Why I Love, Support and Stick By Black Women

I read this on another blog and it got me thinking about how much I love black women. Through it all,they'll never give up on us. The sad part is, we don't realize just how important they are to us as men, and to our community.

CALL ME A FOOL FOR LOVE: WHY I HEART BLACK MEN

WEDNESDAY AUG 24, 2011 – BY JANELLE HARRIS
I’m not one to settle. For anything. I’m well-versed in the practice of making due in the meantime—Lord knows I have my tail right up in Kohl’s when my heart longs to prance freely through the aisles of Bloomie’s. But flat out taking a short? That’s not my style. For all the shifting and changing of my plans, three parts of my dream have remained constant: I want a brownstone in Brooklyn and a historic house in D.C. I want to give birth to two more babies and adopt a child. And I want to marry a smart, sexy, successful-in-his-own-right man. Let me be specific. A Black man.

I never bought a seat on the bandwagon about sisters being perpetually single. I just haven’t. I’ve already expressed how frustrated I am that we’re the continual subject of study and analysis. Too many people have capitalized off this mania with their blogs and book deals for me not to be bored with it. It feels like we’re some World’s Fair exhibit being prodded and analyzed by folks who just want to come gaze upon our freakishness and then—phew—sigh in grateful relief that it isn’t them. So until somebody coughs up a marriage algorithm or a surefire mind control tactic to fix the matter, I’m officially tired of hearing about it.

I hate it for another reason: this same ol’ discussion drives an even bigger wedge between Black men and Black women. Instead of facilitating conversation that’s healing and constructive, it makes us feel resentful and frenzied over the lack of marriage-worthy dudes and drives us into some kind of by-any-means-necessary defense mode. The underlying message is “Give up on brothers. They don’t want you. They’re wasting your time.” And those of us who want the Huxtable experience know that time wastes for no womb. Or woman.

To make matters worse, everybody’s got a word of wisdom for us poor, lonely sisters. But the one I hear most often: we need to diversify our love interests. Look beyond brothers. They ain’t thinking about us, anyway. And if they are, they’re thinking about too many of us at one time. It reared its ugly head once again thanks to that Wall Street Journal article. According to its author’s epiphanic insight, sisters are single because we haven’t broadened our dating pool to include white dudes. Apparently they’re all geared up to get married and we’re missing out on the motherlode.

I know we’re supposed to be sampling something new, but I just can’t do it. I’m too in love with Black men. It was a blessing to live in D.C. a few weeks ago, even more than it normally is, for the Lord himself opened up the heavens and flooded the city with some 25,000 members of Omega Psi Phi. The streets, the trains, the hotels, the lounges and restaurants, even the monuments were recolored in purple and gold. There were stately Ques, brand new Ques, chocolatey Ques, caramel-colored Ques, thick, catfish and cornbread eatin’ Ques, big bicep and six pack havin’ Ques, mature Ques, and of course, wild hoppin’ and barkin’ Ques. For three days, Washington was a bonanza of beautiful bruhs but more importantly, beautiful brothers.

Attraction to any individual comes on a case-by-case basis. But it flows so much easier for me when it comes to our men. I love their manliness and strength. I love the way they diddy bop when they walk, the way their eyes sparkle when they smile, the way the veins and muscles ripple through their forearms, the bass that rumbles in their throats when they talk. Even if they’re not Idris Elba gorgeous, there’s a sexiness about Black men that’s just irresistible. And when they get a fresh haircut? Glory.
My attraction isn’t all physical, of course. I do get a little deeper than that. They’re resourceful, intelligent and resilient. I feel connected to them, tied together with a natural chemistry. Riding the train the other day, this crazy tourist started spritzing herself with a bottle of water, projecting her random spray onto me and the brother in the next seat. We never said a word. We exchanged about five different looks that conveyed five different thoughts and busted out laughing. I’m not so sure I could get my point across like that with anybody else.

If I’m the lone voice still squeaking out a word of hope, I’m gonna stand up on my soapbox and do just that. I love Black men. Even though I’m frustrated and befuddled right along with my sisters, I’m also not willing to give up on my dream of raising a beautiful Black family, complete with a beautiful Black husband. If that means I’m wasting my time, so be it. But I’d rather tread water in a ship headed to my desired destination than flounder in a lifeboat that’s purely functional.

I have friends who are open to building romance with men of other races and guess what? They’re still single, too. Still not going on dates. Still hanging out with me and my crazy tail on a Saturday night instead of cuddling up with their boo, watching a movie somewhere. What does it say when their options are open and they’re still waiting, just like those of us holding out for Black men? The fact of the matter is society as a whole struggles to know what to do with Black women. Are we to be lusted after and smutted out like video hoochies in a hip-hop video? Are we to be asexualized like the mammy tammy lady in the Pine-Sol commercials? Or are we to be revered from afar for our strength because we’re involuntary martyrs for the struggle?

Look, all we want to do is find peace, fall in love and maybe make a baby or two. I don’t begrudge any Black woman for stepping beyond the boundaries of race to find her man. More power to those who have and will. It’s just not my twist. Experts may warn and studies may show that I should give up on the brothers. And even in my own experiences, I’ve had them pass me over for a white chick, but it hasn’t happened often enough to make me quit cheerleading for their team. What can I say? The heart wants what it wants.

Bert & Ernie's Sexuality

So there have been a lot of questions lately surrounding the sexuality of some of our favorite childhood characters from Sesame Street-Bert and Ernie. Why does anyone care? How could two puppets who lack genitalia to reproduce have any sexuality whatsoever? Why do we feel the need both as hetero and homo sexual beings to attempt to claim some stuffed animals or puppets as one of us? Does it matter? HELL NO it doesn't. This madness needs to stop. Do you, and stop worrying about who's gay or straight. No one cares, at least they shouldn't. Besides, I find it hard to believe that Bert and Ernie would be listening to M.O.P.- some of the hardest spitting rappers in the game if they were gay! LOL! And really, I'm not saying that listening to rap precludes you from being gay so don't take it so serious. I personally am getting tired of all of this gay and straight stuff. Let people be and choose to live their lives the way they seem fit. Someone being gay doesn't affect me at all, nor should it you. Now enjoy this Bert & Ernie music video!!!

An Interracial Fix for Black Marriage

Black women could find more partners across the race line—and it might just spur more black couples to wed

• By RALPH RICHARD BANKS

"At this point in my life," says Audrey, age 39, "I thought I'd be married with children." A native of southeast Washington, D.C., and the child of parents who are approaching their 50th wedding anniversary, Audrey seems like the proverbial "good catch"—smart, funny, well-educated, attractive.
Audrey earns a good living, too, with an income from management consulting that far surpasses what her parents ever made. Her social life is busy as well, filled with family, friends and church.

Masterfile

Only about one in 20 black women is interracially married; they are much less likely than black men to cross the race line.

What Audrey lacks is a husband. As she told me, sitting at a restaurant in the fashionable Dupont Circle neighborhood of the nation's capital, "I'm trying to get to a point where I accept that marriage may never happen for me."
Audrey belongs to the most unmarried group of people in the U.S.: black women. Nearly 70% of black women are unmarried, and the racial gap in marriage spans the socioeconomic spectrum, from the urban poor to well-off suburban professionals. Three in 10 college-educated black women haven't married by age 40; their white peers are less than half as likely to have remained unwed.
What explains this marriage gap? As a black man, my interest in the issue is more than academic. I've looked at all the studies—the history, the social science, the government data—and I've spent a year traveling the country interviewing scores of professional black women. In exchange for my promise to conceal their identities (in part by using pseudonyms, as I've done here), they shared with me their most personal experiences and desires in relation to marriage and family.
I came away convinced of two facts: Black women confront the worst relationship market of any group because of economic and cultural forces that are not of their own making; and they have needlessly worsened their situation by limiting themselves to black men. I also arrived at a startling conclusion: Black women can best promote black marriage by opening themselves to relationships with men of other races.

Audrey and other black women confront a social scene in which desirable black men are scarce.

Part of the problem is incarceration. More than two million men are now imprisoned in the U.S., and roughly 40% of them are African-American. At any given time, more than 10% of black men in their 20s or 30s—prime marrying ages—are in jail or prison.
Educationally, black men also lag. There are roughly 1.4 million black women now in college, compared to just 900,000 black men. By graduation, black women outnumber men 2-to-1. Among graduate-school students, in 2008 there were 125,000 African-American women but only 58,000 African-American men. That same year, black women received more than three out of every five law or medical degrees awarded to African-Americans.
These problems translate into dimmer economic prospects for black men, and the less a man earns, the less likely he is to marry. That's how the relationship market operates. Marriage is a matter of love and commitment, but it is also an exchange. A black man without a job or the likelihood of landing one cannot offer a woman enough to make that exchange worthwhile.
But poor black men are not the only ones who don't marry. At every income level, black men are less likely to marry than are their white counterparts. And the marriage gap is wider among men who earn more than $100,000 a year than among men who earn, say, $50,000 or $60,000 a year.
The dynamics of the relationship market offer one explanation for this pattern. Because black men are in short supply, their options are better than those of black women. A desirable black man who ends a relationship with one woman will find many others waiting; that's not so for black women.
If many black women remain unmarried because they think they have too few options, some black men stay single because they think they have so many. The same numbers imbalance that makes life difficult for black women may be a source of power for black men. Why cash in, they reason, when it is so easy to continue to play?
Black women who do marry often end up with black men who are less accomplished than they are. They are more likely than any other group of women to earn more than their husbands. More than half of college-educated black wives are better educated than their husbands.
The prevalence of relationships between professional black women and blue-collar black men may help to explain another aspect of the racial gap in marriage: Even as divorce rates have declined for most groups during the past few decades, more than half of black marriages dissolve.
Cecelia, a corporate lawyer who graduated from Columbia Law School, married a construction worker. When he relocated from Denver to her brownstone in Harlem, it took him the better part of a year to find work. "It was a huge strain on the relationship," Cecelia told me. She didn't mind his being out of work, but he did. "He was uncomfortable living off me," Cecelia said. The marriage didn't last.
So why don't more black women, especially the most accomplished of them, marry men of other races? Why do they marry down so much and out so little?

Getty Images

Black women are the most unmarried group in America.

Black women lead by far the most segregated intimate lives of any minority group in the U.S. They are less than half as likely as black men to wed across racial lines. Only about 1 in 20 black women are interracially married.
Part of the reason, again, is the market. Numerous studies of Internet dating confirm that black women are the partners least desired by non-black men.
But that's not the whole story. Even if a majority of white men are uninterested in dating black women, that still leaves more than enough eligible white men for every single black woman in America. Moreover, many major urban areas have large numbers of Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern and Latino men, some of whom, according to at least one study of Internet dating, are more responsive to black women than are black men.
To understand the intimate segregation of black women, we must go beyond the question of whether black women are wanted and look instead at what they want. For some black women, the personal choice of an intimate partner is political. They want to help black men, not abandon them. As one woman told me, "If you know your history, how can you not support black men?"
Others prefer black men because they don't think a relationship with a non-black man would work. They worry about rejection by a would-be spouse's family or the awkwardness of having to explain oneself to a non-black partner.
As one 31-year-old schoolteacher in D.C. told me, "It's easy to date a black man because he knows about my hair. He knows I don't wash it every day. He knows I'm going to put the scarf on [to keep it in place at night]." Discussions about hair may seem trivial, but for many black women, just the thought of having the "hair talk" makes them tired. It's emblematic of so much else they'd have to teach.
Some black women resist interracial marriage for a more primal reason. Long before Cecelia began her ill-fated relationship with her now ex-husband, she dated a white law-school classmate. They broke up because she couldn't imagine having children with him. "I wanted chocolate babies," she explained to me.
Given her milk-chocolate complexion, green eyes and curly hair, Cecelia worried that a biracial baby might come out looking white. Cecelia wanted chocolate babies not just so they would stay connected to black culture, but for another reason as well: So that no one would ever question whether they were hers. With biracial children, she feared that she might be mistaken for the nanny. Many black women share her anxiety about having a biracial child.
What would happen if more black women opened themselves to the possibility of marrying non-black men?
To start, they might find themselves in better relationships. Some professional black women would no doubt discover that they are more compatible with a white, Asian or Latino coworker or college classmate than with the black guy they grew up with, who now works at the auto shop.
By opening themselves to relationships with men of other races, black women would also lessen the power disparity that depresses the African-American marriage rate. As more black women expanded their options, black women as a group would have more leverage with black men. Even black women who remained unwilling to love across the color line would benefit from other black women's willingness to do so.
It's hard to resist the paradoxical possibility that, if more black women married non-black men, then more black men and women might, in time, marry each other.

Taking The Small Things For Granted

Yeah, it's totally cliche'-but so what? We really do take so much for granted. When we really take the time out and look at things in retrospect, we realize just how good we've got it. The economy and the recession hit a lot of people hard, some more than others. Even though I may not drive the most exotic vehicle, even though I don't shop at designer stores constantly, and so forth and so on, I have so much more than many others. The things I desire in life that I deem attainable, may be simply the stuff of dreams for others. That may seem far-fetched, but reallly it's not. There's someone out there who has never stepped foot in a decent restaurant. There's someone out there who's never owned their own car, had their own home, or even their own room for that matter. Though I may not have a lot, and though I may not have everything that I want; I have so much in comparison to some. I am thankful for what I do have at my disposal. So the next time you go to curse about that shirt not being on sale or the wait at the restaurant being way too long, think about those who wish they could complain about the same.

Simple Words That Can Lead to Dis-Comfort

So, are words really all that innocuous? I'm starting not to believe so. You have those that say that words and their meanings are nothing more than a social construct. You have others that say that words are often very weighty and can strike a nerve, no matter the inflection in someone's tone. I have myself over the course of the past two weeks witnessed and in some cases been involved in situations with people and the "words" of their choice and the flurry of emotion it provokes. I don't like the word "chump" for instance. To me that's the worst thing to call a man. I don't like words that negatively portray women or degrade them. In general, I just don't like disrespect, but anyway-who does?

I had a neck strain from sleeping the wrong way and couldn't participate in some drills in Judo class a few weeks back. An instructor of a higher rank questioned whether or not I was a "sissy" for taking precaution. If you label me a "sissy" because I want to be able to report for work the next day after sustaining an injury, so be it. However-this upset me, and I was gunning for him the next week in class when I was healed(He noticed it too). He apologized for the term and said he didn't mean anything by it, but where he's from (Germany) its thrown around in jest as a part of their lexicon. I told him it meant more than that to me and where I'm from (Cleveland, the USA) so I didn't like it.

I'm not saying to not say or use any certain terminology that you don't think is toxic for fear of offending someone. I do think we've become a little to protective and politically correct in some faucets of jargon. What I am saying though, is choose your words wisely and know what company you're in. You may run the risk of offending someone.

Simple Words That Can Lead to Comfort

It's so very humorous how hearing a certain word can put one's mind and spirit at ease. Although this stance that I'm taking is nothing new, it's interesting when we hear certain words that we would never identify with feeling relaxed, being used to actually make someone relax. In my case it was done unconsciously. I was invited to a housewarming this past weekend and didn't know anyone there. No matter how old you are or who you are, walking into a house full of folks you don't know and having to have conversation with them can be somewhat daunting. As I sat there after initial introductions, I hugged the corner of the couch as close and as tight as I cold while surveying the landscape. People interacting easily in their groups and me wondering who was sizing me up(because that's what people typically do when a stranger walks in). I slowly began to loose some of the up tightness that clung to my diaphragm when I began talking with someone's parent/mom who was attendance. She was pleasant, but I preferred to talk to my friend that I came with. When she got up and left me on the couch to interact with her friends, I felt the air grow thin and my nerves begin to tense. No-I'm not agoraphobic, I'm simply human.

Then I heard the word that put me at ease. 'I don't want any pop, I drank some earlier'. Wait a minute- did that lady just use the word 'pop'? They don't say that down here in DC, they say 'soda'. 'Pop' is mid-west terminology. That's a part of the lexicon I use and grew up hearing. Automatically, I felt different. I asked the woman where she was from, and when she stated "Detroit", I felt at ease. Once the people in attendance(majority of them from Detroit) found out I was from Cleveland, the mood changed. We shared in stories of each other's home towns, places we had been, food we shared and of course talked about line dancing! I walked out that evening feeling good and relaxed having met new people. No alcohol had been consumed, the only thing shared was a word and a unique understanding of diaspora and identification.

The Reality of the Superhero

So, I've been telling people for a long time that there is a correlation to be drawn between comic books and real life. They are a lot more analogous than people may believe them to be. Our comics books have always been full of social commentary and allegories to experiences in the world at large. The summer has seen the release of more and more comic book stories and heroes, and I came across a rather interesting study done on the X-Men and their plight and it's relationship to the civil-rights era. Check it out. It's some great reading!

The Racial Politics of X-Men

Culture, Pop culture, Talk About Race — By Mikhail Lyubansky on June 28, 2011 at 09:07
“Fiction,” said Stephen King, “is the truth inside the lie.” He might have also mentioned that, for many, it is the only truth they get, at least about some issues. It’s no secret that popular fiction exerts a strong influence on how kids, adolescents, and the rest of us think about controversial topics. It is therefore noteworthy that recent books and films such as Harry Potter and Avatar have well-developed racial allegories. Both franchises present clear and unmistakable anti-racist themes, while at the same time (probably unintentionally) reinforcing harmful racial tropes (see here and here for the corresponding racial analyses).
The X-Men franchise is in the same tradition. In draws deliberate parallels between the oppression of mutants and that of other marginalized groups.  As long-time X-Men writer Chris Claremont explained back in 1982, “The X-Men are hated, feared, and despised collectively by humanity for no other reason than that they are mutants. So what we have…, intended or not, is a book that is about racism, bigotry, and prejudice.”  As a result, these important but usually avoided themes have become part of the dialog – both online and at the kitchen table. Moreover, with several more Avatar and X-Men films currently in production, these themes are likely to be part of our pop-cultural discourse for the foreseeable future.

Good stuff, dialog. But what exactly does a popular franchise like the X-Men teach about race and racism? What precisely does it mean, for example, when Magneto, the principle villain in the X-Men comics/films, tells Xavier, the leader of the X-Men, that he will fight for the liberation of his people (mutants) “by any means necessary”?¹ Despite what I assume are noble intentions on the part of the creative teams, for this generation of filmgoers it likely means a distorted view of Malcolm X and the Civil Rights Movement, an unrealistic understanding of contemporary race relations, and an unintended promotion of the racial status quo.
These are serious problems, and I will give them the attention they deserve, but it is also worth noting that X-Men provide the opportunity to have those much-needed conversations about tolerance and inclusivity. The importance of being comfortable and proud in one’s skin is one of several prosocial messages of X-Men First Class, as well as of the original trilogy.  The X-Men films handle many racial themes well, but, like Avatar, they may have some negative consequences too. In this space, I briefly examine two specific racial myths perpetrated by the X-Men franchise. For those interested, a much more detailed discussion of this topic, including an in-depth examination of the Magneto-Malcolm X parallel, is available here.

Myth #1: All oppression is the same

One of the most popular themes in popular fiction’s depiction of group prejudice is the drawing of explicit parallels between the plight of the fictional group and real-world historical oppression, most commonly the Holocaust and the legalized segregation in the South under Jim Crow. Although the comics pursued both analogies at length, Until X-Men First Class, the films had focused primarily on the latter, drawing a variety of explicit and unmistakable parallels between Xavier’s and Magneto’s fight for mutant rights and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. On the surface, the parallels seem well-informed. The mob violence and the hateful slogans (e.g., “The only good mutant is a dead mutant”) are remarkably familiar, and the anti-mutant hate groups, such as Friends of Humanity and the Church of Humanity, are clearly intended to represent real oppressive forces like the Ku Klux Klan and a variety of other Christian Identity and White Supremacy groups.
This is fine as far as it goes, but the parallel is built upon the flawed premise that the mutants’ experience of prejudice is analogous to the oppression experienced by Blacks and other racial minority groups. It’s true, of course, that both mutants and Blacks experienced prejudice, but the specific prejudicial attitudes that people hold and express toward these groups is often very different. Consider a 2002 study by Susan Fiske and her colleagues in which racially diverse samples of undergraduate students and adults rated 23 different out-groups on the basis of how society views them on two dimensions: expressed warmth (i.e., how positively people feel toward out-group members) and perceived competence (i.e., how competent they perceive out-group members to be).

Results consistently revealed three different types of prejudice: paternalistic prejudice (high warmth towards the group with low perception of the group’s competence); contemptuous prejudice (low warmth towards the group with low perception of the group’s competence); and envious prejudice (low warmth towards the group with high perception of the group’s competence). While this study did not include mutants in their list of out-groups (clearly a glaring oversight!), X-Men fans know that though mutants tend to be regarded with little warmth by humans, they are nevertheless perceived to be high in competence. This combination would place them squarely into the envious prejudice category, quite far from how “Negroes” were perceived by the White majority prior to and during the Civil Rights Movement. Which brings us to Myth #2.

Myth #2: An oppressed group is in some way responsible for its own oppression

The distinctions above are highly relevant. Although oppressed groups that are viewed by the dominant majority with contempt are not necessarily powerless (even nonviolent protest is a show of power), unlike mutants, they typically lack the physical force or political power to stop their own oppression. Under these circumstances, placing the burden of peace and tolerance on the oppressed group (this is essentially Xavier’s agenda) can itself be seen as a subtle form of oppression, for this expectation blames the victimized for their own victimization. Thus, while it’s reasonable to expect super-powered mutants to make certain accommodations in order to fit into mainstream society, this expectation is hardly reasonable in the real world, where ordinary human beings comprise both the oppressed and the socially privileged. Even if we believe (as I do) that those with less power vis-à-vis mainstream society deserve greater protection, no oppressed group should ever be expected to bear the burden of accommodating to their own oppression.
Applied to real history, Xavier’s mindset would have blamed Jews in Nazi Germany and Blacks in the antebellum South for their victimization–and would have expected them to make accommodations for the sake of peace, rather than demanding that the society itself become more accepting and less oppressive. In fact, this is what actually occurred as Nazis blamed the Jews for their condition and slave owners rationalized the institution of slavery by arguing that the “uncivilized” Africans needed the firm hand of the slave masters to lead happy and productive lives.
Unfortunately, the tendency to blame the oppressed group for its victimization is not just a fictional or historical phenomenon. Today our society continues to express this mindset in a variety of instantly recognizable ways, as when we suggest that a woman who was sexually assaulted should have worn less revealing clothing or imply that a gay man could choose to have a different sexual orientation. On some level, the X-Men franchise understands the folly of this type of thinking. X-Men United (X-2, 2003) even pokes fun of victim-blaming tendencies in its very effective parody (and social critique) of how some families react to a child who “comes out” as gay. Indeed, it is no more possible to will oneself into not being a mutant, as it is to will oneself into not being gay or female or a person of color. Yet, the X-Men creative team fails to take the critique to its logical conclusion, for though Magneto actively challenges this notion, since Xavier is presented as the film’s moral compass, the viewer is expected to ultimately accept the assumption that it is the mutants (and, by extension, gays, lesbians, and people of color) who must somehow make themselves fit into mainstream society, rather than expecting society to become more inclusive.

Conclusion

This propagation of racial mythology is not a minor flaw, and the resulting probable harm to readers’ and viewers’ thinking about race relations should not be dismissed or minimized. And yet, unlike Marc Antony, I come mostly to praise Caesar, not to bury him. There are frequent moments when the X-Men creative teams manage to turn a superhero soap-opera into an opportunity to meaningfully engage readers and viewers of all ages with social issues that are too often ignored by both the mainstream media and mainstream educational institutions. Even if the X-Men comics and films at times fail to adequately or accurately convey what scholars have learned about prejudice and group relations, they nevertheless open the door for historians and social scientists to weigh in and provide their own perspectives. My hope is that those perspectives also become part of the popular discourse.
Footnotes
¹Magneto uses this phrase in his conversation with Xavier at the end of X-Men (2000), saying: “The [human-mutant] war is coming, and I intend to fight it by any means necessary.”
This essay is adapted from a longer chapter in The Psychology of Superheroes published by BenBella Books.