I just watched T.D. Jake's film Not Easily Broken. I was ready to settle down for a romantic film about two people who are working on their marriage, when they had to throw a wrench in the plot. The husband in the film, played by Morris Chestnut, has a litte dalliance with a ww.
Maybe it's always been like this, but what the hell is with black films and the "ww stealing your man!" story line?! I'm not saying it doesn't happen in real life, but it seems like it is becoming (or has been) a trend in film. This plotline is not always in the writing of bw but of bm, too. What's going on with that?
I tutor a 14 year old black girl who lives with her single mother. She told me Thursday she was excited because her mother and her girlfriends are taking her to see Obsessed this weekend. The girl wants to see it because she loves Beyonce, but all I could think was that she was going to leave the theater brainwashed thinking that white women can't be trusted around black men.
Am I just being paranoid?
No, you're not.
Its a problem within the black community. And its a lie that has been sold to the black community for a the last couple of decades. The people who promote this falsehood are mostly black women but its also played up well by their black male toadies. Guys like Tyler Perry, TD Jakes and others who have films and books to sell to black females are also in on this game.
I have written posts about the exaggeration of this crap only to be attacked by a couple of toadies on this board who deny this attitude is persuasive or they think black women have justification for being paranoid about this or they think I have serious hatred going on for black women. The last accusation is silly in that it suggests one cannot fairly bring up a negative quality or action by a group of people without being slammed for it. I have no problem saying that a lot of Bill Cosby's criticism of the black community is spot on but for some people my opinion concerning that would make me a man with too much self-hatred. Criticism towards black women about their attitudes towards BM/WW would lead to me getting a similiar negative reaction.
But here's the truth: the bitter attitude that so many black women have for BM/WW relationships is nothing short of racism. Of course many folks will deny that. Black folks don't think they can be truly racist and they think black women are less capable of racism than anyone. But we know that's not the truth. It needs to be called what it is. I don't want to hear any nonsense about black women being justifiably concerned over black men and white women because the numbers show that in the end black men and women date and marry within their race more so than any other racial/ethnic group in America. Less tha 10% of black men go outside the race. So let the Asians worry about this instead. I've written this before and I've also written that black women are far more likley to lose potential black male mates to prison than they are to non-black women. Again the numbers bear this out.
Then there's that whole issue about black women being told throughout history and the media that they aren't beautiful. Also they claim that white women have been put on a pedestal. Well, its not as if black men get told that they are handsome and desirable by the mainstream society either. And white guys haven't been put on a pedestal? Get real.
Back in the 90s there was some afterschool special with a black male teen and a white female teen that were thrown together because of a tragic circumstance and end up falling for each other.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132087/
It was an okay story. But what stuck out to me was the scene in which a black female highschool classmate of the white girl tells her that she and other black ladies were tired of seeing white girls take their men. But she ended up giving her blessing anyway after she let her know what her beef was all about. How funny is that? According to the person who wrote the script even black high school girls spoke like characters out of "Waiting to Exhale." Please. Can there be a movie with a white girl and a black guy get together romantically without any social commentary?
I love shows like Keith Olberman in which he points out how some groups (usually right wing folks) make all these claims but don't have the facts to back them out. Then Olberman would use numbers from legit sources to show how stupid those folks are and how they basically lie about everything or are so paranoid that they believe in their bullshit remarks. And I'm sure there are shows out there for rightwingers in which the hosts do the same to discredit claims made by those on the left. The point is that in these debates the two sides don't simply accept what the other say, they tried to counter it with facts of their own. Its a shame that in the black community there aren't enough media watchdogs or pundits to do the same when people make generalizations that are far from the truth. The black community needs that balance in so many ways but too often there is the one rule of thought.
Lastly I don't know if the sordid history of black women and white men during the slavery days has anything to do with this, but both black women and white men need to step back a bunch concerning their negative reactions towards black male/white female relationships. All folks can show signs of bigotry when dealing with miscegenation, but damn, black women and white men can take it to extremes (in different manners of course). Not all black women and white men are uptight over seeing a black dude and white chick together but they are most assuredly the people doing the biggest complaining.
Csbean, be honest. Do you and other white women you know lose your heads every time you see a white guy with some Asian woman?
