Black People : SHOULD BLACK WOMEN DEMAND MORE FROM BLACK MEN?

Bisabee

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Apr 4, 2006
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This is an article that provokes a lot of thought.

What would happen if Black women DEMANDED more from Black men? Would lots more Black men jump ship and cross over? It also seems that so many Black men (here, especially) are already complaining about what Black women are asking for until I can't imagine what they'd do if we asked for more. I, personally, already demand that a man bring enough to the relationship because I know I won't be content with less than I need. Obviously some sistas are NOT doing that. I think that in the long run, it would mean a great improvement in the men if the majority of Black women demanded more.

What do y'all think?

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Cosby's challenge fell shortHe should have told black women to demand help from black men in saving their community.
By Leonard Pitts Jr.


For some of us, it is the easiest thing in the world to idealize black women. To romanticize them, sentimentalize them.

Consider Legends Ball, last week's TV special produced by that uber black woman, Oprah Winfrey. I seldom watch Winfrey, but her salute to trailblazing black women kept me rooted. There was something soul-settling in seeing all those sisters, daughters, mothers - Gladys Knight, Maya Angelou, Cicely Tyson, Dorothy Height, Leontyne Price and more - gather in their finery to celebrate and be celebrated.

Or, consider a chat I had earlier this month with a group of academics and health-care professionals about the fact that black women have among the lowest suicide rates in the country - one-third that of white women, according to a 2003 University of North Carolina study. Asked why, I began to wax rhapsodic about the grounding that spirituality gives, the grace that hardship brings, and that serene majesty that often settles in on black women of a certain age.

Point being, black women are the strength and succor of their community. They are the last line of defense.

That's why there's something heartbreaking in what Bill Cosby recently told 500 of them, the graduating class of Spelman College, a historically black women's college in Atlanta. In his address, Cosby advised the young women that they will have to assume sole responsibility for the salvation and uplift of the black community because their men, by and large, have opted out.

As quoted by the Palm Beach Post, he said, "You young women have to know it is time for you to take charge."

The stark figures on incarceration and education that support Cosby are, of course, so well known as to defy repetition. And a 2003 Newsweek report tells us that increasingly, black women of education and achievement are having a hard time finding similarly situated black men.

Full disclosure: Cosby provided a blurb for the cover of my book, Becoming Dad, which is being reissued in June. The book makes many of the same points he's been making in recent years, so it should come as no surprise that I agree with him here. But I have a caveat:

There is nothing new about women picking up the slack for men. We take it for granted that they will do this, that they will raise the children, tend the house, anchor the community, when the men are jailed or killed or simply disinterested.

So Cosby simply told those women what, surely, they already know. And even though it was truth, it occurs to me that it's truth that might more productively be addressed to black men themselves.

Even iron, my father liked to say, wears out. And if iron can get tired, maybe even idealized, sentimentalized, romanticized black women can. Maybe sisters can get tired of forgiving brothers, daughters tired of making excuses for fathers, mothers tired of burying sons. And maybe, instead of telling them to be ready to shoulder the burden, Cosby should have told them to demand that men share it.

Maybe black women should begin to require one thing of black men: that they be better. Better than the systemic racism of the criminal injustice system, better than all the internalized lies of inherent inferiority. Better, in the way women have long had to be.

It is neither fair nor pragmatic to ask black women to save black America. We all need to save it, or else stand by and watch as that last line is crossed.


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Leonard Pitts Jr. (lpitts@miamiherald.com) is a Miami Herald columnist.





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A woman can only provide perspective for a man to move. She doesn't have the power to move him.
In the event that she does, she will only appreciate him for so long.
Either that, or he will only be moved and succumb to such demands for so long before he reverts to acting as he wills.
A woman deciding to only receive that which she expects is more practical and realistic.
That is, not settling for less.

*edit* I am beginning to subscribe to the belief that THIS Bill Cosby is a clone.
The Bill I grew up on would never even think such a thought.
And I know absolutely no Q who would.
 
Sister Bisabee ... thanks for sharing.

Unfortunately, no one can demand or make another do what they don't wanna do.

Black Men must collectively recognize what is needed, and encourage each other in that.

If women could make them do, they'd already be doing.

:heart:

Destee
 
Even iron, my father liked to say, wears out. And if iron can get tired, maybe even idealized, sentimentalized, romanticized black women can. Maybe sisters can get tired of forgiving brothers, daughters tired of making excuses for fathers, mothers tired of burying sons. And maybe, instead of telling them to be ready to shoulder the burden, Cosby should have told them to demand that men share it.

Maybe black women should begin to require one thing of black men: that they be better. Better than the systemic racism of the criminal injustice system, better than all the internalized lies of inherent inferiority. Better, in the way women have long had to be.

It is neither fair nor pragmatic to ask black women to save black America. We all need to save it, or else stand by and watch as that last line is crossed.

That was good stuff - gotta admit it...

So, before folks go off on their tangent against Cosby, consider that I wrote a thread here 2 years ago asking Black Women to Step up to the plate, and I wasn't prompted by ole Bill... I was prompted by what I SEE of African men... If it's not pleasing to me, then you can only imagine how our sisters feel... Like trapped in a nightmare of choosing between some of us, and NOTHING - because that is what I believe most African women would choose, US or NOTHING...

What I mean is that sisters TALK about getting with other men or other ethnicities, brothers gone ahead and DO IT... We do a lot of talking about "they aint ish", and then WE go about tryna prove it... I think we need to look in our mirrors and ask ourselves, WHO in heck we were talking about, them or ourselves??? Let me make myself clear, here... I am not talking about brothers who post to Destees, nor those brothers who are handling their business on a daily, monthly, yearly... I am talking about the multitudes of cats whom we make entirely too many excuses for... If they were all the men we say they are, they wouldn't need nobody's exuscues for them... If you got to make excuses for somebody, then they aint got their stuff together, and making excuses for them don't help them in that process...

Yes, I agree with brother Pitts... Sisters must DEMAND MORE FROM US - even those of us who seemingly got it together... Black Women should live up to what we say about them, and NEVER be satisfied...

Oh, and I forgot something - forgive me... WE, as African Men must DEMAND more from our brothers, TOO! Aint nothing like some peer pressure to get a human being motivated... Sisters should not have to do the motivating all by themselves - like they've been doing forever... Brothers Need to Step to the plate in these terrible times, too...


Peace!
Isaiah
 
the implication is that black women are in some superior position and black men are in an inferior one.
this is yet another "divide and conquer" strategy.

sisters need to make demands of themselves.
find their own power.

men need to do the same.

we are all in this thing together.
 

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