The loneliness of Black Womanhood

HEYYYYY FRENSSSS. So it has been a while. Between my grad school program, lack of energy, and frustration over a lot of things I took a lil break from the blog, BUT IM BACK AGAIN AND IM BETTA.

 So I did a lil insta poll to see what people wanted to hear about n shit and I got a lot of responses about the climate in the black community and the seeming tension between black men and women in here Amerikkka. I usually like to keep my personal politics out of the public because of backlash I don't want or need, but the people asked so I provide (plus my audience is small and quaint, which has its pros and cons lol).

 SO the other day a male acquaintance of mine,

who clearly doesn't have Google cuz he spends a lot of time askin me questions like I’m a search engine, went on a rant in front of me and my salad. He was ranting about how the black women community as a whole needs to stop focusing on feminism... and instead focus on the current “race war” in our country BECUH our blackness should come before our womanhood. When I audibly gasped he went on and asked me what I think of the two is my current priority. I would like to answer that question in this space.

First off, some context. So because of social media the wurl seems to think there is some sort of internal war amongst the blacks between the genders and its been brewing ever since feminism became trendy. First I would like to debunk this myth. I do consider myself a feminist and I love me some black womenz, but black women are some of the biggest promoters of patriarchy in our community. Outside of the young, hip, educated black millennial “sistas” that are the most vocal on twitter, many black womenz are totally fine with our oppression. Don't even let me get into the statistics to why we don't have the generational wealth we could have in our community. (Just do ya googles and you will see why it is still true no matter what people say that black women continue to ride and DIE for black men). Which is why I specified twitter, because the facebook crowd is a whole different story, trust me. Although light feminism may be popular, black radical feminist are not liked across the board by the black community and even women community as a whole. It's a lonely title to have but everyone is not built for activism (speaks for myself lol).

I bring facebook up because it is a crazy crazy internet wurl, but also the place where I recently found myself at a loss of words and where I realized how lonely black womanhood is. I have very vocal friends and family members whose politics don't align with my own who love to use facebook as their platform. These politics tend to be extremely Black Male centered. This folk continues to erase women and black women specifically out of their fairytale narratives that they create. A prime example is the Brett Kavanaugh case. Like many black men and women, so many people on my fb feed were not as concerned that a now supreme court justice member was likely out here sexually assaulting women, but more upset that white men could get away with these things and black MEN could not. This was very similar to the reaction over Bill Cosby and his arrest. Many people thought, “sure it sucks he prolly rape a bih or two but why no white men got locked up over rape, huh?”.

 EW!

But the Brett Kavanaugh case was special. It was special because while many black men were ready to fight over the fact a white man got away with some B.S. again...they didn't do their research or conveniently forgot that CLARENCE THOMAS the BLACK ASS supreme court judge who CURRENTLY is on the supreme court ALSO WAS ACCUSED OF SEXUAL ASSAULT.  He was accused by a black woman who also had to share her testimony before he was appointed... and he sits on the supreme court until this day.

When I pointed this out to many of the black men in my life they came up with excuses “oh well we don’t like him anyway”, “that don’t even count forreal he a whole Republican  “oh he lost his black card a long time ago”...etc...etc...etc.

For some reason the black community does not want to believe or acknowledge male privilege, and it truly disgusts me. If we do not acknowledge the real how can we fix anything?

That lack of acknowledgement alone as well as the lack of care for the women in our community makes being Black and Women extremely lonely.

It's hard to align with feminism as a whole when you have leaders of the movement such as Bette Midler (who I adore by the way so I was very hurt by this)  saying: “women, are the n-word of the world. Raped, beaten, enslaved, married off, worked like dumb animals; denied education and inheritance; enduring the pain and danger of childbirth and life IN SILENCE for THOUSANDS of years They are the most disrespected creatures on earth."

...so black women do not exist...oh…

It is hard to align with blackness as a whole and black men specifically when as a woman you are disturbed and horrified by the actions of Bill Cosby but you have black men like Damon Wayans (who I also once adored smh) saying: “If I was him, I would divorce my wife, give her all my money, and then I would go do a deposition,” Wayans said. “I would light one of them three-hour cigars. I’d have some wine and maybe a Quaalude, and I would just go off, because I don’t believe that Cosby was raping.”

It is hard even to believe in the power of black womanhood when you have people like ERYKAH BADU OF ALL PEOPLE saying stuff on twitter  about how she “thinks that girls should “pull down their skirts” because they might serve as a distraction to the men that occupy their spaces in school settings”.

Black women cannot trust many non-POC women, our own men, and in some cases not even each other. We have to find these communities amongst the triflin people surrounding us and cultivate sisterhoods to keep our shit together. And it's tiring and hard.

SO when you ask me which is my priority, my blackness or my gender I am going to continue looking at you like you asked me to hold a dollar… like you a damn fool.

Black womanhood cannot be separated; it is an experience like conjoined twins with shared organs. They finna be together FOREVAAAAA.

...and that's the THAT on THAT.

Now I gotta drink some wine to decompress... may you all be living ya best lives.