The Image of Black Women Part I

One of the very entrenched images that will not be given up without a fight is the image of the brash, loud black woman, unfeminine, unattractive.


The whole of western civilisation needs that image to continue for their collective sanity. I see it everyday. If anyone where to shift the portrayal (not sporadic representations of pretty black woman), to the point that the image of brash, unattractive black woman become severely eroded the prescription for Prosac and other calming medication would go up. This image is required to maintain the present way society is set up and run.

Indeed, one of the key reasons for the persistence of this image is the benefits it generates for all other parties, as we have discussed ad nauseum, however the key thing here is that the image ensures that black women are shut out of social and power alliances. You see, in a world where women depend on building alliances to survive and thrive, the very ability to create alliances is being attacked and taken from black women to mire them in disadvantage and to ensure that they never move into a better social situation and hence ‘reserve’ the good of the land for others.

I hear folks say that women should make their own money etc. BULL! We do not yet live in a society were women don’t need alliances and to be linked and connected to make it.

We still need social contact and to be linked in firmly to secure jobs, contracts, relationships, good education etc etc. A deliberate con man's (and women) argument is being sold to black women that they are an island that can live comfortably alone.

A slight detour here, but have you, like I, noticed that black women are often asked to run out in front of everyone else in living by standards and conventions that are light years ahead and thus impratical in societies current configuration. Yes even though these life concepts that black women are being told to run with might be progressive, society is not yet in such a place where living by such standards is practical and does not result in a sever penalties to all those who would dare live so out of tune with the rest of society. Indeed the move to make black women totally self sufficient and able to ‘go it alone’ can be seen by some as the ultimate feminist dream (for white women that is), but we can all observe what damage this has done to the image of black women deemed now a 'mules', 'beasts of burden,' 'masculine', needing no help or respite…who but a sadist would want that kind of life for black women.

In lots of ways black women are being urged to be pathfinders and battering rams to scale walls and beat down iron doors and when they have taken the brunt of it all, others come in after the battles have been hard won, to pick and choose the spoils they want.

Now back to the issue of black women and our image, ask yourself, who would want to build relationships(alliances) with the stereotypical black women, indeed who would want to give a job to the neck rolling, shrill black woman that occupies popular imagination? Not many for sure. It is important to see then why this image of black women is in heavy rotation and heavily guarded so that it does not move off and away from popular imagination. Remember that it is the very ability to create alliances that is being attacked and taken from black women here, so that societies assets and material resources continue to circulate only in specific circles.

Indeed the stereotypical image of black women has such a powerful hold over the general perception as folks can’t even believe, and I have a key example for you to underscore this point.

Now some of you have said that in online dating, you have often been ‘contacted’ by men who have stated in their online profile, that they do not want black women i.e. they want a selection of anything but black replying to their profiles or they want to be matched only to non-black women. So here you are preparing to respond to this nice white or other guy who has ‘winked’ at you and just before you fire off a nice flirty email, you decide to check his profile once more (you casually glanced at it first and it said he was a writer!), anyway you are in for a shock because he has clearly checked for everything but black! So how come he is emailing you, does he not see from your profile that you are black? What kind of disconnected thinking is that?

Many of you have wondered about this totally confusing situation. I mean why would a man who says or who indicates that he doesn’t want a black woman suddenly IM or respond to one. What many of us fail to understand is that the general idea of ‘black woman’ conjures up negative associations in many of these men’s minds, so when these men are filling out the generalised form and come across white, black, asian etc, as soon as black comes up, it taps into the negative associations and images particular those which saturate society.

But guess what, as soon as that classification assumed a personality e.g. Tyra, Oprah, Halle, Gabriella etc or you in your cute photo, suddenly he is no longer thinking stereotypes. Trust me on this one, but if these dating sites changed the system of demographic identification and made it more personalized e.g. instead of asian, white, black, they have asian =Lucy Lui or black = Oprah, you would note the difference before too long. The negative ideas of black women are triggered in all sorts of areas and ways, denying black women opportunity and their humanity. Yes I know we like to believe that people can think for themselves and all that, but the reality is that the average person (the population from whom most of your social interractions will come) has tastes and choices that are easily controlled and dictated. Humanity unfortunately is sheep that can be lead and manipulated and suggested to, and this is what those who control resources play on.

The image of black women is being controlled to sustain an impression that prevents her from moving to a more propitious place socially. This is a feminist issue for black women, not for white women for sure, because anything that would redistribute the resouces accruing to white woman will be avoided and down played and even made a figment of our active imagination.

Those that determine social images will, even in deep sleep, tightly hold the image and idea of black womanhood captive to the most negative stereotypes available!

What to do?
I have always said that I am not even worried about what folk plan for black women, IF ONLY BLACK WOMEN COULD BECOME SELF AWARE!

Black women walking about clueless about what they face and showing even less willingness to figure things out is the key problem. Indeed even if folks are training a nuclear weapon against black women, as long as we know they are, we can strategize against their worst plans.

But instead what do you get? Black women intent on remaining ignorant and preferring to run after dead dreams, work for crumbs or work to buy the affection of the very folk that would use them and in the end be happy to see them destroyed.

Under such a situation, very little can be done on a broader scale to wrest the image of black women from the negativity unless black women become serious and invested in the idea of organizing themselves. Each of us is left with the option of working on an individual basis to create the best impression of ourselves and the image we have in the minds of others.

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Black women actually 'sign up' to the twisted thinking they have

http://interracialloveandspicebysara.blogspot.com/ which is Sara Taylors blog, is one of my favourite haunts!

Anyway on a recent post, an 'anonymous' commentor claiming to be a black woman, accused Sara of destroying black men and women. 'She' went on to talk about how black men are being left alone to fend for themselves by disloyal black women running off with white men!

Now even though I do doubt that this commentor was a black woman, I must say that I have and do come across black women giving an account that reverses the situation as it stands and those who do position black women as the aggressor or the abandoner of black men/black relationships.

In the face of the clear evidence that it is black men who have abandoned black relationships and refused to uphold the tenets of black love, you have black women making youtube videos saying black women have dropped the ball and etc etc. Now do you think these women are really seeing a situation that is totally different from what we all can easily observe? Do you think that these women do not see the reality confirmed by statistics (for many years now) that black men have been out dating and out marrying twice the rate of black women for it to be that it is black women are abandoning black men and not vice versa?

My response to this is No. These women have 'signed up' to both believe and distort the picture and reverse the actors to serve the agenda they have.

I want to reiterate that black women actually 'sign up' to believe and promote the twisted logic that is evident with a whole lot of what these types of black women spout and believe. It is very deliberate. So if you are a black woman who believes these ideas then know that somehow and somewhere, you 'checked' a box, that you would believe faslehoods and direct opposites of reality to support the 'false' ideologies of black unity. It is deliberate on your part, dont get it wrong, you decide to believe falsehoods and outright lies about what pertains.

Black women who have PERVICE (persitent views inspite of contrary evidence), do it deliberately but they are also psychologically prepared to recieve these views.

I remember when I used to attend 'strong black women rallies' (out of curiosity), how a mood would be created under which black women would believe anything even when they knew the truth was directly opposite to what they were being told.

Under the spell woven at these rallies and meetings, out and out nonsense and things easily observed as false suddenly started to sound 'sensible' and maybe 'have something to them'. I actually think it is the 'maybe we are not seeing the full picture' spell, that is used effectively to capture black women. Many black women are told that there is another story to what they can visibly observe, and once black women believe that there maybe more than meets the eye, they become duely primed to slot in some 'nonsense' as the missing piece of the story. Now the created mood in these 'conventions' makes statements like 'our brothers need our help and support', become logical and sensible even when it is clearly observable that at this point it is black women that need support. I remember that one of the things that was never done was to challenge patently false accounts, as this would essentially 'break the spell'. I remember once doing this by challenging a particular statement. The women in the room got very angry. To this day, I believe the anger was because I broke the mood necssary for recieving and believing the fantasies they were being told about black men.

I also used to get the one where one of the 'leaders' would try to get me to bend to their will and blind-believe along with everyone else. They try to get a black woman like me who was unwilling to submit/collude with the self deception to bow. One of them said to me, 'You know that when black women get it together, black men will come home'. Now that statement was loaded with all sorts of psychological arm twists and was my 'cue' to give up the rebelion and just like a good black woman, go along with the self deception.

As a black woman you decide to be taken in by such fables, and give your mind over to the deceptions and falsehood! Therefore a black woman has to decide for herself that beliving the truth as evident in what she can observe is more important than agreeing to believe a lie in a bid to serve an agenda!


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A Picture and a Thousand Words

Give it up Part II

Black women must give up living their whole existence around the notion of black community. It is the whole obsession of black community; of 'living for' black community, 'surviving' the black community, 'looking out' for black community, 'uplifting' the black community, 'protecting' black community, 'fixing' the black community, working for the benefit of black community, 'fitting in' with black community, 'residing' in black community, 'seeking her needs' within black community, aggitating for black community, 'rescourcing' black community,................. that has mired the black woman in her present hardship and misery and struggle.

It is black womens' refusal to stop playing community engineer or even god with the power to create without the necessary ingredients and raw materials in place, that causes black women to be burdened, stressed, struggling, denied, ill, drained, confused and depressed.

Black women must stop ordering their lives around, even putting themselves on hold for some coming great 'revival of black people.' They must go out and get their needs met NOW and from what is obtained and obtainable in the here and now.

It is black women's insistence on 'making up for', picking up the slack and 'keeping things going meanwhile', that has entrenched the idea that black women can handle it all alone and or need to be just left to get on with it. It is black women trying to be good 'race' women, who are willing to do more than their fair share, even work alone in the trenches of the black struggle, that has enshrined the shirking of responsibility and participation among black men, so much so they now feel that 'sperm' alone is an adequate contribution for the black community 'building' effort!

Black women must abandon shop, and lay down tools to all this struggling for and on behalf of the race, when the expectation continues to be for them to do it all alone.

Only then can black women be healthy and get themselves a slice of this life of which we all have only one to live.

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My thoughts on a range of things

I have been on a month long break from this blog, and my thoughts have 'piled up' over everything and anything. I am going to have to do a clearing house style post today to just share from a range of issues.

By the way, thanks to those who emailed and wished me a good one. I think some people do realise that we BWE bloggers are human with needs of rest and nuture and sustenance.

I always remember how Evia talks about sustaining those who are doing a good work, so that they will not only continue, but others will step in and take up the call. Anything rewarded continues and we all need to get into the idea that we need to appreciate those who work on our behalf and I dont mean just financially, you still have a kind word or good deed that you can share even if you dont have money (and I must say thanks again to those who have contributed financially to me and for the work I do, you will not miss your reward. Amen).

Sadly I see an abundance of arrogance among black women, with regard these issues. Some of you are very spiteful and jealous of the BWE bloggers (possibly because you think they have somehow happened upon the leadership of some 'big' movement and you envy that) and you say nasty things about them at the same time enjoy the fruits and employing the principles that they have offered up freely. I trust the 'universe' to be fair on this one, and if you repay good with evil and lift your hindleg at anyone who you have been blessed off, and if you have at anytime benefitted from the work of BWE bloggers (even if it was some nugget or the other of advice you gleaned), and yet turn round and repay them with insults, false accusations, distortions, character attacks etc, then it will not be well with you. Amen. TAIHTSAT.

A few thoughts

On the ever confused state of black women
Every other person seems to know what time it is except black women. Black women appear to be in a particular mind about things which no one else is in, or shares with them. You get black women saying things like 'well I thought we are supposed to be doing it this way' or 'I thought this is what we should be saying.' Yet no one has been doing or saying things that way for years. Black women are so obviously and painfully out of step with everyone else that even a blind person can see it. It leaves one tapping their chin wondering, how in Gods name could anyone have stayed in this isolated and marooned mentality in the midst of everyone else behaving differently? What could have kept them shelterd from reality?

This particular 'lag' in black women's perception and in their thinking on things is a constant and repeating theme.

Their general befuddled state, and the 'so what page are we on now' type confusions black women are displaying especially when the general society has stopped reading and operating from any such 'books' that black women are engrossed with, suggest that 'blocks' and 'filters' have been set on black women's minds to filter out vital information that could have gotten them 'in tune' and in mental line with what the rest of humanity is now doing. This is the kind of thing done to keep people in an exploitable state, not knowing their rights and their opportunitites. The mental marooning of black women means they continue to have their rescources accruing to others, not knowing their rights and oppotunities in the current dispensation.

Black men’s dedication to the race
Are black men dedicated to the idea of black community? Well one way to acertain this is to look at how black men have positioned themselves and responded to the critical ‘needs’ of the community in terms of black male input.
Indeed, instead of locating themselves 'in' the black household and adding to rescources and the push for black families and the black community, they have evidently chosen to locate themselves 'outside' of it (as evidenced by single parent homes headed by black women) and outside it, where they can serve their individual interests better and indeed then constantly negotiate upwards, the price for their ever marginal involvement. Operating by sheer market forces and not the higher principle of 'community outlook' clearly puts black men in the category of self-server.

Another thing that black women havent caught up about black men
Black men now see us as rivals for the attention of white peoples. Over the years, black men have begun to view black women as their rivals for the affection, attention and other attonement overtures of white people. Notice how black men talk about how 'white society props up black women at the expense of black men, notice how they come with a catalogue of their own complaints anytime black women raise the issue of their trials in wider society, to take the focus off black women and block black women from the possibility redress, indeed any redress is due black men not black women. They are also 'measuring shoulders' with black women over IR because for them, it is about 'more white people have to like us than like you,' and 'our profile and universal appeal must be higher than your'. Any wonder then that many are fighting tooth and nail against black women opening up their options, all the while with a blonde on their arm.

We have become competition with them for any rescources coming by way of white people (in their minds this is all it is about), hence the sabotage, blocking and ruining of black women's PR with white males and general disorienting of black women re their wider options etc. Think about it, this is classic competition dirty tactics. Rival is the correct sentiment for how many black men now view black women, but poor black women always the last to figure things out and still running with the belief that black men are their 'brothers'.

Black women do indeed have to learn to watch people and deduce who and what they are from their actions not from handed down definitions.

About the framing of the debate about why black women are not marrying
As you all know, another day brings another article about the singleness plight of black women. Recently I read some commentaries and articles again putting the situation down to black women 'driving off' black men (in other words, black men's desire to marry and marry black women at that remains intact and unchanged). When I finished reading the commentary, the obvious question occured to me- as it usually does these days given how black writers and intelligensia have been afflicted with a strange case of 'ignore the huge polka dot elephant in the room'. Anyway the rhetorical question arose and it was, 'I suppose the situation couldnt possibly be that black men are no longer interested in marrying black women to any great extent. No of course not, everything with black men remains the same; this includes their interest in marriage, their motivation, the women they deem worthy of marriage etc etc etc, the issue is all down to black women and their snooty faces. If they could just smile, the rates of marriage would rise faster than the stock market.

My fear is that black women have become very adept at such convulated and disengenious reasonings themselves. I have just read an article written by a black female journalist regurgitating this 'its black women's fault' -of course in nice professional language but that is the bottom line of what she is saying. It is scary because I see intelligent black women who I feel have the trained critical skills to notice how these types of discussions and debates skirt black men's involvement in the state of things. These women unquestioningly go ahead to reproduce these faulty discourse styles and ones which are bent on castigating women as themselves!

Two things are clear, the objective of these articles is damage limitation and to head off any movement away from black men given the state of things. This is indeed an attempt to pull back black women into continuing to confine their choices to black men.

Secondly, I realize that admitting certain things about what is really going on with black men, will collapse the very precept around which building black unity becomes possible ie admitting that black men are just not into marrying black women anymore and by extension building black families, would then make the whole black love/unity aggitation look ridiculous given that black men could care less. It would be like, 'Why are we even pushing for this when the vital piece is missing'. The black unity aggitators know this deep down, that admitting black men are not onboard means admitting the defeat of the whole idea and so, these aggitators (who are predominately black women), will continue to collude with other parties in to not admit the truth just to keep hope alive. Hence they will continue to issue false reasons for the situation and fake solutions and those black women who unfortunately incline their ears to their voices will continue to chase their tails on this one.

The foolish-making effect.....
I know I shouldnt be amazed at what black folk get up to but I said to a freind after reading another article trapping black women in the false dichotomy of 'black men or no men', 'This article is just like me writing a full scientific piece, about how to get your daily vitamin C from eating oranges'.

If I wrote a ten page document about Vitamin C and eating oranges, surely along the way someone would ask, 'but cant you can get vitamin C from eating Apples or Kiwis or etc..' The fact that me, the writter, wrote a ten page article without reference to any other sources of Vitamin C (which is something even a 10 year old knows) would make me an absolute moron, in everyones eyes. But not in the black community. We acknowledge these types of faulty premised 'black men or no man' articles as very valid discussions. I find the whole thing very unnerving and have started to think seriously about carrying my tin foil hat with me to any 'black meetings', so that the 'rays' of whatever idiocy inducing mind control at work doesnt take me in to.

Notice how that women who are all about up 'black unity' display amazingly low levels of intellectual abilities, when you really engage them on the issue. You get a lot of ducking and diving key issues around the possibility of this black love/unity. I used to wonder why such women would suddenly seem dumb and not be able to add 1 an 1 to get 2. Even women with PHD's and etc would suddenly start struggling over obvious issues or try to meander round critical questions about how possible this black love-unity thing is. Clearly in order to believe all this black unity tripe you have to suspend your intellect and power down your critical abilities, because thinking critically is not conducive for holding unto the 'black uplift' blind belief. Indeed you cannot use your brain too keenly if you are a 'black unity' proponent or else you would see clearly how the numbers dont add up and the fundamentals for achieving so called black unity (principally the committment of black men) dont exist to make it possible. Thus being all about black unity means you must depend on strong emotions to carry you through the inherent inconsistencies and glaring gaps of the pro-black unity position. You must switch off/down your brain activity to a level for this black unity spiel to make sense in the light of how things are. Which brings us right back to the cause of foolishness among black writers.


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The Results are in

From www.divorcereform.org/black.html

"Today the number of children born into a black marriage averages less than 0.9 children per marriage (less than one per family). "The birthrates of black married women have fallen so sharply that absent out-of-wedlock childbearing, the African American population would not only fail to reproduce itself, but would rapidly die off."

Thanks Felicia for locating this information, what would we do without your research!

Now if this doesnt remove the rose colored glasses from the eyes of black unity aggitators I wonder what will. Indeed, do folks understand what is being said here? In case you missed it, black marriages and the children they produce, can no longer sustain the black community numbers as we have them. The marriage numbers of black folk and the resultant children have so bottomed out, that left to this group alone, we are looking at the so called black community (which essentially and really means the black head count) dying off in who knows, say as little as 3-4 generations.

So to the rescue have come single black women, taking up the task of supplying and topping up the numbers of black folk born. I remember reading Mitchelle Wallace's book years ago where she said that black women see themselves as responsible for birthing the black army. I rolled my eyes at that one, but I can now see how this underlying meme, could be informing the actions of black women, who looking around and seeing the gross disinterest in black men over the fate of the black community, decide to just 'keep things going' for black people, to just keep birthing black children without support, and do this so at least black people do not physically disappear if ever black people should rise up.

All of us know of women who have said, 'Well now that there is no black man come for me, I'll just have kids.' This is all part of it.

Indeed if for black women, it was just about having children and not the political act of 'topping up' black numbers, then black women would be willing to explore other options for fathering these kids not just black men. Indeed if it was just about black women loving the OOW lifestyle then they would have as many OOW for all races of men, white, black, Asian, Native American. Instead you see that black womens OOW status is significantly confined within the race.

Women of every group have offspring, that is what they do, it is a fact of life. However it is the men of the group that decide wether these women will be having these children within the confines of a marriage relationship or not. I repeat,
women of child bearing age will have children one way or another. It is the men who decide wether these childen will be born in or out of wedluck.

I indeed hear arguments blaming black women for opening their legs to irresponsible men, but do the folks who speak so realize that they have these single black mothers to thank for sustaining the numbers of black people existing in this country. Are they willing to now say that black women should not have children OOW even if this sets blacks on a clear path to extinction. hmmm...

Black women are simply displaying their utter commitment to having black children even without any support because as I said above, at the end of the day, if this was simply about ‘promiscuity and getting paid and whatever, black women would be doing the OOW dance across the board and with white, black and Mexican etc (and particularly with better odds of some support from other men). Yep those who blame black women for having OOW please note that without OOW there would be almost no black population for the future.

By the way and for clarification, I am not in favour of black women 'doing it alone.' I am simply pointing out that the whole idea that black men have the will and inclination to build a black community is false and black women waiting for and relying on black men is sadly misguided as a result. The high OOW of black women points clearly to black women wanting to continue the black agenda in the absense of black male participation!

Black women Well and Truly punked!

And I got this one off Khadija's Blog (please see the sidebar link to The Mind Workout) and all thanks to the commentor Beverly for these stats.

While 42 percent of Black men were now married, just 31 percent of Black women were married when Census 2000 was taken. The LOWEST PROPORTION FOR WOMEN OF ANY RACE or origin groups. The 10 percentage-point difference in the percentage of Black men and Black women who were now married was the largest difference between men and women in any of the groups.

(source: http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-30.pdf)

So while y'all were sitting at home waiting patiently for your black prince to come for you, they were out there cranking up their own marriage numbers till now they give you an eleven point lead. Wow! And you can imagine what the numbers are today 9 years later. Jesus take the wheel!

Even though on a whole, men are supposed to have rates of marriage slightly more elevated than women(because of the higher numbers of women to men), it is a big shame on women of any group to have men more married than them at such a greater rate. It underscores once again that black women have lost sight of self-care.

All I can say again is 'Black women, wake up'. 'People are laughing at you not with you'!

Halima is on Break

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