What is it with black women, and why won’t people leave us alone? Not only do we have to face the unfavorable statistics that tell us we are the least likely to get married out of other racial groups, the least desirable of all women in the dating pool, but there is also the fact that black women outnumber black men as a result of mass incarceration. A 2015 study showed that 54% of black children grow up in single-parent homes compared to 22% of caucasian kids due to unemployment and incarceration of black men. Thereby making the black men that are marriageable significantly less.
This lack of eligible black men is further exacerbated when a percentage choose to date outside their race. Maybe this is why black women are so bitter when they see their men with women of other races, white women in particular. Could it be that simple to reduce their anger to mere jealousy? or is there a greater force at play?
The strong, aggressive black woman narrative
It’s funny how all the way across the Atlantic to where I was born and raised in Nigeria, the strong, aggressive black woman stereotype was sold to me via media and Hollywood as the true representation of all black American women. These Women had daddy issues and had babies for different men — they were rude and sassy with sharp mouths — This is the narrative pop culture gave us. They used a minority to represent the majority. They sold us hatred and shame of our own race. They did this by promoting what we call Ratchet TV and entertainment. It became the norm.
This gross misrepresentation has affected countless black women who go about their daily lives and whose characters are far from angry and aggressive. It’s gotten bad to the point that a black woman speaking up for her rights or complaining about something she doesn’t like is automatically tagged ‘an angry black woman.’
A woman of another race could have used the same tone and wouldn’t have been tagged an angry(whatever race they are) woman, leaving black women to face displaced blame where they are switched from being the victim to the aggressor. Sadly our brothers who should know better also buy into this trope. I remember watching a video on youtube where the presenter stopped a couple of black men on the streets to ask them why they think black women have the lowest desirability rate in the dating market. I was shocked to see a guy I knew in that video, and he responded that black women are proud and will remain single if they don’t change. I was speechless. This guy in question was known not to date darker-skinned women, and if I thought he dated them out of mere preference, his response gave me accurate insight into his real motives. Believe me when I say I made sure he heard what I thought about his opinion, which I found quite abhorrent.
However, there is some historical link to the strong, aggressive black woman narrative apart from Hollywood representations. Research shows that in the past, enslaved men were sent away from their families by their masters for work in other regions, sometimes gone for long stretches of time. These men were not present, and the women were left to fend for the children on their own. In the long run, this led to strained communication and relations between the man and his wife and family. It’s possible that this absenteeism and fractured family relations were somehow passed down the generations through socialization.
Cue in the Ronald Reagan era, where he declared war on drugs which led to the mass assembling of black men into the prison system, further adding fuel to an already fractured family unit. More men became absent. Black women could no longer rely on their partners, and so the idea they passed down to their daughters — to rely on themselves and not on any man – to get their degree and make their own money ideology was born. It wasn’t born out of feminist ideals that see women as capable of working and getting an education as much as men can; rather, it was born out of a need to survive and a lack of trust in their men to stick around and be present husbands and fathers who provide.
Truly there is no smoke without fire, and Hollywood may have capitalized on these facts, albeit to extremes, and created a whole new monster to an already wounded community. But if these issues affect both black men and women, why then do some brothers follow the crowd to put black women down instead of standing with their sisters to heal their community?
Black is ugly — white and fair is beautiful.
In her piece for The Guardian, Dream, McClinton delved into the reality of colorism within the black community. She traced its origin to slavery, where children born by a slave and their master were given better treatment than their darker counterparts; these slaves were resigned to the easier tasks of serving in the kitchens or as housekeepers instead of working the fields. Driving the idea for generations in the psyche of the black community that fairer than a brown paper bag is better.
Trends show that most successful black men have white or multiracial partners — this idea drives home the point that a white or fair to racially ambiguous woman, elevates a man’s status or represents a more refined woman. Coupled with the harmful representations of darker women on the big screen as sassy and full of drama, while black women cast as love interests in movies are usually the multiracial women who have eurocentric features — I wouldn’t mention names, but go figure. Data also shows that 53% of light-skinned women get married as opposed to 23% of darker skin women within the black community.
This phenomenon can also be observed in the black community outside the U.S. In the U.k, 40 percent of black men have white partners, with black women who have white partners being significantly less. In Nigeria, where I’m from, we typically like to marry within our community because we place cultural values and ideologies as a determinant for picking a spouse. However, there is still the case of some Nigerian men going for white women because they want to have ‘cute multiracial babies.’
There is also the problem of colorism in my culture, where fair women are seen as more desirable. This, too, can be traced to colonialism because even though we were not subject to slavery, we faced an indirect form where white people ruled us, our country was hijacked, and we did menial jobs in service to the colonialists. They sold us lies as well that they were better than us as a race. And we, too, have been affected by the internalized colorism of our own people. But can we keep on blaming colonialism and racism for our problems? When will we take responsibility for our part to play in all this?
Black women may express displeasure when a brother is seen with a white woman or woman from another race not because they are jealous of the white woman or are racist, but because they are angry at the overall message it passes across. Because of all the mitigating factors where we see the internalized racism some of our brothers have against us — with some black men further pushing harmful narratives about black women — ‘Black women are proud,’ ‘ I want cute multiracial babies,’ ‘I don’t want no darkie’ — it brings to mind the reality that some of our brothers are dating these women from other races not merely because it’s their preference, but because they also have misplaced hate of their own sisters. This is where it hurts.
And yes, perhaps even when women of a darker shade may seek to date outside their race, they are not wanted and are seen as undesirable, which also adds a layer of frustration.
The toxic red pill community has also driven the vile hate towards black women. Sometimes I scroll down the comment section of the King of the red pill movement, Kevin Samuels, and I see the unfortunate hate many black men spew on his platform. Men who have no respect for black women and the struggle that got all of us in this mess in the first place.
Black women face the discrimination that comes with their gender, which women of all races face; but there is also the added layer of being black and the baggage it brings. They have to cope with the stress of the intersectionality of being a black woman.
I don’t know the future of the black community and where our healing will take us, but I know it will start when a man can date outside his race without seeing the need to put down his own.
source:https://aninjusticemag.com/black-women-voted-most-undesirable-women-to-date-what-a-mistake-559ac53965e0