Can the Black Church Cheat Black Women Out of Marriage & Kids…

Hello World,  blacklove

If the election results in your state didn’t go quite the way you voted, shake it off today…God’s mercies are new every morning…Stay engaged, but more importantly stay prayed up…Okay, off of my political soapbox and on to the issue of the day on this here blog…

This week I have happened upon three articles about black relationships that have caused me once again to lament the messages that are being disseminated about the state of black on black love…

On Sunday, I read this article “No Scrubs? The Dilemma of Modern African-American Women” by New York Post reporter David Kaufman….According to this misguided writer, the choice of Rachel Noerdlinger, chief of staff for City of New York First Lady Chirlane McCray, to be with ex-con boyfriend Hassaun McFarlan is proof that black women have nobody to date and must date ex-cons if they hope to be with black men at all…and that the only choice for black women at this point is to boo up with white wen…I know Rachel Noerdlinger assists the wife of an elected official, but who elected her Black Women’s Dating President…I am reasonably sure this is not a title she even wants…Obviously this woman likes a “bad boy” for whatever reason…She is not the first one and she won’t be the last one to like a rough neck…and that goes for women of all races…

A day later, I see this – “Well-Traveled, Intelligent Black Man, 34, Seeks ‘Sista’ OK With Him Making Less Money” on theroot.com…Jermaine Terrell Star says the sistas ain’t checkin’ for him because although he “spent all of [his] 20s traveling around Eastern Europe—mainly through Peace Corps, Fulbright and language study-abroad programs—and earning degrees,” he wasn’t making moves on the career front, relegating him to a lower salary when he finally did enter the working world…making him not the optimum choice for black women who entered the working world when they were in their ’20s and have the salaries to prove it…

So which is it? Are black women forced to choose from ex-cons or not willing to date black men who don’t quite measure up financially? I just don’t think both can be true…

rainaNow on to the article that made me have to gone head and whip up this blog post…“How the ‘Black Church’ Cheated this Woman Out of the Possibility of Marriage With Kids…” Raina T. Shaw on beyondblackwhite.com said that while she was yet holdin’ on for a black man in the church since she was 19 years old (praying, tithing, believing and serving/volunteering in the church), — the saved and sanctified men eventually passed her up for “someone that wasn’t even in church. Usually, it was somebody that they fornicated with and got sexually turned out. After that they didn’t care if the woman was “saved” or not. He was going to make a convert out of this freak of the week with three kids! The men talked holiness, chastity and celibacy but wanted the same thing that other non-Christian men wanted after all. The church girls got tricked and are tricked on a continuous basis to this day.”

Then she went on to say that the black church encourages black women “to settle for under achievers, ex-cons, drug addicts, men on the downlow that are fighting the feeling, men with many divorces and children, under and unemployed but they get a pass from the saints because they know all of the scriptures.”

Finally, she broke it all the way down and said she does not regret passing on marrying and having children with dysfunctional, unmarriageable men but, I am absolutely sure that had I not limited my dating pool to so called ‘saved,’ “Christian” men in the black church and black men in general, I would now be a wife and mother.” Oh yeah, she is also looking forward to “tak[eing] up with a non-black gentleman that recognizes and appreciates a black queen like myself when he encounters one.”

You may also want to check out similar commentary on “Honest Question: What Do Folks Expect Quality Black Women to Do? Shrivel Up and Die?” which is about Jacque Reid’s quest to find a quality man…

Now, let me be clear…I’m not against interracial relationships…wherever you find love or love finds you is beautiful… but I am against black women being cast as desperate and without options and black men being cast an ex-cons or not marriage material altogether…What say you?

Any thoughts?

 

Not Every Black Person Believes in God…

Hello World,

It’s funny (funny peculiar, not funny haha) that Christ often gets lost in the hustle and bustle of preparing for Christmas, but it’s true…And it’s also true that black people are known in this country for having an unshakeable belief in God that brought us through slavery and other historical hardships and continues to sustain us today…But more and more black people are admitting that they frankly do not believe in Jesus Christ or God, which is especially poignant at this time of the year…

Tommie Shelby

Tommie Shelby, professor of African and African-American studies and of philosophy at Harvard University, recently shared why he is a black atheist on theroot.com in his essay “I Didn’t Lose Faith. I Just Don’t Have It.”

Below are a few excerpts from his essay…

And so one day, after much study, I joined a church and was baptized. Soon I was earnestly sharing the gospel with family and friends. I lived at home during the summer after my freshman year, and my mother and I studied together. As a result, her faith was renewed. Indeed, she held tightly to her faith until the day she died.

I can’t say the same for myself. By the time I graduated, I no longer believed in God. I didn’t get to this place easily. It was a painful and trying process that involved hours of study, reflection, self-examination, fasting and prayer.

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I worried that my belief in God was ultimately rooted in things like fear of death, desire for community or longing for the loving father figure I didn’t have. Was my attraction to Christian doctrines driven by the fact that I was a lonely, alienated, scared kid looking for something firm to hold on to? After all, faith made me feel powerful and protected.

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I’m an intellectual, by natural disposition and vocation. I have chosen to live a life of the mind in a community of scholars where my nonbelief is unremarkable. My path is not for everyone. And I don’t expect most black folk to leave the Lord. What I would like to see, though, is greater respect for and understanding toward the nonbelievers among us. If my mother could muster it, surely we all can.

Another black atheist, Jamila Bey,  shares how she celebrates the Christmas holidays without Christ in her essay “Heathen Holidays: An Atheist Celebrates”also on the root.com.

Jamila Bey

So what do I think of the views of the Shelby and Bey as an unabashed believer in Jesus Christ? Well, first of all,  I very much value the freedoms on which this country was based – one of which is the freedom of religion….We are free to believe in whatever God we choose to believe in, and we are also free to choose to not believe in any God at all…So I say – have at it Shelby and Bey…

But I will also say this…the freedoms (religious and otherwise) that Shelby and Bey enjoy today in this country are the result of courageous black Christians down through the years that sacrified – many with their lives – so that we can be as free as we want to be today…it is a real luxury for Shelby and Bey to say they don’t believe in Jesus Christ in today’s times…

Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Fannie Lou Hamer, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are just few black people whose lives and Christian faith enabled us to enjoy the freedoms we so cavalierly enjoy today…I’m not sure that Shelby and Bey would be of the same opinion years ago…not hatin’ just sayin’…

What say you?

Any thoughts?

 

 

 

Is Obama the antichrist and other discussions inspired by the Obamas…

Hello World!!!

It’s hot to death in the A, ain’t it? A few weeks ago, I was contemplating buying a row boat to get around it was raining so much and now ya girl is two shades darker and sweating at the most inconvenient times…God must be like, “I make it rain, y’all complain…I make the sun shine, y’all grumblin’…it don’t stop!” Ha, ha, let me stop trippin’ and complainin’…Thank God it’s sunny!

Okay, so last week, I was checking my home page at Facebook and one of my friends posted a most fascinating article, Crazy Right-Wing Myths About Obama 2.0: The Post-Inaguration Edition of Odd Things Conservatives Believe About Obama. Teleprompters! Hitler Youth! Satan!written by the Salon staff. Excellent piece! Wish I had written it!  The article includes an assemblage of ludicrous myths and the data to dispel them. So here are some of the myths they included…

  • Obama can’t function without a teleprompter, even uses it for answers at press conferences.
  • Obama’s stimulus provided cash for a “levitating train” between Disneyland and Nevada brothels.
  • Obama is a socialist.
  • Obama has created his own version of the Hitler Youth. And MY PERSONAL FAVORITE…
  • Barack Obama is the antichrist!

So during the election, I heard whisperings from people around me that Obama could be the antichrist…after all, he descended on the scene without much of a warning. Cornell West said Obama “rose like Phoenix” in a speech at Morehouse last year. And anyone who has attended church for more than a year has heard about the antichrist and how he will mysteriously appear on the world scene…But I did not know there was a whole movement dedicated to this whispering…According to the article, there are several Web sites devoted to this topic such as www.barackobamantichrist.blogspot.com, www.obamaantichrist.blogspot.com and www.beastobama.com.

On obamaantichrist.blogspot.com, there is a post about Obama distancing himself from the observance of the National Day of Prayer. The author states this is a reason why Obama could be the antichrist. But then, the author confesses about worrying at point if past President George W. Bush was the antichrist in the same article…That’s just weird…So on the one hand, this author thinks that Bush, the creater of the word “evildoer” could have been the antichrist and on the other hand, the most intelligent president we’ve had in quite some time is the antichrist…Sounds like an illness a few pills may help! The title of another post is “Obama and the Pagan Aspects of the White House Easter Egg Roll.”

According to the article, the antichrist is described as “lightning from heaven” in the Bible which translates to “baraq o bama” in Hebrew…Biblical scholars is that true? And the president’s limo is nicknamed “the Beast.” And finally, on the day after the election, the winning lottery number in Illinois was 6 _ _…(Yes, I’m crazy superstitious…I have a hard time writing that number out for any reason…) So is that enough evidence for y’all? I’ve said this before, and I will say it again: Why the black man gotta be the antichrist? We’ve had slave masters, adulterers, racists and warmongers as presidents! Why does the black man have to be the antichrist?

In other news, another one of my Facebook friends posted another article, “What Single Women Can Learn From Michelle: Would Most Type A Professional Women Have Dated Dated Barack When He was a Broke, Big-Eared Organizer With a Funny Name?” byJenee Desmond-Harris on the root.com. You can see where the author is going from the title. As we have all heard at this point, although our president was a summer associate from Harvard when he met our future First Lady, he was not the typical guy. He had a weird name. He was a community organizer. In one interview, President Obama said his car was so raggedy, you could see the road underneath the car. He had big ears.

The author states that many black women would have overlooked him because he didn’t have swag at that point in his life…Do you agree? I’m not so sure about that…Yeah, he didn’t have swag but he was a black man at Harvard…I wouldn’t pass that up – raggedy car or not…But I can see where the author is going…many of us seem to overlook the regular guy who may be going places for the guy who seems to have already arrived…My girls and I have been discussing this issue for a while…One of my friends, who is known to date men with impressive credentials, said,”Where would one even meet a regular guy,” or something similar. Funny, huh? She said this statement after another friend recommended dating “regular guys.” What makes a man regular? That’s the question to ask I think…If regular means hard-working, decent, intelligent, attractive, Christian sans the snooty attitude, I’m ’bout it.

But here’s another question: What Can Single Men Learn From Barack? As one commenter noted, are many Ivy-league educated black men checkin’ for that quintessential girl from around the way…? Or is it that once they have achieved that height, all they can see is white…y’all know what I’m saying…it’s certainly the move for many black men in power…Our First Lady is now known for her guns and style of dress, but I wonder if the same men that are praising her right now would be trying to step to her if they saw her at the light on Memorial Drive…She is smart and capable, but she doesn’t have Eurocentric features…so what many black men may need to realize is that smart, capable, assertive, undeniably black women are the way to go…As we’ve come to know, Michelle LaVaughn is the woman!

So to the “around the way girls” myself included, I post this throwback LL Cool J jam:

Any thoughts?

Tripped me out at the beginning of this video when LL said he was looking for a “regular” girl, not Ivana but Tawanna…