Episode 17: Divesting From the Race, Gender, and Class Expectations of Black Culture

• Don’t make Black men’s expectations your own.
  
• Most Black men are racist. If they’re not racist towards white people, they’re racist towards Black women.
  
• As a Black woman, you will never convince a Black man that he’s the problem. When it comes to Black men, it takes men to check other men.

Empowering Black Women through Divestment

Divestment empowers Black women by challenging the cultural expectations among Black people that perpetuate our marginalization. Divestment advocates for Black women to protect our well-being and success.

Many of the issues Black women face with Black men are global. Around the world, Black men profit from their disrespect of Black women: if they’re not paid to be hateful toward us, they’re rewarded for it by other Black men and their sycophants. No other group of men discards, abandons, and slanders their women at the rate that Black men do.

Some Black men argue that they are simply victims of global colonization, and of the systemic racism toward Black women colonization has entailed. Black women have historically been positioned at the bottom of all academic, social, and beauty hierarchies, although over the last 50 years, we’ve achieved quite a lot for ourselves on all fronts. There has never been a better time to be a Black woman than right now.

Therefore, divesting from African American culture, in particular, is a powerful political statement. It signals our refusal to accept the exploitative Black status quo that cannibalizes Black women, and our demand for a community where our chosen men treat us with the respect and honor that any loving partner deserves.

Black women divesting fosters a sense of solidarity and community among other Black women. Maintaining this sense of community is a must if you have chosen to withdraw from African American culture at large. When we avoid harmful dynamics, Black women can redirect our energy towards building supportive networks that uplift and empower each other. We create new places for us to belong.

Advocating for men who do not care about us, contribute to our families, society, or the communities and families they came from has been destructive to us.

As the majority of Black men are either absent or indifferent, resentful or distracted, this is not a cultural standard, Black women, that we have to accept.

Our lives quickly change once we free ourselves of this expectation.