It’s Not Just Flowers, Candy and Commitment. It’s About Sending a Message. The Black Explains Why Loving a Black Woman is Always Deeper Than What You Think….
A Black Man falling in love with a Black Woman is a very unpopular and unorthodox thing to do in 2011. It is something many Black Men would rather not try.
Loving a Black Woman is not an easy thing to do. It is not because Black Women are not beautiful women, nor is it because they have nasty attitudes. It is because loving a Black Woman symbolizes his desire to positively contribute to his race in spite of the gushing currents of negativity rushing against it.
For a Black Man to love a Black Woman, he must hand her the key to his ego and submit to her his character blueprint. He must believe in himself enough to believe that she will believe in him. And then he must prove that he can be believed in.
But really, what does he believe?
Because for a Black Man to love a Black Woman, he’s going to have to answer the questions from his childhood and address the missing puzzle pieces of his culture. He will have to understand what she truly means, what she symbolizes, where she comes from, and why she is hurting.
Many black women are often hurting. Some aren’t.
He will have to prove that ridiculously supported rappers aren’t right, that the media indeed is manipulative and that men aren’t monsters. He will have to be patient with her; he will have to show consistently that he can exhibit eventual excellence.
Heads are already throbbing.
It’s a lot easier to manipulate the single sister stock market. Unlike Wall Street there is no governing SEC. Rather than making an honest investment, its simpler to cheat the system and indulge in some insider trading. (Pun intended)
Insider trading games confuse black women everywhere. The single brother tells relationship-seeking women they aren’t interested in a “LTR.” They’re actions however, are much different; they will wine her, dine her, date her, mate her, do her and woo her. But they won’t love her.
That committment word is a crazy thing on the brother globe. It’s more than just talking to the same chick everyday and taking her to Chilis on a Thursday. It goes beyond boo loving; it’s not about hot sex during Hurricanes or VH1 Soul videos on a Saturday morning.
For a Black Man to love a Black Woman is to defiantly, definitively and confidently plant a tree of life in the middle of a towering landfill of dying dreams. It’s about building a dam and shutting out the flood waters of the past; slavery and slothfulness, poverty and pain, injustice and idolatry, harm and hopelessness. It’s standing up to stereotypes and rejecting the conclusions that somehow, black love has to fail. It’s refusing the contaminated mental poison that the black family cannot survive.
It’s all wrapped up in the box of being black. The mission code is also enclosed within the soul of every brown skinned woman walking in America.
Yeah, it is.
Take off that wig, unweave… that weave, and look at her natural hair standing up, looking you in the face. Understand that behind that sexy African-inspired body is the womb that has carried generation after generation of the African heritage, asking the same question over and over again.
When are you going to stand up, black man? When are you going to take charge, black man? When are you going to take care, black man?
Women of color won’t stop asking these annoying – but necessary – questions. This is part of the reason many black women remain loyal to black men. Even if they don’t know, they do know. It’s deeper than just putting a ring on it. It’s making a cultural and social statement to everyone and everything that looks to curse our existence.
This is also part of the reason many Black Men furiously flee to other races for love. There’s less responsibility attached. Many Black Men know that it’s not because some sister has an attitude, it’s because deep down, he knows what lies beneath that attitude. And he just doesn’t want to deal with the challenge of the bigger, blacker picture.
It takes a Black Man to love a Black Woman. And make no mistake, this world is heavily invested on the hope that black males do not develop into Black Men. The world hopes for more of the Carter IV, and less Carter G. Woodson. The racists pray for more fatherlessness and flash mobbing, enmity and effeminate behavior. No emotions and no commitment. Just sex and jail time.
Do we mimic this guy?
Or do we mimic THIS guy?
Life would suggest black love is a dead emotion. But amidst biting blogs and dismal statistics, brothers can’t afford to stop loving. We cannot afford to stop loving black women. Because even while walking on a hill covered with trash, true love keeps looking forward.
And somewhere, a tree keeps growing.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I am no psychologist. Nor am I versed in psychology. However, I studied the topic of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs the basis upon which I make the following comment.
One thing is certain: A man who has a healthy sense of self-identity will have to be realistic about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as it relates to his potential partner. Both parties should have a clear mental understanding of where their partner is in Maslow’s hierarchy.
If your partner is at the lowest level of the scale and you are higher, or vice versa, there will be a greater potential for conflict. This does not mean that there will be fewer problems when both parties share the same level of the hierarchy.
The following represents the stages of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
Physiological needs
For the most part, physiological needs are obvious — they are the literal requirements for human survival. If these requirements are not met, the human body simply cannot continue to function.
Air, water, and food are metabolic requirements for survival in all animals, including humans. Clothing and shelter provide necessary protection from the elements. The intensity of the human sexual instinct is shaped more by sexual competition than maintaining a birth rate adequate to survival of the species.
Safety needs
With their physical needs relatively satisfied, the individual’s safety needs take precedence and dominate behavior. In the absence of physical safety — due to terrorist attack, war, natural disaster, or, in cases of family violence, childhood abuse, etc. — people (re-)experience post-traumatic stress disorder and trans-generational trauma transfer. In the absence of economic safety — due to economic crisis and lack of work opportunities – these safety needs manifest themselves in such things as a preference for job security, grievance procedures for protecting the individual from unilateral authority, savings accounts, insurance policies, reasonable disability accommodations, and the like.
Safety and Security needs include:
Personal security
Financial security
Health and well-being
Safety net against accidents/illness and their adverse impacts
Love and belonging
After physiological and safety needs are fulfilled, the third layer of human needs are social and involve feelings of belongingness. The need is especially strong in childhood and can over-ride the need for safety as witnessed in children who cling to abusive parents which is sometimes called Stockholm syndrome. The absence of this aspect of Maslow’s hierarchy – due to hospitalism, neglect, shunning, ostracism etc. – can impact individual’s ability to form and maintain emotionally significant relationships in general, such as:
Friendship
Intimacy
Family
Humans need to feel a sense of belonging and acceptance, whether it comes from a large social group, such as clubs, office culture, religious groups, professional organizations, sports teams, gangs, or small social connections (family members, intimate partners, mentors, close colleagues, confidants). They need to love and be loved (sexually and non-sexually) by others. In the absence of these elements, many people become susceptible to loneliness, social anxiety, and clinical depression. This need for belonging can often overcome the physiological and security needs, depending on the strength of the peer pressure; an anorexic, for example, may ignore the need to eat and the security of health for a feeling of control and belonging.[citation needed]
Esteem
All humans have a need to be respected and to have self-esteem and self-respect. Esteem presents the normal human desire to be accepted and valued by others. People need to engage themselves to gain recognition and have an activity or activities that give the person a sense of contribution, to feel self-valued, be it in a profession or hobby. Imbalances at this level can result in low self-esteem or an inferiority complex. People with low self-esteem need respect from others. They may seek fame or glory, which again depends on others. Note, however, that many people with low self-esteem will not be able to improve their view of themselves simply by receiving fame, respect, and glory externally, but must first accept themselves internally. Psychological imbalances such as depression can also prevent one from obtaining self-esteem on both levels.
Most people have a need for a stable self-respect and self-esteem. Maslow noted two versions of esteem needs, a lower one and a higher one. The lower one is the need for the respect of others, the need for status, recognition, fame, prestige, and attention. The higher one is the need for self-respect, the need for strength, competence, mastery, self-confidence, independence and freedom. The latter one ranks higher because it rests more on inner competence won through experience. Deprivation of these needs can lead to an inferiority complex, weakness and helplessness.
Maslow also states that even though these are examples of how the quest for knowledge is separate from basic needs he warns that these “two hierarchies are interrelated rather than sharply separated” (Maslow 97). This means that this level of need, as well as the next and highest level, are not strict, separate levels but closely related to others, and this is possibly the reason that these two levels of need are left out of most textbooks.
Self-actualization
Main article: Self-actualization
“What a man can be, he must be.”[8] This forms the basis of the perceived need for self-actualization. This level of need pertains to what a person’s full potential is and realizing that potential. Maslow describes this desire as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.[9] This is a broad definition of the need for self-actualization, but when applied to individuals the need is specific. For example one individual may have the strong desire to become an ideal parent, in another it may be expressed athletically, and in another it may be expressed in painting, pictures, or inventions.[10] As mentioned before, in order to reach a clear understanding of this level of need one must first not only achieve the previous needs, physiological, safety, love, and esteem, but master these needs.
True