Have black men failed black women?

We should all be concerned about the state of black women's relationships, if not because we genuinely give a shit about the fact that most black women will die poor and lonely, then because we don't know what effect this is gonna have on the rest of us. Could there have been a Don Imus incident if there weren't so many single mothers in this country crying themselves to sleep at night? These bitches are gonna fuck around and bankrupt hip-hop just because they can't find anyone to be with.

The reason I bring this up is because I just saw a few segments of this series NBC Nightly News is running called African American Women: Where They Stand. It's been running all week long, and I figured I might not catch any of it, but then I stumbled upon a link to the segment about the dating woes faced by black women just now and I watched about 20 minutes of it. I was perusing a few of these blogs run by members of The Oprah Lobby, and that shit was linked to all over the place. Those motherfuckers are up in arms!

(Tonight is actually the segment on hip-hop's effect on black women, which I'm sure will just be fantastic. But I'm not gonna be able to catch it, because I'm going out of town in a little bit.)

Which is surprising, actually, given what I've seen and read of the series. At the very least, I think you could say it was presented with a level of professionalism, which I think we all know isn't always the case when it comes to media depictions of black folks and our issues. BET, anyone? I'm just saying. It seemed like the entire series was delivered from the perspective of a bourgeois, middle-aged black woman, but I wasn't even sweating that as much. They could have brought on Michael Eric Dyson, for the sake of equal time, but what difference would it have made, really?

Overall, I'd say the depiction of black women was very positive, and - proud black man that I am - I'm willing to admit that this was fairly warranted. As mentioned in the bit called "Booming in business," black women are starting their own businesses at record rates, and you fruits know I advocate a black person owning his own business, even if it's a woman. The main issue that's been raised with the series in general is that so many of the successes and failures of black women are presented in relation to the failures and... um, failures of black men. But I'd say a lot of that's self-inflicted.

Perhaps because it's in a woman's nature to derive her sense of self worth from a man (and I'm sure every woman who ever reads this will pretend to disagree), women tend to view every aspect of their lives in terms of how it relates to men. Which is why, I'm assuming, so much of this series has had to do with why black men don't achieve in education at the same level of black women, and why professional black women have such a hard time finding a man with a comparable level of income (who would have any interest in them).

If the tables were turned, and black men were doing remarkably well and black women weren't (I know, science fiction), I seriously doubt that there would be films and countless articles and segments on the nightly news during a motherfucking war about successful black men not being able to find successful black women. Newsflash, ladies: most men who are well-educated and who have achieved a modicum of success in their careers don't get nearly as much pussy as they might definitely deserve, "successful" or otherwise. But you know what? They (read I) learn to deal with it. Why do you think there's so much pr0n on the Internets?

Of course one of the many differences between a man and a woman is that women bear the burden of child-rearing. It's only right, then, that a women would seek to have a man in her life, to share some of that burden. And in that sense, you can see why it wouldn't be quite as vital for a man to have a woman around, though he'd certainly like one, especially on some of these cold winter's nights! Also, a woman might add, since a woman is entitled to bear children, it's incumbent on a man to do whatever he can to support a woman in this regard. And if he won't, she will anyway, and she'll still blame him, regardless of whether he had anything to do with it.

Lest you think I'm bullshitting (because I am sometimes), this is more or less stated outright in a segment of African American Women: Where They Stand. It's a particularly touching segment, in which the host, Rahema Ellis (sp?!), recounts her decision to adopt a child that looks just like CL Smooth (I think its name is even Corey), despite the fact that she was divorced from her husband. I got a little bit verklempt watching it, and you girls know that all there is is a tiny lump of black coal where my heart used to be.

You have to wonder though, how important is it that a child be raised by two parents? Are black kids turning out all fucked the fuck up because they have one parent instead of two, or because, whatever they've got, it doesn't have a whole lot of money. After all, there's countries in Europe where plenty of women raise children by themselves, and you don't see nearly the same issues. So my guess is that the issue might not be that the black man has failed the black woman, but that it just costs so much to raise a child in this country. And contrary to popular opinion, most black women in this country aren't these world conquering middle management closet lesbians you see on the NBC Nightly News, it's these bitches I used to see working in the drive thru at White Castle, coming through at 11 p.m. on a school night with a car full of kids and no man, ordering a big-ass bag of trans fat-laden chicken rings.

But you guys know I'm racist like that. What do you fruits think?