The prevailing wisdom, it seems, is that the wicked Black Woman chases Black Men away from their cherished and honored duties as fathers, and that is the why there are so many female-headed households in our communities, but can such an argument really be sustained in light of all the other pressures that are brought to bear on Black Male-Female relationships?

I mean, have we gotten to the place where we are willing to take the blame away from historical White Supremacy/Black Male unemployment/and our overall socio-political and socio-economic disfranchisement, and drop all the blame on Black women?

I will say no more. I hope we can weigh such a situation, and bring forth some sense from that sort of insanity.

I mean, have we gotten to the place where we are willing to take the blame away from historical White Supremacy/Black Male unemployment/and our overall socio-political and socio-economic disfranchisement, and drop all the blame on Black women?


more bull to separate people more than they already are

i still blame where the blame is: historical White Supremacy/Black Male unemployment/and our overall socio-political and socio-economic disfranchisement

lIKE you stated

hey i was mad too when i wasn't workin' and/or didn't have access to money

i mean come on now

this is a non-issue for anyone with any sense


peace EL

more bull to separate people more than they already are

i still blame where the blame is: historical White Supremacy/Black Male unemployment/and our overall socio-political and socio-economic disfranchisement

lIKE you stated

hey i was mad too when i wasn't workin' and/or didn't have access to money

i mean come on now

this is a non-issue for anyone with any sense


peace EL

And i'm still mad for other reasons though

mainly that we are suffering out there

in ways you don't even see

i wish the spirit would swoosh down and correct all of this

I believe someone, the powers that be, something ... wants to destroy the great bond between Black Men and their Mothers.

Oftentimes, a Black Man's Mother is the ONLY one he KNOWS will stand with him, no matter the situation.

Oftentimes, a Black Man will offer his life, and threaten the life of another ... for his Mother ... and vice versa.

It is a VERY STRONG BOND ... between (most) Black Men and their Mothers ... and somebody doesn't like it.

We are now being told, that it is the Black Mother that is ruining the Black Man ... that she is in essence, his enemy.

If this one (and oftentimes only) remaining bond is broken ... the one between the Black Man and his Mother ... he has no one.

The Black Father / Child relationship has already been weakened to a great degree, is on the ropes, and struggling.

The Father leaves, and the Mother remains, sacrificing / giving her life for the child ... bearing all responsibility alone.

Separating a child from its Mother ... suggesting that she is now the problem ... will surely be our collective death.

If not for the Mother (in these cases), what would become of the child? Are folk suggesting the child would fare better alone?

Break the Mother's heart and resolve, while planting seeds of doubt in the minds of Black Men, that their Mother is the enemy.

I don't think it gets any worse than this.

:heart:

Destee

The prevailing wisdom, it seems, is that the wicked Black Woman chases Black Men away from their cherished and honored duties as fathers, and that is the why there are so many female-headed households in our communities, but can such an argument really be sustained in light of all the other pressures that are brought to bear on Black Male-Female relationships?

I mean, have we gotten to the place where we are willing to take the blame away from historical White Supremacy/Black Male unemployment/and our overall socio-political and socio-economic disfranchisement, and drop all the blame on Black women?

I will say no more. I hope we can weigh such a situation, and bring forth some sense from that sort of insanity.


NO, we can NOT "drop all the blame on black women."

We ALL must accept some "blame" and "responsibility, EQUALLY.

And that is ALL I am gonna say on this because the arguments have gotten tired...

I believe someone, the powers that be, something ... wants to destroy the great bond between Black Men and their Mothers.

Oftentimes, a Black Man's Mother is the ONLY one he KNOWS will stand with him, no matter the situation.

Oftentimes, a Black Man will offer his life, and threaten the life of another ... for his Mother ... and vice versa.

It is a VERY STRONG BOND ... between (most) Black Men and their Mothers ... and somebody doesn't like it.

We are now being told, that it is the Black Mother that is ruining the Black Man ... that she is in essence, his enemy.

If this one (and oftentimes only) remaining bond is broken ... the one between the Black Man and his Mother ... he has no one.

The Black Father / Child relationship has already been weakened to a great degree, is on the ropes, and struggling.

The Father leaves, and the Mother remains, sacrificing / giving her life for the child ... bearing all responsibility alone.

Separating a child from its Mother ... suggesting that she is now the problem ... will surely be our collective death.

If not for the Mother (in these cases), what would become of the child? Are folk suggesting the child would fare better alone?

Break the Mother's heart and resolve, while planting seeds of doubt in the minds of Black Men, that their Mother is the enemy.

I don't think it gets any worse than this.

:heart:

Destee

:ref: That the data on oow births and their consequences on that family are quite conclusive? :bullseye: Honestly, there is no way around the problems associated

:ref: That the data on oow births and their consequences on that family are quite conclusive? :bullseye: Honestly, there is no way around the problems associated

What's up, Kem? LTNS.

One thing though, like O said, we BOTH, woman and man, share SOME blame in this.

I wish we could get our heads clear and just live the way we think we ought to. If we did that, our unity would be strengthened and a third of our problems would be solved.

What's up, Kem? LTNS.

One thing though, like O said, we BOTH, woman and man, share SOME blame in this.

I wish we could get our heads clear and just live the way we think we ought to. If we did that, our unity would be strengthened and a third of our problems would be solved.


:ref: There are too many sisters doing this for shared blame. Prior to the 80s that argument could be used. Moreover, there are many sisters that really dont want a guy around. :getout: At least until the child starts becoming unruly. They deliberately chose guys that wont be around. There is no getting around those stats either

:ref: There are too many sisters doing this for shared blame. Prior to the 80s that argument could be used. Moreover, there are many sisters that really dont want a guy around. :getout: At least until the child starts becoming unruly. They deliberately chose guys that wont be around. There is no getting around those stats either

If that was the Sista's sole purpose...to lay and play with a man who wouldn't stay...wouldn't she use some type of contraceptive so that she would NOT get pregnant. Or, dare I say, that she was trying to use the baby to keep him in her life? And why would a Sista choose to be with a man of such nature? What's her benefit from doing so?

Speak on it, Brotha.

If that was the Sista's sole purpose...to lay and play with a man who wouldn't stay...wouldn't she use some type of contraceptive so that she would NOT get pregnant. Or, dare I say, that she was trying to use the baby to keep him in her life? And why would a Sista choose to be with a man of such nature? What's her benefit from doing so?

Speak on it, Brotha.

You're not hearing me. There are lots of sisters out here that want a child and NO man to interfere with his raising. They dont get pregnant until they want the child. So yes, they do use until then.

They chose to be with a guy of this nature because they know it is highly probable, he wont be around when the child is born. :dance1:

You're not hearing me. There are lots of sisters out here that want a child and NO man to interfere with his raising. They dont get pregnant until they want the child. So yes, they do use until then.

They chose to be with a guy of this nature because they know it is highly probable, he wont be around when the child is born. :dance1:


Now that's deep. But, I've met a few women who actually spoke those words out of their mouths. And, I've been presented with that proposal as well. But, Black women at large thinking this way....Bruh, I don't know about that one.

You mean to tell me that Black women think so little of Black men that they're choosing those particular Black men who won't stay around just so they can have a baby and raise the baby without a man. That's deep.

This must be an organization of Black women who keep hidden because all the Black women I know want a Black man in marriage with children.

smh

Now that's deep. But, I've met a few women who actually spoke those words out of their mouths. And, I've been presented with that proposal as well. But, Black women at large thinking this way....Bruh, I don't know about that one.

You mean to tell me that Black women think so little of Black men that they're choosing those particular Black men who won't stay around just so they can have a baby and raise the baby without a man. That's deep.

This must be an organization of Black women who keep hidden because all the Black women I know want a Black man in marriage with children.

smh

It is deep but, I think it is true. Should not have said that. This is one fight I do not need. But, believe me, I have known more than one African woman who simply did not want to get married to ANY MAN. Period. I do not think thay all of them were lesbians. But, there is definitely a problem in the heads of our women on this issue. At least some of them if not most of them.

We can't deny that a lot of young black men are angry. The cause's are many and varied. I think that when a black woman is raising a male child by herself, then the child is without the proper role model. He can love his mother and still be angry because his father is not around. I have sixteen grandchildren, and twelve are boys. Four of the boys are angry because their father's are absent. One is already in a juvenile facility, but I think he will be alright. Another is already staying out all night and taking cars, he was recently sent to live with his father. Two other's are brothers and one has said that he wants to go to jail before he grows up. The other eight boys are not angry, their father's are in the home.

There is a lot of anger in the black community. Women are also angry because they usually get stuck with the total responsibility for caring for their children, there are too many "hit and run" type of men around. Most of the treads on this site are about various forms of anger in the black community. It's not limited to the males at all.

The prevailing wisdom, it seems, is that the wicked Black Woman chases Black Men away from their cherished and honored duties as fathers, and that is the why there are so many female-headed households in our communities, but can such an argument really be sustained in light of all the other pressures that are brought to bear on Black Male-Female relationships?

I mean, have we gotten to the place where we are willing to take the blame away from historical White Supremacy/Black Male unemployment/and our overall socio-political and socio-economic disfranchisement, and drop all the blame on Black women?

I will say no more. I hope we can weigh such a situation, and bring forth some sense from that sort of insanity.

Utter rubbish. The problem has little to do with our being raised in “Female-headed households” as it is in our subscribing to the idea that households have to be headed by men. We cannot be talking about African consciousness and Africentricity and yet when it is convenient maintain the Eurocentric paradigms just because we are comfortable with it.

Now I don’t know what the whole story is in the US but I live in Trinidad, where this nonsensical argument is also rearing its head of late. As I began researching for the book I’m writing, I realised that much of the problem stems from some of our early sociologists who were schooled in Western academia and adopted their ways of seeing problems. So single-parent households and female-headed households were diagnosed as dysfunctional families. A closer look however, revealed that this was part of a holdover from Africa itself and that it was actually linked to a wider structure or network of female-headed communities. True, enslavement and colonialism decimated these structures and traditions, but the destruction was by no means as total as they are often made to appear. What we are dealing with here is really a clash of two worlds: the surviving strain of the female-headed community in which the man had his clear but yet informally defined roles and functions, clashing with a social and familial structure in which the man was the singular, dominant force and in which the societies economy was anchored in the man’s functions.

This female-headed household was something practically every working-class person in the Caribbean – and especially here in Trinidad – over 35 can relate to in several variants until about 30 years ago when rapid industrialisation brought on by the oil boom made us “modern” and “civilised” which meant that the patriarchal nuclear family was the only legitimate family structure in the eyes of the sociologists and other social scientists.

Now I would like to use Tyler Perry’s protagonist “Medea” as a model because this character is identical to Caribbean storyteller Paul Keens Douglas’ “Tante Merle”. Both characters are the traditional strong, highly opinionated, assertive and protective black woman who because of their age, life experiences and the wisdom acquired from same, became respected leaders in their communities gelling whole families together in informal structures and rituals. Men had their functions and their own importance but it did not have the principal, dominant position it does in Eurocentric societies. If it’s one thing we must always keep in our minds about European/northern-cradle societies is that they have deeply entrenched cultural hatred and fear of women and things defined as female. The more “educated” (more correctly, schooled) and churched we became in the Eurocentric mould, the more these traditional structures became challenged, undermined and marginalised. Couple that with the onslaught of the aggressive, individualist capitalist ethic with its inherent racism and class consciousness that defines the industrial West and you have a recipe for the dysfunction and violence that is taking over our respective communities.

Kem... what's up with these sweeping generalizations of what a lot of Black women want. Where is your statistical evidence and source?: :ref:
i would argue that the problem is continual.. finding the precise beginning is imposisble because of the cycle never stops spinning... until this past century there could not have been an arguement of 'female-headed households' because through oppression that was the only person there to head these families...

secondly... if what you say is true about women choosing 'sorry' men to procreate with.. then i'd say that the picking would be subconscious and not with any sort of concentrated effort.... weren't these same black women being raised in a household without a father?

lastly... i think we jump to conclusion to blame anyone... i have known quite a few men that were raised by both their parents and they are horrible fathers... most have choosen to not be a part of the children's life.. and their father was present...

there is something foul afoot and either the blame is evenly distribuited over more than the black nucleur family or... hell i don't know...

if young Black men are angry, then let's talk with them to find out why they're angry...to blame the Black woman is just wrong. The fathers of these children should and could have stayed ever-present their son's life...but chose not to. For those women who chose men who wouldn't stay with them, that's their choice. But, it doesn't stop that man from being in their son's life. If the father is not in the son's life, then that's his fault not the mother's.

I didn't have my father in my life and on many ocassions I wish I had an older Black man to talk with about situations I was going through at the time. But, I never got so angry as to do or sell drugs, want to go to jail to impress older guys in my hood who were not about anything, or go around getting a bunch of girls pregnant when I have no way of supporting them. As I got older, I found out that I could depend on older men in my family...grandfather and uncles. At the time, I thought they just wanted to be to themselves. Instead of males in my family, I found male role models at my school at every level who gave young boys sage advice about how to deal with things in our lives. I suggest the young boys of today do the same.

I'm not totally convinced about single Black women head of households being the cause of angry young Black boys/men. It seems to me that they're angry because older Black men let them down...not because they are raised by a Black woman.

So, the question becomes: Are we or did we as Black men let down our young Black boys?

Utter rubbish. The problem has little to do with our being raised in “Female-headed households” as it is in our subscribing to the idea that households have to be headed by men. We cannot be talking about African consciousness and Africentricity and yet when it is convenient maintain the Eurocentric paradigms just because we are comfortable with it.

An informative socio-historical post, brother Moko Ananci, let me say that off the top. But While I agree with you on 95% of the things you say, I say that you cannot just shrug off "western civilization" as relates to our condition in the United States and the Caribbean. We do live in a world of their creation, and long ago they cut off most avenues to our pure AFrican cultural and social expression.

It may well be that, as you say(history supports your assertions)that we have had these female-headed communities and households for much longer than we realize, but it doesn't work in this structure, which punishes the poor, the uneducated, and the unmarried/unattached with children. Actually, in light of what we know of the "Black Tax", and the "poor people's tax", both of which are economic penalties imputed agains those who fit in either(or both)categories in the United States, we do ourselves an injustice not to acknowledge the reality, and properly adjust.

Additionally, Black men clearly are not playing the roles we apparently played in the African Context. We have rare contact with the female-headed or Euro-nuclear families as stewards, caretakers, mentors, leaders, and fathers, and that is probably because, one, so many of us are unemployed/unemployable, and two, so many of us are behind prison walls. Our absence - in 70% of our households - cannot be overlooked in the cause of so much anger among both boys and girls.

Yes, boys and girls in African American, and probably the Caribbean as well, are angry. In fact, 80% of boys and girls of all ethnic groups who are now in juvenile detention, brother Moko, say they little to no relationship with their fathers. That is across all ethnic lines. That is because human beings, in my humble opinion, are psycologically hardwired to have both male and female principle in their psycho-emotional development. One without the other creates confusion and fear, and confusion and fear create anger.

That having been said, I don't believe all brothers leave their families because sisters chased them into the sunset. In fact, I can say with great certainty that between 1970 and 1995, when our teen pregnancy rates were off the charts, most of these brothers were children with no visible means of supporting themselves, much less a family. Some in this generation of African American young men looked upon making as many sisters pregnant as they could as a matter of "dropping seeds", nothing more nor less, because the consequence was that the female would take care of the child anyway. Beleive me when I tell you I heard it put this way a zillion times back in the day. In short, Black Females only had to get pregnant to "chase" these brothers away. That was their signal to get in the wind.

Lastly, Women are not immune to major criticism. They must be called to task for engaging with these brothers over and over again, knowing what the consequences were going to be. If something happens the same way 70% of the time, then you should know chances are it's going to happen to you. Unfortunately, it took a whole generation for us to wake up, and deal with the problems WE created by having so many children being raised by one parent. Based on some of the posts, We are still unwilling to accept this problem as one we created - together - Black men and Black women.

Peace and Blessings Family,

There's only going to be so much of this ... "it's the Black Woman's fault" ... BS.

Likewise ... "it's the Black Man's fault" ... will be limited as well.

This message / energy / Spirit will not live here ... you cannot use us, this community, to destroy what remains.

If this is all you have to give ... you need to go somewhere else ... right away.

This thread is closed.

:heart:

Destee

Peace and Blessings Family,

My closing this thread is open for discussion tonight ... in Class with Destee (http://destee.com/forums/calendar.php?do=getinfo&day=2007-4-22&e=49&c=1) ... @ 8 pm ET.

If you have an opinion to share, or just want to listen in ... Join Us Tonight (http://destee.com/chat).

In the meantime, this thread is still closed. If i'm convinced to reopen it tonight, i surely will.

Much Love and Peace.

:heart:

Destee