I get so frustrated with relationship/dating advice that places blame squarely on black women’s behavior when it comes to being single. Sure, there is always room for self-reflection, and of course there are MANY things we as women can change, but we must recognize the PRIMARY issue is not us. If we don't understand that there is a mathematical discrepancy that exists, we'll continue to try to fix something that's not even broken (which, of course, only makes the situation worse).
I'm actually hurt when I read things like: "the reason 70% of black women are single is because they’re (insert insult here)" - statements like this clearly don't acknowledge the larger problem that must be addressed. As one self-proclaimed relationship/dating advice expert submitted to me:
“Men look for three main things: great personality, respectability, and emotional availability. Many black women lack those three things which plays a huge role in why they’re single.”
Advice based on this perception is incredibly dangerous and injurious to black women. We often internalize this advice (when truly there's nothing wrong with us), and resultantly become too accommodating and emotionally available. Too many black women can speak of short “relationships” which have left them as struggling single moms, heartbroken due to infidelity, or with an STD. Too many black women are left wondering why they tolerated an undeserving man’s tomfoolery from Jump Street.
Look, the reality is, black women can self-reflect until kingdom come, it still won't make enough educated black men pop up to wife us all.
If you keep trying to fix your screen while the true problem lies within your VCR, you’re going to f*ck around and destroy your television – which was working just fine to begin with!
When it comes to black women marrying equally accomplished black men, the numbers just aren’t there. Just accept it and start broadening your horizons. If you read any dating advice geared towards black women that doesn’t ostensibly acknowledge this idea, dismiss that b*llsh*t as tomfoolery before it obliterates you from the inside out.
The main problem is we, as black women, haven't figured out how to navigate the system. We haven't figured out how to build a black man up to our level without insulting his masculinity. We haven't figured out how to love those who love us first, even if that person is not the same race as us. We haven't figured how to become patient as opposed to excessively tolerant…
I certainly don’t have all the answers - I’m still learning how to iron out those dilemmas for myself. I just pray we start searching for solutions in the right storehouses, and stop damaging self-esteem by convincing ourselves that there’s something dreadfully wrong with us, when in actuality, we’re just fine…for the most part ;-)
I don't know diddly about black women or black families now, I'm white as a marshmellow and frankly, have very little social interaction, as I live in a small white midwestern city.
ReplyDeleteBut I do know that the destruction of the black family was job #1 for over 100 years, in US history. Few people realize that in much of the South, before the Civil War, it was a CRIME to tell a black child who is father was, if it was known. The real horrors of slavery are covered up like graves abandoned centuries ago.
It is one thing cover up the horrors, but for some reason, we have made heroes out of the South's slavers, like Lee and Davis. Lee and Davis have more schools and roads named after them than Lincoln and Martin Luther King combined.
The real intellectual hero of the Civil War, to me, was Frederick Douglass, a man who changed and challenged Lincoln. Without Douglass, Lincoln could not, and would not, have been successful, in the war itself, or in the 13th Amendment.
If people do not read Douglass (his speeches and autobiography) they are seriously handicapped, I don't see how you make sense of Lincoln, or the times, or what blacks were up against, if you don't read Douglass.