That's a pretty strong statement to make.
But I suddenly realized the other day that I am no longer attracted to black men. It came as a bit of a shock. I mean, I love my blackness, and would never choose to inhabit anything but this chocolate skin I am in. But my black brothers have made me hate them. They reject education, they reject courtesy, they reject ambition, they reject purpose, they reject spirit, they reject dignity. When I walk down the streets of my neighborhood, I am trailed by their disrespect, voices devoid of education whispering unspeakable things they'd never dare repeat to women of other races. Black men seem to have drawn 4 lines around themselves and sat tight. Worse, they seem content with the narrow world they've made for themselves. I have made it my business to find out why we're in the situation we're in. I don't claim to know it all, but it is deafeningly apparent that we're still scarred by the stereotypical roles foist upon us by Massa. My dad once read me this essay by a Dominican priest, observing the Black Caribbean populace about their Sunday. The men dressed like dandies, making the rounds of their several women and children, drinking and carousing with their buddies. Sounds like any neighborhood today, right? Except that Dominican priest was writing in the late 19th century. The times have changed, but black men cannot seem to shake the admonition from the Great House that they must be robust above all, bear many children to serve the Master's pleasure. They still heed the ancient scold that they are fit for nothing but manual labor.
Look brothers, I know it's hard. But it's up to all of us to get the enlightenment we need to understand who we were, to move past the darkness of four hundred dark years in this hemisphere. I know we were slaves, awfully, terribly persecuted, but look around you. You may not have noticed, but we survived. Despite manful efforts from the highest quarters to annihilate us, here we are still, dragging these battered exhausted bodies out on the strength of a prayer. The knowledge is there... people are writing and putting it where we can read, accessible via this infernal, wonderful machine on which I write. There is one black man who reached me... Randall Robinson's cry for his beloved country echoes through the pages of "Quitting America". As powerful and as sad a tome as I'll ever read, he attempts to share his theory of why the black man is so mired in self-loathing that he cannot seem to move. From Columbus to Bush, every effort is being made to destroy our cultural identity. But we must raise our fists and rail against it- we women are doing it, and you men must join us. Robinson tells a remarkable story I've never heard, that of an old slave telling a doctor that the way they would treat smallpox in Africa was to transfer a bit of matter from a smallpox sore into an uninfected person. That individual might then develop a minor case of smallpox, but this would be incomparable to the ravages of the full-blown disease. That doctor, Zabdiel Boylston, perhaps at his wit's end, followed the advice and was celebrated as the originator of the technique. Now I don't know how true the story is. I assume Mr. Robinson checked his facts, as a person of some eminence. But it certainly speaks to a glorious legacy, lost forever through theft. What must that Africa, of nobles and knowledge, pomp and grandeur, have been like?
I give our women much credit. Black women are the reason our Race still lives. Quietly, quietly they are holding it down for our people: raising our children (often solo), keeping the home together with spit and string, and still finding time... to excel on the job, to further their education. Sisters are starting businesses, buying property, running corporations. Our counterparts will have to labor long to catch up.
Incredible, overburdened women, still fighting to whisper words of hope to boy children ever in danger of falling in thrall to the thrilling, dispiriting streets: "you were once kings, you will be again..."
