Loving Black

A StrongBlackWoman Goes to Therapy

2012-01-07T07:38:00.009-05:00

"How did I get here again?" That was the question that I asked myself as I drove away from my therapist's office. Processing the session, I realized that I was once again in the full throes of StrongBlackWomanhood. I was trying to be all things to all people and I was suffering for it: I was having trouble sleeping, my chronic pain had intensified, and my blood pressure had gone up.

The irony is that I am writing a book about the StrongBlackWoman. You'd think that spending my days reading and writing about this phenomenon would somehow inoculate me against it. At least a little. Right? Wrong. This most recent relapse has further convinced me that being a StrongBlackWoman is so ingrained in many Black women that it is an addiction. It requires constant vigilance. And it also requires getting help.

Some time ago, I posted a 12-Step Program for StrongBlackWomen. Over the past few months, I've been working the program. Right now, I'm on step 5: "We admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our compulsions and the traumas and fears that drive them."

For a long time, I thought that I could keep my own counsel. After all, I'm a clinical psychologist and a minister. And I'm fairly psychologically healthy. I've spent a lot of time in introspection - journaling, meditation, and reflection. To be fair, I haven't been alone in the journey. My spouse and best friend have been sounding boards. And I have repeatedly brought the issues to God in prayer.

It's been a productive process. Yet I realized that I needed something else, or more accurately, someone else. I needed someone who could listen to my processing with a professionally trained ear, to help me to see the connections between my past and my compulsion to be a StrongBlackWoman. I needed someone who would listen for as long as I needed them to listen. I needed a therapist.

The director of my doctoral fellowship program, Dr. Israel "Ike" Tribble, used to say: "Everyone is of your color is not of your kind, and everyone who is of your kind is not of your color." African Americans are often very reluctant to seek help from a therapist and when we do, we usually want an African American therapist. My therapist - a white man in his late 60s - is certainly not of my color. But he is of my kind. Since he's an ordained Episcopal priest as well as a licensed counselor, I thought that he'd have both spiritual and psychological insights that could aid me in my healing. And so far, I haven't been disappointed.

My therapy sessions provide two gifts: a dedicated and uninterrupted space in which to remember and process my life experiences; and an empathetic and nonjudgmental person who listens with his whole being and provides insight just where it's needed. Each week, I unfold another part of my life story. I notice the connections between my past experiences and my current struggles. I feel affirmed, supported, and empowered to heal. And I feel the chains that bind me in the yoke of the StrongBlackWoman breaking away, one link at a time.

Every StrongBlackWoman in recovery needs multiple mechanisms of support and accountability. Some of these can be found among our family and friends. But sometimes, we need professional support as well. Admitting that we need help is difficult. But refusing to seek the help we need could be deadly.

Loves Roundness

2011-11-07T17:13:00.016-05:00

From the third definition of "womanist": "Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless." - Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983)

“Girl, where you been hiding those legs?!” my high school classmate shouted. It made me regret the decision to wear my favorite outfit – a purple mini-skirt and matching top, ironically chosen because the long gold-flecked shirt covered what I considered to be my worst asset. Until that day, I hadn’t realized that my thick, muscular calves were just as capable of eliciting attention. I tried to hush my classmate, but he was unhushable. His appraising stare and loud mouth followed me down the walkway and onto the bus.

This was the late 80s, when skinny black women tried desperately to gain weight so that they’d be considered appealing to black men, whose aesthetic was defined by a preference for things thick. From the waist down, I had thickness in abundance. And I hated it.

Loves love and food and roundness...Loves herself. Regardless.

My classmate's yell was eerily similar to one that I'd heard one day when I was at my grandparents' house. “Where did she get that butt? None of y’all got butts like that!” That time, the voice belonged to a longtime family friend. “Her daddy’s people,” was the answer offered by one of my mother's sisters. Oblivious to my shame, the woman kept going, “And ain’t got titties the first!” Damn. Did she really have to go there? She could have won the top prize in how to crush a teenage girl’s ego.

It was true, though. I was the inverse of my mother and her sisters, who tended to be heavy up top and narrow below. I was built just like the women in my dad’s family, more like an inverted P, the small of my back ending abruptly in a large mound. I once had to whip out my school ID on a clearly-too-old-to-be-talking-to-me man who refused to believe that those hips, those thighs, that ass belonged to a sixteen-year-old.

Being a natural introvert, I hated the attention that my lower half brought. It probably didn’t help that I spent my early adolescence in nearly all-white schools, where skinniness was in and thickness was sin. So as best as I could, I tried to camouflage it – loose pants, shirts that hung below the waist, ankle (or at least mid-calf) skirts and dresses. For most of my life, I have been incredibly uncomfortable with my body.

Strangely enough, while I have deplored my own thickness, I love it on other women. Beyonce is beautiful, but Jill Scott and Marsha Ambrosius are downright breathtaking! The irony is never lost on me. I watch them in admiration, wondering why I have had such a hard time appreciating that same roundness in myself.

Loves love and food and roundness...Loves herself. Regardless.

This month, I enter the last year of my third decade. Looking ahead to the big 4-0, I have decided that the next two years – preceding and then entering my forties – will be dedicated to celebrating me, loving me. And that requires me to learn to love roundness…my roundness. I have realized that 20 years from now, I will look at images of the 38-year-old me and wish that I had enjoyed this body while I had it. I have realized that it is time to do with my body what I learned to do with my hair – delight in it and all of its big roundness – rotund belly, ample derriere, thick thighs, and boulder-sized calves.

Even as it flagrantly violates the societal ideal of beauty, as it repeatedly sidelines me with chronic illness, and as it requires medication that causes it to regain much of the 35 pounds that I worked so hard to lose, I am committed to loving this body…this flesh…this round, brown flesh. And guess what? On more and more days lately, I actually do. Regardless.

Paint the Town Purple (and Pink)!

2011-10-25T10:36:00.011-04:00

For as long as I can remember, pink has been my favorite color. Nearly everyday, you can find me sportin' some shade, even if it's just my carnation pink leather briefcase. Every once in a while, though, I get so inundated with pink that I need a break. In the year or two after I pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, almost every gift from my relatives was pink or green - fuchsia suede shorts, emerald leather coat, rose-colored shirts, mauve sweaters, pink...pink...pink. For about 10 years after, I essentially purged my closet of all pink. It was still my favorite color; I was just sick of it.

This year, with Breast Cancer Awareness Month underway, I am starting to feel the same way. The entire city seems adorned with pink, from shopping centers to funeral homes. There was a time that I loved purchasing merchandise with that pink loop. My mother is a breast cancer survivor. She was only 41 when she was diagnosed with stage 4B breast cancer. When I tell that to doctors, they look at me like I've got an expiration date stamped on my forehead. That, together with my first lump scare at age 28, has had me going in for a breast smash annually for ten years now. And still, I'm getting tired of seeing the town painted pink.

Maybe it has to do with the commercialization of breast cancer. A few days ago, I passed a Rue 21 store with the display window full of ribbon-adorned shirts that had more to do with breasts than cancer. What percentage of this junk actually goes toward finding a cure? Or perhaps providing aid to the victims of this disease who are poor and lack health insurance? Saving ta-tas is nice, but saving lives is much, much better.

I think, though, that my frustration has more to do with the invisibility of the other symbol for this month. October is also Domestic Violence Awareness Month. The month is almost over, and I've yet to see a single purple ribbon (much less a 10-foot-high one mounted in front of a shopping mall). I've seen no races, no marches, and no men, women, or children cheerfully declaring their status as survivors. The only acknowledgement that I've seen was a spoken word performance at the church my family attends in Birmingham (and I'm deeply grateful for the prophetic ministry of East Lake UMC).

Long before my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, she was involved in a physically abusive relationship. I saw and heard the abuse on more than one occasion. I have a distinct memory of being about 5-years-old and throwing myself between my mother and her abuser, yelling at him, "Don't you hit my mommy!" But I was well into my 30s before I thought of it as domestic violence. My mother was not a passive victim. She fought back. She called the police. And when she was overpowered, she grabbed whatever she could to defend herself. She was nothing like those women on Lifetime movies, who cowered and hid behind sunglasses. So for years, I simply did not recognize her victimhood, even as I was a passionate advocate on behalf of women's issues.

Domestic violence is one of those things we don't like to talk about. Few people are eager to claim their status as victims or perpetrators. And even though 1 in every 4 women in the United States experiences domestic violence during her lifetime, those experiences often go unnamed as such. This is especially the case in the African American community. Growing up, I often heard African Americans dismiss domestic violence as a white issue: "No sistah is gonna let a man beat her. Black women are too STRONG to be victims. They fight back!" Collectively, we liked to pretend that a woman's attempt to defend herself against violence actually nullified the existence of that violence, even though the perpetrator was usually larger and stronger. We allowed ourselves to believe the lie that Black women are less likely to be victims of abuse than women of other races, when in fact, approximately 29 percent of Black women have suffered violence at the hands of a romantic partner. We hid our heads in the sand while Black women, who comprise only 8 percent of the U.S. population, accounted for 22 percent of all intimate partner homicide victims.

If those of us who are survivors remain silent, how can we ever expect those who are still victims to find their voices? It's time to end our silence. Let's paint the town purple!

Time to Unplug

2011-10-19T11:38:00.013-04:00

Two weeks ago I discovered a writer’s haven – an internet café at a public library. It’s got tables, plenty of power outlets, restrooms, vending machines, and even a microwave. Walled off from the rest of the library by glass doors, it opens into a private courtyard, with benches, picnic tables, and yes, more power outlets! It’s been a great spot to work. Armed with a thermos full of coffee, a lunchbox, and a laptop, I can work there all day – without spending any money!

This morning, though, my haven keeps getting interrupted. Every few minutes, a young man dressed in a sports store uniform, pops in with his cell phone to his ear. A longtime lover of library silence, I'm impressed that he is respectful enough of the patrons in the main space to take his phone conversations elsewhere. I just wish that "elsewhere" was somewhere else. Doesn't he see me working?!

Cell phone conversations are loud, even when people think they're speaking quietly. So it didn't take long for me to get a sense of what was going on. He was being called repeatedly by his job. More than three hours before his shift was supposed to start (like I said, cell phone conversations are loud), his co-workers were tracking him down, asking him when he was coming to the store. By the fifth call, he walked straight through the café to the courtyard. Even with the doors closed, I could hear him giving instructions to someone. By that point, my frustration with the noise had turned into sympathy for this man, who couldn't enjoy his morning off without constant interruptions.

I couldn't help but think of a few of my friends in ministry. I have been to a few ministry retreats and conferences this year where I've watched colleagues who could not get away from issues back home. Every few minutes, they got a call, text, or email from someone who ostensibly needed their help. And every few minutes, they were responding. It was nearly impossible to have conversations with them without them pausing to take a call or answer a text. "Hold on, I need to respond to this" was the frequent refrain. Their busyness took on a manic element as they rushed from task to task.

If it were just conversations with me that were being interrupted, I wouldn't be bothered. But I knew that their addiction to busyness was all-encompassing. It impacted their health and their relationships. Is it ironic that it happened most, actually always, with African American men and women? Probably not. My guess is that it's the StrongBlackWoman/StrongBlackMan thing rearing its head. Layer that with Christianity's emphasis upon "bearing the cross" and you've got a full-scale case of ministry overload and eventual burnout.

A few months ago, my husband and I imposed a blackout period on electronic devices in our household, a two-hour evening time slot in which we would not utilize our cell phones or computers. Miraculously, it was doable. The world didn't come to an end. Our lives did not turn upside down. Instead, we had two hours each evening when we read, talked, or played games rather than checking Facebook and playing Angry Birds. Over the past few weeks, though, there's been a gradual erosion in our observance of the blackout. It probably began around the time of a deadline when I "just had" to work on something for a few hours. It's a slippery slope. I better scramble back up before I fall too far. I encourage you to do the same. Make a commitment to "unplug" for part of your day - even if it's only one hour. And for that hour, be present to the world in other ways. Spend time with your partner. Play with your kids. Read a book. Take a long, hot soak in the tub. And trust that God is in control of everything else.

Going Natural

2011-08-15T12:04:00.011-04:00

This article appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of Geez Magazine.

It started in front of the mirror. I was in the bathroom, trying to figure out how to squeeze the next appointment between classes, a dissertation, and a research assistant gig. I'd pulled off some impressive scheduling maneuvers before, but in the final stages of my Ph.D. program, it was increasingly difficult.

My weekly salon visits began in my junior year of college. During a visit, my mother looked at me and asked, "When was the last time you got your hair done?" I'd mostly done it myself since freshman year. "You need to get it done every week." Was she kidding? It took a minor miracle to stretch my paycheck for groceries and textbooks. "I'll pay for it." But not tuition, groceries, or books? Just like that, my priorities were ordered.

In the bathroom six years later, I estimated that I spent at least fifteen hundred annually on my hair. My graduate stipend was eleven thousand dollars. That means thirteen percent of my income went toward my hair, toward salon visits and the cabinet full of products bought in my ongoing search for the bottled miracle that would keep my always-reverting hair straight. No wonder I couldn’t give to the church. I was tithing to my hair dresser!

Suddenly I heard a voice. No, not God's. It was my hair: "Isn't it obvious that I don't want to be straight?" Ridiculous, I know. Of course, my hair wanted to be straight. Why else would I endure costly and corrosive chemicals every five weeks and pay to have someone shampoo and style my hair each week in-between relaxers? "That's the point! You have to keep going back because I don't want to be straight!"

In some lost book of the Bible, African American women must have been given a new Decalogue. The first commandment: “Thou shalt keep thy 'do nap-free at all times and at all costs.” African American women are likely the only racial/ethnic group in the world where the majority do not wear their hair in its natural texture. In a society gripped by racism and sexism, we are strongly discouraged from doing so. Some corporations actually have policies forbidding “ethnic” hair. An article in the August 2007 edition of American Lawyer magazine reported that a Glamour magazine staffer did a presentation for a New York law firm on the "Do's and Don'ts of Corporate Fashion," in which she deemed black women's natural hairstyles "shocking," "inappropriate," and too "political" for the workplace.

For Alberta, a UCC minister, potential professional consequences were key in her consideration of going natural as a corporate employee twelve years ago: "To be natural was a radical approach." Comedian Paul Mooney puts it bluntly in Hair Show, the documentary directed by Chris Rock: "If your hair is relaxed, then white people are relaxed. If your hair is nappy, then they're not happy." And if the professional costs aren't high enough, there are also personal consequences. Alberta reports, “My family was against natural hair because of the stereotypes that had plagued the black community. We had to look like the ideal model - the Barbie doll - and not embrace our culture." Another minister, Dionne, who works for a Pittsburgh community development organization, first tried going natural as a college freshman; a noticeable decrease in romantic interest from guys sent her back to the salon after just seven

months.

It is no wonder, then, that most African American girls are subjected early to harsh processes designed to break the bonds of naturally kinky hair and to transform it into straight, socially acceptable hair. According to the authors of Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America, sixty-five percent of African American women use chemical relaxers or hot combs to straighten their hair. In recent years, these processes have been supplemented by methods of integrating commercial hair, including extensions, weaves, and wigs. The popularity of extensions and weaves among African American women has risen so dramatically that one comedian joked that the current generation of

Black children will never see their mothers’ real hair.

When I was six years old, I got my first relaxer, beginning a twenty year odyssey of chemical processing (which doesn't even include the hot combing of my early years). The results were often disastrous - burns on my scalp, neck, or ears, and damaged hair. At 27, I'd had enough. Since high school, I'd expected going natural when I was older. I imagined myself sportin’ a silver afro, not because of a dye job, but because I couldn’t fathom having the courage to do it before I was sixty.

But standing in the bathroom that morning, something came upon me. I’m not sure if it was courage; it may have been plain ol' fatigue. The next day, I was sitting in my stylist’s chair as she trimmed away the chemically straightened ends, leaving me with the half-inch of new growth. Seeing my hair for the first time in my adult life was daunting. A persistent thorn in my flesh had been my hair's refusal to show any sign of the racial miscegenation evident in my caramel complexion. The stuff on my head was thick, coarse, wiry, and tightly coiled. I put on a brave face, smiling in response to the stylist's pleased expression. I walked to my car, donned a baseball cap, drove to the nearest beauty supply store, and bought a wig. It took five weeks for me to adjust to the sight of my own hair and to feel comfortable exposing it to the world.

When I did, it was like being emancipated. I was freed from a daily twenty-minute hair ritual and a weekly two-hour salon appointment. Freed to exercise anytime I wanted, not just when I could spare an hour afterward to get my hair back in shape. Freed from fear of rain (a relaxed head’s kryptonite) and the weight of the umbrellas and ponchos I carried everywhere. Freed from the bondage of constantly striving to make my hair conform to an ideal that I could never attain.

Alberta experienced a similar kind of freedom when she went natural at the age of thirty-three. "This was a spiritual journey. I embraced who I was. I began to love African American culture and history. I realized that on this journey I had a voice as an African American female. My hair was a symbol of power."

For some African American women, going natural is just a temporary style preference. But for others, especially

those of us rooted in the traditionally conservative Black church, letting our hair exist in the way that it grows out of our head is revolutionary. It is a countercultural move, an intentional act of personal liberation from the sociopolitical powers and principalities that tell us that we are "less than."

After her first transition to natural hair, Dionne returned to relaxers for over three years before making another attempt to go natural. "My reason for going natural the second time around was this deep desire I had to really appreciate the grain of hair that God gave me. I had been thinking a lot about what it meant for me to be made in the image of God.

One of the things I concluded was if God took the time to create me with my specific grain and texture of hair, why couldn't I take the time to appreciate my hair in its natural state. In addition, I wanted my hair to serve as a source of inspiration for other young, black women who struggled to appreciate their hair. I wanted my hair to spark conversation that would allow me to empower women to wear their hair natural. I prayed that prayer before cutting my perm off and I can't tell you how many opportunities I've had to minister to women about their hair since I've gone natural. I can honestly say that after three years of wearing my hair in locs, I absolutely love my hair and would never consider perming it again. I'm so proud of my God-given hair and I'm learning to appreciate it more and more!"

Although I had not anticipated it at the time, that last visit to the hairstylist marked the beginning of a journey of spiritual transformation. A few months later, I had different experience in the mirror. Arriving at work one morning, I pulled down the visor to look in the overhead mirror and discovered a pair of beautifully enormous brown eyes. For most of my life, I had spent so much time obsessing over my hair that I had never noticed my face. That morning, I drank it in, recognizing the reflections of my parents in my face, realizing how much I looked like the aunts whom I admired. In going natural, I saw myself for the first time. I realized that I was beautifully, wonderfully, and intentionally handknit by God. And I was good.

We Got Mad (Hair) Issues

2011-07-26T10:38:00.006-04:00

Recently it occurred to me that I've been that I've been fairly silent on a topic about which I'm fairly passionate and that has considerable significance to Black love - Black hair. Or more specifically, our personal and cultural hang-ups about Black hair. Maybe my silence has to do with its potential explosiveness. Conversations about Black hair tend to devolve into a sort of war between two nations - those who wear their hair relaxed and those who wear it natural. It's a touchy topic. But fully loving ourselves also means loving our hair in its natural form.

That's an assertion that usually rubs relaxed heads the wrong way. Keep in mind that I don't think it's wrong to relax or straighten one's hair. My issue (really our issue) is that the vast majority of Black women have been straightening their hair for so long that we don't actually know what our real hair texture looks like. We are afraid of our natural hair texture. We don't want to see it and we don't want anyone else to see it. So collectively we spend billions of dollars each year on hair care products even though we are among the poorest group of people in the United States.

Imagine if every Black girlchild, around the age of 8 or 9, went to a plastic surgeon and had her skin lightened because she lived in a country in which light skin was considered beautiful and brought considerable advantages in terms of education, income, and marriage (Oh wait, it does.). And then for the rest of her life she avoided the sun and went back for regular "touch-ups" every six weeks to ensure that her skin stayed light. I suppose we could argue that doing such a thing has nothing to do with race-based beauty ideals. But we'd be lying to ourselves. The good news, though, is that it will be easier to lie to ourselves after several generations of Black women and girls have been doing it. Then we can pretend that it's just the way that things are done.

It's hard for a person to admit that she doesn't fully love and accept herself. It was hard for me. It still is. I've been natural for nearly 13 years now, after what seemed like a lifetime of conscious and unconscious hair self-hatred. Now, I'm working on getting over my body self-hatred (Seriously, do these two skinnies need to be sitting across from me eating cake while I sip on a skinny, sugar free, decaf misto?).

Whenever the conversation turns to natural hair, women with relaxed hair get defensive. Do me a favor and relax your defenses just long enough to ask yourself these questions (and don't worry - I've got something to say to women with natural hair too):

Do you know what your natural hair texture looks like? Most black women don't. At the slightest sign of kinks, we rush to the salon for a new application of the creamy crack. How can you claim to love you if you don't know what you looks like?
Do you know how to take care of your natural hair? That is, do you know how to style it, moisturize it, keep it healthy? Only in the past 10 years have natural hair care products become widely available. That's amazing in itself considering that beauty salons and beauty supply stores are among the businesses most likely to be found in Black neighborhoods. Of course, the irony is that most of these stores devote much of their floor space to selling hair - Malaysian, Indian, Asian, and European hair - to Black women. Apparently, relaxers are no longer strong enough to tame those natural kinks, coils, and curls. We've just resorted to wearing other people's hair.
Do you feel just as beautiful with natural hair as you do with relaxed hair? You should. After all, your natural hair is the hair with which you have been fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God. And as the church folk say, God don't make no junk.
Can you honestly afford the time and money that it takes to maintain your relaxed hair? This really should be the clincher. If you're putting your hair styles on credit or on layaway (or ignoring other obligations - including tithing - because of your hair), then you can't afford it! Now that's not to say that natural hair doesn't take work; if you want to wear anything other than a closely cropped fro, it's going to take some work. And the learning curve is steep in the first few months if you're learning how to take care of your own hair for the first time in your adult life. But overall, I've found it to be much less time consuming and costly.
Does your hair want to be relaxed? Not all Black hair is the same. Some people's hair does well with relaxers. But many of us have hair that just doesn't want to be fried, dyed, or laid to the side. For years I struggled to find the right relaxers and styling products that would make my hair stay straight for more than a few weeks (seriously, I once walked into a new stylist for a wash n' set and she told me I needed a touch-up. My response: "I just had one last week."). I finally realized that my hair was rebelling against the chemicals. It didn't stay straight because it wasn't meant to be straight.

I don't expect women to go out in droves and do the big chop. I just want us to be honest with ourselves about the reasons that Black women are the only group of people in the world who talk about wearing our hair in its "natural" state as if it's an abnormality. We have hair issues just like we have skin color issues.

By the way, for the naturalistas among us who have been reading this with a self-righteous smile on our faces, we have hair issues too. Many of us have made an idol out of natural hair. We act as though wearing our hair naturally automatically elevates us to a higher spiritual and emotional plane than our relaxed sisters. Please! Now, it's true that for many of us - including myself - the decision to go natural is part of a spiritual journey (I'll post another article about that shortly). But for a lot of folks, it's just a hairstyle, plain and simple. It doesn't denote self-love or the lack thereof; it's not a symbol of spiritual growth or political sensibilities. They do it because its convenient or in style. Sometimes they do it because they're flat broke and can't afford anything else.

So let's talk about hair. But let's drop the defensiveness, self-righteousness, and all the other stuff that impedes healthy, community-building dialogue. We've got enough issues without it.

A Long Hiatus

2011-07-26T10:36:00.001-04:00

Yikes! Has it really been 8 months since my last post?! It's been a tough 8 months. Some medical and family issues have put this StrongBlackWoman on the sidelines. Against my chronic SBW tendencies, I've been forced to cut back. But that's the topic for another day. Fortunately, the receipt of a research leave grant means that I get to spend the next year writing. I'll be working on my book and reviving the blog.

The next post is coming up in just a few minutes.

For Colored Girls: Tyler Perry's Invitation to Lament

2010-11-23T06:16:00.011-05:00

No bad news
No bad news
Don't you ever bring me no bad news
'Cause I'll make you an offer, child
That you cannot refuse
So don't nobody bring me no bad news

Those are the lyrics sung by Mabel King in her role as Evillene in The Wiz, the all-Black adaptation of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The irony, of course, is that Evillene (the wicked witch of whom kids were actually afraid) was the epitome of bad news. So is it strange, then, that this song leaped into my head when I thought about the resistance of some Black men, particularly Black male pastors, toward seeing Tyler Perry's latest film, For Colored Girls?

Just to avoid misunderstanding, I am not labeling Black men or Black male pastors as the epitome of bad news for Black women (although some folks might, in the case of the latter). And I confess that I have leveled a fair share of criticism at Tyler Perry for his portrayals of African American women and African American romantic relationships. Earlier this year, in a post about Why Did I Get Married Too?, I wrote:

The essence of both Why Did I Get Married? films remains the same: Black romantic relationships are screwed up because: (1) there are a lot of no-count black men out there (i.e., the abusers, cheaters, etc.); and (2) black women are ball-busting bitches who don't know how to appreciate a good thing when they find it.

Of course, I'm not alone in my criticism. Tyler Perry is to the blogosphere what George W. Bush was to late-night comedians. He provides plenty of fuel for the self-righteous indignation of...well, just about everybody.

As a teenager, I cut my womanist/feminist teeth on Ntozake Shange's choreopoem, For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf. I've never seen the Broadway production, but the PBS film adaptation starring Lynn Whitfield and Alfre Woodard (as well as Shange herself) occupies a prominent place in my DVD collection. So I was more than skeptical when I learned that Perry had acquired the rights to Shange's work and would be writing, directing, and producing it. Yet I also remained hopeful that he would somehow avoid butchering Shange's elegant and heart-wrenching treatise on the lives and loves, struggles and triumphs of African American women. I wanted and needed Perry to do well with this film. And as the film's release date neared and some positive reviews came pouring in, I became even more hopeful.

Since the film's release, the feminist blogosphere has been afire with the criticisms of Perry's adaptation, which has been labeled as a weak and undeserving imitation of Shange's masterpiece. Other critics (read "probably White critics unfamiliar with Shange's work") have excoriated the film for its jumpy quality and lack of a cohesive storyline. Quite frankly, I disagree with all of them. Shange's work is a highly artistic, complex piece that defies easy categorization. Perry took a feminist choreopoem aimed at a 1970s theater audience and produced a 2010 film that was relevant, accessible, and profitable. That's not an easy undertaking. But he did it. And in my opinion, he did it well.

I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed the film. I went to see it with my colleague and fellow womanist theologian, Dr. Cheryl Kirk-Duggan. And I expected that we'd leave the film with a listful of complaints. Instead, we both walked out saying, "That was great!" But my delight met with another source of resistance: the individual boycotts of African American men who refused to see the film because of its assumed depictions of African American men as predators.

I heard the protests most frequently among male students and colleagues at the historically Black Baptist seminary at which I teach. At some level, I understand. After all, I am an African American woman, member of a racial-gender group whose images are routinely assassinated on the large and small screens. These days, a Black actress can hardly buy a job. But I digress...

I found a few ironies in the refusal of Black men who were leaders in the Christian church to watch the film. First, I doubt that many (any?) of them were basing their protest upon a careful reading of the original work. They were objecting to what they had "heard" about the film, not upon any concrete data. Second, it was the same stance which was articulated against The Color Purple in the 1980s and Waiting to Exhale in the 1990s. It seems that whenever a Black female writer's narrative of Black women's pain is adapted for film, some brothers turn into Evillene, mad at the possibility that someone might bring them some bad news. And as a consequence, the struggles of Black women's lives are silenced behind a wall of Black male denial. "Don't make brothers look bad" becomes a weapon of silence waged against African American women by Black patriarchy.

In the case of For Colored Girls, this is especially disheartening. For Colored Girls is an invitation into lament. It shatters the myth that Black women have transcended the burden of racism and provides a glimpse of the gendered forms of oppression that uniquely and/or disproportionately impact Black women in America: rape, incest, domestic violence, child abuse, HIV/AIDS, lack of social support, and problems in relationships of all kinds. In contrast to his prior work, Perry makes no attempt to wrap everything up in a nice, neat little bow at the end. The characters' lives and pain are unresolved. There is no prince in shining armor coming to save the day. There is no quick fix. As an audience, we are simply invited to sit alongside these women (as well as the men) and to hear their stories for two hours. To cry with them, to hold them in our hearts, to see ourselves in them, and to see them in ourselves and in the women we know.

The church could learn a valuable lesson from that. Perry's characters may be imagined, but they are also real. And they are in the church, sitting in the pews every Sunday morning, outfit tight and hair and makeup just right. They go to church, at least in part, hoping to receive a balm for their wounds, but also terrified of letting anyone see just how wounded they are. Perhaps they think that no one cares. Or maybe they don't want to be the ones to bring their pastors "no bad news."

Brothers - get your heads out of the sand. Go see the film. And if you're a pastor or minister, take a few women with you. And after the film, sit with them for a while. Hear their stories. Cry with them. Hold them in your hearts. See yourself in them and see them in the women that you love. Don't try to fix it. Don't let your black male ego raise its defenses. Just lament.

Speaking Out: An Ally Confesses

2010-10-11T16:41:00.005-04:00

It has been eighteen days since Tyler Clementi reportedly killed himself. Clementi was a freshman at Rutgers University. He leapt to his death from the George Washington Bridge one day after his roommate and another Rutgers freshman secretly broadcast a live video stream of Clementi having sex with another male student. I cannot imagine the embarrassment of having one's sexual activity displayed for public consumption. It's a humiliation that would likely drive most of us into a deep depression. With the exception of the most brazen, most of us would worry that we could never again show ourselves in public. Just the thought is terrifying.

For Clementi, the shame must have been exponentially greater. Only one month into his first year of college, he may have feared the prospect of going through the next four years known on campus as "that guy." And in an era when social networking blends one's professional and personal existence for all the world to see, he may have worried how it would impact his future employment prospects. And then there's the fact that Clementi was not just engaged in sex; he was having sex with another man. If Clementi was closeted, I can imagine that he saw no other way to resolve his anguish than to end his life.

I feel my heart breaking each time that I think of Clementi and the many gay youth who commit suicide each year, and the many more who attempt to end their lives. As a Christian, I feel responsible for each loss of precious life. I feel responsible for every hateful look, word, or deed that drives my LGBT brothers and sisters to such despair, especially those acts of hatred lobbed at them by people who proclaim to be followers of the merciful and loving Christ.

I feel responsible because I once threw the insults. Raised in the South in a conservative Christian family and church, I believed that homosexuality was a sin worthy of eternal of damnation. Oh yeah, I also thought it was a trick of the white man designed to annihilate the descendants of Mother Africa (look, it was the resurgence of black nationalism, okay?). Like many of the people I knew (none of whom were gay or lesbian, conveniently), I thougth that homosexuality was learned behavior, a product of a sick society that was moving further and further away from God. And as long as I stayed around heterosexual, conservative Christians, there was no one to argue otherwise. I could and did join in the chorus of "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" without witnessing the impact that the spiritual assault had upon the lives of homosexual men and women.

But living on a college campus made it impossible to keep the emotional distance necessary to maintain my ignorance. Away from the watchful eyes of their parents, same-gender-loving peers were much freer to express their affection publicly. So too were the Bible thumpers, the emotionally immature, and the sexually insecure (who often were the same people). After a few university-newspaper headline-mkaing incidents of heterosexist harrassment, it dawned on me: "Who in their right minds would choose this life?"

Gradually, I became convinced that sexual orientation, at least for the overwhelming majority of the population, was not a matter of conditioning or choice. It was innate and largely out of one's control. Still, I thought it was a deviancy, a biological mutation that could and should be cured, sort of like diabetes or nearsightedness. And while my resolve was weakening, I still thought it was sinful, just no more sinful than any other behavior that the Church doesn't like. I was a softer, gentler heterosexist. At least, I was until Susan and Gloria happened.

Susan and Gloria were clients in the substance abuse treatment program at which I worked part-time during my second year of graduate school. The program was intensive - six months in a residential facility with limited outside contact. The women were nearly all long-time drug users who had tried and failed in other treatment programs. Our program was often their last hope.

Susan and Gloria had entered the program within less than two weeks of each other and were in the final month of treatment. During their stay, they had become close. Really close. Now close friendships among the women were common, but this one was different. And everyone noticed. Other clients openly accused them of being lovers. They were adamant in their denial, but admitted that their love for one another had grown beyond friendship. "We don't know what we are," Gloria once said resignedly.

The staff was less confrontational. The general consensus seemed to be that if we ignored it, it would disappear. Maybe it was that head-in-the-sand mentality that prevailed during the women's last few weeks of treatment, when the the administration decided to issue twelve-hour passes to both on the same day so that they could begin searching for jobs and housing in preparation of their transition back into society.

I came to work the day after they had gone out on their passes. Panic was in the air. "They didn't come back," one of the women said softly. The normally boisterous group was quiet. For the entire day, they sat just outside my office, jumping expectedly every time a door opened or the phone rang. With this group, failing to show up after a day pass meant only one thing - relapse. And for women who had managed to accrue almost six months clean after decades of addiction, that was a fate akin to death.

Finally, with just two hours left on my shift, the pair returned. They explained that after registering Susan's daughter in school and finding Gloria a new apartment, they were overcome with excitement about their impending graduation. "We couldn't help it," Susan said, her eyes focused on the floor of my tiny office. "We did it."

"You did what?", I asked, praying that she would not say the dreaded R-word. "We were together," was all that she could muster. Guilt weighed heavy in her voice. "Together how?", I queried, putting to use the clinical skills I was learning in my psychology program. I knew exactly what she meant, but I wanted her to say it. Like everyone else, I had seen the love that had grown between the two women. I wanted them to own the moment in which they had consummated their love, rather than hiding behind ambiguities. "We made love," one finally said. Before I could utter the cliched "And how did you feel about that?", Susan continued, "Then we figured that since we're going to hell anyway, we might as well go all the way." And just like that, they went out, bought some crack, and threw away six months of hard recovery work.

As I delivered the director's decision that they were both ejected from the program, I wept with them. And I felt responsible. I knew that it was the rhetoric of folks like me that made them believe that their lovemaking was an unforgiveable sin, as opposed to an act of beauty. I knew that Susan and Gloria had confirmed what I was beginning to suspect for many of the program's clients - that their substance abuse was an attempt to mask their struggles over their sexual orientation. On that day, I realized that my position had to change. I made a conscious effort to get to know to stories of people who identify as gay and lesbian. As I heard their pain - the many ways that they tried to deny their sexuality, their unanswered prayers to God to "fix" them, their stories of depression, substance use, and suicidality - my heart opened up. So did my mind.

At some point, I realized that I could no longer consider homosexuality sinful. I could no more imagine God punishing someone for a sexuality that they could not change than I could imagine God sending someone to hell for being born blind or deaf. I became convinced that the real sin was the hurt inflicted by so-called "people of faith" unto our homosexual sisters and brothers.

It is a theological risk, to be sure. I am fully aware that I could be wrong. But I accept that risk, prayerful that if I am wrong, God will forgive my error as one born out of my desire to emulate Christ's love and compassion for the "least of these."

But it is not enough. In the fifteen years since saying goodbye to Gloria and Susan, I have been too invisible an ally, especially when revealing my stance would risk the rejection and condemnation of those who I hold most dear - my family. I have been silent too often when heterosexist comments have been made by people whom I love. And my silence may have made the Tyler Clementi's of the world feel that they are alone. Enough.

I am heterosexual. I am Christian. I am an LGBT ally. And I will be silent no longer.

Single Black Women: The Miner's Canary

2010-08-15T09:37:00.021-04:00

Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem?, they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town - W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk

How does it feel to be a problem? The question famously articulated by W.E.B. DuBois is well suited for single black women in 2010. There's been a lot of chatter this year about the seeming crisis of singlehood among African American women, especially well-educated, middle class African American women. The issue has been the focus of an ABC Nightline special, a Washington Post story, and countless blogs.

The latest entrant into the conversation is CNN's coverage of a debate sparked by author and relationship columnist, Deborah Cooper. Cooper recently wrote a post arguing that the black church is responsible for the low marriage rates among African American women. The crux of her argument is that the black church teaches women that the only suitable marriage partners are men who are "equally yoked," in other words, fellow Bible thumpers and avid churchgoers. Cooper thinks this is problematic since there are many more black men who do not attend church than those who do. Her solution: black women need to skip Sunday services and head instead to the local sports bar in their best go get 'em outfits.

On the face of it, it might seem like a decent argument. After all, Cooper is saying that women need to expand their notions of appropriate romantic partners. I'm not one to quibble over that point, given that most women's lists of desired attributes in a romantic partner are based more upon fantasy than reality - Disney movies, romantic comedies, and Harlequin romances.

Cooper overlooks the fact that religious identity and involvement are not arbitrary characteristics but are central to many people's sense of self. They form the core values and beliefs about who we are and how we related to other people. And while all forms of religious practice, including the beliefs and practices of black churches, have some problematic aspects, Cooper's criticism of patriarchy within the black church overlooks the ways in which black women find sustenance to cope with racism, sexism, and classism within the walls of the church. So admonishing women to loosen their religious ideals for the sake of marriage is short-sighted and irresponsible.

Still, that's not my main contention with Cooper's argument. I have the same issue with her column that I have with every article and television report on this topic: they are trite, specious, and unrevelatory.

Most of these discussions are based on a single, faulty assumption: black women's singleness is an abnormality. Often there's a second assumption: this abnormality is the result of some deficiency, most of which resides in black women themselves.

Maybe. But there's another phenomenon occurring that is repeatedly overlooked in these discussions: there is a pervasive cultural shift underway in America with respect to beliefs about and practices of marriage. The high rates of singleness among African American women are the proverbial canary in the coal mine. They are not an abnormality but rather a prediction of the direction in which the rest of the country is heading.

In societies stratified by systems such as race, class, and gender, those groups on the lowest rungs of the sociopolitical ladder are particularly vulnerable to social shifts. Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres say it well in their book, The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy:

"Those who are racially marginalized are like the miner's canary: their distress is the first sign of a danger that threatens us all. It is easy enough to think that when we sacrifice this canary, the only harm is to communities of color. Yet others ignore problems that converge around racial minorities at their own peril, for these problems are symptoms warning us that we are all at risk."

When it comes to marriage in the United States, African Americans have been the miner's canary for a long time. According to Census reports, there has been a consistent decline in marriage across race and gender since 1950. While the decline has been more pronounced among African Americans, it is not unique.

Notice that rates of marriage among black Americans have always been lower than rates among white Americans. Also notice that rates of marriage among white Americans in 2009 were similar to the levels for black Americans in 1950. Perhaps in another sixty years, the percentage of white Americans who are married will be akin to the 2010 rates for black Americans.

There is, however, something interesting happening with African American women. Between 1950 and 1960, the percentage of women who never married were similar (and low) for blacks and whites. Likewise, black and white men had a similar likelihood of never being married. Since 1950, the chances of never marrying have increased for blacks and whites. However, the rates for blacks increased at a faster rate. And the percentage of black women who never married have risen so dramatically that they now approach the rates for black men.
Again though, notice that the chances of never marrying for white men and women in 2009 are actually slightly higher than black men and women's chances of doing likewise in 1950.

Marriage, in general, is on the decline in America. So if being single is a problem, it is the nation's problem.

So, how does it feel to be a problem?

Note: I have constructed these charts based upon a very brief (and not very scientific) analysis of Census data.

A 12-Step Program for Strong Black Women

2010-08-06T13:39:00.001-04:00

If this were a 12-step meeting for StrongBlackWomen, I'd be saying, "Hi, my name is Chanequa and I'm a StrongBlackWoman. I have been in recovery for almost eight years now. But at most, I've probably only accrued a few days of being clean at once. I relapse constantly, maybe even daily. I don't know if I'll ever break free of this thing. But I'm here. And just for today, I will make at least one decision in favor of my physical, spiritual, emotional, and relational health. Just for today, I will try to let go of my need for control, to become aware of when I need help, and to ask for help when I need it. Just for today, I give myself permission to cry when I'm sad, to scream when I'm frustrated, to smile and laugh when I'm happy, and to dance like I've got wings when the Spirit moves me. Just for today, I will reject the mandate to be a StrongBlackWoman. Just for today, I will simply be."

Being a StrongBlackWoman is an addiction, a force of habit ingrained in many of us from childhood. Moreover, it is reinforced by our families, friends, co-workers, and churches - all those people who praise our strength and continuous self-sacrifice. And it's especially lauded and reinforced by those who benefit from our caretaking. Our healing, then, is not a one-time event, but rather a lifelong process. It seems appropriate, then, to develop a 12-step program for StrongBlackWomen. Here's my first attempt:

1. We admit that we are powerless over our compulsion to be strong — that our physical, spiritual, emotional, and relational health are suffering.

2. We acknowledge that we are not divine, that there is a Power greater than ourselves who can restore us to right relationship with ourselves and others.

3. We make a decision to turn our will and our lives, and those of the people we care for, over to the care and protection of the Divine.

4. We practice self-awareness, making a searching inventory of ourselves and our relationships.

5. We admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our compulsions and the traumas and fears that drive them.

6. We are ready to have the Holy One heal us.

7. We humbly ask the Almighty to remove our need for control and to nurture in us a commitment to self-care.

8. We make a list of all persons we have harmed and continue to harm through our excessive caretaking, and we become willing to make amends to them all.

9. We make direct amends to such people wherever possible by allowing them to assume responsibility for their own lives.

10. We continue to practice self-awareness and when we relapse, we promptly admit and correct it.

11. We seek through prayer, meditation, and journaling to nurture our connection with the Divine, praying for knowledge of Her will for our lives and for faith in Her protection and care.

12. We try to carry this message to the strong Black women in our lives and to embody these principles as an example to them and to the generations that follow us.

Reading and the Black-White Achievement Gap

2010-06-04T11:59:00.009-04:00

Since childhood, I have been an avid reader. In elementary school, I almost failed fifth grade because of my love of reading. When the teacher gave the first worksheet of the day, I'd finish it as quickly as possible so that I could reach for the book that I had stashed in my desk. Every now and again, I'd look up to see what the rest of the class was doing. If they were still working, I kept reading. I always marveled at how long it took my classmates to complete a worksheet. It wasn't until the "D" appeared on my progress report that I realized that my peers had been moving on to new assignments while I was reading.

With a toddler around, I don't often have the luxury of becoming so engrossed in books that I'm oblivious to what's going on around me. But I am addicted to books in the way that some women are addicted to shoes. Give me a free minute and there's likely to be a book in my hand. When I leave the house - whether it's for a day of work or for extended travel - I often spend more time agonizing over which book(s) to take than what to wear. I swear I get a contact high when I walk into a bookstore.

So it's probably no surprise that I would really, really, really love to have one of the new e-readers on the market now. The idea of being able to carry thousands of books on one device is euphoria-inducing. And to be able to buy and instantly read a new book no matter where I am…OMG! Given the number of books that I have to buy for my classes and research each year, the comparatively low cost of e-books could mean a pretty significant savings. Well, in reality it'd just mean that I could buy more books for the same amount of money. Okay, but it'd definitely be less weight to carry around, which would help my chronic back pain. Not to mention it'd save on shelf space.

But every time I think about these miraculous devices, I experience a twinge of reluctance. There's just something about a physical book that can't be replaced. I tried to convince myself that I'd adjust to an e-reader over time, but I still couldn't imagine switching over to a virtual library.

A few days ago, I finally realized why a Kindle, Nook, or iPad could never replace physical books for me. It's because my library is not just for me. It's for my children.

For years, I've been trying to accumulate a library that includes books that I think all progressive families should own. There are certain books that I want to have sitting on the shelves so that my children might be compelled, in a moment of boredom or curiosity, to pick them up and read them. These include books like Alice Walker's The Color Purple, Carter G. Woodson's Miseducation of the Negro, W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk, Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. Not to mention Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, Lewis' Narnia series, and the entire Harry Potter series.

Last week, as I was writing in the journal that I'm keeping for my son, I felt compelled to list these books, and others, as required reading for him to be a thinking Black man (I'll post the list sometime soon). It turns out that I was making this list in the same week of publication of a study showing that the number of books that a family owns is a better predictor of children's academic success than the education, occupation, and socioeconomic status of the parents. Children who grow up in a home with 500 books complete an average of 3.2 years more schooling than children who grow up in homes without books. And the effect is even greater for children from the poorest families. For parents with only primary-school education, having as little as 25 books in the home means that children will complete 2 more years of schooling than their counterparts with no books. USA Today has a brief article on the study, which appears in full in the June 2010 issue of the journal, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility.

While the study didn't look at race, I can't help but to wonder about the impact that a family library can have on academic achievement among African American children. Studies like these often focus on poverty (and they should). However, there's a long line of research documenting a significant and persistent achievement gap between middle-class black and white children in America. As one researcher states, "the school performance of middle-class black children is closer to that of poor white children." By the age of 5, black children in middle-class homes own an average of 60 books; their white counterparts (i.e., children of parents with similar levels of income and education) have 100.

More than once, I have visited the homes of middle-class African American friends and family and have noted that there are few, if any, books in the household. In contrast, these homes are usually well-stocked with DVDs and state-of-the-art entertainment and gaming systems.

A few months ago, when I proudly posted a video of my then 20-month-old practicing his alphabet, a few family members asked what our secret was. Quite simply, we limit his television consumption and we read to him often. We take him to story hour at the library, buy at least two new books each month (at not quite two, he has at least 60 books), and have read a minimum of 4 books per day since infancy (the current average is 6-8 books per day). In fact, 99% of the time, if he brings a book to us, we will stop whatever we are doing and read it. Even if he brings 12 books in a row (which he likes to do), we read all of them. You might call us a child-reading-centered household.

Does it mean that he'll be smarter than other kids? No one can predict that. There are a ton of social factors out there waiting to influence him as he grows up. We may not be able to combat all of them. But hopefully, our attempts to raise a reader will give us a head start.

Another Look at Tyler Perry

2010-04-06T09:56:00.010-04:00

Yesterday I went to see Tyler Perry's new film, Why Did I Get Married Too?. Of course, I didn't go to see it purely for entertainment's sake. Since he debuted on the major film circuit a few years ago, Perry has tended to elicit one of two responses from black viewers: rabid loyalty or seething hatred. I tend to fall somewhere in the middle. To date, I have seen nearly all of Perry's films, one of his stage plays, and even a few of his filmed stage productions. Granted, Perry's work is not likely to garner an Oscar nod anytime soon, but it's always entertaining. The play that I saw, What Goes On In the Dark, was the best laugh I've had at a live show since Cedric the Entertainer's set during The Kings of Comedy performance in Miami over ten years ago.

I'll pass on the television shows though. I tried to watch The House of Payne, but its oversimplified story lines, clichés, and overacting (reminiscent of the SNL skit, "The Overacting Negro Ensemble") became painful.

Why Did I Get Married Too? is vintage Perry. Once again, he uses his "everything but the kitchen sink" approach - mixing slapstick, romantic comedy, and drama with a few gratuitous hot body shots (even Janet Jackson's cleavage, which was uncharacteristically demure in the original, makes quite a few appearances). The film's many plot lines include divorce, domestic violence, adultery, grief, financial hardship - in sum, nearly every possible catastrophe that could happen. With this film, Perry seems to be taking himself a little too seriously; he went to an epic length of 2-1/2 hours, a good 45 minutes too long.

The overall verdict? It was...entertaining. I laughed, sometimes in spite of myself. And as I walked out of the theatre, I thought, "Maybe I should just leave Tyler Perry alone and not write about this one." Did I mention that Perry inspires a sort of rabid loyalty? Writing anything negative about him causes a knee-jerk reaction among his fans, who immediately accuse the critic of being an intellectual elitist snob who clearly doesn't understand his work and therefore has no business writing about it.

The irony is that I often receive the opposite reaction when I ask students in my undergraduate classes to watch and write about one of his films. More than one student has responded, "You want us to do what?! What are we supposed to learn from that? His movies are stupid." Even those students who secretly enjoy Perry's movies question the idea that there could be anything worth intellectual engagement within them.

The last time that I wrote about Tyler Perry, I critiqued his treatment of women's roles, which have a pretty heavy patriarchal lens. Perry's films are usually part-entertainment and part-morality play. Why Did I Get Married Too? doesn't have the preachiness of his earlier work and it's easy to assume that the film has no message. But it does. And it's an important one.

The essence of both Why Did I Get Married? films remains the same: Black romantic relationships are screwed up because: (1) there are a lot of no-count black men out there (i.e., the abusers, cheaters, etc.); and (2) black women are ball-busting bitches who don't know how to appreciate a good thing when they find it. Now, here's where you need to read carefully before you press the comment link: Perry does not paint all black men and women in this light. In this series, Mike (played by Richard T. Jones) clearly represents the former, while the rest of the men portray the latter. Even Marcus (played by Michael Jai White) seems to have reformed his philandering ways in this one.

The women, on the other hand, almost universally fall in the category of too strong for their own good. Angela, Marcus' wife as played by Tasha Smith, is still a twenty-first century depiction of the Sapphire stereotype - the loud, abrasive black woman who loves to belittle black men. Patricia (portrayed by Jackson) is classic Strong Black Woman - a repressed psychotherapist who spends all of her time fixing other people while her own life is in shambles. As for Diane and Sheila, the characters played by Sharon Leal and Jill Scott, respectively...well, I don't want to give the movie away.

Whether it's the Why Did I Get Married? or Madea films, Tyler Perry's works are a form of social commentary. The question is, what kind of comment is he making? Is Perry simply depicting what is? Or is he pointing to what ought to be? Those of us who critique Perry usually assume that he's doing one or the other, oftentimes both. But I think there's another way to look at Perry. His art (and yes, I believe it is artistic) exposes what many people believe to be true about the state of African American relationships. Simply put, he's just depicting what many African American men and women believe to be true about black relationships - that black men are dogs and black women have too much baggage.

Perry's meteoric rise to success is evidence that he's a genius as a businessman. He knows how to tap into the psyche of his audience and to give them what they want to see. So the question is not why he keeps playing the same tired old story, but why we as African Americans keep believing that story and what impact it has on our lives.

Reggie Bush and the Essence Cover Controversy

2010-02-10T11:32:00.004-05:00

In all the turmoil over the Vanity Fair "Hollywood Issue," another magazine cover controversy has gone relatively unnoticed. It seems that a lot of Essence readers are upset over the magazine's decision to feature Reggie Bush on the February cover, the "Black Men, Love and Relationships" issue. The problem? Essence is supposed to be black women's magazine. And Bush just happens to be dating a white woman - Kim Kardashian, to be exact (although part of the controversy involves whether Kardashian's Armenian ancestry qualifies her as "white"). It seems that in crossing the color line in his romantic relationship, Bush has failed the racial litmus test. By at least one segment of the population, he has been deemed as insufficiently black.

Here's the kicker: among the names that have been bandied about as more appropriate cover choices is Robin Thicke. Yep, that one. The ivory-skinned, soul-singing son of Growing Pains star Alan Thicke. The younger Thicke is married to African American actress Paula Patton. It seems that qualifies him to be an icon of black love, according to some Essence readers.

Confused? Okay, the equation goes something like this:

Black man + white woman = Rejection of all black women
White man + black woman = Affirmation of all black women

Of course it's madness. But the easy thing to do is to scoff at the women who think like this. My first reaction upon reading about the "controversy" was to do my best Bill Cosby impersonation: "Come on people!" My second reaction was embarrassment that some of my sisters (assuming that these are actually black women making these comments) are so publicly living into the stereotype of the Angry Black Woman.

But there's an important question here, I think. What has American society done to make the self-image of some black women so fragile that they equate interracial relationships involving black men with personal rejection and view interracial relationships involving white men as a form of validation? The answer to that question is not simply, "They got issues." It implicates all of us, regardless of our race and gender. And it's not just a historical question. It certainly starts in slavery. But it doesn't end there.

Vanity Fair and the Light/Dark Thing

2010-02-05T10:45:00.013-05:00

There's been quite a buzz in the blogosphere these days about the lack of diversity in Vanity Fair's annual "Hollywood Issue." The fold-out cover features nine of Hollywood's up-and-coming actresses. And wouldn't you know it? All nine happen to be very thin, fair-skinned white women. Notable exclusions include Zoe Saldana, who starred in two of the year's biggest films ("Star Trek" and "Avatar") and Freida Pinto, star of the runaway hit, "Slumdog Millionaire."

But most of the controversy over the lily-white cover has centered upon the omission of Gabourey Sidibe, the Oscar-nominated star of "Precious." Sidibe was not completely ignored; she appears inside the magazine. But her exclusion from the cover has a lot of folks talking about the magazine's bias against people of color. One writer bluntly questioned whether Sidibe is "too fat, too black" for the magazine's cover. The fact that Sidibe graces the March 2010 cover of Ebony magazine seems to underscore the charges of racism. A lot of folks, many of them non-black, are pulling the race card on this one.

But not so fast. I discovered the Vanity Fair controversy the same way that I learn about most popular culture these days - via Facebook. The posts started flying the same day as the Grammy's, which inspired quite a few comments as well. So between reading people's thoughts about the Vanity Fair cover, I also got my fair share of interesting tidbits such as: "Beyonce didn't call Jay-Z by name because he doesn't really love her"; "Michael Jackson's kids don't look like him because they're not his kids"; "What is she wearing?"; and "Doesn't Lil' Wayne look like a cockroach personified?"

Oh wait, did I forget to mention that all of the Grammy posts were by African Americans? Now, I'm not going to make the argument that Lil' Wayne should be a contender for the male version of "America's Next Top Model," but a cockroach? Come on people. Let's not get it twisted. There is only one feature of Lil' Wayne that makes such a comparison fathomable - his blackness.

The cockroach insult is not a new one. It has been used as a racial slur for a long time. But among African Americans, it is an epithet typically reserved for dark-skinned blacks. No matter how "unattractive," medium and fair-skinned blacks are immune from it. It is the slightly subtler version of the "African booty scratcher" insult leveled on school playgrounds. And in the vast majority of cases, both the perpetrator and the victim are African American. After all, let's face it - the only white people who would dare enunciate such obvious racial epithets are the hood and swastika wearing varieties.

At some point in their lives, many dark-skinned African Americans have heard the term "black" hurled at them by other African Americans with such venom that it makes them feel lower than low. The color complex is the wound of internalized racism that African Americans try to keep concealed from whites. We may have come a long way since slavery, but we've yet to learn to love our blackness. I once heard activist John Perkins say that black people hate ourselves so much that we required an entire movement to try to convince ourselves that black could be beautiful. If the continuing (and perhaps rising) popularity of skin lighteners is any indication, that movement still has a way to go.

Oh yeah, we're not supposed to talk about skin lighteners anymore, especially in mixed company. But if you open that Ebony issue featuring Gabourey Sidibe, I'm sure you'll find plenty of ads for them inside, their number likely rivaled only by the number of ads for hair straighteners.

I'm not opposed to critiquing the Vanity Fair cover. But quite frankly, I'm less interested in convincing white folks to love blackness than in helping us to love ourselves.

The Fascination with the American Negro (Episode 1)

2010-01-09T10:58:00.008-05:00

I have spent much of my life being the first, the only, or the youngest. It comes with the territory as a black person in the academy and as a woman in ministry. When I began my current position at a historically black seminary three years ago, it was the first time since elementary school that I had been in an academic setting (either as a student or professor) that wasn't dominated by whites (although my high school was predominantly black, the AP classes in which I was enrolled were decidedly not, but that's another story).

My husband's experience is similar, albeit in reverse. The day that he graduated from college was his last time that he spent his days in a majority black setting. Over the past 15 years as an engineer, he has always been one of a small handful of people of color at the firms at which he's worked.

So it's not surprising that by virtue of our socioeconomic status (as well as our commitment to racial reconciliation), we spend a lot of time in places populated mainly by whites. In our home city of Durham, we're part of the granola crowd. We shop at Whole Foods, are members of the NC Museum of Life and Science, and take our son to classes at the Little Gym.

Herein lies the challenge. Because we are usually the only African Americans (or among a small minority) in the contexts that we inhabit, so is our 18-month-old son. As a result, he's become something of a celebrity. Being the "only" makes you highly noticeable and recognizable. When you play the go-around-the-circle-and-introduce-your-child game, everybody remembers the name and face of the solitary black child. It's not uncommon for my husband to have unfamiliar white women greet our son by name at the grocery store or museum. We've gotten used to it.

But it makes for some very strange moments at times. Take this week's gym class, for instance. There was one little girl who had apparently never seen a black person. Or at least black hair. Or at least a 1" Type 4B Afro that had been packed under a winter cap (I admit it, the boy looked like who shot john). For the bulk of the 50-minute class session, this little girl followed my child around the room, pointing to and patting his head. He seemed oblivious to it and kept playing. But his mother, who has some major hang-ups around race and hair, was not.

"Oh here we go," I thought, "It's time for another 'fascination with the American Negro' moment." Since the majority of African American women do not wear their hair in its natural texture, when we do, it is often a source of heightened attention and discussion by folks of all races. But with whites, there is an added element (especially if you have locs, which I did until two years ago) - morbid curiosity:

"How did you get your hair like that?"

"I didn't. This is what God gave me."

"I've never seen hair like that."

"That's because it's usually hidden under relaxers and weaves."

"Ooh, can I touch it?"

Hell no.

Sorry, that was a flashback. Post-traumatic hair syndrome, I guess. But having absolute strangers or casual acquaintances try to turn you into a hands-on museum exhibit is beyond maddening.

I once spent a week at a retreat for black women. Toward the end, after days of spending every waking moment together, one of the women said to me, "Your locs are so beautiful. Can I gather them?" I could tell her motives were pure, so I said yes. My spine tingled as she stroked my locks from crown to nape, pulling the wandering strands - in the most gentle way possible - into a single stream flowing down my back. In that space, surrounded by women trying to love ourselves and one another, that was an act of love.

Of course, none of that - the dehumanizing-museum exhibit moments or the intimate acts of sister-love - means anything to a blond 18-month-old who thinks the fact that her new friend's hair looks and feels like a cotton swab is cool. Her mother was clearly embarrassed, trying unsuccessfully to make her stop. "Don't worry about it," I told her, "he doesn't even seem to notice."

Meanwhile, I thought to myself, "Okay, this is really the last straw. He won't sit still long enough for us to pick it out, it gets messed up anyway, we have to get soy nut butter and applesauce out of it twice a day, and now he's getting harassed by little white girls."

He was in the barber's chair three days later.

Resolutions for Revolution (or, What Black Folks Need to Do in 2010)

2010-01-02T10:19:00.009-05:00

Another New Year has arrived. If you haven't done it already, it's time to make those New Year's resolutions. Never mind the fact that you may not keep them past March. Making them - and even breaking them - is an important exercise. It encourages us to spend some time reflecting on the lives that we would like to live, the persons whom we would like to be, and the values and practices that we hold most dear. It helps us to embody, in word and deed, God's ongoing creative activity in our lives. Even our failures are important. They remind us that our transformation is not entirely under our control; we must lean into God's grace and strength for real change to take place.

This year, the celebration of the New Year and the impending observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday are inextricably intertwined in my mind. Perhaps it is because I am still haunted by my last visit to my hometown of Atlanta. It's been 15 years since I left Hotlanta and each time I return, I am reminded why the city has become one of America's black cultural capitals. There is so much to do, see, and experience of the Black diaspora in the city - galleries and museums, cultural centers, civic groups and organizations, historical sites, and soul food and Caribbean restaurants. Even the walk through the airport was enjoyable; the walkway to baggage claim in Hartsfield International currently has an installation of sculptures by Zimbabwean artists. A trip home is always a striking reminder of just how far African Americans have come in the 45 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

But during my ride through the city, I noticed something else, a reminder that the struggle is far from over, even for those who have ostensibly "arrived." While traveling down a major thoroughfare on the south (code word for "black") side of town, I realized that I was in the largest collection of beauty supply stores, car accessory shops, and chicken wing shacks that I had ever seen. I had no idea that it was possible for one street to sustain that many beauty supply stores, a large one on every block. And there were rims galore. For rent, no less! And the chicken - the air was permeated with the smells of grease and sauce (okay, I'm exaggerating, but there really were a lot of them).

While Atlanta's chicken wings have a special place in my heart and I have many memories of scouring beauty supply shops for the perfect product, the whole scene was mildly depressing. I could almost hear a voice emanating from the shops: "Come to us. There is a hole inside of you that we can fix. You are not enough. Come to us, my daughters, and we will give you hair to cover your insecurities. Come to us, my sons, and we will cover your alienation with rims that you cannot afford. And if that doesn't fill the emptiness, come to us, my children, and we will fill your stomachs. Come to us and we will make you enough."

I have often heard African Americans say that integration destroyed the fabric of the black community in America. But what has been known as "integration" - the end of legalized segregation and the granting of access to education, housing, and employment - was never meant to be the final destination of the Civil Rights Movement. It was simply a road marker, and an important one, on the journey to beloved community, a society where reconciliation, redemption, love, and justice would be realized. Dr. King envisioned the beloved community as an America where we would adhere to the two greatest commandments: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, our mind, our soul, and our strength; and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves (cf. Matthew 22:34-40).

But as we enter the second decade of the 21st century, many African Americans still have a lot of difficulty loving ourselves. Centuries of racism has inculcated within us a sense of self-loathing. Most often it's an unconscious impulse. That is, most of us don't go around thinking, "I don't like being black." Rather, we have a deep, abiding sense that "I am not enough." We try to make up for not being enough by doing more, getting more, and consuming more. We take on superhuman personas, trying to live into the ideologies of the StrongBlackMan or StrongBlackWoman. Or we spend a disproportionate amount of our income on visible signs of "enoughness" - hair, nails, clothes, purses, shoes, rims, cars, TVs, bluetooth headsets, cell phones, etc. Or we eat...and we eat...and we eat. Sometimes we do all of the above. And the struggle continues.

So as you make your resolutions for 2010, consider the inner revolution that still needs to take place for the liberation of the African American mind. Make resolutions that will help to free you and your family from the vestiges of internalized racism. Sometimes societal change demands marches and legislation. But oftentimes, it needs the decision and determination of individuals to be differently.

And just in case you need help, here are a few ideas:

First, take charge of your health. In 2007, 35.6% of African Americans were obese, according to CDC data. For too long, our knee-jerk reaction to such statistics has been to say that the weight charts do not take into account African American "bone structure." That's all well and good, but somebody needs to send that memo to our cardiovascular and endocrine systems, because they seem to think that our bodies can't handle that weight. We have the highest rates of hypertension and Type II diabetes of all ethnic groups, with some rates rivaling those of people in the poorest countries in the world. Who needs Jim Crow and lynch mobs when we are committing slow suicide with overeating and underactivity? Not to mention epidemic rates of HIV/AIDS and homicide. Let this be the year that you develop and sustain healthy diet, exercise, and sexual habits.

Second, regain (and retrain) your righteous mind. A 2004 Nielsen study shows that, on average, African Americans watch 40% more television than all other ethnic groups, a whopping 11 hours per day! It's bad enough that we spend that much time being physically and mentally inactive. It's even worse when you consider the values and images that are being transmitted by television shows, videos, and commercials. No wonder we continue to believe that we are not enough! In contrast, only 37% of Arican Americans read literature. A few years ago, I read a study that showed that by the age of 5, children in white, middle-class homes have an average of 100 books; their black counterparts had only 60, even though the parents had similar levels of income and education. I don't want to underplay the impact of racism and poverty on racial differences in academic and occupational achievement. But let's be honest - we aren't helping the cause by willfully neglecting our intellectual development. Make this the year to increase your reading and decrease your television consumption.

Third, get active for justice. Commit, in at least one tangible way, to striving for justice and equal opportunity for all of God's children. You might volunteer at a food bank or homeless shelter, mentor a child, organize a clothing or book drive in your community, attend vigils against the death penalthy, clean up a neighborhood park, or raise funds for a local nonprofit. Just do something.

Maybe if we make a collective attempt to fill the emptiness with health, knowledge, and service, we won't be so inclined to fill it with weaves, wheels, and wings. And then we will know what the Great Spirit has been trying to tell us - we are enough.

On Being an Icon

2009-11-09T18:54:00.003-05:00

"That's a ghetto name!", he said. I didn't have time to respond. His classmate, another teen court-ordered to participate in an intervention program for juvenile gun offenders, immediately admonished him: "Don't call people's name 'ghetto.' That's rude!"

Over the past two decades, I have grown accustomed to my name - Chanequa - becoming the iconic ghetto name - used by comedians, singers (remember Oran "Juice" Jones: "Shaniquaaaa...ya got me whupped"), and celebrities who mistake themselves as intellectuals (remember Bill Cosby's 2004 speech to the NAACP?). Whenever someone wants to evoke the image of a gum-popping, neck-wagging, eye-rolling, hand-on-hip-placing, lower class African American woman, Chanequa (and all its variations: Sheniqua, Shaniqua, Shenikwa, etc.) becomes a common target.

I was born in 1972. As Lisa Jones would say, I am a movement baby whose Mississippi-born mother reached back to Africa for some sonic inspiration when naming her first-born. She had no book of African baby names to draw upon, just a deep longing to give her baby girl a name that would mark her as special, as touched by the ancestors. Pulling from a rich family heritage of unique names (Laquitta, Lunetha, Sarita, and so on), she sat down one day and started putting letters together.

I find it ironic that my name has become identified with some of the worst stereotypes of African American women. As far as I know, I am the original Chanequa. While the name has become increasingly popular over the past three decades, I have never heard of a Chanequa who is older than me (and trust me, I always ask). So until someone proves otherwise, I am the prototype.

And just to be clear about what the prototype looks like: I am a highly educated (Mr. Cosby - that's 3 graduate degrees, each of them earned, not honorary), sophisticated, ambitious woman. Happily married for 13 years, I live in the suburbs and drive a mid-sized SUV (the last two are not necessarily points of pride, just counterpoints to the prevailing image). I am a voracious reader of theology, cultural criticism, historical fiction, fantasy, and memoir.

I love documentaries and hip-hop. I make my own granola and can cook up a mean pot of greens. I love being among the folk, but I'm also comfortable in environments where I am the first, the only, or the youngest. I am grounded in what I believe to be the best of my culture even as I try to transcend and transform some of its worst elements. And I love seeing the looks on people's faces when they realize that this icon of all things "ghetto" is capable of deconstructing the classist and racist assumptions behind the term with minimal intellectual effort.

In other words, my name is Chanequa and I am the ish. So stop taking my name in vain.

Rethinking the StrongBlackMan

2009-10-14T17:24:00.010-04:00

About 2 years into my (now seemingly endless) project on the StrongBlackWoman, I realized that she had a male counterpart. Because I don't presume to be an expert on men's issues, I figured I'd leave writing about the StrongBlackMan to folks who were much better equipped - folks like Mark Anthony Neal (who takes on the subject quite well in New Black Man) and Kevin Powell (who doesn't use the term explicitly but is certainly evoking the concept in Who's Gonna Take the Weight?). But after passing the buck for a few years, I've decided to enter the fray, especially since, as far as I can tell, the fates of the StrongBlackWoman and StrongBlackMan are bound together. Be gentle - it's my first time.

If I were in the classroom right now, I'd begin this story on the west coast of Africa, talking about how the circumstances of the European encounter with the African set the foundation for centuris of racist depictions of black men. Then, crossing the Atlantic into the American slaveocracy, I'd narrate how these depictions were further codified into the Tom (the obsequious servant) and the Buck (the violent, aggressive brute). Next, I'd take a leap to the nineteenth century, when newly freed blacks began crafting the archetype of the StrongBlackMan as an ideological response to these negative depictions, using as raw material the inherently flawed icons of the Self-Made Man and the cult of black genius. But I'm not in the classroom so I won't start there.

Instead, I'll start by echoing a caveat made by others: being a StrongBlackMan (no spaces) is not the same as being strong, being black and being a man. The StrongBlackMan, like the StrongBlackWoman, refers to a specific way of being in the world - a particular set of psychosocial characteristics that are strongly rooted in racism and sexism. These are not people; they are costumes. Whereas the StrongBlackWoman is characterized by the triumvirate of strength (specifically expressed as the capacity for silent suffering), independence, and caregiving, the StrongBlackMan revolves around the three "cardinal virtues" of dominance, self-control, and pride. These three virtues are interconnected, but I'll try to parse them out as much as possible.

The virtue of dominance might be portrayed in terms of three sets of dichotomies: the StrongBlackMan wants to be seen as a master, not a slave; as a leader, and not a follower; as a producer, and not a hired hand. He is not to be owned, ruled, controlled, or influenced by any outside force. He must maintain the appearance of being powerful, tough, and right at all times and at all costs He is competitive, aggressive, and in charge of the resources that he has at his disposal, no matter how meager they may be.

The second cardinal virtue, self-control, has to do with the StrongBlackMan's need to be in charge of his self - his emotional, moral, financial, and physical self. Within the constraints of racism and classism, he tries to embody the American masculine ideal of rugged individualism. He is a master of his own fate, allowing no outside person or institution to influence his choices, behaviors, feelings, beliefs, or values. He is an achiever, a doer, a producer, a performer. He is active, not passive; a giver and not a receiver. He can never allow anyone or anything to get the better of him, especially in matters of the heart. Above all else, he must never be punked.

The third cardinal virtue, pride, concerns the StrongBlackMan's need to always be seen as responsible, self-confident, successful, and persevering. He takes pride in livign up to the mantle of black manhood and shuns anything that might make him appear weak, vulnerable, or unsure. He takes pride in his accomplishments, his family, and his racial heritage. In his dealings with persons of other races, he strives to be seen as a "credit to the race." One of his greatest fears is embarrassment. He can never appear weak, vulnerable, or unsure.

The three cardinal virtues of the StrongBlackMan - dominance, self-control, and pride - are bound by an underlying theme of defensiveness. Ultimately, the StrongBlackMan is not a real persona. It does not reflect the authentic nature - the true thoughts, feelings, personalities - of the men who wear its garb. Rather, it is a defense against a society that deems black men to be unfit as anything other than entertainers, athletes, and criminals.

The StrongBlackMan is black men's best effort to stand up straight against the enormous weight pressing down upon them - racism, classism, heterosexism - and to say, "I am a man. I am not a boy, a clown, a body to be exploited for profit. I am not a problem to be solved, re-solved, or locked away. I am capable of greatness that you cannot begin to fathom. And I am part of the same species as you so take me off that endangered species list."

At least that's my (very preliminary) analysis. I'd like to say that I get it, that I understand the plight of the StrongBlackMan. But of course, that's not true. Black men and Black women both have issues, but as the saying goes, "Your blues ain't quite like mine." Yet the more that I learn about black men and women - about me - the more I realize just how similar our struggles are.

As a black woman, I know a little something about wearing a mask, especially one called "strong." The problem with that mask is that if you wear it enough, you forget that it's not really you. It becomes fused onto your being, twisting your appearance into some exaggerated form of what you were trying to be, just like Jim Carrey's character in the 1990s film, The Mask. No one can get inside the real you, not even your loved ones. And worst yet, you can't get out. Your joy, your pain, your love - it's all tucked deep behind the mask, inaccessible even to you.

This is not to say that being strong is bad. It has its place. Dominance, pride, and self-control each have their place. But so, too, do vulnerability, intimacy, openness, receptivity, silliness, and tears. Being whole means having all these things in balance. StrongBlackMen and StrongBlackWomen are way off-balance. We are far from whole. And two half-lives do not make a life.

Five years into this project and I still have no clue what the resolution is. But I have come to the place where I understand that the healing of the StrongBlackWoman is dependent upon that of the StrongBlackMan. Perhaps the best way to start is for all of us StrongBlackWomen and StrongBlackMen to show one another our pain, without judgmenet, without criticism, and without trying to prove whose pain is worse. And then maybe...just maybe...we can really get this revolution going.

The Week in Review (09-26-09)

2009-09-26T11:52:00.007-04:00

In my daily wanderings around the internet, I usually run across some pretty interesting articles, blogs, and essays that are related to issues of race, gender, relationships, sexuality, and parenting. Some of these are certainly worthy of sharing to like-minds. So from time to time, I'll post them here as a sort of "week in review."

Here are a few that caught my attention this week:

"Good Luck Raising That Gender-Neutral Child" by Tracy Clark-Flory @ Salon.com

Many of us so-called progressives attempt to live out our commitment to gender equality in our parenting, trying to avoid gender stereotypes as we choose our children's toys, friends, clothing, etc. But a common refrain heard among such parents is that once children enter the preschool years (around ages 3-4), they begin to exhibit traditionally gendered behaviors that may run counter to everything the parents have tried to instill. In other words, gender is not just a social construct (or performance). In this article, Lisa Eliot, a mother and neuroscience professor, discusses her recent book, Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Big Gaps - and What We Can Do About It, in which she reviews the research on gender differences and similarities. She also weighs in on preschoolers' gender stereotypes, the "boy crisis," and South African runner Caster Semenya.

"The New Generation of the Young, Gifted, and Black: What Are Their Responsibilities to the Black Community?" by Max Reddick @ soulbrother v.2

This is an older post that I just discovered this week. Max Reddick raises some really good questions. What responsibilities, if any, do the beneficiaries of the civil rights movement have to "the race" in our so-called "post-racial" age? And is it possible to feel any sense of responsibility to the race without also carrying the burden of representation?

Black Men and Boys Week @ soulbrother v.2

This week, blogger Max Reddick did a series on black men and boys, in which he examined the definition of black masculinity, the prison industrial complex, and whether single mothers can effectively raise black boys. He also provides several web resources for parents and educators of young black males.

The Strong Black Woman Goes to the Doctor

2009-07-17T10:03:00.005-04:00

"So you see, there's a pattern here," I said. "The women in my family wait until we're at the point of disability or death before we bring a problem to the doctor." My doctor buried his face in his hands as he laughed - at me and with me. We were finishing up a 45-minute diagnostic interview, which was laced with plenty of humor as we talked about parenthood, marriage, and my chronic failure to pay attention to health issues.

This visit should have happened a year earlier. But after a few rounds of calling the clinic to reschedule my follow-up visit last spring, I finally told the receptionist, "I'll just have to call you later." I was glad to have finally found a primary care physician who practiced holistic medicine (and accepted health insurance!). But the clinic hadn't seemed to catch on to that fact; they kept scheduling his patients for 15-minute slots. There was an inevitable backlog in his daily schedule. I'd wait an hour in the waiting room and then spend another hour with him.

Now add the commute, which was 30 minutes in one direction and 45 minutes in the other. In total, a visit to the doctor took over three hours of my day. And I just didn't have the time. It was the end of the spring semester, crunch time for students and faculty alike. I had too much to do. So I just kept putting off the visit. Before I knew it, it'd been a year and my doctor had left the group practice to start a new clinic, still pretty far away. Plus, I was now a mother and I didn't want to spend my precious baby-free moments at the doctor's office. I had too much to do.

In retrospect, this seems really obvious - I had fallen off the wagon in a major way. I was back in the throes of Strong Black Woman syndrome - taking care of everyone and everything but me. But until that doctor's visit, as I realized the similarity between myself and the other women in my family, I hadn't known that I'd relapsed.

To be honest, I'd probably only made - and kept - this doctor's appointment because of my mother's urging. My mother and her sisters were worried. In the past year, two more family members in their generation have been diagnosed with degenerative and debilitating neuromuscular or neurological conditions. This brings the grand total to five - out of fifteen. It's more than scary.

As my mother told me about the latest diagnoses, she also told me of the worries that she and my aunts had for my generation. She urged me to get back to my doctor soon and let him know that we needed to be on the lookout, especially because the most recent relatives were not diagnosed until they reached the point of disability. Most likely, they've had symptoms for years but didn't notice them, didn't take them seriously when they did notice them, and decided to worry anyone about it once they suspected it was serious. Now, I haven't asked whether this is the case; I'm simply speculating as to what might have happened. But I feel pretty secure in my speculation. After all, I am the women in my family. I am my mother's daughter and my aunts' niece.

That point became all too obvious just minutes after ending the telephone conversation with my mother. When I related the information to my husband, he immediately asked whether it might have anything to do with the muscular problems that I've had, and largely ignored, for at least six years now. Quite frankly, the thought that there might be a connection had never occurred to me.

So yesterday, I - a Strong Black Woman in recovery - went to the doctor. After that lengthy diagnostic interview, I thought I had given an exhaustive list of my ailments. But the physical revealed my tendency for minimizing my problems: "Your allergies are nowhere near 'under control.' You've got all kind of swelling up there." I guess that would explain the pressure that I'd been feeling in my head and face all morning. "Wait, do you have back pain? I feel tenderness here, and here, and here." Had I failed to mention that? Oops, my bad.

Curing Manhood?

2009-07-11T11:51:00.011-04:00

A few months ago, I attended a continuing education seminar for psychologists on men and grief. At one point in the discussion, the instructor commented, "If you think of manhood as a sickness that needs to be cured, you need to work on that." With that one sentence, he gave voice to an uneasiness that I had been feeling in our discussions all day. Despite their biological sex or gender, those of us working as therapists tend to embody and value personality traits that are typically considered feminine. We like to listen, to process, and to talk about our feelings - about nearly everything. We place high esteem on intimacy, that is, feeling connected with others on a psychic level. And quite frankly, we think everyone should too.

Towards the midpoint of the seminar, I began to suspect that maybe we clinicians were on a mission to make men be more like us - to feel more, reflect more, relate more, and to talk more about all of it. More importantly, I recognized myself in the charge my by our instructor. In fact, I could easily imagine myself leading the campaign to have Hypermasculine Identity Syndrome (HIS) added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of psychiatric disorders. Gender identity is what I read, write, teach, and talk about. Thus, with one statement, I found myself charged, found guilty, and sentenced. So for the rest of the afternoon, I began thinking that maybe we...maybe I needed to accept gender differences as another example of "apples and oranges" and to let men be men.

But (you saw that coming, didn't you?) there was just one problem with that: our traditional notions of masculinity in America (which, by the way, have only been traditional for about 200 years) aren't working. Not for men, not for women, not for children.

Case in point: life expectancies. While the gender gap is decreasing, there's been a stark gender disparity in life expectancies. On average, women in the United States live 81 years, men 76 years. The gender gap is even greater among African Americans, with African American women living an average of eight years longer than their male counterparts. The earlier deaths for men aren't attributed to sex chromosomes or sex hormones. Rather, they're more likely resultant from behaviors like the way men handle stress (bottling it up, not talking about it, not asking for help), take unnecessary risks, and behave violently and aggressively toward themselves and others. Okay, you won't really find any of those factors on a mortality chart. But they are factors related to the diseases that account for some of the gender disparity. Anyway, I'm trying to make a point here, not write a research paper. The point is this - the fact that men die so much sooner that women indicates that maybe there's something wrong with the way they live.

But perhaps more compelling are the data on how our ideas about masculinity impact relationships. In fact, this has convinced me, more than anything, of our need to rethink manhood. A major theme in that continuing education seminar was the father-son relationship, particularly the issues that many men (of all races) have with their fathers.

I see this in my undergraduate classes, especially among male students, who talk about fathers who have never told their sons that they love them. During his segment on the Tom Joyner Morning Show last week, D.L. Hughley talked about this very issue. He described once asking his father whether he loved him and getting the response, "You ate, didn't you?" It was a tongue-in-cheek response, one which Hughley found funny at the time and one at which I chuckled even as I shook my head in sympathy when he told it on the show.

But as Hughley noted in his commentary, he later realized that the whole exchange wasn't funny at all. He, like all children, needed to hear that his father loved him. He needed a father who did more than provide for his physical needs and comfort, a father who did more than provide rules, structure, and discipline. As he said:

I don't know one black men who isn't broken in some way. Broken either by the relationship he had with his father, or by the relationship he wished he had with his father...It's a shame that you're a casualty if you have a father, and you're a casualty if you don't. Finding the blend, the right way to be a father, the right groove, the right tempo to be a father, is an amazing thing...We can break a family with our presence as easily as we make them.

Our understanding of fatherhood is bound with our understanding of masculinity. And as I begin to hear more stories about men's issues with their fathers - the ones who stayed and provided - I realize that there is some serious work to be done.

So no, we can't just let men be men, any more than we can just let women be women. We are all deeply broken, our divine likeness obscured - hopefully not obliterated - by our conformity to societal norms and expectations about who we should be. This includes our gender identities.

Black Movies and the Myth of Relational Violence

2009-05-23T08:56:00.007-04:00

During the media frenzy over the alleged incident of domestic violence between singers Chris Brown and Rihanna, I remained silent. Silent, but observant. I listened to the countless number of citizens who called into black radio stations to cast their pronouncement of guilt or innocence. I watched Oprah, Phil, and Tyra as they launched their special (and much-hyped) episodes about teen dating violence. I read the articles, commentaries, and blogs about patriarchy, victim's rights, and the potential impact on the careers of these two talented artists. And in the midst of listening, watching, and reading, I noticed a screaming silence. No one was talking about the glorification of relational violence in black film and how it might have impacted those two young people or the public dissection of their lives.

In fact, with the exception of Kevin Powell, who was given very limited talk-time on one of Oprah's episode, no one was talking about the American fascination with violence at all. Just take a look at the slate of movies lined up to hit theatres in this year's blockbuster season: Wolverine, Terminator Salvation, Transformers, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (this series stopped being appropriate for children by about book two). Sure, there are lots of other good, non-violent films coming out too, but many of them won't do nearly as well as those about aggression, violence, and death.

But as far as it relates to black film, I'm talking about a different, more insidious type of violence. I'm talking about relational violence - physical aggression between two or more people who are linked together by kinship, friendship, or romantic intimacy, that is, spouses, romantic partners, parents and children, siblings, etc.

In my undergraduate class on black love, I require my students to watch a series of black popular movies that deal with romantic relationships. Our selections over the past two years have included Baby Boy, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Claudine, Love Jones, Jungle Fever, The Color Purple, Something New, Jason's Lyric, Waiting to Exhale, and Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?. And after two years of watching and re-watching these films, I realized that very many of them contain scenes of explicit relational violence.

In some cases, this might be expected. After all, abuse - and liberation from it - is a central theme in The Color Purple. And Jason's Lyric and Baby Boy are dramas in which young couples try to form and maintain intimate relationships in the midst of violent, chaotic environments. But relational violence is often woven into films in which it really doesn't seem to be needed.

Take, for example, This Christmas. There aren't many holiday movies about African American families, so I was happy to see this one starring Loretta Devine, Delroy Lindo, Regina King, and ironically, Chris Brown. I didn't expect it to be Oscar-worthy; after all, it's a Christmas movie, a genre which usually includes a fair bit of cheesiness, contrived drama, and overly simplistic themes. But Christmas movies also tend to be heart-warming and family-oriented. And I expected no less of This Christmas.

What I did not expect was a scene of graphic, premeditated domestic violence. The eldest daughter in the Whitfield family (played by Sharon Neal) drenches the bathroom floor with baby oil and assaults her husband with a leather belt as he steps out of the shower. Wearing nothing but a towel, he is defenseless against the attack as he falls and slides on the oil-slicked floor. Apparently, the beating is supposed to be legitimated by the husband's infidelity (and in general, being a jerk).

That's the scary part about the depiction of relational violence in black film - in some ways, it is always seen as being legitimate. Over and over again, black filmmakers pay homage to what theologian Walter Wink names as the "myth of redemptive violence" - the idea that violence saves, solves, empowers, or makes whole. In black film, violence is often trotted out as the "fix" for wayward lovers, children, siblings, or friends.

But there's something even more disturbing than the way filmmakers use violence in black film - the way black audiences respond to it. John Singleton describes this best in the DVD commentary for Baby Boy. During an extended film in the scene, the main character, Jodi and his best friend, Sweet Pea, encounter a group of young boys who had earlier assaulted Jodi and stolen his bike. At gunpoint, Jodi and Sweet Pea line the boys up and punch them, one by one. Unlike his friends who cower before the punch, the last boy stares the "men" in the face boldly. So instead of punching him, Sweet Pea takes off his belt and beats the boy mercilessly.

In the commentary, Singleton said that he meant this scene to be a dramatic depiction of how violence and its valuation are transmitted from one generation to another in urban communities. He meant it to be horrifying. But he found that when the film is watched by predominantly black audiences, they - we - laugh.

It's not funny, people.

Now granted, black filmmakers hold neither the patent or the monopoly on televised violence. White filmmakers have issues of their own, especially the routine depiction of sexualized violence against women. But that's another post for another day. At issue here is the statement that is being made about African Americans' valuation of relational violence by its depiction ad nauseam in black movies and by audiences' response to it. What meaning does this have for our relationships? What meaning might it have had for Rihanna and Chris? Perhaps none. But we need to raise the question.

Stay Tuned

2009-05-17T07:19:00.002-04:00

I've been AWOL from this blog for much of the past year. Actually, AWOL isn't the best term...let's say I've been on maternity leave. But I think it's time to write again. So new blogs should begin appearing within the next week. In the meantime, blessings on your journey!

Reflections on an American Election

2008-11-05T10:35:00.000-05:00

Silence.

A thought emerges…but it too is silenced.

I'm not sure how to respond to this - this new America. The possibility-turned-reality of a person of color - a black man - being elected to the presidency of the United States is not one for which I've been prepared. I can still envision that little girl with the afro-puff wearing the pink shirt that said, "Future President." The little girl who, when asked what she'd be when she grew up, responded without hesitation: "A teacher, a scientist, a doctor, and president." But then she learned that while teacher, scientist, and doctor might be within her grasp if she studied hard and went to college, president was never, ever, a dream to be reached. Not by little girls and especially not by little brown-skinned girls or boys.

And now, some thirty-odd years later, that little brown girl has exceeded her dreams. And still she wonders "what might have been" had the specter of race not cast a net over her dreams. A political career? Unlikely. Not really her cup of tea. But what other possibilities might have existed in a boundless imagination? More importantly, with the ceiling so visibly shattered, how does she raise that little brown boy, whose laughter rings throughout the house as she writes, so that he hears within his head, "Yes, I can," and not "No, they won't let me"?

Silence.

Yesterday, a brown-skinned man was elected president. Today my sister-in-law and her family woke up to find that their home, as well as those of other African Americans in their community, had been paint-balled.

Yesterday a multicultural coalition voted in record numbers to honor the ancestors on whose shoulders we stand. Today an African American family in Birmingham tries to clean up the $7,000 in property damage and untold amount in environmental damage done by those who rock-salted their lawn.

The hope abounds. And so do the hate crimes. And downstairs is a little brown boy who must be prepared for both of those realities.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

Silence.

Make Room for Daddy

2008-08-23T09:58:00.007-04:00

I have been thinking a lot about fathers over the past few months. To be more specific, I've been thinking about the denigration of the role of fathers in the African American community. Denigration is a tough word, to be sure. And it's not one that I use lightly. But increasingly, I'm coming to the conclusion that denigrating the importance of fathers is exactly what we're doing.

It's no secret that the majority of African Americanchildren are being raised in single-parent households - about 65 percent according to the latest estimate. Of course, "single-parent" is not a synonym for "absent father." Although the media and the so-called "Moral Majority"might like us to believe that the children living in single-parent households have all been abandoned by their fathers, many of these children live with their fathers and a good many more have fathers who are actively and critically involved in their lives.

But if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that there are far too many African American children who are being raised without the presence of a father. While there are often grandfathers, uncles, or other male mentors in relationship with those children, I suspect that only a minority of those men really fulfill the role of father figure.

What's more, there are some neighborhoods where fathers are entirely absent. It's a running joke on Chris Rock's semi-autobiographical sitcom, “Everybody Hates Chris,” that his is the only father in the community. There are lots of men in the neighborhood, but only one fulfilling the role of father. It cuts too close as an imitation of life. It reminds me of several years ago when I was working with a dataset from a national survey of thousands of high school students across the U.S. In the beginning, to familiarize myself with the data, I reviewed the manual that described each of the variables in the survey and the range of values possible for each variable. It was some pretty heady material but I was making my way through it okay. At least until I got to the section on community data. There was one variable where the range of values seemed statistically impossible. I couldn't make sense of it. Finally, I realized what the manual was telling me - there are communities in the U.S. (in this case defined at the census tract level) where there are no fathers present. Not one. Not even Chris' dad.

We might imagine that the neighborhoods in question were poor. And they probably were. Economic and racial oppression has a lot to do with the absence of fathers. But I am not content to lay sole responsibility for this phenomenon at the feet of The Man. After all, as far as I can tell, The Man doesn't plan on changing the system anytime soon.

Perhaps it’s the focus on economics that has many college-educated, financially successful sisters deciding to bear children without the benefit of a committed father. I'm not going to speculate on why these women aren't married or even argue that they should be married (that's a topic for another day). Rather, I want to question the notion that seems to be underlying this trend - namely that prosperity (and maybe a strong sisterfriend network) is a substitute for a father. The idea seems to be that if a woman makes enough money or has enough support from family and friends, then she can raise a child successfully without the father's involvement. And there are many examples that prove this to be true. In fact, there are many women who have raised children successfully without the benefit of money, a strong support network, or a father.

But is this the exception rather than the rule? Let's face it - maybe Bill Cosby could have worded it better (and nuanced it a great deal more) but he wasn't all wrong - come on people! Yes, racism, classism, and sexism matter - a lot. However, I believe that it is precisely because these interlocking forces of oppression bear down upon black children and create an uphill battle for African American parents that we must do whatever we can to protect our children. And part of that protection has to involve fathers.

In my class on African American families, we read Mary Pattillo-McCoy's “Black Picket Fences,” an analysis of the strengths and struggles of middle-class African American families. At the heart of Pattillo-McCoy's argument is that the prosperity and privilege of middle-class African Americans does not insulate their parenting. Even in this tight-knit community, gangs, crime, and teenage pregnancy were highly prevalent. As we read the text, my students and I noticed a consistent factor in the lives of the teenagers and young adults who had succeeded - fathers. Each of them - whether their parents were married or not - had fathers who were actively involved in their lives. In fact, children who lived with their mothers but had daily contact with their fathers fared far better than did those who lived in households with fathers who were tangential.

Fathers matter. And they matter for more reasons than their financial contribution or even the benefit of having another body involved in childrearing. After a long time of ignoring fathers (and blaming mothers for everything that went wrong with children), child development experts have begun to realize this. There is a growing body of research that shows that fathers - good fathers - offer something that is unique from what mothers offer. And I believe that most children need the benefit of both to fully thrive.

In other words, African American women have got to stop using that mantra "I'm mama and daddy." We're not. And if you need any further evidence of that, just look to the number of young women who are chasing down father figures in the form of unhealthy sexual relationships and the number of young men who are chasing them down by emulating a model of manhood that they've seen on the corner or on BET. We have to reclaim the role of fathers in our communities. Otherwise, we may be throwing our children's lives down the drain.

Barkley Hendricks and the White Imagination

2008-02-15T11:44:00.006-05:00

Last night, in celebration of Valentine’s Day, my husband and I went to see an exhibit by Barkley L. Hendricks. Known for his life-size paintings of ordinary African Americans, Hendricks’ work is shockingly realistic. I spent about 45 minutes walking through the exhibit. Most museum exhibits that I have seen have focused on the novel and the unfamiliar. But
surrounded by more than fifty of Hendricks’ huge paintings, I felt at home. These were faces that I knew. The detail to clothing, posture, and emotional expression was so remarkable that I expected each painting to come to life and begin talking to me as I gazed at it.

Later, there was a dialogue about African American men and body image that was inspired by Hendricks’ work. Did I mention that there were more than fifty paintings depicting a diverse array of black women and men from across the diaspora? Well, the sponsors of the dialogue chose to focus on one painting – Hendricks’ Brilliantly Endowed, a self-portrait of the artist
wearing nothing but a fedora, wristband, tube socks and sneakers.

Because I’d stepped outside of the exhibit hall for a drink of water and had gotten waylaid by a conversation with a friend, I missed the first part of the discussion. When I returned, I found a group of mostly white (and some Asian) faces sitting and standing in front of Hendricks’ exposed
penis. On an easel at the front of the group there was a flipchart with these words:

BLACK MALES TODAY

BLACK MALES IN HIS ART

flashy

basketball

crime

unemployed

hip hop

hypermasculine

power

drugs

style

homophobia

rap

danger

soul

un(der)educated

ghetto

really nice guys

confident

cool

defiant

in control

thoughtful

in your face

meditative

well-dressed

muscular

serene

comfortable

relaxed

challenging

attitude

angry

deep

successful

suave

sexy

As I stood looking at the chart, a few African American couples joined the crowd, including my friend and her companion. Each pair began murmuring among themselves. Finally, a young man leaned over and whispered, “Were you here when they put together that list?” None of us were.

And we were all wondering what question had led to that left side. Perhaps they had specifically asked for negative stereotypes about black men. That was my hope anyway, even though I suspected otherwise.

At one point my friends’ companion spoke to the group at large: “It’s disturbing to walk in here and to feel so good about being surrounded by paintings of people who look like men, and then to come over here and see how the artist’s work is being received. I suspect that it tells us less about the artist than it does about the audience.” A middle-aged white woman spoke up cheerily, trying to reassure: “I don’t think you were here when we did the exercise. The left side wasn’t actually in response to his work.” As if that made it better.

At the end of the dialogue, I asked one of the facilitators, a young Asian woman, about the question that had prompted the list. She responded brightly, “Oh, we didn’t have anything on the paper other than the two headings, Black Males Today and Black Males in His Art. We just
asked people to say what came to mind when they thought of black males today. It could have been from media, from perception, from anything. Then for the other side, we told them to say what comes to mind when they thought of black males in his art.”

Ironic. At a time when a black man has made history by becoming the first person of color to have a viable chance of becoming the presidential nominee for one of our major parties, it is the stereotyped representations of African American men that whites spontaneously report (and
yes, I’m ignoring the “really nice guys” given that it’s a pathetically absurd attempt to make up for what came before it). That this was supposedly the educated, progressive crowd made it even worse.

But perhaps the real tragedy is that there are some African Americans, including those in high-profile positions, who seek to capitalize off of and perpetuate this image. BET (aka Booties Every Time) comes to mind. Which image do you think a white cop is more likely to have in mind when he encounters a black man with a wallet in his hand? How about a white human resources manager when she receives an application from a black man? Based on the list above, it is certainly not Barack Obama’s “bright, clean, and articulate” self. Clearly, this is not just entertainment.

Directly across from Brilliantly Endowed was another image, Sweet Thang (Lynn Jenkins), a painting of one of Hendricks’ black female students from Connecticut College. Slumped on a sofa, hand up to her head, the sister has a look of resigned frustration that is reminiscent of Fanny
Lou Hamer’s, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” I’d been drawn to the painting my first time through the gallery. After the group discussion, it became my clear favorite. Looks like that sister had just been around a group of white folks having a discussion just like this one.

An Open Letter to Tyler Perry

2007-11-08T15:10:00.000-05:00

Dear Mr. Perry,

Do you like women? Not "like" as in gay or straight, but "like" as in respect. I have seen a few of your films now - Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Madea's Family Reunion, and Why Did I Get Married? And increasingly, I find myself questioning whether you truly love, respect, and appreciate women in their own right.

Don't get me wrong. I have found your films entertaining and thought-provoking, even if a little over the top. I have laughed, groaned, and mourned along with your characters. And I have truly appreciated your attempt to portray black women in roles that expand beyond the skimpily dressed, booty shaking figures that we see on MTV and BET. In your latest film, Why Did I Get Married?, you made a point of depicting professional, highly educated black women. And as woman with a few graduate degrees, I saw part of myself in your characters' struggles to balance work, family, and self.

But at the end of every film, I was discomfited despite having had a good laugh. And when people asked me whether I liked the movie, I struggled to express the conflicting feelings within: I was entertained and glad I saw it but I'm not sure that I liked it and perhaps I could have waited for the DVD.

Leaving the theatre after viewing Why Did I Get Married?, my husband and I did our standard check in. "What'd you think?" he said. "It was entertaining but…" I paused before continuing, "I'm starting to wonder if Tyler Perry likes women."

You see, Mr. Perry, I have noticed a disturbing pattern in how you resolve your films: the solution to the woman's problems is always located in a man. You seem to think women incapable of standing on their own, being happy, whole, and successful outside of a relationship with a man.

Let me assure you that I am not one of those "I don't need a man" sisters. I have been married for 10 years now and my husband's unconditional love and support has helped me to become who I am. However, I have also learned that my ability to truly love my husband is only made possible because loving him is a choice which I freely make - over and over again. I am not with him because I am afraid of being alone. I am not with him because I think that life would be meaningless without him. I am not with him because I feel otherwise incomplete. I am certain that I could live - and thrive - without my husband. But I choose to share life without him because he makes it richer. I've come to think of my marriage as the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae: the sundae is good by itself, but the cherry makes it different and better (and Mr. Perry - I really like cherries).

But your idea of "happily ever after" always involves a woman finding happiness in a new relationship or becoming a "better wife." Your female characters transfer their emotional dependency from one man to another. (Really, couldn't Helen have at least gotten an apartment of her own before investing her happiness in Orlando? Couldn't Sheila have done the same before marrying Sheriff Troy, less than a year after her divorce from Mike?) Professional women sacrifice their career aspirations in order to accommodate their husband's desire for more children. (Dianne's concern about pregnancy jeopardizing her career was a valid one held by many women. Rather than trivializing it as "selfish," perhaps she and Terry could have had a discussion about how to accommodate her professional aspirations as they raised their family, instead of her "I'll do whatever it takes to keep you" speech. I'm not saying that marriage should not involve compromise. I'm just asking for a little reciprocity). And sisters who seem to have it together, including supportive husbands, turn out to be emotionally repressed. (Why couldn't you at least let Patricia be emotionally balanced, given the fact that you portrayed three seemingly healthy men? Do you really think we're all screwed up?).

I'm worried because I've seen a lot of women like this - in my personal life and in my career as a psychologist. I've seen women who sacrificed their educational and occupational dreams because their husband's job required frequent moves or forced them to take on a disproportionate share of family and household responsibilities (in addition to their jobs). I've seen women who have denied themselves to take care of the needs of everyone around them. These women have ended up in my office - depressed, anxious, overweight, and just plain stressed out. And all the while feeling like they had no right to complain because "at least I have a good man."

I really appreciate your emphasis on forgiveness in your movies. But I wish you'd also emphasize the importance of reciprocity as well as individual health and fulfillment. I know that you're trying to do something good, so I want to push you to do more. Because ultimately, I believe that you do like women, that you love women. You just don't know how. So right now all you're doing is replacing one stereotype - the sex-craved jezebel - with two others that are slightly better - the needy, victimized woman or the superstrong sister. You're pulling the rug from beneath us even as you give us legs. And unfortunately, because many of us are so battle weary from the assault on our images, we don't realize that we should expect better. But we deserve better. And I have faith that you can - and want to - do better.

A Chance Encounter

2007-11-07T12:50:00.000-05:00

I just had an interesting encounter. Sitting in the campus coffee shop at Duke University, where I teach part-time, a woman approached me.

"Are you a graduate student?" she asked.
"Actually, I'm a professor," I replied.
"Oh! What department?"
"Women's studies."
"What class do you teach?"
"Black Love."
"Wow! That must be explosive."
"It's quite enjoyable. I've just come from there." Indeed, I was still unpacking my computer.
"Well, I'm from the Caribbean and you want to know what I think of black men in America?" I nodded and she proceeded to gesture from the tabletop to the floor.
"I'm not sure what that means," I said.

She clarified by giving a thumbs-down sign. I wasn't quite sure how to respond.

"Really?" I finally said, hoping the lift in my voice would encourage her to say more.
"Black men in America are no good. Every now and then you find a good one here or there. But most of them are no good."

I wondered whether I should tell her about my husband, my brothers, my brothers-in-law, my cousins, my uncles, etc. - all the good black men in my life. I was tempted to invite the young brother at the next table to join our conversation. I wished that some of my students were around.

She continued. "Then again, I'm not a feminist. Are you a feminist?"
"Yes, I am."

She gave me that look, the one that sisters use - no matter if they're from U.S., the Caribbean, or Africa - when we're sizing you up. She announced that she was going outside to smoke. But as she turned to walk away, something caught her eye - the gleam from the ring finger on my left hand.

"You're married?!" she asked incredulously.
"Yes I am," I said.
"And you're a feminist?!"
"Absolutely. They are not mutually exclusive." I found it ironic that the woman with such a dismal view of black men was surprised to discover that a feminist liked men.

She went outside for a few minutes. Coming back in, she grabbed a chair and pulled it up to the table.

"Are you religious?" she asked.
"Yes, I'm a Christian. In fact, I'm a minister and I teach at Shaw Divinity School."

Her mouth fell open. We talked for nearly an hour before exchanging telephone numbers and promising to keep in touch.

Ironically, my class today was about the way in which our imaginations are shaped by popular culture such that we hold judgments about each other based upon what we think we know. Many of us walk around with scripts in our head that tell us what to expect from other people based upon a label. Black man = no good. Feminist = hates men. Christian = not feminist. These are a few that my conversation partner seemed to hold at the beginning of our encounter.

With rare exceptions, most of us have some sort of script in our head. And for those in the United States, these scripts are heavily tainted by the legacies of racism and sexism. And these scripts, in turn, poison our romantic relationships. They are the walls that box us in. They limit our imaginations in terms of who we see as romantic partners, how we function in relationships, and how we expect our partners to function. And quite often, they prevent us from seeing the truth about ourselves.

People are usually more complicated than labels. At the risk of sounding cliché, it's time to think outside the box.

The Burden of the Strong Black Woman

2007-09-14T13:57:00.001-04:00

A single disorder is causing a health care crisis among African American women. It is not one that you will hear about on the news. It is not recognized by the medical establishment and few health care professionals would diagnose it. Yet millions of African American women are affected by it in some way and have been for centuries. The symptoms of this disorder can include stress, fatigue, headaches, poor dietary and exercise habits, obesity, hypertension, chronic pain, emotional numbing, and pent-up anger. The name of this disorder? Strong Black Woman syndrome.

You are probably wondering how being a Strong Black Woman can be bad. After all, the Strong Black Woman is resilient, assertive, strong-willed, independent, dependable, and persistent. She is capable of overcoming adversity with poise, confidence, and style. No matter the odds stacked against her, she presses on without a complaint. She is the sister who will come through when friends and family are in a pinch – serving as counselor and caretaker for all those around her. Her strength and determination have enabled her survival and inspired others to endure under conditions of extreme oppression and abuse. Her crucial role in the survival of Black people in the United States is undeniable.

But such strength comes at a cost. In an effort to protect herself from the overwhelming and paralyzing pain in her daily life, the historical Strong Black Woman learned to repress sadness, grief, and anger. The experience of repeated disappointment and shattered dreams taught her to dampen hope and happiness. Rather than living and enjoying life fully, she operated in survival mode, coasting through in a numbed emotional state, with just enough hope for the possibility of a better life.

While circumstances have changed, the Strong Black Woman has not. Unable to show any signs of weakness, she cannot ask for help when she needs it and buries any sign of emotional distress in an effort to look as though she has it together. Her fear of vulnerability causes her to be closed off to others, incapable of expressing her full humanity or experiencing emotionally intimate relationships. She sacrifices her own happiness for that of others and lives a life full of unfulfilled hopes and resentment. The perpetual caretaker, she spends most of her days caring for the needs of others, promising to reserve the leftovers for herself. But usually there are no leftovers. So she ends up taking care of the needs of others at the expense of her own spiritual, physical, and emotional health. She becomes tired, unhappy, not living up to her full potential, and stressed out. She experiences feelings of guilt anytime that she does something for herself and instead fills her days with constant activity. She loses her sense of connection with the Creator and suffers from stress and lifestyle-related health problems, including obesity, hypertension, diabetes, chronic pain, migraine headaches, and ulcers.

Each of us has a Strong Black Woman in our lives – our mother, sister, grandmother, aunt, or ourselves. It is time to release her. Free her from the bondage of being a caretaker and allow her to devote time to some much needed self-care. Help her to do the one thing that she is not strong enough to do – take care of herself.

Self-Love

2007-08-24T13:50:00.000-04:00

Do you know what the basic building block for a healthy relationship is? Communication? Ability to compromise? Having enough money? It is neither of those. The key to having a healthy relationship –whether it is a romantic relationship, parenthood, friendship, or family relationships – is being healthy yourself. It is being emotionally balanced, mentally sound, and spiritually whole. A healthy relationship begins with a healthy you.

Here is an example. I know a woman who constantly complains of being lonely. She can not understand why she can not find a man. When she meets men, they are typically more interested in her friends than they are in her. If she manages to go out on a date, there is usually no second date. And the men who do stick around take advantage of her. This woman often wonders what she is doing wrong, why she cannot seem to find the happiness that other women enjoy. After all, she says, she knows how to cook and clean, dresses well, keeps her hair groomed and nails manicured, and is not interested in men for their money.

Like many men and women, she mistakenly believes that the key to a happy romantic relationship is what one does. So she focuses upon improving her household maintenance skills and keeping up her outward appearance, not realizing that it is her very desperation for a relationship that repels good men and instead attracts men who will mistreat her. Caught up in unresolved pain from her childhood and young adulthood, she is unhappy at her very core. And she wears her misery like a finely tailored suit. She starts every conversation with a complaint and frequently makes self-denigrating comments. She is jealous of other women whom she perceives as having greater success and happiness. Her conversations tend to be one-sided as she has little interest in genuinely listening to the stories of others and primarily uses others for her own emotional catharsis. Her anguish exudes itself in every interaction and in her deportment. Unwilling to accept responsibility for her situation, she blames God and men for her unhappiness.

Now granted, not every single woman is in the same predicament. There are plenty of intelligent, personable, successful, attractive, "got my stuff together" brothers and sisters out there who just haven't found a good match yet. And there are many others who prefer the single life. Yet, unfortunately, there are far too many women and men like my friend - people who remain depressed by their continued inability to be in a healthy relationship and who do not realize that they do not display the qualities that attract healthy mates.

Moreover, this situation is also not limited to romantic relationships. Many people experience problems in their relationships with the children for the same reason. Plagued by loneliness, they rely upon their children, and in some cases even have children, to fill the void in their lives. Desperate to be liked, they behave more like friends than parents and attempt to buy their children’s loyalty through excessive materialism. They become overinvolved in their children’s activities yet underactive in providing structure and discipline. Youth raised in such homes almost inevitably begin to display behavior problems, causing these parents to feel betrayed by having children who do not respect them and who take advantage of their overindulgence.

Alternatively, there are those parents whose internal pain and depression manifests itself through excessive criticism, lack of affection, and harsh punishment for their children. These parents use their children as verbal punching bags to express the hurt of old resentments. Often, these individuals grew up in unloving and abusive households, often marrying and having children early as a source of escape, consequently ending up in another unsatisfying relationship. Their children subsequently become the psychological stand-ins for abusive parents or romantic partners or unfulfilled dreams.

The connection between all of these cases is the absence of a good understanding of love. Many people view relationships and love as a mechanism for filling a void. However, truly loving relationships are only possible when we love ourselves, when we commit ourselves to nurturing our development as beings created in the image of the Divine. It is no coincidence that when asked to name the greatest commandment, Jesus Christ answered "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" (Matthew 22:37-29, NIV). Jesus assumed that we would love ourselves!

Genuine health in relationships, then, comes when we are so happy in and of ourselves that, while we would like to experience the sharing of life that is unique to relationships, we also relish our experience of life without them. It comes when we view relationships as an enhancement to happiness, not a requirement. When we love ourselves, we model for others how they should treat us in relationships. We establish a standard of care and attract those who will uphold this standard.

Advice for a Newly Engaged Family Member

2007-08-13T13:16:00.000-04:00

After our wedding ten years ago, my husband and I received all sorts of unsolicited advice from people about how to remain married. Quite ironically, some of that advice came from those who had divorced. I never understood whether their admonitions reflected what they had done or had not done in their own marriages. Regardless, given that a much loved family member has recently gotten engaged, I feel compelled to offer some unasked-for advice as well, especially since I'm supposed to be something of an "expert" in this area.

1. Make your wedding an event that reflects and celebrates the values that you and your beloved hold most dear. Perhaps what has gone wrong in many American marriages is that most weddings are showpieces of capitalist and consumerist culture. Many engaged couples spend more time thinking about decorations than about their vows and choose their guests based on who will give the best gifts rather than who will most support their life together as a couple. Unless you're really bound to the idea of increasing the profits of the bridal industry, I'd suggest keeping the wedding party small and foregoing the guest book and cake cutter (you'll never use them again), expensive invitations (they just get thrown away), and the decorations (really - who needs three candelabras and $1000 worth of flowers?).

2. Be intentional about nurturing your marriage. No one would hold onto a job for long if all they did was to show up. Every now and again, a furniture store near my house holds a big sale and has someone stand on the shoulder of a busy highway, holding a sign advertising the sale. Most of the time, it seems clear that the person holding the sign is not a permanent employee of the store but is rather someone that the owner or manager found on the street and invited to come make a few bucks for the day. Granted, it's not the hardest work - it mainly involves holding a large poster and occasionally walking back and forth. But still, it requires some intentional effort. The person can't just stand there and hope that the sign will hold itself. Marriage is no less. Simply having a wedding ceremony and living in the same house does not make or maintain a marriage. The wedding ceremony is not a magic trick that binds you irrevocably together for life. You've got to nurture a marriage as if it is a living, breathing organism. Like any living thing, if you don't feed it - or you feed it the wrong type of food - it will die. And by the way, watch out for pests - jealous friends, intrusive family members, jobs that sap your joy and energy, disagreements over money.

3. Learn the art of forgiveness. When I first got married, I couldn't understand when long-married couples warned me that there are times in marriage when you won't like your spouse. But it's true. Over time, what you now consider quirky idiosyncracies - or perhaps slightly annoying habits - will become the bane of your existence. Even worse, through the eyes of your beloved you will discover things about yourself that you never wanted to know. As a friend once told me, being married is like having a mirror held up that reflects your negative attributes. So you'll need to learn to forgive not only your beloved, but also yourself. By the way, the mirror's not all bad. When held rightly, it also helps you to recognize strengths about which you were unaware and it affirms the best parts of you.

4. Value the wisdom of others but discover the path that is best for you and your beloved. Several years ago, a colleague came to me and asked for some advice on marriage. Like my husband and I, he and his fiancée were young, black, educated, and had highly demanding careers. And neither of them was interested in being the type of couple where one is subordinate to the other. Yet so far, everyone had given them - actually, her - the same advice: "Remember, he's the head of the household so your job is to support him." Perhaps in desperation, he had turned to me, a person with only five years of marriage experience. There wasn't much I could tell him other than this: "Ultimately, you and your fiancée together will have to decide what kind of marriage you want. If it's a marriage that looks different from those of your elders, then they may not be able to tell you how to achieve it. So you'll have to figure out which of their advice suits the two of you. And you just might have to improvise."

5. Most of all, consider your marriage a journey. Even as someone who studies, counsels, and teaches about marriage, I find that my so-called "expertise" goes out the door when I get home. I'm not sure that anyone ever gets this thing really figured out. Even we professional experts are always personal novices. Life is always changing and new challenges are always just around the corner. What seems stable one minute can be topsy-turvy the next. At times you may have no clue where you are or how you got there. But as long as you consider such things to be ordinary bumps in the journey, you'll have a much greater chance of adapting and making it to the next bit of straight road.

Many blessings on your engagement.

In The Beginning

2007-07-19T11:27:00.000-04:00

This didn't start out as a project on love, at least not a project about finding love/being in love/making love with someone other than yourself. It was about black women. About healing the hurts that have been done and get redone to black women during our existence in this country. By racistsexistclassistheterosexist society. By the church, which is supposed to be a place for healing but has far too often also been racistsexistclassistheterosexist. By people who looked like us and who were supposed to love us, who said that they did in fact love us but were so scar(r)ed themselves that they didn't know how.

But the further I went into the mission of healing the sisters, the more I was drawn into the pain of the brothers. Because she can't love herself for the same reason that he can't love himself and he can't love her and she can only offer him a broken...wounded...battered love. Because the greatest commandment is love: love God love your neighbor love yourself. And if she/he can't love her/him, how can she/he love him/her and how can they love God?

And so this is a project about love. And about faith. And about the folk. About faithfully and joyously loving the folk in a world bent on making it impossible.