Someone recently left me a comment that essentially said that I don’t speak positively about black women as much as I do about black men.
Here’s a screenshot of it:When I saw it, it sort of saddened me, but it got me thinking about how I cover black women. I really had to think, am I sending a signal that black women don’t matter? Which is obviously very ironic because I am a black woman.
And I really started to think about all of my past commentaries. I do comment on women in general — not just black women. But, I actually said, how many times do I use my platform to defend women? And it was kind of hard for me to come up with many examples of that.
And I felt like when I do cover most women, I am harsh in my critiques. Many celebrity women are contributing to the corrosion of society, and I point that out.
And so this commenter is correct to feel that I am neglecting really all women in a lot of my analyses — not just black women.
I don’t use enough of my platform to talk about women that are providing good examples.
I will say that think that there’s an element of our culture that is so disturbing to me that we need to discuss.
I feel that the only way that our culture is going to get back on track is for women to stop believing that they need to rinse themselves off their womanhood and their femininity in order to be successful.
But there is something about the culture of women that perturbs me and blocks that from happening.
For one thing, women have a capacity for emotional hurt that men don’t. It seems there is an underpinning of biology to that — a competitive and catty nature.
Besides that, there is also a social contract. We tend to want to make other women in our image — especially black women. If they’re different from the accepted narrative then those women are looked down upon.
For example, in middle school, I made good grades and tested out of my class. In turn, I was constantly bullied by other black girls for being smart. One girl used to walk across the hallway just to bump me into the locker with her shoulder every time she saw me. Another girl made fun of me for not knowing the lyrics to a rap song.
Much of that behavior was because of this apparent social contract that dictated that I was not “black enough.” To this day, that attitude still exists — especially in hip-hop culture.
Metaphorically, I’m still getting bumped in the hallway for being too “white.”
And this doesn’t just happen to me — it happens practically to all women to varying degrees, and all black women.
Why is that?
Well, most black women feel like they have to exist within a certain prototype to be black. They can’t be free to act how or say what they want.
That is a form of slavery. And we fall into it pretty easily.
Black women are most responsive to the current culture. Black men are establishing trends and black women respond to those trends. Black women are trying to empower themselves in ways that don’t work — in other words, black women are often not being true to who they are, in order to fit in and be accepted.
Another example, and I see this in the pettiness of some of the comments I receive, they say things like “I’m not going to listen to her because of the way she dresses.” It seems that many criticisms are often about my looks and not what I say.
I think black women are the most hurt by that sort of culture.
I recently talked to Dr. Ben Carson on his podcast about the work I do at Blexit, where we give kids experiences, and my goal is to bring black people together. But Dr. Carson pointed out how black slaves in the South — who often outnumbered whites — were constantly divided. The owners would tell them the ‘house slaves’ were better than the ‘field slaves’ and cause division.
And, in a different way, something similar happens today. Leftists always call me a ‘house negro’ on Instagram. And this is learned behavior we’ve been taught because somebody knows that we would be too powerful if we all came together.
But, I don’t feel that I am better than you because I like politics or anything else.
We need to accept that we are different and that is ok. I don’t want to be someone I am not, just to be your friend.
The good news is that we are beginning to have these conversations and understand that we are more powerful as allies. But, still, the media always portrays me as talking badly about black people.
And that is not true — my belief is just that we as a culture can do better.
For some, that message is threatening, yet it shouldn’t be. And the only way to change our situation is if we all stop participating in this slave economy.
As I said, when I read the comment above, that I don’t highlight positive black women enough, it made me very sad.
I don’t want them to feel like I don’t see them or that I don’t hear them.
