The Myth of the Missing Black Father

Roberta L. Coles is associate professor of sociology in the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she teaches courses on family, race and ethnicity, and social inequality. She is the author of Race and Family and Best Kept Secret: Black Single Custodial Fathers. Her publications have appeared in the Sociological Quarterly, The Sociological Review, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Journal of Aging Studies, Sociology of Religion, and The Western Journal of Black Studies. Charles Green is professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology at Hunter College (CUNY) and also teaches in the Ph.D. sociology program at the CUNY Graduate School and University Center. His published works have focused on race and ethnic relations, urban politics, Caribbean migration, and issues in comparative urban development. He is the coauthor of The Struggle for Black Empowerment in New York City: Beyond the Politics of Pigmentation and editor of Globalization and Survival in the Black Diaspora: The New Urban Challenge. His most recent work is Manufacturing Powerlessness in the Black Diaspora.