Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Face Book Page 'Black Women Reintegrating'- Update

Please bear with me all those who have requested an invite, I am still figuring out a few things!...

Over the years, my work has shifted axis into being about the overall well-being of black women (BWE for short), from having a purely black women into interracial dating focus. I have been thinking about a general theme under which to summarize my work as it now stands, to encapusulate what my core thrust is and also my evolution of thinking, and also give a broad scope for any possible expansion of the work.

Over the months I have come to see that a whole lot of what i do can be said to be 'calling' black women to reintegrate into general society, to get into mainstream and the general playing field and succeed. To learn how to win within the society in which they find themselves.

After all these years, I have come to see that very little benefit accrues to black women 'holed' up both physically, socially and indeed mentally in the 'black community' context. I am watching freinds dry up on the vine, loose sparkle and enthusiasm expending all their energy for naught trying to patch back the community, when 10 holes appear for every one they fix. When I tell them that saving the black community is conditional and conditioned on black men themselves being inetersted and fully participating, they seem to get it on a logical level but their emotions are still tied in and invested in the old failed model. I have talked about black women accepting, greiving and moving on in the past and the sooner some of you complete the process the sooner many of you can get on with reaching those goals of life that will gladen your hearts in the fading years!

Richard Banks' Sister Speaks!

Black women continue to 'sit' out the general game of life waiting at the sidelines for a promised black social resurrection that never comes. Many black women particularly above the age of 35 will never be able to to recover the years and resources they have invested in this mirage.

Black women who circumscribe themselves within 'black community' as their only or primary operating area, run a great risk of experiencing lack, limitiation and misuse. This reasoning runs counter to everything we have been told about how 'our communtites' provide us with succour and nurture and that the wolf will eat us if we move out of the protective domain of other blacks.

I have resisted a social network page, but I now see a need for a page on which to continue this particular element of the BWE work ie bw re-integrating that dont fit under this current blog theme.

My page will focus on a community of black women (with a few others), who are serious about the challenge of reintegrating back into the general societal playing field and winning within it.

Some reasons for the facebook group around reintegrating

1) I do not agree or believe that Racism is the main culprit for the areas of social underachievement of black women. I say 'the areas' because we all can see that black women are making great strides in education and business however there are areas which mean so much to black women that they cant seem to get fulfillment. We know them all, OOW, singleness. There are also other attendant issues due to holing up within the black 'confines,' including increase in HIV infections, black women increasingly becoming victims of violence, street harrasment and other black male entitlement expressions, black women pouring out their resources and recieving nothing back neither having anything to show for all their efforts etc etc.

These are areas that are about making black women's lives meaningful.

The notion that all these issues are because of overarching racism is revealed as false especially as issues like singleness numbers and OOW numbers where not as high as they are today as little as 30 years ago! I believe this notion of 'racism' is the issue ior that only when racism is tackled can black women's situation improve is a notion blocking out useful discussions about how black women can turn their fortunes around. I believe this idea also provides the greatest mental block to all black women can be, and enjoy in the now! I hope that with the FBG we can look at and exchange real strategies for succesfully navigating mainstream which is where black will now have to forage for her sustenance.

2) I believe that it is only by choosing to move and carve out a space in mainstream that black women can enjoy better personal and social conditions, achieve respite and social consideration. Think of all the issues plaguing the black woman in her community, yet many want to maintain that it is in this community that black women can experience love, acceptance, belonging, and support. This assertion is simply theoretical thinking in the face of stark social indicators that show that black women would be safer, more accepted for their skin tones and hair texture, less victims of crime and harrassment by positioning themselves in a broader social context. We hoped that we would never have to say this but it is undeniable now that black women on average will experiencing better conditions and 'peace of mind' by locating themselvces out of the black community. I hope to with this facebook page that we can 'define' the common issues affecting black women so as to come up with strategies.

3) I feel strongly that it is a matter of urgency to pass on 'intelligence' on effective living to the younger black women. As I have written in a fair few blog articles, we are at the point where we are or even have lost a generation of black girls because we the elders (even the black community as a whole) has essentially thrown them to the wolves. We abdicated this responsibility of guding the young girls aright and have left young black women to fend for themselves and come up with their own survival strageies and it is no suprise that many have gone astray and internalized inferiority and low esteem giving the toxicity and dysfuntion within which they are functioning.

There is also the deliberate misguiding I see happening. I do not think the lack of coaching and effective training of black girls is something that just happened but continues the age old agenda of 'preparing' the young black girl to be the 'galley slave' to their community. Indeed if they get 'consumed' by the toxicity and dysfunction evident in black enclaves, this is seen as all part of the function that black women perform (collateral damage and canon fodder) thus there is deliberate misguidance and lack of direction giving.

Many black girls are also trapped in an atmosphere saturated in anti-black woman sentiment which means they are unable to tell who is for them or against them. They gleam information within an anti-black woman set up as well as anti-black woman portals and references that they dont know how 'being for them' looks and feels therefore they lack the ability to determine freind from foe.

4) Mainstream challenges you to do better, to be world class rather than mediocre because you are appealing to a wider audience and working within healthy wider competition spaces. These mainsteam conditions sharpen you. Unfortunately many black women are currently guided by in-group thoughts, priorities and chatter, they are becoming even more insular and unable to make sense beyond the black community realm. It cringed when I heard a black woman speak to a public forum a couple of days ago, because even though I could tell that she was speaking from the 'black ideology', she sounded so off current thought and reasoning. She was taking about things which society had now thought was a most ineffective way of viewing the situation. A lot of black women are 'off' in their thoughts and thinking and it is because they have cut themselves off wider thought systems and are holed up mentally in the 'black community' context.

and so
I am still tinkering around on the facebook page at the moment but if you do feel you can identify with the core concept of the group, feel free to ask for an invite. I reiterate, there will be an empasis on black women integrating into mainstream to win. There will be no discussions on how to bring back black unity and black women have to be happy to move on from worrying about black men and their situation/issues.

Facebook group is 'Black women Re-integrating'- Halima Anderson


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2 comments:

Lynn said...

Thank you for such an inspiring article! I have read your site, Khadija's two sites, Faith, Evia, and Sara's for a couple of years now and I feel incredibly blessed to have this knowledge.

I have been tinkering with the idea of setting up a BWE meetup group to reach out to other women locally and see if there are any other women in my area who are likemind in focusing on improving our lives and reaching out to young Black women and girls. I live in the south, and I have completely plugged myself out of the Black Construct. I am in a wonderful relationship with a great wm, and I have never been happier. It can be done, but it is hard to navigate with no female friends who are likeminded.

I don't have a FB page and I don't plan on getting one, but being an IT graduate I see the huge impact it has on the current generation's social connections. I think that is a great way to start implementing strategies and solutions to a global audience of young Black women/girls. Also an awesome way to effectively screen out the rabid naysayers who haunt our 'spaces' obsessively.

Halima said...

Hi Lynn i want to give you maximum encouragement regarding the meetup group. it is bold of course and it requires carefully looking at the risks. if you need to have a chat about possible ways forward, lets look at having a skype chat at some point! :)