Episode 4: Black Women Are Often Viewed as Unworthy by Black Men, Unless We’re Black “And.”

Don’t mind me while I rant.

I failed to create the family I was raising because to me, it didn’t turn out to be the picture-perfect image of black love and solidarity that I had been striving for.

I’ll admit, I collapsed under the pressure. All I ensured was our survival, and that our daughter fared way better than either of us did. He was present but never led. He didn’t know how to, and cared more for gaming and his personal pursuits than he did to learn.

This man isn’t a good man. Black men like him aren’t good men.

As a class, they’re way more misogynistic, emotionally unavailable, and emotionally immature. They’ll promise you everything and deliver far less or nothing at all of themselves; if you’re upset or disappointed by this, somehow your disappointment is your own fault. And because you’ve learned how to prioritize his struggle, his position, and his success more than you prioritize your own, it feels like you simply ignore what you can’t deny.

The unrealistic expectations of the black men in your life are somehow okay; you eventually make peace with being a priority in these niggas’ lives. And when you can’t make peace with being less important, it’s easy to be angry with everyone who is. to be angry than to have empathy for yourself.

For Christ’s sake, more black men than any other have tried to convince me the gender wage gap doesn’t exist, and that white people and capitalism are responsible for every single injustice or social ill, even the ones they personally impose upon their own women and children. They can fuck up your head, and fuck up your life — and know that they’ve done so. But as long as they don’t beat or kill you or kill, and pay for things sometimes, these men think they’re good men. They’re doing you a favor by helping you out, they think, though they inflicted upon you wounds and mental travel that may need healing for the rest of your life.

“He’s hurting you with his low standards for himself, and you’re hurting yourself by accepting them.”

Being a black woman is a sentence with no commute.

“How do you tune the world out when it outnumbers you?”

I heard my grandmother’s voice again last night, telling me to pray.

Nothing I knew was real.

He could never be the man I thought he was, though I believed his potential was real. Believing always kept me afloat. But I know a man is what he does right now — in the present. In front of you. He is NOT what he could one day be or do.

Even if he has potential, wasting it produces the same outcome as having none.