This AAPP may be a bit clueless regarding many issues impacting black females. I must wonder out loud, is Mary Fields accurate in her recent article in Black College Wire: Single, Black, Female -- Disrespected By Mary Fields -- Black College Wire Black women are protrayed negatively in the media. We're shown to the world as dumb, lazy, obese, weave-scratching, finger-pointing, neck-rolling "Ashinkashays" who are perfectly content with six kids, six baby's fathers, and an unhealthy dependence on that check from the state every month. Those with a balanced view of black women know these things are not true. But what happens when the few men left in our community internalize this negative imagery? They abandon us, their queens, for white women. The sad thing is that these rappers are not far off. Tyson Beckford, Taye Diggs, James Earl Jones, Quincy Jones, Bryant Gumble (who left his black wife after 26 years for his white mistress) and most notoriously Wesley Snipes are just a few names of successful black men who have chosen to share their lives and successes with white women, and not the women holding their communities together, without their help. In a country where blacks are still socially and economically unequal to whites and women are barely getting through society based on merit and not by sexuality, we're born with a double deficit: being black and being a woman. On top of this, black men are dying in gang-related, drug-related and other senseless violence, and being incarcerated for extended periods of time for felonies at alarming rates. As of 2001, approximately two million black males were or had been incarcerated. It's no surprise then that black women have the least amount of prospects of any other race in terms of marriageable men within the black race. "So let's really break it down. Why are black men choosing submissive, controllable white women instead of strong black queens -- women like their mothers and all of the other shining examples of black female---no, complete black strength while they were growing up? It is because of an internalized self-hatred and the internalization of the imagery of the black woman as portrayed in mainstream media outlets. |