Episode 6: We Can’t Trust Black Men Because They Never Learned How to Be Good Men

We never want to prove white people right when it comes to what they think and say about black men. As black girls it becomes one of our first responsibilities, to safeguard the reputations of our men, especially if you’re fortunate enough to grow up with a dad in the house. But black men have a unique talent for cannibalizing their own and pouring salt onto wounds. Because of the shame they carry from enduring their position in their countries, the close relationships they have with black women who aren’t their mothers are often those of master and slave. Black men create standards and communities that in which they project upon us generations of angst and self-loathing so intrinsic they have to be felt to be known.

They’re more misogynistic than most other men and will try to convince you their emotional immaturity, emotional unavailability, and aloofness toward your accomplishments are products of your female attitude or behavior. Instead, they’re really the result of black men’s inability to see where they are failing themselves.

What he cannot deny or ignore, or what he refuses to confront, he will simply blame on you. His faults will always pale compared to yours, even after he’s spent a lifetime neglecting and aggressive or passive aggressively disrespecting you or your mother. He creates unrealistic expectations for you to live up to in order to justify not prioritizing you in his life when you fail to meet them. To him, as a black woman, you are a placeholder until he tastes money or freedom. As soon as black men experience any type of freedom, they leave their women and families behind, both literally and figuratively. Yet they’ll blame racism or capitalism or western ideologies for most of the problems within the black community. For all the community’s problems not caused by rich white people, the rest are caused by you. Imagine that.

It’s easy for him to disregard you because most of the time, he doesn’t think your struggles are real. He doesn’t believe your experiences are anywhere near as real as they feel to you, because he wasn’t there to see them and no one he knows has personally experienced them. (Never mind the fact that he knows you). Black men are to black women what white society is to black people: blind. Black men are not our protectors. Oftentimes, they are our worst antagonists.

Black men hurt us, and we hurt ourselves to keep them, because both the men and women within our communities blame us if we leave. We try to hold him accountable; we try to push and support our men to be better versions of themselves. But really, they ways in which they expect us to support them, and how they want to see themselves centered in our lives is a form of mom-ing them. A real man doesn’t need this from his woman, however: he’s already done being parented. Healthy, emotionally mature grown men make regular practice of developing their mental and emotional resilience.

As a woman, what do you actually know about a man? You know everything he shows you right now, nothing more. So, plan your life accordingly, black women. The only thing I accomplished on my quest for the perfect black love was survival. But I know now that I deserve a love that’s more than that.

Being a black woman is a sentence with no commute. That is, unless you divest.