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I've only heard this twice in the online world but I shudder to think that there are a number of men who believe this.
Our comments comes from a blog entry that deals with a woman having to deal with past mistakes yet is moving forward with her life.
Here's the comment made by a male poster:
I agree everyone did make bad choices but ATTENTION BLACK WOMEN in the last 20 years you have ran shit! Its sad and I'm a black man. But you all are in a position of power right now. With everythig going on with the Black Man right now it is up to you now to lead and to be an example for us now. If you hold yourself to a certain standard it will force us to raise the bar. Think about it if most females made it a point that they wasn't messing with niggas unless they had a college education or a diploma of higher education of some sorts you would see a lot more cats going to school. Its a shame that's our motivation or their motivation but it's true. Instead you want that baller you want that drug dealer you want this guy that's giving you all the intimacy but nothing intellectually and then at the end of the day wonder why you are in the situation you are in. LADIES raise the bar!!!
My response to his post:
I agree that there are Black women with low standards but why can't misguided Black man set their own bar? Do Black men not have their own minds? Who's setting the bar for Black women? We don't need anything but a fucked-up situation (or someone else's) to put us on the right path.
Since statistics suggest that Black women are wise enough to take their lives by the reigns (i.e., employment, education), why can't Black men follow suit? It seems like you wanna absolve lazy bums of any wrongdoings and excuse them for creating their own shitty lives. They need to learn discipline and personal responsibility.
And the quality of your life shouldn't be geared towards gaining attention from the opposite sex. Anyone that lives like that doesn't have that much to live for.
I think there's something strange and terribly wrong with asserting that weak-minded men will follow suit if we (Black women) raise our standards. That is a cop-out. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? Personal responsibility is always demanded of Black women. We can't get away with being fuck-ups. Also, the male poster seems to forget that Black women have already taken the role of leadership. Statistics have shown that an overwhelming majority of Black children are raised by single mothers. If being a dual parent isn't leadership, I don't know what is.
Also, let's call this problem for what it is --- baby boyism. Boys and girls are raised differently. Boys tend to be coddled a lot more than girls are. Girls tend to be expected to act responsibly. Both parties go out into the real world and the young man is ill-equipped.
Black women that are on the right track didn't need a man to raise the bar in order for us to know that we needed to get our lives in order. Normally, it takes being tired of bad predicaments to set us straight. Why would someone suggest that Black men needed more than a reality check? Also, the want for change should be genuine and not about fuckability. Change because you hate being useless. Change because you want to stand on your own two. Change because you have goals to set and accomplish. Change shouldn't be centered around gaining the attention of that hardworking woman that wouldn't give you the time of day.
Please let me know if I'm missing something because I'd like to know why personal responsibility is unpopular.
Sidebar:
The male poster's last sentence was on point.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
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7 comments:
Anonymiss-
i agree with your response. the male's last statement was the only one that i could agree with as well.
great post!
blessings,
focusedpurpose
Ok, so its baby boyism. And who is raising them? Black Women.
Here are some random thoughts.
Personal responsibility is unpopular because our culture makes it that way. Many blacks live in some kind of Eurotrash hell of socialism where the government provides most or all of their existence. They are told daily that racism is keeping them down and anyone who suceeds has of course sold out. Any black youth who wants to suceed needs to get a beatdown from black males and rejection from black females.
Men who engage in illegal or violent activities to obtain wealth are most desired. Right behind them are Atheletes.
Black men who desire more from themselves than what socialism has to offer either have to fight for the one or two black women who will appreciate them, or find someone of another race who will.
Women of course get pissed when the latter happens.
Why would a man want to get the attention of a hard working woman when there are legions of women on the public dole who will put them up? There are legions of hard working women who seem to prefer weak men around them. Unless you want to be doomed to be alone you had better be baby boy.
I chose not to be weak, stupid or uneducated. As a result I understand fully what that male poster said. I have said a hundred times to deaf ears: "If Black Women were to stop having relationships with and babys by worthless men, most would stop being that way"
I envied my parents who married young and stayed that way until death parted them.
I was taught that men were put here to serve, protect and provide. Black women no longer want that and I fully realize I am outdated and stupid for thinking that way.
I'm actually taking issue with the fact that Black parents aren't raising their sons to be responsible for themselves. Something has to be corrected with this useless double standard of child-rearing between sons and daughters. I feel that the solution is to raise both parties to be self-reliant, ambitious, and productive. I just don't understand why little girls are raised to be multitaskers and less tends to be demanded of little boys seeing how life is going to be hard for the both of them. It sets a bad precedent for the future.
But I also have to take issue with the fact that an adult can seriously state that his motivation for progress is centered around female attention. That is pathetic and disfavoring. It tells that your move towards progress isn't acted in earnest. It's disfavoring because if you lose your touch with the opposite sex, then what? Revert to regression and dependency? Plus, it just glosses over the preexisting loser quality and it tells that there wasn't any real growth.
As far as Black women not wanting men to take care of them, that's crap. Everyone wants to be taken care of but there are different ideas as to what constitutes for being taken care of. With some people, being taken care of = superficial demands while with others, (myself included) being taken care of = emotional support.
I feel as if there was a great debate that took place in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Sometimes it seems almost as if it was embodied in the debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois over the focus of efforts to advance the Black community. In the end, socialism (DuBois died in Ghana a Pan-African socialist) and all of its agitprop and pomp won, and still continues to win because that brand of thinking was adopted as mainstream for the Black community by the 1960’s.
Funny enough, it’s culminated in people like Reverend Jeremiah Wright (a student of Liberation Theology, i.e., radical socialist revolutionary thought) doing tremendous damage to Senator Obama’s image in front of about 240 million American who are not Black. Now THOSE are chickens come home to roost; because radical 19th/20th Century socialism hasn’t work anywhere in the world to date.
As far as Black men in general are concerned, I feel like collective thinking and a socialistic philosophy has caused tremendous damage. I don’t think it’s an accident that gangs grew out of “street organizations” who modeled themselves on the Black Panthers. And of course to question the sanity of it all, or to theorize for a moment that the Black culture is producing and reaffirming this failure to be self-critical and independently motivated, seems to be met with ridicule.
I don’t think the blame for the many Black men’s failures to behave in society can be laid squarely at the feet of Black women; and I certainly don’t think these young boys/men are merely the product of an all male structure, as many are raised by Women who are not/cannot provide a suitable substitute for Black masculinity.
It seems to me that the only solution is to rethink the entire Black ethos at this point. I feel as if Black masculinity has been severely eroded. It’s done by men teaching boys what little they can accept or expect of themselves; it’s done by women’s expectations and acceptance of a weakened Black masculinity; it’s done by advocating greater collective thought and action, which hasn’t worked yet. Just “sticking together” in a situation that doesn’t work isn’t helping matters, things are worse.
The challenge seems to be in the Black culture itself, and not from a particular sex, as Black women (as a broad generalization) have different, yet important challenges to themselves, collectively.
@ Anonymous 4:19pm
I agree especially with the last paragraph. Our community seems to believe that we are above critiques from within. How else are we supposed to make progress? Who else should you take critiques from if not from those who care about you?
No one is coming to build the infrastructure necessary to maintain a prosperous Black community.
Fortunately, I have long since outgrown fear of working toward positive goals, even if it’s unpopular.
Like I told some young people once while volunteering: “I’m not your homie, your buddy, your friend, your dawg, or anything like that. I’m your Brother, and I love you. And that means I’m gonna tell you some things you may not like; and don’t care if it makes you mad. Because I love you, and no one else will.”
That’s how my father is, and I’m glad he was.
FYI, I like your blog. I'll have to come back sometime.
I like that you deal with the kids that way. Tough love is underrated.
Feel free to stop by anytime :-)
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