“I loves you but I ain’t gonna be your fool.”

If anyone in here is old enough to remember The Flintstones, Ann Margrock (real life “Ann Margret”) was the subject of an episode where she sang this song and totally killed it.

Well, this isn’t cartoonland, but the words of that song are still quite distinctive and remarkable. I’ve said it before, I will say it again: Black men are the single biggest cause of the continuing impoverishment of Black women and children in the United States of America.

Forget for a moment what my wonderful dear and dearly departed Aunt Mabel said about “Black men being where they are supposed to be when they are supposed to be there,” because even though her answer was intrinsically interconnected into a long misguided story that dates back to prehistoric times, we cannot overlook the fact of the European slavery of Black people all over the world and its devastating impact on Black society to this very day.

It has not ended, they just got better at doing it.

In spite of all of those ugly social machinations and the extreme horror of American terrorism against persons of color, SOME (plenty) of Black men stood their ground against all the white supremacist forces that came at them and stayed in their households or close by, even with loud-mouth brassy bossy seemingly fearless Black women, and took care of business. Righteously, some white man is quoted as saying “Black women are made for grown men.” Women … not little girls. Note the difference.

Not too long ago, I had a radio show called “The Joshua Generation Network Radio” on The Legacy of a Nation. As much as I hated the sound of my own recorded voice, I was talked into hosting that show and did so for quite a few months; faithfully “on the air” each week even if I had to do it all by myself.

It took me more than six months to garner a decent enough audience to take on 2015 as “The Year of the American Black Woman” and bring in an invited and hand-picked panel of determined Black women WHO IMPRESSED ME to ride with me once a week to discuss some of the issues that bear on Black women the most. Well, long story short, we were soundly and effectively interrupted by the “owner” of the network, whose name I will not print here because it wasn’t about him as much as it was about what happened.

In the end, this strong Black man whom I admired deeply and still do, came into the scenario and circumstantially insulted all of the Black women on the panel with his “man in charge” attitude, and even though I tried a daunting “save” to explain his “bad attitude” (they told me later), it did no good and I was not able to go on for another number of months without that panel…people on the radio don’t do it just to hear themselves talk for two or three hours on a Talk Show.

The Truth

Admittedly, I have spent the majority of my own life being socially and economically uplifted by white males –whether I needed a good-paying job with benefits, some help “on the side,” or even a recommendation for another good job, and truth told, ultimately some solid white males who don’t believe in letting medical authorities “get away” with malpractice landed me into a home of my own and got me started on a good “last round” of my retired life, medical benefits and all. My attorney smiled when all was said and done and said “Congratulations! You deserve it.”

Sadly enough, I can’t say the same for very many Black men who have been in my life, and that is almost without exception.

I admired the real Black dads and honorable Black men from afar, but they were never a part of my personal core of Black males. I was raped, molested, manipulated, traumatized, torn down, and nearly destroyed by Black men who had never come close to being a positive part of my life the way MOST of the white men I encountered had. Even when I was in recovery mode this last episode, yet another Black man came into my presence to zap me of the energy I had left to try to stay alive and be okay.

He had been a good friend for years when we were younger, but I had to dismiss him post-haste and tell him never to come back to my house again. That tore me up, as he was really a good man and decent Brotha deep inside, but I had no more energy for being tapped of resources by someone who didn’t have the unction to become a help to me rather than a hindrance; not even a GOOD friend of more than 30 years. My only solution? NO more Black men in my life except for relatives and those who are working hard to save their own families and futures, and that, from a distance.

I’m not going to lie about it to save face in the Black community.

However, getting back to that BIGGER picture: There is such a thing as white supremacy in America, and it has to be defeated. It is not an excuse, it is a HISTORICAL FACT; even though Black men still don’t have a right or a reason to use it as leverage to do nothing at all.

A LOT of Black men would not go into mental trauma (post traumatic slave syndrome) about the need for them to BE men and take care of their families and wives/sistahs/girlfriends, or to be the kind of men who even try to understand why it is that “Sistahs” have to take the somewhat egotistical masculine stand that they do — if it wasn’t for the HIGH IMMORAL GROUND of white supremacy and racism in America. {Some Black women figure on being the man in their lives that no one else will, and rightfully so.}

That system of racism, by the way, has no reason of its own to operate any differently now than it has in times past, it is still highly profitable.

BUT.

There is a bigger picture here than our own self-comfort in the arms of soothing caring white men — sincere or not, whom we give credit to because they were there when they needed to be there, closing up gaps that Black men left wide open. Sister Shaharazad Ali is situationally right, but circumstantially wrong, when she says “welfare drove the Black man from the home.” Welfare fed a lot of Black children that would have starved to death if the moms had waited for the Black man/children’s father to come to his senses. And on the other side of this coin, in case you are wondering: NO, all of these white men were not trying to screw me and turn me into a Black “bedwench,” most of them blessed me and my sons in the only ways they could and moved on.

That said, HIGH SALUTE to the Black men who toughed it out even when “Mama” was getting on his ding-dang largest nerve and even when he was afraid things were not going to work out because the doors of opportunity were majorly CLOSED (and they were, and some still are).

I cannot turn my back on the need to kill white supremacy at its root just because I can testify that white men had a more positive impact on my life (OUTSIDE of the filthy nasty racist ones) than Black men. This struggle to rid the world of white supremacy is bigger on my moral compass than my own personal comfort; it is the legacy that I leave for my own Sistahs, sisters, and grandgirls, that matters more than what a big house, or what a nice car, or how many mink stoles and free tickets to Blingland that some white man was willing to wrap about my shoulders on a cold and dark night.

The white men I’ve known who were NOT prejudiced understand exactly what I mean by this and would never be offended. I talked to them about it and they got it, and one of them even told me NEVER leave out the race piece ‘until it ends’. #blacklivesmatter isn’t a slight to them, it’s a necessary cause to defeat the SYSTEM, not to destroy THEIR white lives.

I’ve been the “exceptional” Black woman in white America; and I’ve turned it down and lived to regret it…falling into worse and worse circumstances with every Black man I have encountered in my short 50-odd years on this Earth, some not their fault, most of it was their own fault. It was an amazing thing to me to hear a Black man say he told the judge to add more to his alimony “because I will never let my children say I left their mother broke and in poverty.”

I will let it be known that now therefore, hence and forevermore — I love Black men (especially my four Black@ sons and their sons) and I love the fact that SOME of them are waking up to the bullchit that has fallen at their feet and lies within their own realm of culpability in TODAY’S America.

However …

I will ALSO encourage Black women to set aside “gross feminism” for the cause of the ENTIRE Black family in America, for nation-building with its God-given righteous leader and head honcho.

But I cannot and I will not stand idly by and let any Black man on Earth make an outright poverty-stricken begging “Mary J Blige”-crying fool of a Sistah just to appease Black male superiority any more than I would to appease white supremacy in any form. Duly noted that too many white women are at the heart of the cause of racism’s rampant continuance, as well, be they jealous of Black women, or just overtly fearful of us.

I’ve been there and it ain’t pretty, which may explain why I ain’t what they call ‘pretty’.(LOL)

TAKE CAREFUL NOTE: Black women should not be raped “and NO one,” as former peace officer Daniel Holtzclaw is said to have said “is listening.” ESPECIALLY not if a Black man does it, let alone a white arsshole like that one.

It’s 100/100, fellas, or nothing at all.

You can never accuse us of ignoring you, for that is the same thing as ignoring the blood of our fathers, husbands, sons, lovers, brothers, nephews, uncles and cousins … and even some of THEM have raped and abused us.

YOU be the Miracle and tell Black women, either we do this TOGETHER or not at all.
#buildnations

#30#

“This ain’t Pussy Riot, this is the LAAAW and the Prophecies: [LAAAW: League of Activated African American Women] We loves you, but … we ain’t gonna be no fools.”

Part 4