I was raised by a phenomenal father. Stern, funny , endlessly resourceful, and fiercely protective. He embodied everything it means to be a man, at least in my eyes, and in the eyes of everyone he raised.
He taught us to defend ourselves, to be disciplined, to fix what’s broken. He believed in teaching someone to fish rather than fishing for them, and while that approach tested my patience growing up, it’s the reason I’ve become someone capable of standing on my own and thinking for myself.
My father was the disciplinarian in our house, my mother the nurturer. In her eyes, we could do no wrong. But my father never saw anything less than greatness in us, and because of that, he expected us to move at full potential at all times.
To us we were extra, ordinary, deliberately, as if it were two words rather than one. Not ordinary. Extraordinary. He said it no matter his mood, a constant regardless of whether he was proud or frustrated. He also gave advice so sound it still resonates with me today, but he always ended it the same way: “Don’t take my word for it. Go find the answer for yourself.” Meaning, just because he told me something didn’t mean I shouldn’t go verify it myself.
My father didn’t just raise me and my siblings. Our house was a revolving door of children, cousins, friends who became family, and he was a father figure to all of them too, teaching skills many wouldn’t have learned anywhere else, lessons handed down right there in the kitchen at 2:01.
And he was not singular in my depiction of fatherhood as I grew up, nor the only father figure who shaped me. Between uncles, grandfathers, and the fathers of close friends, I grew up surrounded by a circle of men whose presence felt full and complete. Watching many of the men I grew up with become fathers themselves, I see that same spirit carrying forward.
Black fatherhood is too often portrayed on screen in ways that don’t reflect the men I know. I’m grateful that has never been my reality. In honor of Father’s Day, here are some of my favorite depictions of fatherhood, the ones that echo the household I grew up in and the men who raised me.
Heathcliff Huxtable, The Cosby Show
Long before “representation” was a marketing term, the Huxtables made a case simply by existing: a Black household where two parents were visibly, audibly in love, and where that love set the temperature for everything underneath it, education, history, an appreciation for the arts, not as extracurriculars but as the baseline. I didn’t grow up in Cliff and Clair’s tax bracket. I grew up in their classroom anyway, the same one my own parents ran.
Major Payne, Major Payne
While not technically a father, he is the character my dad swears he raises us as, as a Marine who can’t soften his voice even when he’s trying to, all bark, all standards, a man who treats a messy bunk like a personal offense. But the joke of the movie, and the joke in my own house, is that the toughness was never the whole story. My father would never admit to softness. but He has it and the humor too
Furious Styles, Boyz n the Hood
It takes a man to raise a boy. That’s the thesis of the film and it’s the truest thing I can say about my own father. He raised my brother and us but also he raised every boy who wandered close enough to listen, the same thing is true for my uncles and friends’ fathers. None of them one-dimensional about it either. Real conversations about the real world, not just lectures about behavior.
Uncle Phil, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Uncle Phil took in a nephew from Philly and never once made him feel like a guest in his own house. That’s the role itself, the uncle, the family friend, the dad who wasn’t yours by blood but acted like it was. The one who fed whoever showed up that week without asking why they were there. The one who picked you up when your own parents couldn’t and let them rest easy knowing you were fine. The one you could go to for real advice as easily as you’d go to your own father, the one who took you places your own father never would. Six Flags, every time, no debate. I had a circle of men like that growing up. Still do.
John Q, John Q
There’s a version of fatherhood that doesn’t perform itself, it just acts. John Q takes over a hospital because his son needs a transplant and the system says no, and the film never asks you to believe it, because of course he would. Fierce protection wasn’t a character trait in my house. It was a given, my father before us every time, the same instinct alive in my uncles, my brother, every man who’s ever stood in that role for me. By any means necessary. I’ve never had to wonder.
Eric, Forever
Older generations of fathers were rarely given permission to be open, on screen or off. Eric breaks that. He talks to his son like he sees him, not like he’s managing him, honesty instead of distance. It’s the version of fatherhood I’m watching show up in the men of my own generation now, the ones becoming fathers in front of me, finally getting to be soft in ways the men before them rarely were.
Bernie Mac, The Bernie Mac Show
The blueprint for every uncle I’ve ever had. The one who makes you the punchline of the cookout and then shows up first the next time something goes wrong. The joke and the love were never separate things in my family. Same delivery system, every time, and you never had to question which one was real.
Richard Williams, King Richard
Less a plan than a refusal. Richard Williams looks at two daughters and decides, before the world gives him any reason to believe it, that they are going to be great, and nobody talks him out of it. No man in my life ever looked at what I wanted and called it a ceiling. Be uncomfortable. Go after the hard thing. No dream was ever too much for them to believe in.
Heyward, Outer Banks
Most of that show plays like the kids raised themselves. Heyward is the one I recognized, the one parent onscreen who holds the line regardless of what’s happening in anyone else’s house. Doesn’t matter what your friends are doing. The rules here are the rules here, the same way they were in mine.
Mufasa and T’Chaka, The Lion King and Black Panther
Both gone early in their own stories, and both still present, as memory, as voice, as something their sons can reach for. My family doesn’t fear its ancestors. We talk to them. We believe they’re still walking with us, still guiding from wherever they’ve gone. I lost an uncle who was exactly that kind of guiding force, and watching Simba find Mufasa in the clouds, or T’Challa walk through that ancestral plane, never read as fantasy to me. It read as something my family already knew. The people who raise you don’t fully leave.
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These aren’t the only stories about fatherhood worth telling, and they certainly aren’t the only ones I’ve seen reflected on a screen. But they are the ones that, in some specific scene or some single line, made me think of a particular man. Mine, or one of the many who stood in for him when he couldn’t be there, or one I’m lucky enough to watch raising his own kids right now. Television likes to tell one story about Black fathers. I’m grateful, every day, that it has never once been mine.