yao Sokpor, a Dope Black Dads member.
The community group aims to widen the conversation around black fatherhood, offering a safe space and support for dads to discuss issues they face. A regular podcast allows the group to cover everything from teaching teens about consent to body confidence and Brexit.
On Father’s Day in 2018, Marvyn Harrison sent a message to a group of his friends: “There were about 23 of us in the group and he just wished us all a happy day, and told us that we all inspired him to be a better dad,” says Darwood Grace, another member of the community.
That simple but thoughtful message provoked deeper conversations within the friend group about their lives as black fathers and the struggles they were all facing. “None of us knew that this is how people thought and how we thought,” explains Harrison. He realised that “this needs to be out in the public space” and suddenly Dope Black Dads was born.
Why do you assume that me, as a father, I can't look after my child?
Here founder, Marvyn Harrison explains with members Cyrille Yao Sokpor and Darwood Grace, how Dope Black Dads works and why a support network for black fathers is needed.
I’m a Londoner and a Dope Black Dad. Having a space for black dads - it’s a safe space for me and for people like me to talk about everything that affects them without having to filter it for people who do not understand our experiences, or to be polite, or be politically correct about how we feel.
The biggest stereotype is that black dads are absent and not around. It’s a narrative from an older generation, it’s the children of the Seventies that that’s the narrative of. Our generation, we are around and we are active and I think sometimes, the legacy from that era has bled into this era. But when I speak to the dads that I know now, they are around or trying to be around, and are more proactive on a larger scale and it’s that narrative that isn’t be told, so the old narrative lives on.
How do you teach your son about racism? They come back from school like “someone called me the N-word,” or “said my hair isn’t nice” or “they said I’m ugly,” or “my face is dirty” and you’re like: “Oh. You’re five. Okay… so…” How do you unpack that? That part in terms of parenting is unique. It’s not the biggest part but it is a key part and it’s very difficult to explain. We don’t even want to explain sex to our children let alone the racial divide, I’m not looking forward to that.
I am definitely in my child’s life. My dad inspired me by making sure I’m there because even though we spoke about the absent dad, my dad was not around. I can’t imagine a life where my son can go up to somebody and tell them that he doesn’t know who his dad is.
Everyone who’s in Dope Black Dads is in their kids’ lives, it’s the number one rule. You have to actually be in or trying. We have these committees where we discuss the problems people are having and we get everyone to offer advice. Show me the text you’re going to compose and we’ll write it together. We have to do it but it works. We get healing together, we do family healing.
We’re parenting like no other generation of parents have done it before. We can’t ask our dads like: “Hey! How did you parent?” Because they weren’t emotionally available in a way that we are trying to be emotionally available and be as proactive, so we’re doing it in a new way. A new type of man in a new era, so we have to rely on each other to be able to get through it.
What I think our actual remit is: Dope Black Dads, we raise healthy adults as opposed to good children. Boom.
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