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.

When Will The Violence End?

And unfortunately more,

more and more.


.

"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

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.

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.

"What Single Women Can Learn From Michelle"

From The Root:

By: Jenée Desmond-Harris

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.

"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.