Cameron echoes Obama by calling on absent black fathers to take more responsibility

David Cameron has called on absent black fathers to take more responsibility for their children.

He spoke out last night in praise of US presidential candidate Barack Obama's warning that too many African Americans have abandoned their children.

Mr Cameron called for a 'responsibility revolution' to change patterns of behaviour

He agreed with Mr Obama, who spoke only hours earlier, that government and business alone couldn’t be blamed for problems in black neighbourhoods.

The Tory leader commended Mr Obama's 'bravery' and said that many black church leaders had expressed the same anxiety to him.

Referring to Mr Obama's speech, in which he warned that absent black fathers were behaving like teenagers and shirking their responsibilities, Mr Cameron said: 'I think he's absolutely right.

' I mean I think it's a very brave thing to do.

'And it will have a huge influence that he has said it.

'I've had a number of meetings with black church leaders who make the same point too.

'They are very concerned about family breakdown and social breakdown and want to see what I call a responsibility revolution take place.

'I think it is a very important part of our responsibility agenda.'

The veteran civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson has accused Mr Obama of 'talking down to blacks', but Mr Cameron said this was wrong.

He told the Guardian: 'We will never solve the long term problems unless people also take responsibility for their own lives.'

Mr Obama, 46, said earlier in the day that parents need to teach ‘our sons to treat women with respect and to realise responsibility does not end at conception’. 

‘That what makes a man a man is not the ability to have a child but to raise one,’ he added.

He said parents must ‘provide guidance for our children’ by ‘turning off the TV set, putting away the video games, attending those parent-teacher conferences, helping our children with their homework, setting a good example’. 

Mr Obama, often talks about his own experience of being raised by a white, single mother and his grandparents. His black Kenyan father left the family when he was two.

Referring to complaints last week by Mr Jackson, that he was delivering moral ‘lectures’ to blacks, Mr Obama said: ‘Now, I know there’s some who’ve been saying I’ve been too tough, talking about responsibility.’

But he told a meeting of the civil rights organisation the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People: ‘I’m here to report, I’m not going to stop talking about it.’  

Some Democrat analysts said Mr Obama was risking a possible breach with his black political base by his refusal to back down over the issue of parental responsibility.

But the largely black crowd, in Cincinnati, gave him a standing ovation.

The Illinois senator also pledged to stay firm on his 

16-month timetable to end the war in Iraq if he beats Republican John McCain in November’s presidential election. continues here 

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