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There is nothing wrong with getting ahead of the curve and facing the reality that if a man can't make enough money to support his family, then leaving the family and just supporting your self is not an option. We are moving into an era where less and less labor is needed across the board in all industries.
This trend will impact the black community first. The problem is we have undervalued women in the role of home maker for so long that a man won’t think of it as actually making a worthwhile contribution to his family.
I grew up in a family of 10 kids in the inner city both parents worked menial jobs. In those days you could do fine without welfare under those conditions. All ten kids went to college and there were no police records.
That is a by gone era, you can’t even support a family today with two low wage jobs. Whatever paradigm shift it takes to get black women and men home every evening and weekend together as a family is worth trying. Black families have always have always been impacted first with the changing dynamics in labor. What black women need is stability in the family unit.
You contradicted yourself. If a family can't be supported by two low-wage jobs--and most black men and black women alike are in low-wage jobs and will be for a good while--then we can't talk about single-earner families becoming the norm regardless which one stays home.
This may be semi off topic, but I just want people to understand what it's like being a black woman in America, from my wife's perspective.
Back in 2011 when my wife did this "experiment," she had a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a master's degree in Human Resource Management, and 5 years of experience in her field.
My wife's name is "Tamika," a name that immediately identifies her as black. When we first moved to Denver in 2011, she applied to jobs that she was more than qualified for. She got a few phone calls, but that was it. No interviews, very little interest. Discouraged, she tried a little experiment. She changed her name on her resume from "Tamika" to just "Tami," and then applied to jobs. I have an Irish last name, so on paper as "Tami McClain" (just used McClain as an Irish name example), she no longer appeared black. Exact same resume, exact same credentials. Just "Tami" instead of "Tamika."
You know where this is going, don't you? Yep, you do. After six months of applying to jobs in the Denver area with a "black name" and zero interviews, after just 3 weeks of applying with "Tami," she had three interviews, and landed a job as a Technical Writer with a major US Bank. Regardless of your political affiliation, how can you not be disgusted by that????
I've never been one to play the race card. I'm a black man. Yes, I have been pulled over by police 18 times since 2001. Yes, I have had police search my car with drug dogs more than once and didn't even get a ticket. Yes, when we exit through the "receipt checker person" as Costco, it feels like they take a lot longer to check our receipt than the 5 white people in front of us. Yes, I feel like I always have to work hard at my job and never slack off as I fear being labeled/stereotyped as a "lazy black man." Yes, I've been called a ****** (n-word) before. That's just life as a black man. I'm 34, I'm used to it.
But my wife was dealt the double whammy. She's black, and she's a woman. She's got it harder than I do. So every time I might feel a little sorry for myself because somebody else at my job got a promotion that i felt I was more qualified for, I just try to keep things in perspective and remember that my wife didn't even get phone calls for jobs she was qualified for.
I love my country, but sometimes it infuriates me how so many people are completely oblivious to situations like my wife's job search.... and how things like that happen every single day. My parents are both white (I'm adopted), and when I told my mom the story about what happened to my wife applying to jobs, she was so frustrated that she started crying tears of anger.
America.
Now, this is a post that begins to address the element.. Racism!!! yes, after 100's of years of that institution, where the systems mandate was to divide and conquer, well if if you think that divide was just between blacks and whites, you are not paying attention. That divide had to have the premise in its function to create divide within the black people, and within that group of people, it needed a secondary divide, which was a divide between the black man and the black woman..
Now the point of the matter is simple. Ovecoming all those divides gave the dominators means to see when one may over come one divide, they'd pursue to over come the next. So, if the man and woman was overcoming the divide between them, there was a system, of either, take the woman and rape the woman and make sure the man knows, and make sure her shame becomes a wedge, while at the same time, forcing the care of a baby from rape in the mix, so he is to never forget, that the master can have his woman at any time. If they over came that, then there was always, selling of the kids, or selling of the wife or husband.
Listen people.. Slavery was no joke. EVERY ASPECT OF LIFE was factors, and script in place for complete dominance, that why it was called slavery.
To make a slave means to "take everything" including their name, and their sense and concept of spirituality and damage their soul with pain and despaire, where you have total submission and total dominance over those whom you enslave.
Therefore, when Slavery was abolish, there was not programs to help people learn the steps out of slavery or how to unwind centiries of damage. They were cast out, in destitution and left desperate, because the former slave masteres were angry they could not longer get free labor, and no longer force by malice of whip and condemnation under his rule the labor from the people.
So, the social design was to deny opportunity and wait for desperation to fore people to accept less than they were due, and the sacrifice was they had to give up everything to take that job, and it provided only enough to barely feed their young. To assure that man and woman would sperate, the same game of using black men as studs was interjected, where the only way he could be given a regard of esteem was based on how many women he could bed, not how many children he could take care of.
People, realize, that the system of slavery invaded every law, every social function and system and the whole of society, and just because one was given the opportunity to not be tied down to the plantation did not mean he was free to enjoin society and become on equaility and equilibrium with white society nor white ideas, because he had economic disparity, and many of the other chains that he could not even get to seeing, because they were layered upon him so thing and deep, until he breaks one, only to find another ......
So... if one is not going to re-adjust and modify the aims of the post, to go into the depth of structure, then they are only dealing with a surface level, of symptoms, and not dealing with the root of the condition.
If you really want to engage this subject. I've many post that give many aspects of reflective invocation to pursue further inquiry...
But, why not first come to lay out some Identity of what is slavery, and how it was structured to function..
Because many have not a clue in that realm of understanding, before it goes into trying to deal with various dynamics of what has culminated into current day conditions.
The pass, is a great teacher, but it requires a dedicated student, if one expect to become a capable and functioning figure in grooming offspring for the future.
When you find truths on here or any place, how much do you share it to enlighten other? many simply don't. We don't even share the politican necessity, which is why we have so much apahty in the black communities when it comes to political awareness... but it was political decision that sanctioned the bondage, that it took political decisions to unlock the shackles.
But, how many truly deal with this, other than surface level bickering and everyone walks away less aware of fact and mor wound up in uncontrollable emotions, but have learned nothing that can infuse the associates and the future generations of how to learn to grow.. Because nature makes one grow, but to learn "how to grow" is what matters.
Too many people are lost into hair, nails, cars, gadgets, trucks and status labels and such, until, we have no ideas what truly matters and we waster our resources pushing external imagery, when our minds are starved to oblivion for the truths that give its the will to become what God gave it capability to be and do.
What I was getting at with the stay at home moms is the propensity for black women to work rather than stay at home. I think this is a good thing due to the employment statistics of black men. My mother and my father's mother were at odds because my mother chose to work and not stay home.
I think there is more competition between upper class black men and women because they are competing with each other for the few high paying positions for black people. Lower classes don't have this problem because some low paying jobs may have a workforce that is majority black. I think the stay at home black dad is going to have to be the new normal (for upper class and lower class black families) if black men want to support black women and this is a reality that more black women will have to embrace in order to keep the family intact.
On the bold, please note that even with black women being more educated, they still make less than black men...
Also it is a cultural aspect of black women to work, our grandmothers and great grandmothers worked. I am a black woman and have been a SAHM and didn't like it. I only did it until my kids were 2 years old as I didn't want them in daycare as babies and neither did my husband. He worked 3 jobs when I stayed at home (sometimes a 4th). I also worked from home doing customer service and contract based work.
One cannot compare the general "millenial" with black America in regards to domestic trends. And black men have had a much higher rate of providing actual care to children for a long time versus other men. My dad bathed me and did my hair when I was a girl. My grandfather did the same for my aunts when they were girls. All of my grandmothers and great grandmothers worked and both parents took care of the children, though, like today, women took the brunt of the childcare and housework.
You contradicted yourself. If a family can't be supported by two low-wage jobs--and most black men and black women alike are in low-wage jobs and will be for a good while--then we can't talk about single-earner families becoming the norm regardless which one stays home.
The status quo isn't working well now and it will be less viable moving forward.So I'm not contradicting myself because what we have now has to be changed to accommodate low wage earners existing in traditional family units. A relative of mine was shocked by what he owed in taxes one year and it moved him to make drastic changes. He quit his job, paid off his house and stayed home for 12 years. No more two nice cars and parade of handyman fixing this or that, eating out etc. After the last kid left college he went back into the work force
The status quo isn't working well now and it will be less viable moving forward.So I'm not contradicting myself because what we have now has to be changed to accommodate low wage earners existing in traditional family units.
We will all be glad to see your plan to bell that cat.
Quote:
A relative of mine was shocked by what he owed in taxes one year and it moved him to make drastic changes. He quit his job, paid off his house and stayed home for 12 years. No more two nice cars and parade of handyman fixing this or that, eating out etc. After the last kid left college he went back into the work force
Quit his job? So he paid off his house and stayed home for 12 years, and put his kids through college with no income?
We will all be glad to see your plan to bell that cat.
Quit his job? So he paid off his house and stayed home for 12 years, and put his kids through college with no income?
Sounds like magic to me.
Or you've left out a heck of a lot of that story.
This is the early seventies, Masters degree, two kids, VA loan with a substantial amount down. Wife makes around 30G, House bought for 27G, very little tax burden, smart kids get scholarships. substantial gardening, no more two car payments, I watched it happen.
This is the early seventies, Masters degree, two kids, VA loan with a substantial amount down. Wife makes around 30G, House bought for 27G, very little tax burden, smart kids get scholarships. substantial gardening, no more two car payments, I watched it happen.
Why did you present that as an example of anything likely or possible today?
That said, often we don't see [many] black men PUBLICALLY advocating for black women's issues they way that they've campaigned for us in the past.
How do we advocate for OURSELVES without neglecting the hardships of women?
On the first sentence:
-what I've come to learn is that black women are not a monolith. And along with that their prioritizing of said issues can vastly differ.
-as a black person we should know how silly it can get when someone tries to speak "on behalf" of black people and that person is not black. People add their own agendas. Black men do it to.
-black women are very much capable of speaking for themselves. In my opinion, black women are a lot more organized and unified that black men. Black women as a collective carry a very big "stick" especially online. After all, this is the most educated group in American society.
-attempting to speak for black women can backfire easily, due to some of the stuff I said above...black women can be vastly different and you can come off as trying to control them.
If you want to see an example...Kendrick Lamar...he recently had some black women attack him because he made song/video where he talked about liking black women who are "natural". This is the type of thing that can scare black men away from speaking "for" black women.
On the second sentence:
-honestly, I feel like we, black men, and black women have similar interests to a point. I just don't think there is a playbook for this especially considering our pasts.
Also, just in general I think the division between black men and women is vastly exaggerated. A few radicals on both sides, mainly online talking head and twitter birds, can make it seem like a war is raging between us. When in reality there isn't one.
On the first sentence:
-what I've come to learn is that black women are not a monolith. And along with that their prioritizing of said issues can vastly differ.
-as a black person we should know how silly it can get when someone tries to speak "on behalf" of black people and that person is not black. People add their own agendas. Black men do it to.
-black women are very much capable of speaking for themselves. In my opinion, black women are a lot more organized and unified that black men. Black women as a collective carry a very big "stick" especially online. After all, this is the most educated group in American society.
-attempting to speak for black women can backfire easily, due to some of the stuff I said above...black women can be vastly different and you can come off as trying to control them.
If you want to see an example...Kendrick Lamar...he recently had some black women attack him because he made song/video where he talked about liking black women who are "natural". This is the type of thing that can scare black men away from speaking "for" black women.
On the second sentence:
-honestly, I feel like we, black men, and black women have similar interests to a point. I just don't think there is a playbook for this especially considering our pasts.
Also, just in general I think the division between black men and women is vastly exaggerated. A few radicals on both sides, mainly online talking head and twitter birds, can make it seem like a war is raging between us. When in reality there isn't one.
What I think happens more often than people are willing to admit is that these issues specific to black women tend to be laid on the doorstep of Black Men as the central point of the problems that they harbor.
Have hair issues? Point to Black Men
Have color issues? Point to Black Men
Have marriage problems? Point to Black men
You're a single Mom? Point Black Men
It's inherently divisive and will force people to align with their sides of their gender.
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After six months of applying to jobs in the Denver area with a "black name" and zero interviews, after just 3 weeks of applying with "Tami," she had three interviews, and landed a job as a Technical Writer with a major US Bank. Regardless of your political affiliation, how can you not be disgusted by that???? 