(ThyBlackMan.com) I don’t have great confidence in the state of Black Love. By ” state of Black Love ” I don’t mean an annual report ala the National Urban League nor a yearly event along the lines of the State of The Black Union. The state of Black Love I have in mind is the landscape of fatherless homes and general coarseness in male/female relationships. While stable homes exist they aren’t the norm. Happy relationships are out there but are overshadowed by doubt and disgust. My generation followed our parents march away from the altar as an inevitable life destination. Those after us have taken this march even further with amazing results.
At 44 I’ve never been married nor have children. Marriage has been an abstraction for most of my life. Extremely picky deceased parents aside, jumping the broom has been a bridge too far for me. I write this as someone whose adventures include bounty hunting; in-your-face activism with the local Who’s Who and other risky endeavors. Marriage is the one risk I’ve thus far haven’t taken. Multiply this by millions and you have the state of Black Love written by each person, each in his own way.
I don’t think leaping backward to the world of Good Times; the Jeffersons or the Cosby Show solves this problem. Granted, such a back step would address some of this problem but I fear we’re radically different than our predecessors. I fear our belief in the Judeo-Christian ( Islamic ) ethic of Man-Woman-Child or Children has morphed into something quite distant from such bonds. Multiple partners with little or no permanence is the entrenched status quo. Black Love is still on the scene but it may not be as loving as past generations define it. I see it’s role in our crime rate; education challenges and human development crisis. If we can’t embrace each other then into this gulf steps misdirected anger; coldness and loss of nurturing environments. Black Love sets the standard for the state of Black America as a whole.
I am part of the skeptics who’ve removed themselves from the dating scene per se. Every blue moon I succumb to God-given needs and go on an occasional date. Like many in my peer group a serious girlfriend or even wife seems like the longest of long shots. Black men like us have opted not to jump in with both feet and consequently have sat out staples like parenthood or watching children become parents themselves. In a nation within a nation where most women are single and most kids don’t know their fathers, what are relationship skeptics to do?
We have to decide whether it’s worth it to leap into the fray and take the ultimate risk of finding significant others and wives. This is how God designed us but the playing field for this design is unlike anything Black men have ever encountered.
I’ll continue monitoring the state of Black Love and weighing options for myself and brothers like me who’ve sat on the sidelines in what is the definitive scenario about who our community really is and what it’ll ultimately become.
That said, I do know my skepticism may not be the best contribution to the state of Black Love but it’s all I’ve given thus far.
Written By Nadra Enzi
Official Websites;
http://www.captblack.info
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/nadraenzi
As a husband, father and head of my black household I really find relationship-coward black men very disgusting in their ways of thinking. At the same time I think it is equally discusting on what black women define as a man and what they accomadate to in our society. The condition of the community is a direct result of the lack leadership of men at the behest of social engineering and manipulation. What we have is women rewarding the wrong type of man with reproductive access and the expense of the next generation of the black community.
Your commentary is immensely sad, especially coming from a man. What is really sad and disappointing is that, the likes of you (blackmen), have spent your youth having unrealistic expectations of the type of women that you want and hope to spend your life with, consequently bypassing good hearted and loving blackwomen in your path….only to chuck your lot in your middle age(44)as not finding a suitable blackwoman…smh.
Also, what you and most blackmen fail to realize is that your choices are one of the major reasons why the black community is in disarray…whether you choose to believe it or not. What you and your likes forget is that the future and survival of a people/community lies on the shoulder of it’s men on how they conduct and comports themselves. There’s no doubt someone will come here and start comparing men to women. Men are suppose to lead and have a strong disposition to weather the current and protect their community.
You must also bear in mind it is a man that has to ask a woman for her hand in marriage, if blackmen aren’t taking that step/chance, there goes the abyssmal state of the black community as it is today. Sound and strong family foundation is what holds and binds a people….if men keep taking to female disposition, it’s going to get worse than it is today. Every other ethnic group that comes to this country, are sustaining themselves through family bonds, and they view marriage as an expectation and the continuity of the family foundation, and the collective betterment of their community and people.
Most of the time these other ethnic groups take consideration of their overall family and community image into account first and foremost when they act, as oppose to individual wants….’cos the expectations of the overall community should always trump that of the individual. Marriage=strong family/community foundation……men should be men (blackmen)!
Black love and the status of the black family is at a new low, its bascially a joke.