I was out at breakfast with a white friend last week. She was telling a story with a Black husband and a white wife in it. Then she said, “Black women don’t care for white women dating their men. I know that’s a sore spot.”
I chided her, gently. “That’s not exactly the story,” I said. “It’s more sadness than anything. Let me break it down so it makes sense.”
Black women hold the history of how we’ve been mistreated and failed as a people. We have a unique ability to take multiple events and see how they connect, and how American history works to obscure the truth of the matter. That one innocent comment turned into an hour-long conversation about the intent of the US government’s will upon its Black citizens.
To explain why Black women, and Black people, are still angry at the world, and why Black women carry an innate sadness at many Black men’s obvious preference for non-Black women, we have to start with enslavement.
Black men and women were in the same boat. We experienced the same horrors. The rapes. The subjugation. The forced work. The beatings, again and again, and every level of cruelty. Even through our own pain, Black women saw the toll it took on our once strong and proud men. Our empathy, and the compartmentalizing of our own anguish, put us in position to be the healers and the soft place for our men to land. We had an additional job. We upheld the enslaved community on the plantation. We taught and minded the children. We gave our men a soft place after a sometimes, unconscionable day. We persisted because that’s how Spirit led us.
The Civil War wasn’t fought because of slavery. It was about money, power, and greed. Nothing else. I have books you can read if you’re interested in that factual history.
Enslavement ended after the war, and no, chattel slavery didn’t end. Here’s the caveat. The 13th Amendment abolished chattel slavery in the US, except as punishment for a crime. If you were in jail or prison, you became a slave again. Yes, that amendment is still in place today. Hold onto that. It keeps showing up.
Once that version of enslavement ended, multiple government enactments made sure Black people would never be free. White men who had made their livings as slave catchers and bounty hunters needed jobs. Someone had the grand idea to create a police force, a group of men who could keep the newly liberated Black folks in line. The job has changed a bit over the years. Let’s remember how it started.
Chain gangs followed. Put the two together: a police force that needed arrests and a loophole that turned arrests into labor. Black men were arrested and convicted on false charges so they could work the same fields they had just left. In places, the law said a Black man must be employed. If he wasn’t, he was imprisoned for loitering and put on a chain gang to build a new railroad. It was so prevalent that local towns made money off Black quotas, capturing any Black man passing through or any resident they wanted gone.
A small percentage of us were “sent back to Africa,” or to Nova Scotia and other places. The rest of us were stuck in a system that barred education and upward mobility, increasingly by law as time went on. Reconstruction was a thought, not a plan. Too many Black people were smarter than the laws and norms the US government had put in place, so it made more laws. We couldn’t hold office. We couldn’t vote. And on it went.
Some Black people moved out West to build community away from the South and its remembered horrors and people. They succeeded without the watchful eyes of white jealousy. Once white folks got hip, they burned those communities down, with government support at the most and minimization of the actual events at the least. Some moved North and to the Midwest to do the same. Black women were the unsung heroes of the Black family, enabling our men to push forward in this new reality. There’s a saying, “In a good marriage, the man is the head. But remember, the woman is the neck.” It’s a well-turned commentary on the circumstances of Black women.
So Black people made gains. The US government took notice, and some felt it shouldn’t continue. Enter Jim Crow, lynchings, and continued restrictions on voting. Many people give the Southeast credit for these horrible inventions. All parts of the US made their own versions of segregation and bad behavior. The Southeast was just gangsta with theirs. The US government knew about it all and took part, actively or inactively, by letting states and local authorities have their way. Black men were disrespected for breathing and held in contempt for trying to live the same life as everyone else. Since we weren’t seen as equal, these restrictions held for a very long time. And the chain gang foundation evolved into the modern prison system.
Fast forward to the 70s. Black people had educations similar to whites, and a whole bunch of us had decent jobs, homes, and cars. That did not sit well with the US government, which wanted the Black population smaller and Black people humbler. Enter one of the biggest drug deals in modern history.
Now, the US government isn’t a street corner drug dealer, no. It just allowed drug kingpins and well-funded hate groups to infiltrate Black communities with drugs. Call it Contras or Black Alliance or whatever. Lots of drugs entered Black communities all over the US and almost decimated them. Black men and women in happy homes were now wandering the street looking for drugs like zombies. Forget those kids and their lifestyle. Drugs took center stage. And Nancy Reagan and all the US government folks were right there to criminalize dealing and using. Not specifically because they hated Black people, but because the pipeline to make trillions off the commercialization of prisoners was too great.
Remember the caveat in the 13th Amendment? Here’s its next chapter. Yes, the chain gang rears its ugly head again. There’s lots of PR to get rid of that classification, but many businesses benefit from prison labor even today. Black Americans are 32 percent of the prison population and 12 percent of the country. A 2016 study found Black men held the largest share of the farm and maintenance jobs, the ones that pay the least or nothing. Non-white people get significantly longer sentences, and a longer stay means longer enslavement. Hatred isn’t the only reason Black people get higher sentences in court.
The PR machine has been effective. Black people commit more crimes, so they go to prison. In fact, the system has been skewed since inception to keep a large Black population in prison to support industry.
The school-to-prison pipeline? Yes, that’s part of it too. Black boys especially get higher rates of suspension, get labeled troublemakers, and yes, get arrested. This has moved forward in the last 20 years. I read somewhere that for the pipeline to work, Black boys have to be groomed through the school system. They need heavy discipline for minor offenses that would eventually become major ones, once the child was indoctrinated to believe he is bad.
In Black communities, single mothers (commonplace after Jim Crow) were too busy, tired, or apathetic to be present and vocal at their children’s schools. So, they didn’t fight the suspensions, and sometimes joined in building the narrative that their child misbehaved. Because why would a school target her son from 1st grade as a criminal and teach him he was unworthy? Most people didn’t and don’t believe that’s an actual practice, even today.
One sociologist I read said that by middle school, the handcuffs, the police cars, and the juvenile jail practices harden the emotions so the boys can eventually sustain an incarceration mentality for longer periods. This isn’t happenstance. The targeting of Black boys is not an outlier.
So, back to Black women. Every step I just described took a man out of the home or sent him back devastatingly changed. With our men imprisoned, or out of prison acting a fool, some of them with messed up mentals because of what has happened to them, what are we left with to repair the Black family? Scraps.
Some Black men emerged fairly unscathed, and they see that women of all ethnicities look at them as a “strong Black buck” and want them. I firmly believe that’s propaganda too, aimed at pulling sane Black men away from Black communities. Massa’s wife always wanted the “big Black buck,” and in modern times it’s become acceptable. I’ve met a lot of white women with mixed children who are racist. They love having a Black man and their beautiful caramel-colored children, but generally dislike Black people. Their man and kids are trophies. That’s a whole sociology research project on its own. Chile, bye.
Enter, again, the Black woman. We’ve held down our men and our communities. We’ve focused in school and become the most educated ethnic bloc in the world. We’ve sacrificed and had children and raised them on our own. They beat us, ridicule us, and publicly choose other ethnicities over us. But less than 10% of us date non-Black men. We’re holding on to a construct that doesn’t love us back. Most of my single friends don’t have a Black man, and not for lack of trying. In upwardly mobile circles, they really aren’t checking for us. The ones who do are felons, narcissists, or woman haters. Experientially, that’s not just how it seems. That’s how it is.
Yes, the Black home suffers with a single mom rearing it. But why? We hold the Black man to a standard he can easily dismiss and go somewhere else. Being with us is too hard. Look at the Black men on professional sports teams. You’ll rarely see a brown or dark-skinned wife or girlfriend. No, I’m not talking about all Black men. I’m talking about a whole lot of them who are unmarried and carry their Black card somewhere other than the Black community. Black women are left to pick up the pieces.
We’re not mad. We’re sad. We want a fulfilling relationship with a man who understands our community, who gets the cookout and knows how to use a grill. Who knows what to respond when we say, “God is good…” Spades and protest marches. Church politics and the NFL vs. Black QBs. We want partners with our experiences too. Most of us have submitted to being alone rather than being dragged through the mud by a Black guy who kinda sorta wants to be with us (and 3 other women). Ugh. How are we gonna be the neck, when there is no head?
If you’ve had this conversation, what did you talk about and how did it end? Tell me in the comments.
