If 51% of all men are f*ckbois and another 25% enable them with their silence, how would it make sense for black women in the United States to limit themselves to dating black men ONLY?
--- especially when black newspapers and white newspapers both will tell you a lot of black men are dead, in jail, etc and just plain missing?
From 2015: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missing-black-men.html
The book I just read by Brittany Cooper, ELOQUENT RAGE, suggests the gap between available black men and available black women might be closer to double that 17% in the NY Times article...if black women are to marry using the same criteria other women use to marry.
And other women marry people (mostly men) who are comparable in values, class, income, education level, etc. Studies suggest when these things do not match, marriages are much less likely to last.
Even if remaining black men weren't
Dating in a patriarchal society is a numbers game.
And black men understand the numbers game if they don't understand a doggone thing about the patriarchal society they benefit from.
That is, annecdotal evidence suggests that at least half of black men understand that they can bounce without really having made the slightest effort to do half of the emotional work required in a relationship. Apparently a lot of them can sit around like princesses waiting to be pleased. And a lot of black women report that a large percentage of them do just that.
So black women need to understand the numbers game too.
This means a black woman should always keep the number of choices she has high so she never even thinks about settling for less when worthwhile black men are not available to date.
Furthermore, she should make sure every black man she dates KNOWS she has plenty of choices, that he is not "rare" enough for her to be bending over backward to keep him.
I'm not blaming the victim here. I'm really not. Or maybe I should say, I'm trying not to.
But I really do think that if we stop treating black men with a job like purple unicorns, they'll stop acting like we ought to be clapping and barking like happy seals when they do the basics --only to have them cheat when they get slightly bored.
For too many black men, the knowledge that we are desperate for them to love us is a source of power that they have over us. And we're training young girls to believe in desperation and struggle-love and that betrayal is just part of love.
This is why one of the most talented, powerful, and beautiful women in the world is doing handstands celebrating the love of a man that was damn near 50 before he got bored of betraying her every 10 seconds.
That's her choice. But I say she's setting a bad example for young women everywhere -- unless she's had toy-boy on the side herself regularly. And that would still leave her as a bad example of how to conduct yourself when you truly know your self-worth.
Dating is a numbers game.
Black men can be a black woman's preference. And if I were queen of the world with a magic wand, I'd give everyone a psychological tune up and erase old wounds and make sure every black man had a chance of catching a black woman.
But when the black man who understands what it's like to be black in America and also makes an effort to understand how much more difficult it is to be both black and a woman in America IS NOT AVAILABLE, I want my sisters to give other men a shot at making them happy.
If black men can learn to respect women's issues, then non-black men can learn to respect race issues and women's issues both. It's really a matter of finding someone that's open to learning about your group identity as well as your individual identity.
A black man has less quantity to learn, since he's already black too. Then again, some black men act like black women aren't really suffering the same racism they are. So I'm going to go back to my bottom line:
Love someone who had things in common with you who is willing to do the work to learn you.
--- especially when black newspapers and white newspapers both will tell you a lot of black men are dead, in jail, etc and just plain missing?
And other women marry people (mostly men) who are comparable in values, class, income, education level, etc. Studies suggest when these things do not match, marriages are much less likely to last.
Even if remaining black men weren't
- AT LEAST 75% f*ck-boy + f*ck-boy-enablers
- PLUS colorism perpetuating
- PLUS extra arrogant because they know stable black women far out number them as rarefied stable black men
Dating in a patriarchal society is a numbers game.
And black men understand the numbers game if they don't understand a doggone thing about the patriarchal society they benefit from.
That is, annecdotal evidence suggests that at least half of black men understand that they can bounce without really having made the slightest effort to do half of the emotional work required in a relationship. Apparently a lot of them can sit around like princesses waiting to be pleased. And a lot of black women report that a large percentage of them do just that.
So black women need to understand the numbers game too.
This means a black woman should always keep the number of choices she has high so she never even thinks about settling for less when worthwhile black men are not available to date.
Furthermore, she should make sure every black man she dates KNOWS she has plenty of choices, that he is not "rare" enough for her to be bending over backward to keep him.
I'm not blaming the victim here. I'm really not. Or maybe I should say, I'm trying not to.
But I really do think that if we stop treating black men with a job like purple unicorns, they'll stop acting like we ought to be clapping and barking like happy seals when they do the basics --only to have them cheat when they get slightly bored.
For too many black men, the knowledge that we are desperate for them to love us is a source of power that they have over us. And we're training young girls to believe in desperation and struggle-love and that betrayal is just part of love.
This is why one of the most talented, powerful, and beautiful women in the world is doing handstands celebrating the love of a man that was damn near 50 before he got bored of betraying her every 10 seconds.
That's her choice. But I say she's setting a bad example for young women everywhere -- unless she's had toy-boy on the side herself regularly. And that would still leave her as a bad example of how to conduct yourself when you truly know your self-worth.
Dating is a numbers game.
Black men can be a black woman's preference. And if I were queen of the world with a magic wand, I'd give everyone a psychological tune up and erase old wounds and make sure every black man had a chance of catching a black woman.
But when the black man who understands what it's like to be black in America and also makes an effort to understand how much more difficult it is to be both black and a woman in America IS NOT AVAILABLE, I want my sisters to give other men a shot at making them happy.
If black men can learn to respect women's issues, then non-black men can learn to respect race issues and women's issues both. It's really a matter of finding someone that's open to learning about your group identity as well as your individual identity.
A black man has less quantity to learn, since he's already black too. Then again, some black men act like black women aren't really suffering the same racism they are. So I'm going to go back to my bottom line:
Love someone who had things in common with you who is willing to do the work to learn you.
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