Marriage Congrats to Ebony and Jon!! And THANKS, Ebony, for all of the BWIR pics and links you’ve supplied me for the Ezine. Wishing you and Jon a long and blissful marriage and many healthy, bouncing babies. LOL! Ebony, when I looked at your wedding pics, I could tell that the two of you have great chemistry and genuinely like each other–not just love. There’s a certain comfort level that you two have with each other that is apparent. I can feel it! Wedding Pics SITE
Ebony says,
Hello, Evia.
I promised you that I would send wedding pics and here they are.
In a world of Newsweek articles about why black women except Michelle Obama can’t get married, I got married. Jon and I were married in Connecticut on a lovely Sunday morning. It’s been three weeks and I am very, very happy with my choice of husband. We have great conversations, we laugh a lot. We
have fun together. I can be myself with him and he never asks me to be anyone else or look a different way. He goes to work everyday, he handles what he says he will, he does he follows through in all the ways that matter to me. He tries to please me and make me happy in little ways everyday. We bicker sometimes because we are both strong-willed people, but we rarely fight because we share a similar world view. We simply don’t have a whole lot to fight about. He treats me the way his father treats his mother, with respect and care and tenderness. Over the ten months we dated before we got engaged, I observed quite closely the way my in-laws interact, and it’s clear that Jon has benefited from being raised by two loving, married people. Because of you I knew to vetvetvet and watch Jon closely over time in various settings and situations.
I discovered your blog in summer 2007 before I ever met Jon and I’ve been a reader ever since. Your common sense advice and observations are so refreshing and yet, I so rarely see voices like yours in the mainstream. As the crazed reactions to NWNW show me, common sense is in short supply these days. I was never willing to shoot myself in the foot to be ‘down’ with foolish black folks or any other people either. You are out to support black women making quality lives for ourselves, not being self-sacrificing martyrs and mules. I can certainly be down with that.
Feel free to share any pics you’d like on the website. I know young black girls and teens are reading your site and maybe tucking away the info and advice you give. We were not the only wm/bw couple at our wedding which I think surprised some people. A few weeks ago we were walking around New Haven and the Yale area on a Saturday afternoon and we passed 3 other ‘couples like us’, strolling by holding hands, on one block. I believe more and more these next generations of black girls will know all their options for companionship and marriage. You are right, black women are not stupid. Way too many have just been kept deliberately uninformed about so much. I know that given the tools other groups of young women are, black women can flourish.
ENTRY begins – –
I’m going to mostly zoom through this essay by doing lots of posting of pics, etc. and give y’all lots to think about by referring you with some Youtube Videos below of Dr. Barbara Sizemore (one of my She-roes) who had a mighty intellect and was a powerhouse of a woman. Much of what she says relates directly to the current situation among AA women today.
Please listen to Dr. Sizemore’s multi-part Youtube series entitled: “Black People Just Don’t Get It.” I rephrased that title in my title above to say ‘Some BW Just Don’t Get It.’ I restrict my uplift focus to bw only because I know SOME bw will listen to other bw.
I stumbled upon Dr. Sizemore about 15 years ago but prior to even listening to her, I already knew that lots of black folks just didn’t “get it.” This was the main reason I got out of Dodge early in my life. I wasn’t even trying to wait for black folks to “get it.” OH NO! I wasn’t about to wait!
In her videos, she says everything I could possibly say and SO much more and so much better. I’ve listened to many of her other lectures also and bought some of her film lectures.
Her passion is palpable. IMO, her main point is that ALL groups of people are trying to survive at the highest level they possibly can and if they have to step on other groups to give themselves a boost up, they ARE going to do it–no matter what.
With diligence every group can position themselves to utilize that option in this savage world and other groups are trying to get themselves into the position to do just that.There’s no point in being angry at them because they are not going to allow any anger that you may have towards them caused them to pause in their quest to survive and thrive at the highest level possible.
Bw must develop relationships and alliances with those who can help them to rise. ALL sensible people do this when they can.
For women to rise up in the world, they need competent, striving mates who have figured out how to compete for their rightful share of the world’s resources or the types of mates who can join a team of other men who are doing that, so it does NOT matter the race or ethnicity of your mate. A woman only has a relative few years to get that mate. So AA women do NOT have time for black folks to “GET IT.”
If the majority of AA women don’t “get it” real soon, they ‘re going to end up like the Shakers who were once a prominent white religious sect. They made their contribution that we’re all still benefitting from but there are only 3 Shakers left now. 3 individuals. Period. The Shakers rejected sexual relations (chose celibacy since they equated sex with sinning) and grew their membership by adopting the children of others and converting others. From Wikipedia re the Shakers. When they could not longer do that, they all died out–except for 3 people.
I love this pic. Isn’t she gorgeous?
Alike the Shakers, many upwardly AA women (and we all know some of these women) have embraced celibacy since:
1) they are sick and tired of parasitic men,
2)refuse to have OOW children OR abortions, and
3)so many of these bw lack the courage to position themselves to date and mate with non-black marriage-minded quality men.
I know I would have become one of those celibate AA women if I hadn’t had or been taught the commonsense to FLEE the confines of the bc early in my life. I know I would have become celibate because I would never have settled for a less-than AA man, which is the only choice many AA women have IF they limit themselves to AA men as the bc STILL teaches and directly & indirectly pressures black girls and women to do.
So I know I would have eventually become celibate and fairly early because I would never have had an OOW child or an abortion. So abstinence/celibacy is the ONLY way aside from surgery to eliminate all possibility of getting pregnant. I believe that other women have the right to choose, but it’s against my personal belief system to have an abortion. I wanted children so I KNEW I had to mingle ONLY with Quality men from marriage-minded backgrounds and those men, as we can see, are becoming more and more rare among AA men.
Remember and TELL other AA woman that ONLY 35% or less of AA men who could be considered marriageable or marriage material by a rational person are married to anybody and 22% out of that 35% chose to marry non-black women. That is a relatively small number of men compared to the much larger percentage of marriageable AA women. Roughly 2/3 of AA men who could marry or have the basic means for marriage are not marrying anyone.
Still, many indoctrinated AA sista-soldier women cling to the notions of “black love” and the “black Utopia” or a thriving “all-black” community or network of thriving black communities inside this country–like Chinatowns or the Little Italys.
This is NOT going to happen because AAs do not have anything resembling a viable CULTURE or what I call a RUCOSS, an acronym for: Reasonably Uplifting Culture of Some Sort. I’ve written a lot about this since I have a lifelong interest in Cultural Anthropology.
A culture doesn’t need to be perfect, but a reasonably uplifting culture is mandatory to provide the infrastructure for development or uplift of a people. And among AAs, no one is even trying to develop it. What AAs used to have was a system of ‘crisis management’ but after the crises (of slavery and Jim Crow) were thought to be over, that system was abandoned. That actually made sense. For ex., if you have water sitting in buckets all around your kitchen to put out a potential fire and someone gives you a fire extinguisher, you’re are probably going to throw away the water. Right?
So AAs threw away the system they had, not realizing they didn’t have anything to replace it and not even realizing they needed anything.
Readers, I’m stating all of this for the historical record. This is why I’m breaking this all down here. I am not even remotely suggesting that any AA woman should try to solve any aspect of this situation. That time is gone and AA women have already done way more than enough–even de-feminized themselves as women in the process and are now being blamed for not being helpless and dependent like other women and/or for causing the chaos in the bc–instead of being thanked for their sacrifices. All of this is a result of trying to carry the bc, all alone.
It is way past time for AA women to flee, ASAP! And if you can’t flee physically right away, detach and flee emotionally and spiritually.
The vast majority of AAs STILL don’t “GET IT” and don’t know that they don’t “get it.” They don’t know they need a culture. I guarantee you that nothing that AAs erect is going to remain UP without that infrastructure or cultural foundation. It’s like putting a roof up without propping it up by beams. It is going to fall. You don’t have to be smart to know that.
The basic building block of any culture is FAMILY. Family begins with a MARRIAGE.
And bw, never trust a man who claims to love you or claims to be committed to you but won’t marry you (after a reasonable amount of time) because there’s a reason why he won’t marry you. And YOU are getting older. If I were in such a situation, I’d WALK AWAY–OR, I’d be working on my parachute every second. If you’re in that situation, WALK AWAY, or work on your escape with stealth because the bottom of your life can fall out at any second. Only on rare occasions might there be a legitimate reason for a man not marrying a woman, but that is, as I said, RARE.
So to me, it’s amazing to the nth degree that so many of you AA women who believe so fervently in “black love” and the notion of the “black utopia” cannot accept the fact that the typical AA man is not interested in marrying YOU. Sadly, this is why so many of you are now saying there’s no need to get married. Or you’re saying that you’ll wait until later to get married.
NEWSFLASH: The typical 35+ AA man is not going to want you when you’re that age IF he can get a younger woman. If he does marry you when you’re older, you will more than likely have to dance to his tune, like accept an open marriage in effect or pay most of the bills, etc.
You’re saying this ‘marriage is not important’ nonsense because you’re in the process of contorting yourself or adapting to the damaged thinking and behavior of DBR-AA men and their ilk. Many of you bw would definitely leap at the chance to marry those same males IF they asked you to marry them tomorrow. You know that and I certainly know it. You certainly wouldn’t be sexing white men or other non-bm and having OOW children by these non-bm and proclaiming that they don’t need to marry you. You know you wouldn’t. But if you REALLY don’t think marriage is important, then you should allow any race or group of man to sex you as long as he wants and have children by you without marrying you. LOL!
So many AA women have swallowed the non-marriage notion, brought to them by none other than DBRbm that ‘marriage is for WHITE people.’ If marriage is such a stupid, failing institution that only whites and others do, then why are whites and every other ethnic/racial group on earth, including many gay people STILL getting married in droves?????? Is everybody else on earth stupid aside from AA men and similar bm? I ask that because this group comprises the greatest proportion of anti-marriage advocates.
Anyway . . . as Dr. Sizemore points out in her video below and in other lectures of hers, a group of people first has to develop (1) CULTURALLY, then (2) ECONOMICALLY, and then (3) POLITICALLY. All other groups in this country and throughout the world have done it in that manner, but AAs, of course, are trying to do it backwards. This is why it doesn’t matter how many black politicians are in office and it doesn’t matter how rich many AAs become, the masses of AAs are still going to be on the bottom compared to other groups.
ANOTHER THING: Folks keep screaming at AA women to use birth control to prevent OOW children, and I agree totally with that to greatly reduce the number of abortions or unwanted, at-risk and suffering black children, but birth control is not fool-proof and SOME birth control has severe side effects for SOME women. I was one of those women.
Here’s my story. I was married and still using 2 kinds of birth control simultaneously to delay getting pregnant, not have any slip-ups. However, I was at the emergency room just about every month due to the birth control since it caused me lots of pain and spontaneous bleeding/hemorrhaging. OR I had to medicate myself with potentially habit-forming pain killers. When we were ready to have children, the birth control had altered the biochemistry of my body to such an extent that I could not get pregnant for a while. We feared for a while that we wouldn’t be able to have children. I won’t mention the types of birth control because every woman’s body chemistry is different and I’m sure there are others available now.
This is why all human cultures and societies have embraced marriage. It’s not perfect but it’s the best arrangement that humans have been able to devise so that people can have sex, have children, have 2 parents to raise those children and have the man and woman get many of their key emotional and security needs met and receive community and legal support.
Here’s what I’ve wondered for years: Why is it that women’s groups have not clamored for chemical companies to develop birth control for men??? Why don’t men have to be injected with birth control chemicals/implants or take pills?? Why is this burden of taking or implanting chemicals that alter the biochemistry of the body TOTALLY on the woman?
When you think about it, the absolute best solution to curb OOW children and especially this constant chasing men to pay child support would be for any man–who simply wants to ‘hit it and quit it,” who doesn’t want children and doesn’t want to support them– to get a birth control implant/injection or take a pill on a daily or regular basis. Let men also have that delightful experience of having those chemicals seeping throughout their bloodstream every day.
I even think that implanted or injected birth control should be REQUIRED for sexually active, unmarried men because many men want to and/or engage in “hookups” at every opportunity. This would drastically reduce the OOW rate among blacks for sure and effectively put half of the responsibility for preventing OOW and unwanted children on the men. Men could no longer claim that the woman “trapped ” him because he could elude just about any trap of that type. Could the reason why this birth control for men is not readily available is because the patriarchy rules and whatever men in general don’t want to do, they make sure it’s not done?
Anyway, you women researcher-chemists out there, PLEASE start working on the male birth control implant/injection or pill.
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Audrey and Trevor
Thanks for this ES!
They met in the Harvard Drama School.
“The bride, who graduated from Duke, and the bridegroom, a Stanford graduate, met while performing for the Harvard Law School Drama Society at Harvard, from which they both received law degrees.”
Bw, this is why you have to make it a point to be in the position to meet Quality men. Quality men do not tend to hang around ‘holes in the wall’ in the bc. If other bw, ww, etc. are standing on their heads to get a Ray-Ray or Pookie, let them have ALL of them. Remember that the Ray-Rays and Pookies are at all levels these days. So, start EARLY in preparing and positioning YOURSELF to meet and mingle only with Quality men. It is better to be ALONE than to hitch your wagon to a Ray-Ray or Pookie. If you do, then EXPECT there to be much deprivation ahead for you and your children. So don’t be surprised and don’t complain.
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FALLING FOR EVE— THANKS for this Felicia–Here was another off-Broadway musical production this summer (2010) called “FALLING FOR EVE” featuring a bw playing the romantic lead opposite a non-bm. I hope some of you went to see it and it’s probably still around somewhere or will be again soon. Let’s try to find it or more about it.
Krystal Joy Brown and Jose Llana the leads in “FALLING FOR EVE” which was at the York Theatre Company (Off Broadway) in NYC based ona book written by TONY Award winner for ‘MEMPHIS’ Joe DiPietro.
And please keep in mind that we must circulate the news about these productions in a timely manner, so that as many of us as possible can attend them. Producers WILL continue to produce these shows that depict bw in a positive light IF we let them know that we will make them rich. As Dr. Sizemore spells out below, we live in a capitalist country. This means that you can buy ANYTHING if you can pay for it.
Yes, AA women can even BUY a positive image IF we’re willing to PAY for it.
This is why ww generally have a positive image. Enough white men and women are willing to PAY to promote the positive image of ww and not many of them are willing to pay for negative images of ww. They don’t just talk about doing it, they DO it by supporting those images with their pocketbooks! And they, likewise, are willing to penalize those who put up degrading images of ww. And people in general know they cannot get away with mistreating the image of ww. Are enough AA women and other similarly situated bw willing to PAY for the positive image they claim to want? We DO have the money, but do bw have the WILL?
BTW Faith at her Acts of Faith blog has written a scathing indictment of Tyler Perry’s constant defiling of bw’s image in his constant negative depictions of bw as fat, crude, obnoxious, etc. as she talks about his production of “For Colored Girls.” I have never watched a Tyler Perry movie for that reason. I’m not going to pay to see my image smeared or to be told that less-than is fine for me when I have exerted myself all of my life to reach upwards. So, I will NOT go to see TP’s production of “For Colored Girls”. There is NO point in complaining that people are messing on you when YOU are PAYING them to mess on you!
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Dr. Barbara Sizemore Videos
There are aspects of what she says that make me wonder why black folks don’t use some of this supposed creativity that we supposedly have. I mean just because a lot of bm don’t get jobs is no reason for them to sell poison to their own people!!!!!! She’s not condoning this but I’ve heard this condoned so often by black Americans! Yeah, there is a difference in the drug sentences for blacks and whites, but no one ever focuses on the fact that black drug dealers don’t just sell drugs to non-blacks. They are selling drugs to other black people and this kills and/or cripples those blacks for generations. Why is this overlooked??? Why do black drug dealers get a “pass” for that?? And they do get a pass because I’ve never heard anyone hammer that point.
So, for the historical record, I’m shining the light on this aspect.
*****Virtually ALL blacks drug users buy or get these life-destroying drugs that destroy generations of blacks FROM other blacks. Blacks who sell drugs to other blacks do so most often to get money to acquire a Bling-Bling lifestyle. They are NOT black revolutionaries. I repeat: these bling lifestyle seekers are NOT revolutionaries. These drug dealers are NOT brave warriors fighting to uplift black folks or political prisoners when they get caught in the jail trap. DUH! However, this is the way black drug dealers are virtually always presented by AAs to typical AAs and very often, AAs EXPECT for you to be understanding and have a degree of sympathy toward drug dealers who have sold poisonous drugs to other black folks!!! This expectation may not be expressed outright, but it is virtually always couched in the subtext.
Instead of so many AA men chasing balls and practicing Hip Hop lyrics to insult and degrade AA women, they need to use that self-proclaimed “superior masculinity” to figure out how to spread out in the world like other men do in order to get resources and be able to support themselves and their families without killing other bm and selling poison to black children and other black folks, and then demand sympathy when they end up getting caught in the jail trap.
(SMH) When you really think about some of this stuff, it’s way beyond mindboggling.
How is it so easily explained by so many AAs to each other that so many AA men get caught in a trap when they ALL knew all of the time that the trap was sitting there waiting for them?? Why do so many of those males COOPERATE by stepping in the trap and then start complaining and demanding sympathy for being in the trap?? Think about that!
(SMH) Y’all, maybe I’m the crazy one, but as I often tell bw, “If you do NOT cooperate, THEY (whoever “they” may be) cannot win.” Or even if they may win sometimes, YOU should make it so tough for them until they won’t even want to bother YOU the next time. LOL! But that’s just rational thinking and sadly, much of what passes as thinking among typical AAs is not rational at all.