It’s open season on black womanhood. Nightline became the latest media outlet to tackle the issue of why black women aren’t married. The problem is not the topic, but the approach. Like a recent series of articles, books, and television segments (and one Nightline did last year), the show’s focus was on the purportedly low value of black women in the dating marketplace and the wisdom of black women’s choice to stay single versus marrying men who don’t fit their criteria.
Let’s get real for a minute here. Yes, black women are sometimes taken for granted by black men, and men of other races. (I’m thinking here of musician John Mayer saying he had a “David Duke c**k,” because it only responded to white woman. Black womens’ response, for the most part: awesome, dude! Less disfunction for us!) Black women also get oddly, back-handedly criticized for being too functional — for being the majority of black college graduates and growing old alone. In reality, black women with college degrees are more likely to have married by age 40 than those with high school degrees (70 to 60 percent). For white women, high school educated women are slightly more likely to have married than college-educated ones (88 to 86 percent). Read More »
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How Does It Feel to Be a Black, Female, Single Problem?
Reax to Tavis publishing R. Kelly Memoir
Reaction is running hot to Tavis Smiley gearing up to publish R. Kelly’s memoirs.
From the SmileyBooks press release
“I’m writing this book as Robert, not R. Kelly,” the singer says. “I’m tired of being misunderstood. I will show you the tears, fears, and sweat. I will open my heart and reveal the good in my life as well as all the drama. I want to tell it like it is.”
There is no direct mention of the sexual assault allegations that resulted in an acquittal.
From Gina MacCauley’s What About Our Daughters:
I had hoped this was a hoax, but apparently Tavis Smiley, who is accused of gathering large numbers of Black folks together so that they could get pitched predatory Wells Fargo loans (disproportionately affecting Black women) is joining forces with another accused predator, R. Kelly. Its amazing that the primary unifying force in the Black community is EXPLOITATION of women and girls. If you go to TavisTalks.com you will see front and center and item announcing that R. Kelly has joined Smiley Books. When is that State of the Black Union and how do we get a permit to protest it? I’m serious.
The comments are no less critical.
And from Danielle Belton’s The Black Snob:
And this book will be just another in a long line of signifiers to perverts that you can do pretty much anything to a woman, girl, child, whatever, and someone will love your trifling ass anyway because it’s our fault for having vaginas. But for Tavis, and others who claim to be holding the entire race to a higher standard, this is further proof that you never meant to hold anything to any standards ever. That “cash rules everything around you, dollah, dollah bill, ya’ll” and you could seriously give two craps about the implication of being the speakerbox to a known predator. After all, freedom of speech, ya’ll! And SOMEONE was going to publish his book so why not Mr. Accountability? Pardon me while I go regurgitate something.
(Belton’s blog also has a link to a guest post about Smiley and Wells Fargo.)
It provoked a conversation on Twitter where several of us talked about who gets the mic when it comes to representing blackness in media. The short answer, in my mind, is that the people who are the best at getting the mic are people who help build the platform: people like Tavis who are business-builders as well as media-makers. So all critiques have to be funneled through the lens of economics: if you don’t like what one mediamaker does, do you have an alternative brand or model?
What do you think?
