The Bridge: Dirty Black Secrets, Part 1

By Darryl James

Black people have some dirty little secrets.

We all see them, but we’re not supposed to talk about them.

But you already know that I just don’t care.

Here’s one:  Some Black women can be a huge problem for Black people.

Old crazy Darryl James has been saying it for years. I first talked about it in 2005 and people claimed I hated Black women.

But imagine the work that could have been done if we had simply acknowledged it.  We could have also rooted out the core issue and then began to work on some solutions.

Instead, we kept pretending that only Black men were problematic.

Black Americans trotted out every single problem plaguing Black people and laid them at the foot of Black men so that Black men could take the blame.

We pretended that only Black fathers were deadbeat, even though many single Black mothers were having babies by men who were ALREADY deadbeats, knowingly creating a larger pool of fatherless children, when instead we should have been chastising the single mothers who were choosing poorly—if the man has children that he doesn’t support or visit, why would he do anything differently with the children you give him? And if you know that you will be a single mother, why become a single mother? Multiple times?

We should have stopped pretending that there aren’t women who know full well that they will be bringing a child into the world with no male influence or involvement, but do so eagerly, because they simply want to be mothers.

But we continued to blame the men, with the likes of Bill Cosby telling Black women that Black men are simply “sperm shooting machines” who want only sex and then “walk away from a thing called fatherhood.”

We allowed anyone to claim that Black boys were “choosing” to drop out of high school while Black girls were perfect and progressing. We allowed anyone who desired to claim that there were more Black men going to prison than to college and more Black men dating white women than Black women and more Black men in poverty than Black women and that for these reasons, Black women were being left alone in the dating process or “forced” to date outside of the race.

We allowed broken women to lie about there being no good Black men, instead of focusing on the simple fact that many of the Black women who aren’t married simply aren’t marriage material.

And, too many Black women are acting like whores and thinking like men instead of acting like ladies and thinking like wives.

Yes, I said it—oversexed and under-loved (no self love and no love without sexual attachment), while blaming it all on Black men.

And it’s not like anyone in our race benefited, because far too many Black women are still turning 40 with zero marriage prospects, and far too many of them are raising Black boys and girls without male influence or involvement, while lying about how they don’t want or need a man for love or child rearing and blaming Black men for the results.

But today, that has to stop.

Because today, we have finally been given concrete evidence that there are some horrible Black women who have been tearing our race apart.

And we saw it with Gabby Douglas.

Hearing Black women—not white women or white men—tear this beautiful Black Olympian down made it clear that something was stinking and the smell was not coming from Black men.

That same stench facilitated the media’s virtual erasure of Gabby’s daddy as though he didn’t exist. The media was comfortable with it because for more than a decade Black women have been telling the media and the world that Black men were absent and essentially, that they weren’t necessary anyway.

I already know that some of you are getting your “he hates Black women” responses ready, but you should stop and use your brain, or slap yourself.

If we cannot finally embrace the fact that feminism, self-hatred and insidious racist propaganda have turned too many of us too far against Black men and that it seeped into the Black community through Black women and turned into something ugly, then we are doomed, because we will never face the hard cold facts, and so will never have any resolution.

Next week, I will present some hard cold facts that will turn many of the myths about Black men on their heads.

The hardest fact of them all is that many of the myths have been perpetuated by Black women.

We must admit to ourselves that just as there are horrible white men and women and horrible Black men, there are some horrible Black women who are wreaking havoc on our people and they are not all uneducated hoodrats.

The truth is that many of these are college educated Black women who claim to be perfect victims are also in the ranks of those who tear down our community by passing lies, but also by refusing to stand up against the destructive elements

Black women, you are not the victim of Black men.

You have not been simply abandoned and forced into single motherhood, you have not been abandoned at the educational success line and you have not been forced to grow old and alone.

Many of you have made some poor choices that have lead you into some bad situations, along with our children.

And I love you enough, love Black children enough, love Black people enough to tell you and to encourage everyone to stop lying to you.

I’m here to tell all of our dirty little Black secrets.

Next Week: Countering Lies & Deception

Darryl James is an award-winning author of the powerful new anthology “Notes From The Edge.”  James’ stage play, “Love In A Day,” opened in Los Angeles in 2011 and will become a feature film in 2012. View previous installments of this column at http://www.bridgecolumn.proboards36.com. Reach James at djames@theblackgendergap.com.