In order to understand the context of this piece, you must first read this: http://shanacee.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/a-white-womans-opinion-on-black-women/ . My response featured below ultimately became a novel-length Facebook status that I realize was better suited for this medium:
In light of a very silly article I just read by a White woman arguing that Black women all need to “check ourselves” because all our Black men prefer to date them because there are “slim pickings” among us, I want to say that I am so tired of logging onto my social media and seeing Black women slandered by both White and Black people.
There are successful, intelligent and beautiful women of all races just as there are women who participate in activities we do not respect. When discussing Black women, there always seems to be this desire to act as though we have fallen from grace. I saw a meme the other day of Black women who were civil rights activists placed next to a picture of Black women who are provocatively dancing today, and the caption said look at what we’ve come to today. There are successful Black women all over your magazines, tv screens and even in the White House but yet we choose to act as though the only representative of Black women are negative ones.
I don’t know why Black people have this desire to act as though if there are any Black people in the world that are “ghetto” or “ratchet”, then they must be our sole representatives and we need to complain 24/7 about why shows like Love and Hip Hop need to be off the air. Represent yourselves. If you watch TV and are upset that Mimi and Stevie J are our representatives, you have personal issues. We are individuals, stop expecting every Black person to wear the burden of behaving like Mother Theresa in order to defend and represent the entire race.
And furthermore, stop acting as though every Black person in the past was like Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, Huey Newton and people like that in order to act as though because we have Black people today that are not community leaders or activists, that our worth as a race has decreased. There is no singular type of Black person, there is no one singular path Black people travel. Stop looking for one Black savior and then condemning the rest of the race. If you know a Black woman that is angry, that does not make all Black women vessels filled with only rage. If you know a Black man that is a criminal, not all Black men are. If you know a Black person that is uneducated, not only is that not representative of everybody, but how about you look at the circumstances that could have allowed for that.
We are a complex group of INDIVIDUALS with complex experiences, beliefs and behaviors.
Image from hollistics.com
