My response to Jill Scott (Pt.2)
Jill Scott said:
When our people were enslaved, “Massa” placed his Caucasian woman on a pedestal.
And there it is. The major driver behind this pathology:
White women are on a pedestal. Not just on a pedestal but
placed on a pedestal, placed by White men a.k.a Master. Unfortunately, to this day, if you polled a large number of Black women and asked them if they thought White women were on a pedestal, they would say YES!!! To a Black woman it might seem that White women are on a proverbial pedestal, and certainly it would seem that way to a Black woman in bondage. The White woman being on a pedestal is an analogy to White women having a higher social status than Black women. This is true, White women have a higher social status in society.
Like Kenny G intimated, White women being placed on a proverbial pedestal is only relative to how White men have placed Black women on a proverbial
step-stool.
A Black woman has seen White woman in society relative to her own social standing.
People have different truths, granted, but Black women like Jill Scott can no longer site their truth by knowingly distorting, forgetting to mention, or taken things out context when mentioning historical issues relating to other women in society.
A White woman's social status has for a long time been determined by her wealth and birthright. This varies from different cultures; some White women were on pedestals, some were scrubbing those pedestals, some were farming, and mostly all were mothers giving birth to children. White men idolized women according to his cultural standards just like Black men did in Afrcia. Look at my avatar as an example, the Birth of Venus.
Do I need to show further evidence of how European cultures have portrayed their women. All this was the cultural standard for White women before Black women set foot on the plantation.
That's proper historical context.
The relative position of White women still remained the same to Black women though, no matter the realities of White women on the plantation, or in this country, and this position was determined by
White men. White men placed White women on a pedestal and Black women on a step-stool.
Black men, where were we in this dynamic?
I think the best way to highlight my opinion on this is to reference the TV Host Toure's misplaced words from a week's ago:
If you’re Black & dislike seeing Black men w white women, does it give you pause to know that the Klan agrees with you? I u’stand & respect the nationalistic dating perspective & abhor the Klan’s segregative impulse. But politics is making strange bedfellows. Many, many, many of our great grandmothers were raped in slavery. But surely a few of them were loved and surely some ... were cunning and brilliant enough to use their bodies to gain liberation thus fooling massa ... Of course most were raped, we know that, but some were sharp enough to trade that good-good for status or liberation. They are absolutely not hos. They're sexually heroic. They're self-liberating by any means necessary
Talk about not putting something in context and to start this conversation on Twitter nonetheless. I didn't make a thread on this because it wouldn't be a good look for this site (the Klan comment being the only decent take away). Toure seemingly got defensive about his IR and made these errant comments that can be interpreted as Black men wanting what was denied them. There is no way the power dynamic between White men can be construed as beneficial in anyway to Black women. Black women being raped, having relationships in slavery, or being "kept" mistresses during Jim Crow was not positive, but they were relationships that informed the psyche of Black women. This is the proverbial step-stool Black women were placed on.
Relative to the step-stool, Black men are some where in that mix, but I'm not going to lament about how we were treated by White men. It's our responsibility as men to stake a claim in this world no matter the opposition. White men have laid their stake. They seeded half of the new world, all the while keeping White Women on pedestal.....
talk about faithful....their love for White women is so endearing.
This is all part of what I will call the
Step-stool pathology (It sounds corny, I know). Black women have naturally resented the place White men put them in, they understandably have resented White women for being on a pedestal, and unfortunately and sadly
some have resented Black men for our lowly place in this dynamic.
I say that with a heavy heart, because I know this is not the majority of BW, but it's enough to mention, and it seems it's okay to mention all the lingering issues Black men have due to slavery....remember tit for tat.
A regular Black man just being with a black woman, honoring a black woman isn't enough for some of those plagued with the step-stool mentality....you must honor her, put her on a pedestal the way White men put White women on a pedestal, or even above that...
Black men could never place Black women on a pedestal the way White women were supposedly placed on a pedestal because the pedestal is a
fantasy. A White man can treat his woman good or like shit.
The statement Black men ain't shit is all too commonly made by BW suffering from this mentality.
The step-stool is a marginalized component of the permanent underclass in which Black people have been put in by White society. Some Black women, due to their marginal historic place over Black men, are reinforcing this negative dynamic on one hand by saying
Black men are no good and then on the other by saying that
Black men shouldn't be with White women..... on one hand reveling in the notion that
Black women can do without Black men and then complaining that there are
no Black men out there....because we are in jail, gay, or with White women.
Talk about doing the Slave masters work..
and the worst is that some like to throw out this psychological garbage especially for White women to see, as if showing the psychological damage (airing out the dirty laundry) of Black people is some form of weakness between BM/WW couples
who avoid issues of race at all cost. This psych conversation needs to go to the hardened
"no good" gangster Black men who have supposedly been needing saving all these years. As bad as they are, they always seem to find a warm bed....
No Black man (or any man for that matter) can live up to this imaginary pedestal. This is the same pedestal they accuse Black men of putting White women on, and
I'm sure my lengthy rebuttal to Jill Scott is just another example of BM putting/defending White woman on a pedestal. They talk of us idolizing White women, but let's parse Jill Scott's words on White women, out of context of course, but since when has the mattered:
Jill Scott said:
….Caucasian woman on a pedestal. She was spoiled, revered and angelic. The White woman was on the cover of every magazine. She was the dazzling jewel on every movie screen, the glory of every commercial and television show. She was unequivocally the standard of beauty for this country.
Look at those superlatives.
Who wouldn't want, or want to be like a White woman after that, it's sounds great!!!
Jill Scott said:
We reflect on this awful past and recall that if a Black man even looked at a White woman, he would have been lynched, beaten, jailed or shot to death. In the midst of this, Black women and Black men struggled together, mourned together, starved together, braved the hoses and vicious police dogs and died untimely on southern back roads together.
They also went to the same schools together, ate in the same restaurants together, drank from the same fountains together, and rode on the back of the bus together. Their togetherness was not optional, it was Jim Crow. They went through their collective struggles together so we could experience the life of an average White American without restrictions.
there's a part 3
M
