Monday, December 14, 2009

"Men Are Supposed To Be The Leaders"

This is a statement commonly made by the so-called "black woman empowerment bloggers" and "black woman interracial bloggers". It's not really stated because they actually believe this or consciously desire this to be the case. They make this statement for the purpose of chastising black men and to take away black female responsibility for contributing to the problems of black America. To understand the inherent problem with their repeated use of this statement, one must understand that which is necessary for leadership along with the various types of leadership.

For anyone to lead, there must be those who submit to be led. With regard to submitting to male leadership and authority, there is typically more resistance from African American woman than probably any other group of women. This is added to the overall modern trend of women less and less accepting male leadership and authority and the common obstinate behavior of black American women. Now one must understand that there are three basic types of authority:

1. Legal Authority: This type of authority with regard to gender is practically non-existent in American society due to modern laws not granting authority to men. Thus, black men have no legal authority over black women.

2. Traditional Authority: The history of black men in this nation being deprived of so much authority has made male leadership in black America less the tradition than in other groups. Combined with the modern trend of women being less accepting of male authority and the added mulishness common to black women, you basically end up with black men having no traditional authority over black women.

3. Charismatic Authority: This is the only real authority left to black men, yet it is limited to the exceptional. It is not an authority bestowed upon those men of good character, sound judgement and solid work ethic, but rather bestowed upon the small minority of men who possess god gifted talent. Thus, you have a handful of black men whose leadership black women will routinely submit to while the overwhelming majority of black men have no leg to stand on with regard to asserting themselves as leaders. As stated before, a leader requires those willing to be led by him/her.

The problem with charismatic authority is that it is value-neutral and doesn't distinguish between moral and immoral charismatic authority. This is why so many black women are willing to submit to being led by skilled and talented pimps, players, drug dealers and criminals. Unlike traditional authority, charismatic authority tends less to relegate authority to men of sound character.

So basically, when women who often resist submitting to male leadership declare than men are supposed to lead, they are actually in essence reaching for a way to not be responsible for their own behavior. They lower themselves temporarily to the level of a child making men/black men responsible for every misstep made by women/black women. Most men would not mind this IF if was consistent and not a case of picking and choosing according to convenience when to be the damsel in distress and when to be the "independent woman". Either let us lead or handle your own business.

Below is a beautiful sista who understands this perfectly:




It is important to note that this dark skinned sista with African features and natural hair is HAPPILY MARRIED to a black man. It's not that brothas are so color-struck. It's that brothas want a positive attitude.

And here is another intelligent and beautiful sista:

Monday, November 9, 2009

Black Women Have The Highest Self-Esteem


It is amazing how wrong the warped perceptions of the IR and Black Woman Empowerment Bloggers are. This is the price they pay for citing their alleged perceptions as facts. One of their errors is the routine claim that due to the (imagined) beating that they take from the black community, black women have low self-esteem and are discontent with their lives. The problem is that research from experts shows the exact opposite. Here are some excerpts:

There Are Differences In Self-esteem Between African-American Caucasian Women Living in the United States.

Self-esteem is an internal belief system about one's self (Wilson 1). Our basic self-esteem develops during childhood to the age of about 12 (Wilson 1). Some variables that can influence one's self-esteem include individual skills, interests, and talents, economic status, community and culture (Wilson 2). African-American women will say positive things about themselves that Caucasian women are not comfortable with saying about themselves (Dent 1).

Rushton found that African-American women have equal or higher self-esteem levels then Caucasians or Latinos (Rushton 9). Gray-Little found that not only African-American adult women have higher self-esteem than Caucasian women but the same is true in children and adolescents (Gray-Little 17). Abba supports the idea that African-American's hold higher self-esteem standings throughout life (Abbas 2). Differences in self-esteem between African-American women and Caucasian's are less during childhood years and grow to adulthood (Twenge 1). Support for this may be that a woman's sense of identity forms throughout her lifespan (Lafromboise 2). Contradicting information states that Caucasians develop self-concepts as a race earlier because the Caucasians having great sociopolitical power which causes less issues to work though during racial identity development (Hill 5).

Caucasian and African-American women hold significantly different views of beauty and perceptions of themselves (Molloy 1). Molloy finds that African-American women have higher self-esteem levels based on body image than Caucasians (Molloy 1). African-American females are less worried about weight, dieting, or being thin (Molloy 1). Sixty-four percent of African-American women said that they'd rather be "a little overweight" than "a little underweight" (Molloy 1). The differences in views may help one understand why eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia is predominantly seen in white women ( Molloy 1). Ossolotch supports this by stating that people with low self-esteem have a greater-risk of developing an eating disorder (Ossolotch 1). Eating disorders are a growing problem with African-American women (Edwards 1). Edwards says this is because of insensitive remarks being made by family members and friends as well as employers making them feel as though they need to lose weight to compete with the Caucasian woman (Edwards 1).

Depression is also found to be more dominant in Caucasian women than African-American women (Abbas 2). Dent supports this by saying that low self-esteem causes greater risks for eating disorders, suicide, and depression (Dent 1). In 2000 the suicide rate for a population of 100,000 was 1.8 for African-American females and 4.3 for Caucasian women (Eshleman 191).

Both Caucasians and African-American women base part of their self-esteem about their bodies on what they think the men of their race prefer (Molloy 1). African-American women tend to believe that African-American men prefer larger women, so they feel less pressure to lose weight then Caucasian women who believe Caucasian men prefer thin women (Molloy 1). Research done on males preferences tended to support these views (Molloy 1). Molloy says that African-American women who predominantly surround themselves with others of their race as apposed to members of the opposite race have higher self-esteem because they are "protected" from Caucasians distorted body image (Molloy 2).

Molloy suggests that gender role also plays a role in women's self-esteem based on their bodies (Molloy 1). African-American women are more likely to see themselves are masculine or androgynous whereas white women see themselves are more feminine (Molloy 1). Women who feel more feminine are more likely to give in to stereotypical views on appearances (Molloy 2).

Socioeconomic status have a more positive affect on Caucasian women as opposed to African-American women (Gray-Little 5). Wilson suggested that African-American women of lower socioeconomic status' were more comfortable with having a heavier body type than higher socioeconomic African-American women (Wilson 2). Contradicting research says that African-American tend to have higher self-esteem levels throughout socioeconomic status ( Abbas 2). Since African-American women are subjected to longstanding socioeconomic inequalities yet still show higher levels of self-esteem suggests that socioeconomic factors do not affect their self-esteem (Abbas 3).

Boisnier did a study on feminism and womanism among Caucasian and African-American women and found that African-American women identify with womanism because it calls for high levels self-esteem (Boisnier 2). Foster and Petty suggest that black organizations and social interaction help raise self-pride and help them identify with their race (Eshleman 190).


So basically, black women not only have higher self-esteem, but have it across all economic levels and black women who live in the black community have higher self-esteem than those who live outside of the black community. Maybe this is why very few are fleeing the "dreaded" black community the way that the IR bloggers want them to. Maybe this is why few are running to the arms of the "white savior". Maybe it is because black women in general, being some of the main architects of the black community, actually are content within the very black community that they helped build.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Wes Moore. The Next Barack Obama?






Wes Moore

AGE: 30
JOB: Investment banker/former army captain
WHY YOU CARE: Because
the only thing better than one black president is two


Now, it’s
funny. Almost everyone we know seems to know someone they thought was going to
be the first black president. The green-eyed congressman from Memphis, TN. The
well-connected mayor of Newark, NJ. The super-smart, liked-by-all black guy you
went to college with. The founder/publisher of this site. So it’s with healthy
appreciation for his stiff competition that we give you. . .Captain Westley
Moore.

If “Wes,” as he’s known to friends, does not become the second
black president, it’ll only be because he chose not to. His story is no less
inspiring than his credentials are impeccable. In brief: gets kicked out of
school and shipped off to military academy at 12, turns the beat around in under
a decade, graduates Phi Beta Kappa from Hopkins, snags a Rhodes Scholarship to
Oxford, does a tour of duty in Afghanistan, investment banks before winning a
White House Fellowship.

Yeah. We said tour of duty.

Last month,
Moore joined a a panel of veterans in testifying before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee on the topic “Soldiers’ Stories From The Afghan War” (see
video below). We suspect accounts like his may have informed Gates’ decision to
remove General McKiernan yesterday — but that’s beside the point. As his Crains
40 Under 40 profile effuses: Moore served “10 months with the Army’s 82nd
Airborne Division in Afghanistan. There, he helped revise a program to win over
Taliban fighters, boosting its enrollment from 6 when he arrived to 500 by the
time he left, and earning a promotion to captain.”

Make that El Capitan.
An up-by-the-bootstraps background, a championship college football career, a
Rhodes Scholarship, a tour of duty, a People’s Hottest Bachelor nod, an Asia
Society fellowship, a White House fellowship — and, oh, did we mention the
Random House book deal? What else does a future president need? Oh, right. A
brilliant wife. Check. In summer 2007, Moore married the stunning Dawn Flythe, a
one-time senior adviser to Maryland’s lieutenant governor. From a distance, you
might mistake Mrs. Moore for a certain Mrs. Carter. From her resume, you might
mistake her for a certain Lady O.

The kicker?

The Moores
couldn’t be kinder. The day Wes won his Rhodes Scholarship, he discovered that
there was another Wes Moore living in Baltimore. This second Wes Moore, also a
black man in his 20s, was headed to prison on a life sentence as Wes Moore #1
headed to Oxford. (Second-black-president) Moore arranged to see his
doppelganger in prison, and has kept in touch with him ever since. Next spring,
Random House will publish Moore’s Elevate: American Journeys into Manhood, a
parallel account of the “two Wes Moores.”

If the first black president
heeds the counsel of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, and creates a Council for
men and boys, he’ll undoubtedly turn to Moore, no stranger to the White House
(and an Alpha himself). In the meantime, the Moores are laying plans to use
Elevate to catalyze a movement — answering BHO’s call to community service with
a nationwide campaign. Their idea is to do for youth and service what, say,
Diddy did with youth and voting in 2004.

Of course, those who doubt
Moore’s pure intentions (read: those who envy his stunning accomplishments) say
all this good-doing is merely stage-setting for a political campaign. But you
know how that goes. The Stimulist is not in the business of tearing down young
people trying to build their communities up. And Moore just effuses too much
positivity to inspire anything but good will.

So, to review. Army chops,
political chops, financial chops, a memoir, a wife as brilliant as she is
beautiful. We give you. . .Moore for 2024.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Divorce and Black Men's Mothers.


With all of the discussion on divorce, I found the following article quite interesting:

Why Marriages Between Black Men and White Women Fail
March 09, 2007 by
Christy Harrell

You, Me and Big Mama?

If you are a white woman seeking a black man, make sure his mama is out of the picture first! Our culture does not prepare us for what lies ahead. I have fourteen years of experience to back up what I am about to share with you.

A white woman has no chance of ever playing an equal role to that of a black man's mama. This is a fact! Mama has an insurance policy built into her boy. He is 100% insured by Mama's Boy Indemnity Co.

You see, the black woman, she is real smart! She wants her boy around for life. She has invested eighteen years or more pampering this boy, building up his ego, and brain washing him to be at her beck and call. She will not have another woman getting in the way of this relationship. After all, at some point in her life, she will be all alone. When this time comes she has insured that her son will come to her rescue.

But beware ladies! That black man is real smart too, to a degree. He'll make you feel like you're the only woman in his life. He'll buy you flowers, treat you with diamonds. He can be so romantic, and the world knows his business in bed is, well you know. He'll keep you tantalized just long enough to have you wedded to him; all while keeping mama at bay. You see at this point he thinks he can have the crab cake and eat it too!

But ladies, let me assure you, the only good black man is the black man whose mama is non-existent, and you better have a private investigator verify this fact. There is no turning back once you have married this man. If his mama is in his life, she will move in on yours!

Her first visit will be a short visit. You won't notice anything at this point. Something stated negatively you'll just brush off as a cultural difference. Duh! The following year she visits for two weeks, the year after that, three, and before you know it, she will be living with you two months out of the year, every year.

When you finally get fed up with her coming into your home and running it, you will ask your hubby to say something. And when he refuses, you'll resort to back-up. After a few hours of marriage counseling and the counselor in your corner, your hubby will finally agree to have this discussion with his mama.

It isn't until several years later, after wading through excuse after excuse, you face the fact that your hubby never intended to confront his mother at all. You have finally come to the realization that your husband is, afterall, Mama's boy! He ain't gonna ask his Mama to do anything in your favor. You are out of your mind if you think he'll put anyone before his Mama!

Eventually you will become fed up of playing second fiddle to your mother-in-law and in the end Mama will win. She will always be first in her son's life. Unfortunately, your hubby will lose. You will walk away, and hubby will scratch his head.

The saddest point to this comical story is that your poor hubby, excuse me, ex-hubby, won't ever understand what happened. He was brainwashed to put his mama on a pedestal early in life, so spoiled by his mama into believing that he is perfect, that naturally he will assume there is something wrong with you for leaving him.

On the bright side, you will be the wiser and much happier for it. After all, you won't be catering to mama anymore!


After reading this, I thought of Jonnetta Patton, Gloria James and Donda West. Historically, black men have very close relationships with their mothers and very often, such mothers can be hell on their son's girlfriends and wives. Jennetta Patton (Usher's mother) is a good example.

Often times, black women are compared to Italian women in that both are very vocal and aggressive and in Italy, the divorce rate is soaring. What is considered the main reason? Mothers-in-law.

Mothers-in-Law Cause of Italy’s Soaring Divorce Rate

February 3, 2007

Italy has been experiencing an unprecedented rise in marriage break-ups. The main cause bearing a high proportion of the blame? Mamma’s boys and interfering mothers-in-law.

A new poll by research institute Eures reveals that divorce happens every four minutes(!) in the country once regarded as a bastion of marriage. In 2002, Italy recorded 50,828 divorces - a 45 percent increase from 2000. While some reasons for divorce seem to be marrying too young, squabbling over money and meeting new partners, a shocking three out of 10 marriages fail because of the unusually close attachment of Italian men to their mothers.

A real life “Everybody Loves Raymond”, mothers-in-law who live in the same house or nearby, are putting strains on couple’s relationship by meddling in their affairs, finding fault with her daughter-in-law and of course, treating her grown-up son as a child.

Psychologist Dr. Annamaria Cassanese says she sees many disillusioned daughters-in-law at her practice in Milan. “In Italy there still exists a sort of mother love that is excessive,” said Cassanes. “It is a very Latin thing, deeply embedded in our social structure. For example, you will see mothers crying at the weddings of their sons, but they are not crying for joy, they are crying because they feel devastated. Their son has chosen another woman and it arouses very complex feelings, including jealousy.”

Cassanese points out two different types of extreme Italian mothers-in-law. One refuses to give in to ageing and sees her daughter-in-law as a rival; the other has dedicated her life to her family and expects payback, well, for life. The latter type of mother-in-law starts creeping in by offering to do chores such as cooking, ironing and babysitting. “This can often be the beginning of an invasion, in which the mother-in-law slowly takes over and undermines the woman in her own home,” she says. “What starts out being portrayed as something that is helpful degenerates into outright intrusion such as going into drawers and pulling out shirts that are not ironed ‘her way’ or monopolizing the kitchen. Wives feel like strangers in their own homes because the mother-in-law is always there.”

The fact that many Italian parents help out their children financially by buying them apartments or cars doesn’t help either, adds Dr. Cassanese. The so-called generosity causes the mother-in-law to expect something in return. Cassanese claims that many couples still obey invitations to eat with their parents three or four times a week.

According to Dr. Cassanese, the concept of mammoni - sons who cling to apron strings - is well known in Italy and it is not uncommon for men in their 30’s and 40’s to live with their parents. The reasons are partly economic but also come about because boys are indulged well into adulthood causing Italian men who remain close to their mothers to become emotionally immature. “The husband is used to being adored and when he doesn’t get that unconditional love from his wife, he goes running back to his mother.”


This phenomenon is being seen in other parts of the world.

KUALA LUMPUR: Every married person knows it, but a local study has confirmed it – mothers-in-law are the chief cause of divorces, especially in the Indian community.
Data in the Malaysia Community and Family Study 2004 by the National Population and Family Development Board (LPPKN) revealed that “meddlesome in-laws” is the number one reason why Indian couples get divorced.

It is also among the top three factors for divorce among the Malays and Chinese. The other two factors are incompatibility (42.3%) and infidelity (12%).
“Interference by in-laws is the main reason for Indians to divorce. It is the top-ranked reason at 30%,” said LPPKN director-general Datuk Aminah Abdul Rahman when presenting a paper on Malaysia’s family profile and its effects at Institut Kefahaman Islam Malaysia yesterday.

Infidelity is the marriage breaker among the Malays and Indians but it is tolerated among the Chinese.

“Among Malays, the second most common reason is infidelity and refusal to put up with polygamy,” she said.

“Among the Indians, infidelity is the second highest ranked reason for divorce at 25%,” she said.

However, the Chinese considered infidelity as the least crucial reason for a divorce.
Cheating was at the bottom along with health and gambling addiction at 4.2%.
Surprisingly, abuse is not a reason for divorce among the Malays and Chinese, but is a reason among Indians at 5%.

“Another overall reason which ranked high among the three races at 11.5% is ‘not being responsible’,” she said.

Although it is common perception that the family institution is quite fragile and divorces are rampant, data shows otherwise - only 0.7% of the population was divorced in 2000.

The data shows that divorce is more likely to happen to those under 25 and above 40.
Meanwhile, Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil said that more Malaysian women were choosing to marry later in life and it could cause a reduction in fertility rate and an ageing society.
“The National Family Policy and its action plan will address this issue of late marriages,” she said.

The policy would be presented to the Cabinet soon.

Even back in the 40s, mothers-in-law seemed to be a possibly important factor in divorces.

So that brings to question whether black men's mothers contribute significantly to the high divorce rate in marriages involving black men. Black women are often quite aggressive in their desire to run the show and can be immensely possessive. Few women can give a daughter-in-law hell like a black woman. Let that daughter-in-law be white and the animosity increases considerably. The first article's writer sees her ex-husbands mother as the main reason for their divorce and views his mother's interference as something far less common or intense with white mothers. Food for thought.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Sunday, October 11, 2009

The Plight of Missing Black Men and Boys


Missing:
Delshawn and Rakaem Green





I understand that it is normal for most people, male or female, to have less concern about the well being of men as compared to women as well as to have less concern over the well being of boys compared to girls. Men traditionally have been viewed as the stronger sex and traditionally viewed as being in less need of aid, comfort, support, etc. As flawed as this is, it is something that I and most men accept even with today’s growing one sidedness regarding gender double standards (expecting a man to fulfill the manly role is fine but expecting a woman to fulfill a “woman’s role” is chauvinistic).

The problem is that in order to justify their victimism, the so called “black women empowerment bloggers” love to declare that society, the media, black community, etc. show less concern over the well being of black women than they do all other groups including black men. They truly express that there are those who jump to the aid and rescue of black men and boys while turning a blind eye to black women and girls in distress. Where they got this from is a mystery, but when you really dig for the truth, you find something quite the opposite from their assertions. For example:



Missing black men get even less media than black women
By: Diasia
Ellerbee, NNPA Special Correspondent

Posted: Monday, April 20, 2009
12:37 pm

"Why don't you talk about me? Don't you care where I might be?
Am I the wrong color to have my story on TV?"

"Why don't I get air time?
Is it the fact that I don't have naturally
straight hair? Is it that America
isn't interested? Is it that America just doesn't care?"

"So ABC, NBC,
CBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX News Why don't you talk about me?! Don't you care where I
might be?! Am I the wrong color to have my story on TV?!"

Each one above
is from the poem "Black Woman Missing" by George L. Cook III. The poem
represents the lack of national media focus on missing Black women
- but, Black males get even less.

According to Connie
Marstiller of the National Crime Information Center, there were 614,925 people
missing in 2008 under the age of 18. About 16 percent, were Black men.

During that same year there were 163,239 people missing over the age of
18, according to Marstiller. Approximately 14 percent, represent missing Black
males over the age 18.

African-American men and boys such as William Van
Croft IV, 17, Wallace Richards, 23, Dennis Palmer, 44, and Adji Desir, 6, are
currently missing and have not yet received the national media attention as
other missing people such as Laci Peterson, Elizabeth Smart, or Haleigh
Cummings; white women usually get more attention than men of all races when they
are missing.

Blackandmissing.blogspot.com is an online blog site that is
dedicated to informing the public about missing Black children both male and
female that may or may not have been heard about in the media.

According
to blackandmiss-ing.blogspot.com, Adji Desir is an
African-American boy who
has been missing since January 10 from Immokalee, Fla. Desir is developmentally
disabled with the mental capacity of a two-year-old.

If you put both
these names in Yahoo's search engine, Adji Desir name will produce 478,000
results. Haleigh Cummings name will produce 4,440,000 results, which is 10
percent more.

Both children went missing around the same time and in the
same state. Although conditions of their disappearances are different, does race
or gender play a factor in the national media attention that they receive?

Clearly, yes, says Derrica Wilson, president and CEO of Black &
Missing Foundation, Inc., an online website that provides exposure and
educational training for the missing persons loved ones.

Wilson believes
that when it comes to African-American boys, people are more likely to associate
their disappearance as being a runaway. Wilson mentions that the Black
men on her website never receive national attention and are never seen on
television
.

"Therefore there is no amber alert and without an
amber alert there is no media coverage locally or nationally," said Wilson. "Now when it comes to Black men, there are more missing Black men in the
United States than missing Black women, according to the FBI missing person's
report.
The reason I believe that Black men do not receive media
exposure is because society, media, and law enforcement like to relate their
disappearance to drugs, crime, or violence."

Missing children's
activist and founder of the online blog "omega7.com," Alonzo Washing_ton agree
that African-American men and boys get the least amount of media attention among
missing people.


In terms of Black males, the only Black males
that would receive coverage would be someone of high stature, according to
Washington. "If you're grown, a man, and Black, then you can forget
about it," Washington said. "Young Black boys may get a little teaser, but never
an ongoing investigation like Caylee Anthony, Elizabeth Smart or Samantha
Runnion."


"The mindset of the media is that if it bleeds it
leads," said Detective Richard Adams of the Youth Investigation Division Missing
Person Unit in the District of Columbia. "Media wants something sensational,"
Adams said. "They have to have something fantastic and that's going to catch the
viewer's eye. It's all about numbers and ratings to them."

William Van
Croft IV has been missing from the District since January 31, 2009. He has
Asperger's Syndrome and went missing a year after the death of his father.

According to Jason Cherkis who writes an online blog for the Washington
City Paper, the police department waited until February 11, 2009 to issue a
press release.

In his blog, he cited a comment by Cherita Whiting that
speculated an indifference in Van Croft's case. Whiting is a activist for
education in the D.C. metropolitan area.

"Billy's mother filed a missing
person report with DC Youth Investigations on Jan 31", Whiting said. "It sat on
a desk somewhere and they just started investigating this case on 2/10. I have
sent multiple messages to the At-Large Council members and every Police officer
that I can find who is associated with
Ward 1 Precinct 107. It would make
sense that a missing person, especially a special needs teenager could get the
attention of the police and public officials to at least have the police issue a
press release that the child is missing. This has not been done. When the press
release occurs, the media responds and starts spreading the word that Billy is
missing."

Washington also believes that when it comes to
African-American children especially males, the police will say that they ran
away.

"When it comes to the area you live in, your color, and gender,
the more unlikely the police will be in finding you and the less the media will
cover you," Washington said. "Even when Jennifer's Hudson nephew was missing,
her story took the backseat to the Caylee Anthony story. They covered it for a
minute, and now it's like it didn't happen."

According to Detective
Adams, every police department has their own way of handling a missing person's
case.

Tim Ryan is an assistant news director for KUSA, a local NBC
station in Denver, CO.

Ryan said that in almost every case, it's about
if law enforcement decided how important the case is. He believes that the media
needs some sort of belief or standard for the stories that they report on.

"Local news people like myself are not the ones who determines what
makes local news," Ryan said. "There are certain reasons why stories get played
or not. I can't tell you if race does play a role. There are cases that we
covered of all races that hasn't received national media coverage. Things that
make
national news is whimsical. I think it is important to state that local
media does not make those choices."

Martin G. Reynolds is the editor of
the Oakland Tribune in California. Reynolds said that they don't necessarily
have a reporter dedicated to missing children and that it would have to come
across the radar for us to report about it.

When told about the numbers
of missing African-American males, Reynolds said:

"They get less
positive attention...There is plenty negative attention.
We were not
aware that there was such a large number particularly in African-American
children. It was something I wasn't aware of, but something I will look into."

Reporter Kathy Chaney for the Chicago Defender believes that
Black males do get far less national media coverage
which leads to
families looking for other media outlets such as the Jerry Springer, Maury
Povich, or Steve Wilkos show.

Chaney admits that when the Chicago
Defender was daily they had a problem reporting missing children because they
would be found the next day and the newspaper would have already printed the
story.

"I think they get far less coverage," said Chaney. "I think it's
because they are boys. It's just not reported of teenage boys running away. I
don't think that anyone expects them of running away or missing. You think of
foul play immediately."

Adji Desir and William Van Croft IV are still
missing and they need their stories heard.

"There is a defect in
journalism when a certain prototype is given more media coverage," Washing_ton
said. "There is clearly a standard in television. There are so many
ramifications we have to fight for. There are some disparities when it comes to
equality in the value of our lives."


Tuesday, October 6, 2009

"But Will It Last?". About interracial marriages and divorce.

There have been comments made by several black woman IR bloggers proclaiming the notion that IR relationships between black women and white men do much better than those between black men and white women. The first piece of "evidence" that they cite for this comes from this study and this specific part:


"Compared to White/White couples, White female/Black male, and White female/Asian male marriages were more prone to divorce; meanwhile, those involving non-White females and White males and Hispanics and non-Hispanic persons had similar or lower risks of divorce."


Now somehow, the term "non-white females" in this statement ended up meaning "black females". The fact that Asian and Hispanic women are also considered to be "non-White" never entered these women's minds. The fact that there are three times as many white male/Asian female couples than white male/black female couples should indicate to any logical person than this part of study mostly give indication of the stability between white men and Asian women.


The next piece of evidence they give is a ranking of interracial marriages that mysteriously formed out of the ether. It proclaims black woman/white man marriages as the second most stable interracial marriages with black men/white women marriages not even making the list. One their numbers posted a video on Youtube promoting this. Of course, it is like pulling teeth to get them to reference this information or provide a link to it. Sarah made an attempt to reference it by claiming that this was how Cosmopolitan Magazine ranked them in a mysterious issue ten years ago. Of course, nothing more specific was given as far as the date of the issue, volume, issue number, etc. I can't find it it through a Google search. We must all just take Sarah's word that it exists and says specifically what she claims that it says. We all know that Sara is filled with loads of honesty. NOT!


But during my searches, I did find something. There is a book called Exploring Black Sexuality by Robert Staples. Some pages of this book can be found on Google Books and part of it caught my attention. This part says:


“Interracial couples have a much higher divorce rate, especially Black women/white men, than coupes of the same race.”

The book references the statement to the "United States Bureau of the Census, Interracial Couples: 1960 to the Present. Washington, D.C.:U.S.Government Printing Office, 1999".

Now I don't know what is specifically written in this U.S. Census Beureau report, but I find it hard to believe that Staples would give a false statement in one of his several books and then falsely reference the false statement. So this is a good lesson in not taking anything the Black Women Empowerment Bloggers say at face value. Do your own research.



ADDENDUM: Truth B. Told referred me to a study that, while showing black men/white women marriages to be the least stable interracial marriages, the study also shows black women/white men marriages to be the next least stable interracial marriages. Thus, one thing that seems to be clear is that black women/white men marriages are NOT the second most stable interracial marriages and are at best the second most UNSTABLE interracial marriages.

Friday, September 25, 2009

The Lesser Value of Black Boys


As we know, there is a common theme among the so called “Black Women Empowerment Bloggers” and black female interracial bloggers; that theme being the alleged lack of care by the black community for black women and black girls. While this theme is repeated constantly by them, it is quite noticeable how this claim is practically never substantiated. It is something that they simply perceive or pretend to perceive.

What is also interesting is that they are the only ones with this perception. Not only do black men generally not perceive this alleged lack of care for black women, but most of the members of other races and ethnicities as well as black women not involved in their ‘movement’ don’t share this perception. The writer of the article below is an example of this. Note the part in bold:
______________________________________________

A Real Duke Rape Case

Written by Selwyn Duke

Tuesday, 30 June 2009 15:15

We all remember the infamous Duke University rape frame-up case, in which three white lacrosse players were falsely accused of raping a black female stripper. It was front-page news coast to coast, as it had all the elements of a mainstream-media cause célèbre: the perfect victim and the perfect villains, a “downtrodden” black woman of modest means and three “privileged” white college boys. Thus did the hard-left alliance of media, academia, and a Democrat prosecutor try its best to lynch the three, and if the stripper’s story hadn’t changed with the wind, the students could very well be sitting in prison currently.

But now we have a real Duke rape case, and one that largely conforms to the above narrative. Frank Lombard, Duke’s associate director of the Center for Health Policy, faces federal criminal charges for offering his adopted five-year-old son for sex. Where are the parallels? Lombard is white and well-to-do while his victim, the son, is black (Lombard also has a second adopted son, who is black as well).

Yet there are also differences. One is that, unlike the tenuous lacrosse-player case, authorities have Lombard dead to rights. Writes the blog Self Evident Truths:


The arrest warrant states that a person, later identified as Lombard, used video chat on the internet to perfom [sic] sex acts on a child under the age of ten.... The complaint says Lombard's chat room ID lists him as "perv dad for fun.
"The warrant states that an astute police detective contacted Lombard through Yahoo! Instant Messenger. Lombard admitted performing sexual acts on his adopted five year old son. He wrote that he would drug the boy with Benadryl before molesting him. He admitted that he waited to molest the boy until his partner was out of town.

The warrant continues describing the next day, when Lombard offered his five year old to the detective to perform sex acts on him. The detective said he lived out of state, making the solicitation a federal offense.

There are also other differences between the cases. One is that there is no reason to expect the media to do anything but bury this story posthaste. Why? Because, despite the aforementioned parallels, it doesn’t completely accord with today’s favored victimizer/victim narrative, as Lombard is a homosexual, making the victim a child who was adopted by a homosexual. Thus, while Lombard’s sexual inclination alone is enough to make the mainstream media treat this case with the “utmost discretion,” there is an additional factor: disseminate the facts of the crime enough, and people just may get the crazy notion that it’s lunacy to let homosexuals adopt children, especially little boys. So you’ve just got to watch the information you put in the yahoos’ heads.

Not surprisingly, this double standard is already apparent in the reportage. In the Duke lacrosse case, not only was the story front page, but an accuser of the easiest virtue was painted in the best light. For example, the stripper was often called an “exotic dancer,” which is much like calling a prostitute an exotic blind date. In contrast, now the mainstream media seem most reluctant to reveal Lombard’s homosexuality or the adopted victim’s race.

So, as far as how this story will most likely unfold, there are four things I cannot envision happening. First, I don’t foresee Duke’s administration and faculty coming out as a lynch mob and convicting Lombard in the court of public opinion.

Second, don’t expect Jesse Jackson et al. to venture to Durham County and play the race card like a Vegas high roller, even though this case lends itself perfectly to it. A white man who adopts a black boy to keep as a sex slave, anyone?

Next, at risk of being redundant, don’t hold your breath waiting for the mainstream stream media to get on board; like the National Organization for Women, with its deafening silence regarding the savaging of Sarah Palin and women’s plight in Moslem nations, they care not about little victims but leftist agendas.

Lastly, the News & Observer tells us that Lombard is “a licensed clinical social worker with a master's degree in social work, [and] is a health-disparities researcher who studies HIV/AIDS in the rural South” (read: professional victimologist). So, not that any more evidence of his ideological persuasion was necessary, but it’s obvious that the man is thoroughly liberal in his professional life — and libertine in his personal life. Yet don’t expect the purveyors of pablum to be point this out, either.

Speaking of the race card, the hierarchy of victim groups is much like a deck of cards: black is a good hand, but it’s trumped by female. And, it appears, homosexual trumps everything.
_____________________________________________

So as we can see, an adult black woman of highly questionable scruples can get enormous media attention by a simple allegation (later to be proven untrue) and while the proven sexual molestation of innocent black male children in the same area is practically ignored by the media and black activists. It seems that the notion that everyone comes to the defense of black men and boys as opposed to black women and girls is more perception than fact when you actually look at the evidence.











Friday, August 28, 2009

Men/Black Men as Mules????????????

The simple love of a husband coming home, seeing you tired, and offering to go get Chinese food. Or looking over, and seeing your blond husband happily doing your baby's hair-and watching her smile up at her daddy. Or the car breaking down, and being able to pick up the damn phone and say: "Honey, come get us, the car broke down!' So many sistas have no idea how good life can be when you have a good man to share it with. Not a parasite, who's sponging off of you, and sucking the life out of you, and depending on you to do everything for him. But a real man to lighten the load. Someone who can give you the freedom to be a WOMAN- because he has taken the responsibility of being a MAN!!
This is a quote from Sarah in her latest blog. I find it quite interesting because of how telling her statement is. Observe that what constitutes a man's love is servitude. Nowhere does she discuss the pleasure of a man holding her hand, looking into her eyes, placing a rose in her hair, sharing intimate thoughts with her, expressing his feeling to her, etc. etc. It's all about "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY!"

Understand that back in the 1950s when marriage was commonplace with black men as well as all men, there was far less priority with men lightening a woman's load. What was prioritized was men taking on "manly responsibilities" while leaving "womanly responsibilities" to the women. Men back then did not hardly comb their daughter's hair, cook dinner, clean house, etc. Of course, practically all men today and in the past would go pick up their women if their cars break down. Sarah either takes some imaginary story or the example of the lowest of the lowest ghetto thug (the kind that so many black women adore), and applies it to all or most black men.

Those men who married quite often in the 50s were far less likely to kiss their women's butts than men today, yet married quite more often. They proudly took on the responsibility of heavy lifting, bringing home the bacon, caring for the lawn and physical structure of the house, yet adamantly left the job of childcare, dusting, cooking, cleaning, washing, etc. to the women. So why do today's black women define love by a man's servitude? The answer comes down to one word. LAZINESS.

There is basically an epidemic of laziness among today's African American women. This laziness often manifests as the epidemic of obesity that permeates among black women. Sure, they will argue the point of how black women are "shouldering the load of the black community" but what this really translates to is that a whole lot of black women actively and absent mindedly participate in creating situations where they are single parents. Beyond having to adjust raising children alone (something that all women of all races would equally adjust to), many black women are physically lazy. Of course their are plenty of black women who are filled with energy, but an overrepresenting number of black women live sedentary lifestyles.

Such women place great priority on viewing men as mules and workhorses, yet generally don't respect men who given in and allow themselves to be such mules and workhorses. This is where the clash comes in. Black men tend to have big egos and the average black man would prefer to resist a woman's demands than to give in and lose her respect. Black women are drawn to such men, yet a few are drawn to the men who would give in for they seem to find more comfort in a man who gives in and loses their respect than a man who stands his ground. These are the women who seek white men. This is Sarah and her crew. That is the black woman on Wife Swap whose white husband served her hand and foot.

Marriage is at such a low point today because a man's happiness in marriage is far lower priority now than ever before and this is exaggerated in the black community. Sistas today have become so self centered that black men see little positivity in marriage. It's as if marriage is a male obligation and that there is no need to win a black man's heart. With women, it is often a case of marriage filling a void and whether the marriage will be a quality one or not takes a back seat to this void being filled. Men on the other hand don't have a void that needs to be filled by marriage. They must be motivated to marry mostly by the prospect of marriage bringing greater happiness to their lives. It is false to say that these men are not marriage oriented. They simply are not oriented to marriage to women who want to marry, yet really don't value marriage. No man wants to marry women who play the game of tesing their men daily and not respecting their men when they relent to the daily demands involved with such daily testing.

Our grandfathers married women who were socialized to please their husbands and studies have shown that our grandmothers were happier than the women of today. Black women have drank the feminist cool-aid by the gallons and in the process, have contributed to the destruction of the black family. What a black man are looking for today is
someone who can give you the freedom to be a MAN- because she has taken the responsibility of being a WOMAN!!

What her statement also makes me think of is how my father used to comb my sisters hair. It's shameful that his efforts throughout our childhood is not valued by her because my father's hair is black and nappy. These women are sick.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Sunday, August 2, 2009

"Are Black Women Teaching Their Daughters to Be Mean?"

I found this interesting post on another blog from about 9 months back and I found it very interesting. Quite often, certain black women will often try to justify the common aggressive attitudes exhibited by many black woman (definitely not all) by saying that such attitudes result from all of the drama they have to go through with black men and the black community in general. The flaw in this is that such attitudes are prevalent at a significantly young age; such an age whereas there have not been enough time for any significant experiences. Thus evidence suggests that these girls don't just develop such attitudes through experiences, but are taught such attitudes. Here is the blog article:

My 4 year old son is attending school for the first time. His school is very diverse and apparently four year olds are very touchy feely little people. They just like to hug. Well, my baby is quite popular with the girls.

We recently went to the Pumpkin Patch and one particular little girl was all over my baby. They were holding hands and hugging. She followed him everywhere he went. On the hay ride there was another little girl that was really upset and very vocal about it. He had not played with her. My son is African American while his chosen playmate of the day was white and the little girl with the attitude was Asian.

Later in the day, I asked my son about the African American girls in his class. I asked him if he played with them. His response has started an ongoing discussion in my family, so I wanted someone else’s opinion. (And I know I will get plenty here!) My smart and intelligent four years old said, “The brown girls are mean. They don’t speak and only want to play with me when I am playing with the other girls.” My husband says that he is right.

What do you think?


What's further interesting are some of the comments:

Comment by Verona Wiltse on October 27, 2008 at 9:42am Yes Kym, I have a 15 year old grandson, he's very tall and handsome. The school that he attend all his life is predominantly white with mixers of Blacks, Asian, Spanish, arabs etc. I have always noticed that the girls that calls or I see him with are White and Spanish. When I asked him about the Black girls in his school, he said and I quote. "Grandma, they are mad scary". When I asked what do you mean by that. He said they are loud in the hallway and always fighting. I try not to look at them, they may want to fight me.
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Comment by KimSyne on November 5, 2008 at 4:19pm I have a 13 year old daughter who has been talked about and mistreated by black girls. The problem is that they don't like or appreciate "different". My daughter has worn dred locks for the last 5 years. These kids said that she was trying to act African. When she talked what they considered "proper", they called her an oreo. They couldn't make up their mind what she was they just knew that she was different
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Comment by Germaine on November 5, 2008 at 5:03pm Yes I know what you mean, I live in an apartment complex where the black girls here walk around in groups. My daughter being new to the city and area trying to make friends was called fake. She is the only one here I see would embrace a white girl and play with her and then as soon as they see this either they try to come play also or just be plain nasty to them throwing rocks and dirt. It has also gone to the point where if there is new black girls and if they see them playing with my daughter they would do anything to interfere with them playing together I get annoyed and when I talk to the parents of the children either they sound uninterested or just smile.
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Comment by alwysaldy on February 23, 2009 at 7:23pm Your 4 year old has a point.
So does the other posters. Children learn by example and by influences at home. I agree children will mirror what they see. I start up conversations in the store in the bank in our neighborhood with "anyone". My daughter sees it and she does the same. My daughter was raised in a very diverse community. Her school was majority white with asian, samoa, hispanic, mid eastern etc. she was the only AA in her classes from pre-school to 2nd grade. From Colorado, to Florida, to California.

My baby is dark complexion. In the whole time she was in school not one child teased her about me or her being different complexions. They asked her if I was her mom and after seeing us together saw she was my twin.

We moved back to CA and she's in a majority AA school, with some hispanics. She is teased, by the AA girls about being a different complexion than her mom. About her hair, when I braid it with conditioner and take it down in the morning for her to wear it crinkled to school. She always got compliments before about her hair. She has been teased about being "real black" with "nappy" hair. I have never asked her if the boys say it. She has always said it is the girls
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Comment by Joan Wright Lewis on July 20, 2009 at 11:00pm
My daughters attend schools that have mostly white students. They tell me the girls that gets into fights and are mean to them are black girls. My oldest said her school was peaceful with just a handful of blacks. Then the following years more blacks came into the school. Now the school hired security guards in the school. She said black girls pick fights with her, and other girls. She now see fights with girls pulling each other weaves out of their heads. They speak very loud and they meet after school to fight someone. For goodness sakes, they are in high school, she said. When are they going to grow up


So the big question is how does this impact the way that boys view them and how these boys will view them when they become men. Note that one of the final disputes Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover had to endure before his suicide was a dispute with a black girl who had threatened him.

Many black men would probably agree that as children, the most intimidating individuals were the black girls. Black girls can be extremely hard on and degrading to young boys. These boys are often quite intimidated by these girls who generally have physically matured earlier and are often bigger. The problem is that once the boys reach puberty and develop testosterone fueled aggressiveness, this intimidation turns into aggressiveness. Thus, you have the often aggressive demeanor many black men have for members of the opposite sex. It is the bi-product of the aggressiveness shown toward them by girls in their youth. Look at the two videos below:

Video 1

Video 2

Friday, July 10, 2009

Comparisons: Biracial Children and Intelligence.

While many unfounded notions are commonly expressed by the various black female IR bloggers, one that has been on my mind recently is the notion that interracial relationships between black women and white men are superior to relationships between black men and white women. One way that they tried to promote this was by citing a study indicating that marriages between white men and NON-WHITE women tended to last longer than marriages between black men and non-black women. Somehow, the term "non-white" became synonymous with "black" in there minds, totally disregarding the fact that 3/4 of white men in interracial marriages are with Asian women. Thus, wouldn't this study be more of an indication of how well white men and Asian women do?

Now lets look at some comparisons of interracial couplings that are actually supported by the research. While surfing the web I stumbled across this particular study that did a comparison between black female/white male relationships and black male/white female relationships. The comparison was that of the IQs of the offspring of such unions. The findings are interesting:

Mixed-Race Children Born to Either a Black or a White Mother
If the Black–White IQ gap is largely hereditary, then children having one
Black and one White parent should have the same IQ on average, regardless of
which parent is Black. But if one assumes that mothers are particularly important
to the intellectual socialization of their children and if the socialization practices
of Whites are more favorable to IQ development than those of Black mothers,
then children of White mothers and Black fathers should have higher IQs than
children of Black mothers and White fathers. This could of course not have a
plausible genetic explanation. In fact, it emerges that children of White mothers
and Black fathers have IQs 9 points higher than children with Black mothers and
White fathers (Willerman, Naylor, & Myrianthopoulos, 1974). This result in itself
suggests that most of the Black–White IQ gap is environmental in origin. But
because mothers are not the only environmental influence on the child’s IQ, the
9-point difference might be regarded as a very conservative estimate of the
environmental contribution to the gap.
What do Rushton and Jensen (2005) have to say about this study? Because the
White mother–Black father pairs averaged 1 year more of education than the
Black mother–White father pairs, they conclude the study is uninterpretable! Of
course, there can be no basis for assuming that 1-year’s difference in education on
the part of the parents could possibly translate into an expected 9 IQ point
difference for the children.
306 NISBETT


Here is some further information on this subject:

Lee Willerman and his colleagues compared children with a black mother and a white father to children with a white mother and a black father. The cleanest comparison is for mixed-race children who lived only with their mother. Mixed-race children who lived with a white mother scored 11 points higher than mixed-race children who lived with a black mother. Since the black-white IQ gap averaged about 15 points at the time these two studies were done, they imply that about four-fifths of that gap was traceable to family-related factors (including schools and neighborhoods)


So basically what is being said here is that whites of both genders tend to have more favorable practices for the intellectual socialization of their children and since mothers of both races tend to play the most significant role in the intellectual socialization of their children, the children of black men and white women tend to have quite noticeably higher IQs than children of white men and black women. When men are totally eliminated from the equation, what we have is a further gap with half black children of single white women possessing an average 11 points higher score than half black children of single black women.

Of course the most notable possible example of this tendency is the fact that the first black President of the United States was raised by a white woman.

And to be fair, white men probably similarly have more favorable practices for the intellectual socialization of their children. Yet, since this intellectual socializer role is taken on to a far less extent by men, the favorable practices of white men are far less utilized for that purpose. Men place far more imphasis on serving as disciplinarians, coaches, authoritarians, playmates, role models, etc.

Also of note is that the "White mother–Black father pairs averaged 1 year more of education than the Black mother–White father pairs". This is supported by the study I cited in an earlier post showing that the black men who black women marry tend to have more education than the white men that black women marry. Since the more education a black man has, the more likely he is to marry white and other non-black women, black men who marry white women are probably on average more educated than black men who marry black women.

So before these ladies try to make their preferred interracial pairings out to be superior to those involving black men, they should really do their homework.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Addressing The "Black Men Abandon Their Children" myth.


Needless to say, black men are commonly stereotyped as having a strong propensity to abandon their children. The term "abandon" seems to be a preferred term especially by the black female interracial bloggers as well as the so called "black female empowerment" bloggers. The problem is that evidence disputes this stereotype and shows that the source of the stereotype is more so a case of the failure of black men and black women to form stable relationships. In response to President Obama's criticism of black men's alleged absence from their chidlren's lives, this article cites one study disputing the stereotype:
"A month before Obama made this stereotypical and plainly false assertion, Boston University professor Rebekah Levine Coley, in a comprehensive study on the black family, found that black fathers who aren’t in the home are much more likely to sustain regular contact with their children than absentee white fathers, or for that matter, fathers of any other ethnic group. The study is not an obscure study buried in the thick pages of a musty academic journal. It was widely cited in a feature article on Black fathers in the May 19, 2008 issue of Newsweek. There was no excuse then to spout this myth. The facts are totally contrary to Obama’s knock."
Of course, those bloggers insistent on degrading black men will, and and have scoffed at this study citing only their own observations as well as the infamous 70% out-of-wedlock birth rate for African Americans. Basically, to them, every single black child born out-of-wedlock has been abandoned by his or her father. Of course, this would mean that no black couples marry after they have children. This would mean that no unmarried black couples with children cohabitate. This would mean that no black men unmarried to their children's mothers are active fathers.

These bloggers will insist that this statistic as well as their alleged observations of so many little black children who do not know their fathers is proof that black men run away from their responsibilities as fathers. But the reality is that it is not the children that black men run from, it is the mothers of these children that they run from and their absence from their children's lives is a bi-product of not being in the mother's lives and this bi-product is just as prevalent in the lives of non-black men under the same circumstances. Lets look at some research:

"Only a small percentage of nonresident fathers continue to see their child(ren) after a five-year period following divorce (Blankenhorn, 1995; Stewart). This decreased involvement in their child(ren)'s lives by divorced fathers may be the result of constraints experienced by fathers following divorce. Cohen (1998) found that nonresident fathers' involvement in their child(ren)'s lives is subject to an array of constraints, resulting in decreased participation. He reported that "the role of fathering must be squeezed into short meetings under strained and artificial circumstances" (p. 200). If a father chooses to avoid these situations by not seeing his child(ren), the father likely forfeits leisure time with the child(ren)"
As we see, this research keys on men in general and concludes that of all men in general, a small percentage continue to see their children five years after divorce. Clearly, this is not a black male phenomenon. Lets look at more:

"Their findings support differences in fathering activities when controlling for
income, age, education and socioeconomic conditions of wives or co-habitators.
They found that African American fathers are ‘far more likely to monitor and supervise their children’s activities’ (p. 92) and suggest that these men are more strict, cautionary, and authoritarian than European American parents."
And more excerpts from the same website:

"Housaain et al. (1997) found that African American fathers spent more time providing physical care, feeding, and soothing of their infants than European American fathers."
"Comparison of adjusted income means indicate that African-
American fathers reporting more frequently participating in caregiving activities than Latino and European American fathers. In addition, African American
fathers also reported participating in more cognitive activities with their child
than European American and Latino fathers reported. African American and
Latino fathers reported signifi cantly more social skills activities with the focus
child than did European American fathers."
"Race or ethnic differences in reported fathering activities were examined.
As stated earlier, a number of studies have focused on absent fathers in minority
communities and have supported the idea that minority, particularly African
American fathers are not as involved with their children as European American
fathers (Carter, 2001; Hamer, 1997; Lindholm, 1997; Mincy, 2002). The current
study found differences in reported caregiving activities across race and
ethnicity. Toth and Xu (1999) found that African Americans fathers were more likely to supervise and monitor their children’s activities. The findings of this study supports this in that African American fathers reported participating in significantly more hands-on caregiving activities than either Latino or European American fathers. This finding is important because prior studies failed to examine some of the caregiving activities that were included in the measure used in the current study. As a result, African American fathers may be involved in different ways than had been previously reported in that they may participate in more traditional maternal activities. This present study supports the findings of Toth and Xu (1999) that the ‘stereotype of irresponsible and nonsupportive African American fathers is inaccurate and should be rejected’ (p. 92)"
"Both African American and Latino fathers reported higher levels of
participating in social activities than European American fathers. Social activities
are an important concept in early infant development (Parke et al., 2002). This
supports the idea that African American and Latino fathers may participate more in socializing their children especially in such activities as taking their child to
visit extended family and friends. Toth and Xu (1999) found that Latino fathers
reported participating in more activities such as spending time in leisure activities
such as picnics, movies, sports, etc. They report that in contrast to European
American families, African American and Latino fathers ‘tend to reinforce the
norms of family closeness … and monitor and supervise their children more’
(p. 92)."

"It should be noted that there may be an issue with sampling bias within the
sample of African American fathers. Although mothers indicated a father’s
presence in the child’s life, there was some diffi culty in interviewing African
American fathers. One reason for this might be that a higher percentage of these
men were not married or residing with the mother of the child. Researchers
in the current study found it easier to contact and interview fathers who were
residential fathers. As a result, given the higher percentage of African American
fathers not residing with the child, our African American fathers might be slightly
different than the European American and Latino fathers."

"Despite these limitations it is clear that minority fathers are involved with their
children although not always in recognized ways."

So basically, when fathers of similar income who don't reside with their children are compared, African American fathers are more involved with their children. Surprising? I'm sure that this will surprise many based on the media and sell-out driven stereotyping of black men. Many black women will not give credence to these studies because they don't want to accept that their failures to win the hearts of men have a direct impact on their children. Black children reside in single parent households at just under three times the rate of white children and it is this fact, not some imaginary desire of black men to abandon their children, that drives the absent father phenomenon in the black community.



Wednesday, June 17, 2009

"What Single Women Can Learn From Michelle"


From The Root:



Would most Type A, professional women have dated Barack when he was a broke, big-eared organizer with a funny name?

America has fallen for the Obamas. The history, the high glamour, the PDAs on the White House lawn. It’s a universal picture of love. But for many successful black women, with college degrees, ambitious careers and five-year plans, that enchantment has become something of an obsession.

Those of us hoping to find suitable mates in a dating landscape that is, statistically speaking, pretty grave, are absolutely giddy about the very existence of the first family and especially about the possibility that we could find our own Barack.

We’d give up three hair appointments in a row, our designer puppies and that annual tropical vacation with our best grad-school friends to meet a man like him. Brilliant. Confident. Best smile ever. So into his wife. On the cover of April’s issue of Washingtonian magazine, he appears shirtless to illustrate the publication’s No. 2 reason to love D.C. (“Our new neighbor is hot!”) But if we’d first encountered him the way Michelle did, as a regular guy, under the glow of office lights instead of the spotlight, would he have made our lists at all?

In footage that plays when the networks mention how our cool, young, black president shot hoops with his staff and friends on Election Day, Obama is close to gawky in a simple gray T-shirt tucked in just a bit too tightly. Between plays, you notice tapered pants pulled up a little too high. A slightly skinny build. In those few frames, he’s not the hottest guy on the court, let alone in the country. When he appeared as a presidential candidate on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, my initial swoon as he stepped on stage was short-lived. He playfully hip-bumped the host in an overly bouncy dance routine that embarrassed me into looking away. Suddenly, I was watching my boss get down at the company Christmas party or a friend’s dad grooving to Earth, Wind and Fire at her wedding. Not bad. Endearing, even. But “swagga” did not spring to mind. Sure, Obama is a dad and a boss to many . . . but I get the impression he’s been dancing like that his whole life.

I’ve played matchmaker, unsuccessfully, for scores of black professional women. And I’m convinced that Michelle’s got something on many of us. Not her intelligence or her confidence or sense of style, her glowing skin or the carved silhouette of her arms. I could fill a room with friends who have all these qualities to spare. I’m talking about the choices I imagine she made in those crucial moments between meeting Barack and deciding who he would be to her. She must have focused on an abundance of goodness instead of his hint of goofiness and fixated on a warm smile instead of a pair of oversized ears. It’s easy to see now that he was a great catch, but how many of us would have been open to this guy who strayed so far from the black Prince Charming ideal, starting with his very name?

My single friends and I mingle at events dubbed Pandora and Equilibrium, or with long acronyms about political engagement or the black community, where open bars and soul food buffets are the draw but really not the purpose. I will often identify a black man who “someone should be dating” and talk him up to a female friend, colleague or neighbor, offering descriptors like: Funny. Laid-back. Attractive. And more honest ones like: Ambitious. Shy. Soft but not fat.

Just as I picked at the less-than-cool undercurrents of that presidential pickup game and talk-show dance party, my female friends home in on the negative as they snub my suggestions.

His toes were ashy.

He seems like he’d be a really cool friend, but I don’t know, those lips. . .

He was wearing a bubble coat, and seriously, it was not that cold.

We had a good conversation, but I like a man to be more aggressive.

That was our second and last date. He used the word “authentic” like 14 times.

How many times do I have to tell you I’m looking for someone TALL and HOT? Keywords being tall and hot.

He drank a hot chocolate instead of coffee. What is he? A 6’4’’12-year-old? (I’m putting myself out there—this was my own reaction to an otherwise pleasant date just a few years ago.)

In these comments are echoes of my conversations in mini-communities of black professionals—at brunches, bar-passing celebrations and housewarming parties. I think of my years at Harvard Law School, which has 150 black students at any given time. One would have thought that the Black Law Students Association was a group of first cousins; dating among members was so unusual and so scandalous when it did occur. In these “professional” contexts, women are shaking with one hand and tossing men right into the friend zone with another. Across the country and over the years, the take-away often has the same theme: There was not a single guy there I would date.

Yeah, he was tall, but his head seemed a little small for his body.

It was loud in there, so I’m not sure. Did I detect a stutter?

Boy, was he sweating!

He seems like someone who would like Star Trek.

I don’t care if he can’t see. He should have left those glasses at the office.

He was dancing (or worse, trying) way too hard.


To read the full article go here.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

"The Decline of Men"


I was reading some articles on Guy Garcia who is the author of the book, "The Decline of Men: How the American Male Is Tuning Out, Giving Up and Flipping Off His Future." I found it interesting in that with this whole shebang thrown out by IR bloggers and the so-called 'black female empowerment' movement regarding the "damaged black male", we have an author who analyzes such damage, yet does so from the standpoint of ALL males. What you hear from the author sounds quite similar to the various descriptions of black men tossed around by these particular ladies. Here are some excerpts from an interview with the author:

"We do know that men are losing traction in high schools. The same is true in colleges, where 59% of all students are female. Harvard professors tell me male students have lost their drive and ambition, women tell me they can't find a guy who's not a dummy, slacker, cheater or loser. Men of every stripe and part of the country are telling me they feel confused, besieged and worried that they have lost their place in society, that they have lost their bearings as men. They sense the male gender is adrift and increasingly dismissed, denigrated and demonized -- by the media, by women, even by other men. And that's just the tip of the iceberg."
And...

"Let's start with the says-it-all title of Maureen Dowd's post-feminist creed, "Are Men Necessary?" The answer, of course, is yes, we are. The reason is that in this great unraveling of gender roles and male identity, one of the casualties has been the nuclear family. Last year, for the first time ever, single people outnumbered married people. More than ever boys are growing up in single-parent homes without fathers who can guide them into adulthood. And we've known for a long time that boys who grow up without strong male role models are more likely to drop out of school, make less money, be more likely to use drugs or get in trouble with the law and, ultimately, end up divorced themselves. It's a downward spiral."
And more...

"It goes way beyond that. The industries projected to grow in the next few decades are mostly in the service sector, where communication, collaboration and multitasking rule. At the same time many of the industries that favor the physical and mental attributes of males are shrinking or disappearing. Women in their 20s in the 10 largest U.S. cities already out-earn men of the same age. The trend is pretty clear."
And finally...

"Your examples are all symptoms of male decline. Men have been conditioned to be selfish, greedy and aggressive. Infidelity and perfidy are manifestations of insecurity. Society has taught men that it is manly to be competitive, to make as much money as possible, to win at any cost. I would add the war in Iraq and the implosion of Wall Street to the list of troubles that have been brought about by the old-fashioned, swaggering macho approach to politics, economics and life in general. Yet in spite of this -- or partly as a result of it -- other guys have simply given up. They sense that they've lost the high ground (and the future) to women, and they aren't even trying anymore. They've opted out to become jackasses, stoners and slackers. Responsibility is shirked, and adolescence is extended indefinitely."

If we listen to the various IR bloggers and black female empowerment demagogues, one would believe that only such descriptions apply to black men. Of course, they will argue that this trend is at a greater level among black men, but in such a case, should they not argue that the "unraveling of gender roles" that is pushed by the modern woman is at a greater level among black women? Is this push toward dominance the very thing that so many black women call "strenth" and wouldn't their fantasized mass migration away from the black community (black men) and toward white men result in hurrying the process of white men giving up at the level that black men have? How will it affect masses of white men when they are cursed out for expressing an honest view on race to their black wives? We know that black America is always the canary in the mine and as Pat Moynihan showed, black America is often a glimpse of white America's future.

Amanda Platell states it quite well here:

"But perhaps what we should be asking is: who turned men into sissies?

The answer to that is we women. Women wilfully feminised men to make them less masculine, less challenging to our ambitions, less competition for us. We emasculated them.

As a result, we've destroyed the core of their being, their masculinity. We've led them astray and away from the very qualities we intrinsically find most attractive in a man.

We told them we loved their feminine side, then came to despise it. We convinced them we wanted to be equal breadwinners, then began to resent it.

We loved the idea of earning more than our men, more than any man, yet lost respect for them when it was us bringing home the bacon.

But men have been culpable in all this, too. Sure, we gave them a social duffing up, but they gave in to it. The feminisation process sneakily appealed to their intrinsic vanity, and sharing the career workload played to many men's innate laziness.

I disagree with Garcia when he says 'men aren't giving up - they're being run over because they're lazy and can't multi-task'. There is nothing more energised, more vital than a man who is loved and respected for being a successful man, a provider and a father.

But partly because of the way women have systematically traduced men and their manliness, partly because of the way we as a society have feted and institutionalised single motherhood, from the council estate to the boardroom, we haven't left much for men to do or be that is unique to them.

Even the education system is now skewed against them. Garcia is correct when he says that girls are outperforming boys at school, but it's not because they are brighter or more adept at surviving in a post-modern world, but because of the liberal engineering of state education that has made it more sympathetic to girls' learning skills and less so to those of boys.

And with the huge increase in university-educated girls, there is a social timebomb ticking.

In America, over the past 25 years the number of female undergraduates has grown more than twice as fast as their male counterparts.

According to Garcia, by 2006 women outnumbered men on American college campuses by more than two million.

Again, if the tables were turned and women were wildly outnumbered today in universities and if men were overtaking their achievements, there would be an outcry.

The feminists view the current state of play in the war of the sexes as a great victory - they feel it proves they were right and that women were smarter than men all along.

But it's like two armies locked in battle, one armed with bayonets, the other with Kalashnikovs. It's not been a fair fight.

One survey Garcia cites shows that, on average, females between the ages of 21 and 30 earned 117 per cent of males' wages in the same group.

And while women's wages have soared, wages for men have declined.

'Men are not just getting poorer, they're also getting dumber,' he says. And he's right. Beneath the lip gloss of metrosexual modern male, men are in trouble.

Men of all ages are becoming increasingly 'angry, suspicious, reactionary and isolated' because women have treated the men's natural roles without respect.

Who wouldn't become reactionary when all that you knew had been demeaned, taken from you or chipped away?

Who wouldn't feel isolated when society had institutionalised fatherlessness, thus eradicating the most vital and enhancing role any man can play in his life?

Garcia goes so far as to argue that the roles have flipped so much from the way they were, say, 50 years ago - and that men have become so emasculated and feminised - that 'men are the new women'.

If that's true, and sadly it is for some men, then women have a lot to answer for. And perhaps the greatest irony is that it's us who are the losers in the end.

You show me a woman who isn't attracted by strength, success, masculinity and I'll show you a lesbian.

Garcia argues that it is 'an undeniable reality that women are poised to become the dominant gender in America, and in many ways already are'.

With men already in decline, it's only going to get worse. Deep in a recession with so many jobs at risk, a man's native, competitive provider survival spirit has never been more necessary to millions of families' survival, and yet never have these qualities been so systematically diminished.

So when we most need men to be men, we've created a disproportionate number of men who are more pussycats than lions. Perhaps the real Decline Of Men has only just begun.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, they'll throw off their Prada, ditch the pedicures, stop crying and get in touch with their masculine side again. We can only hope."
Well Amanda. Take the negative influences on men you state above, multiply by three or four at the least, and you have the plight of black men in this post feminism world.