Happy 2013: A Little Review of Where We Are

New year comes just straight after Christmas, before you can even catch your breath, doesn’t it? It's pretty much easier to consider yourself already in a new year as soon as Christmas rolls around. This is essentially how I have come to see it for a couple of year now, by Christmas I am psychologically and mentally a year older and living in the new year.

What achievements, await you in 2013? What have you not achieved but are determined to achieve, is it Marriage? Children? Do you want your own business or house, or maybe all of these!

Only you can determine what it will be for you by this time next year.

 

By way of review of the BWE work from the start (around 2006) to date, I will say here that it is my belief that a growing number of black women (who prefer to think about these issues as opposed to refuse to deal sensibly with the reality before them) now know or have become aware and sensible in the face of many critical issues affecting black women due to the work of BWE. I believe the work of BWE blogs and proponents has worked its way into the general discussions of black women and into the thinking of a not insignificant number of black women out there in the wider society and not just those of us who have determined to live empowered.

The issue of Black men coming home

A growing mass of black women now know this view is futile. It happened slowly but now I sense the acceptance of this fact when I read websites and blogs that would have previously advocated for black women to sit and wait for black men. While these websites and blogs dont seem to have much by way of 'what next for black women', they seem to have come to the conclusion that all those lofty and ideal promises around black men and black women being together have failed and are irreparable. I see fewer and fewer people try to pretend that, the disdain even malice from black men towards black women 'is just from a small minority' which can be overlooked. Folk know that it is very much a feature of today’s black man. Each act of disdain of black women by men which continues to occur in the media and in the entertainment world, and each violent act or murder of black women reported on the news has nailed home the truth. Within the gap and dearth of discussion on 'what black women might do next' many black women are finding their own solutions and of course taking up the options that BWE has continued to champion and put forward about how black women can live healthier and happier lives.

I think the work of Ralph Richard Banks around his book 'Is marriage for white people?' burst through a whole lot of resistance, denial and refusal of black women, to deal with the reality in front of them. For many it was the shock treatment that finally forced them to confront an issue which they were doing everything possible to ignore, while suffering dearly for it.

In short I think we are moving away from the phase of resisting the reality of this matter in the wider body of black women. Indeed, maybe I no longer visit the same old websites I used to but the sense I am getting is that black women are no longer talking very strongly about black men and women getting together and casting about for ways which black women (of course it's black women, who else?) might make it happen.

Black planet

I think the idea of salvaging our people and lifting us up as a collective is still a hard one for many black women to give up and many BWE proponents and followers also struggle in this area and though they understand that black women must wisely go after their happiness and let go of the futile pursuit of reconstructing the black group, often an incident trips them into 'lets save our group' mind frame again. Many BWE black women cannot seem to uncouple their self elevation from group elevation, even though loads and loads have been written about how black women are essentially drained and destroyed by the 'saving the black community' project because the project is constructed around the idea of black women's health, wealth, their very sanity and well-being, being sacrificed into the effort.

Indeed BWE has always been clear that community salvation requires the life blood of black women and that as long as this is the way it is to be achieved, black women must totally dissociate themselves from that project even down to their immediate family situation if it mirrors this broader demand for black women to self- extinguish.

Some of us are still confused about how 'putting black women first' works and why we say it conflicts with 'saving alla people'. Get clear about the difference between putting black women first (BWE), and putting community ahead of yourself (BCE), here

Government/society owes me a good life

I think the current bad/struggling economy has kind of resolved this one for a lot of black women even though there will always be people caught on the sandy beaches after the tide pulls out.

I wrote the following in one of my previous blog posts:

The case for personal responsibility and common sense in one's dealings is being so effortlessly made as we get squeezed financially and cuts to all sorts of safety nets are being implemented. When there are no more government programs to stand-in for a participating husband and father, many black women curiously become wise in choosing who to bear offspring with, and the conditions under which it will happen!

 

Self- Advocacy

I think there is an emotional resistance on the part of black women to the idea of being expected to do more to achieve results especially result that others are not expected to work similarly for. I see, hear and feel this resistance in many BWE followers about doing that extra bit especially in the area of interracial dating.

I also wrote the following in one of my previous blog posts:

Self advocates don’t dwell on the fact that Asian women are not being asked to 'pursue' white men, or are not asked to talk to men first, they push all that to the back of their minds and strike up a conversation with the white man standing on the queue.

Self advocates will do all they can to get themselves up and out of the cloak of invisibility that surrounds black women, and to break away from the poor social harvest that many black women are reaping. Self advocates are way too in love with the bright future they could have, to waste a second, complaining about the little effort (which it will amount to when compared to the future that awaits) they need to make to achieve their goals.

For the new year, I hope you the reader will not be too off put by what you see as you having to take an extra step not demanded of others, to refuse to do what you can for your own self-elevation.

 

Making headway over the age of 35

This is what I wrote a while back:

With BWE I know that those who will make something out of it (all we have preached and put forward re BWE) and maybe in the nick of time are those who have just crossed that age thirty threshold. Anyone above 35 who has just come across the idea of black women living for themselves aka BWE will have to work triple time and put in double effort to secure something for themselves. Those in this age group (over 35) are the pioneer group who have to contend with adverse conditions, with working on a hard land that has not been broken up yet, combating stereotypes that have not been softened and also battling their own self esteem issues and complexes, fears about ticking clocks, self recriminations, self pity etc etc.

By the time the younger groups comes through, a lot of work would have been done to change attitudes about black woman, lifting negative notions obscuring black women's desirability and femininity, and opening up black women's social range (unlimited). The pioneers would have changed attitudes and the word would be out, that black women can and are living for themselves. There will be a better understanding of the silent mistreatment and the particular brand of discrimination she has been experiencing all the while from what appears to be her two main detractors; white women and black men.

Black women not marrying is now a facet of their culture! That’s what it is now given the fact that black women are not marrying in any great numbers. The black woman who pursues seriously the marriage objective, is thus marking herself out as of a different culture to what pertains to black women as a rule, and also has made it her objective to not accept what has received wide acceptance in the broader body of black women, and that is the whole idea of going it alone, accepting a life without real companionship and support. She has a higher expectation for herself.

HAPPY 2013!

Next blog post available from 14th January 2013

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