Over the last few years, I have really been rethinking my place in the so-called black "community". I have been reflecting over everything that I have been taught about being a person of black American descent and what society at large tells me about it. I have been questioning whether or not it's all right and if maybe somewhere between all of the black power and social struggles of times past, what it really means to be black in America has somehow gotten lost in translation. When one examines in particular the roles that the women are asked to play, it becomes an even murkier puddle.
One of the first things that I have realized is the disproportionate amount of responsibility placed on black women to be the "back-bone" of the community. They are expected to raise children, hold down full-time jobs, cook, clean, and comfortably stand on the side lines cheering on black men in their personal struggles to achieve upward mobility. She is supposed to be sensitive to his needs and challenges and not give him too much trouble by demanding more of him, because after all, it's still so hard for a black man.
For the last few generations, this "race woman" concept has been hammered into black women and says that they are supposed to "support their men" and if they do this, then the great race uplift project that spawned the modern-day black community (and its problems) could achieve it's goals. Black women would be protected and defended and be able to raise their children in comfort and finally receive respite for the centuries of sexual exploitation and abuse. She would be respected, honored, loved and accepted for who she was, just as strong as she is graceful, and she would be praised for her dedication to the race.
Fast forward about 40 years and you have what we now call the black community- a den of violence, misogyny and chaos that somehow still manages to pass for a culture of proud people striving to achieve a common goal. I don't need to repeat the statistics on the levels of crime, poverty, violence, out of wedlock births, and lack of education. We all know them. What I want to know, is when will someone finally standup and say: "Something is wrong here?"
I love my mother. I never met anyone like her in my life. She is the strongest and most feminine woman I know (maybe only after my grandma). When I look back over my life and see all that she had to go through, I marvel still how her hopes and dreams of a happy family life, being supported and nurtured by the man whose children she bore, completely crashed all around her and she still never complained and never used it as an excuse to let me down as a mother. My earliest memory of her is her coming home in a rush and switching into her uniform to go to her second job. Her work ethic would put the average CEO to shame and her attitude never ceases to be anything but pleasant and joyful. No one would ever have known that for so many years she would come home to an alcoholic, emotionally unavailable and cold-hearted excuse for a man and a dilapidated shot-gun shack full of holes, rats and had no central air or heat. She wasn't happy with my fathers lack of ambition and complete disinterest in his family. She never accepted his cheating or cruelty. She simply did what so many black women have been taught to do when they find themselves dealing with a dead beat. Believe in him. Stand by him. Support him. Encourage him. Motivate him. And she did it all so well. So well. When I was 15 he walked out. To this day the man has no idea if I am living or dead. And he doesn't care.
I don't blame my mother for my fathers errors. All she did was fall in love with a man she thought loved her, got married and preceded to give him three children and the best years of her life. 30 of them in fact. What I have never been able to resolve is why wasn't this enough? Why wasn't the fact that he chose her to marry not enough to motivate him to aspire to a greater quality of life for her? Why did she have to beg and plead for him to find a better paying job, to get a better home decent for his family to live in, to actually have conversations with his children? Why did it never occur to him that the woman who bore his children and those children themselves were precious and deserved safety and comfort? But the question that I have asked myself more than anything, is why- WHY- was it so easy on his conscience to just pick up and leave? After all of this questioning and pondering, I think I have found the answer:
Because there is no fraternity, no church, no club, no law, no shaming and no principle that keeps black men accountable. In short, he did it because he could and he knew he would not be the one paying the price
-he wasn't the back-bone of the community.
Perhaps there was a period in time when all of the social indoctrination that black women received was beneficial in some ways, back when blacks were facing terrorism daily and needed to keep the family and communities strong. What I have become aware of is that black men of former generations, like my great-uncles and great-grandfather, while far from perfect, had a stronger sense of upholding black male masculinity and indeed saw it as their duty to protect and provide for their families and the black community at large. I don't mean to say that there has never been issues related to how the sexes relate but rather that I doubt it was ever such a definitive part of the black experience. Also, so many black males of today base their ideals of what a black woman should be on their grandmothers or women from times past, but fail to realize that if they were the ideal women they are so nostalgically fond of, it's more than likely because the men of those generations held themselves to much higher standards.
And so, this all leads me to my original reason for writing this post: why my blog is called "Just Climbing." In 1904, Mary Church Terrell, a child of slaves and civil rights activist, once said in a speech she was giving about the plight of black women:
" Lifting as they climb, onward and upward they go struggling and striving and hoping that the buds and blossoms of their desires may burst into glorious fruition ere long. Seeking no favors because of their color nor charity because of their needs they knock at the door of Justice and ask for an equal chance."
It amazes me that 108 years later this speech is still so relevant to my life today. However, there is something that
has changed:
I ain't lifting nobody! No race. No community. No man.
What the younger generations of black women and girls must accept is that:
1. Times have changed and applying the same sick model to our modern day situation spells suicide for black women and girls.
2. That they have the right to pursue an identity outside of the black community's definition of what a woman should be.
If you are on the fence or just think that any woman who chooses to opt-out of being black-community identified is just crazy, let me ask you this: what have black women gotten for unquestioningly following the ideals and values of the black community? Where are the benefits? Will I be protected? Defended? Honored? Respected? Loved? Appreciated? Will my struggles as a woman be shared as a collective plight or fodder for sick people's entertainment? If I choose to give my body in love and trust, will it be held as precious or rather just another plot to till? Will I come first? Will I be judged by my character and not the color of my skin? Will I find a safe place to rest? I have considered all of these things and the answer, sadly, is a big. effing. no. There is nothing in it for me.
Therefore, I am Just Climbing. I'm not lifting. I'm not sitah soldering. I'm not claiming as a brother (or a sister) any one who does not share my values and refuses to protect my interests. And my climb isn't the often over-romanticized vision of black struggle against the white devil who keeps him down. No. This is a climb for education, a climb to improve my financial and social status, to develop my own interests and ideas, to achieve my goals and to obtain the best quality partner (of any color) who desires to give me the love and comforts that I deserve as I equally strive to reciprocate. It is a climb for self-actualization.
I don't know where my life, or this blog, is going to lead me, but I do no one thing- I am my own possession and the soul authority over my own life and anyone's irrelevant conceptualization of what my life is supposed to mean can just go kick rocks.
