I know. I know. Imagine my surprise when I saw the title of this article in Black Star News called "The War on Black Women." I called it all the way back in April, but it looks like traditional media is starting to get a clue after say 20 YEARS. It is actually a very good article chronicling some of the foolishness that has happened since Imus. They mention a certain D-list comedian.
Yes, I tend to be melodramatic and engage in occasional hyperbole on this little blog, but when I say that there is a War on Black Women, I mean it. We need to work as hard to introduce that terminology into the lexicon in the way that the "Black man in crisis" or "endangered Black male" have been embedded into the collective consciousness. It isn't that Black men aren't catching hell, but Black women are catching hell too.
In the words of Jill Scott, life has "been hard on [us] too." That's all
When was the last time you heard about the crisis of the young Black female? About the only crisis MSM focuses on related to Black women, at least the ones that get on the front of Newsweek covers and an article in every issue of Essence magazine, is the fact that because we've gone off to college and gotten an education, we're doomed! Yes. Doomed to die old, alone and childless and be eaten alive by our nine cats.
The systematic dehumanization of Black women in popular culture is a WAR and it has CONSEQUENCES. Because we're LESS THAN, when we go missing, nobody cares.. for long. When we're dying in droves from a preventable STD... not newsworthy. When we're claiming the American Dream in large numbers, that's a bad thing because now you gone end up old, childless and alone.
Folks, those are the words of 25 year-old Rickey Lackey expectant father of six before a judge about to sentence him for defrauding a bank.
For reasons passing understanding, he regaled the court with the news that he was about to close a three million dollar deal that would net him $300,000.00 up front. In an apparent bid for leniency, he also informed the court that he had six babies on the way. The judge, doing a double-take, asked him if he was engaged to marry a woman with six kids. His answer, soon to be published in the next edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations: "No, I be concubining" (i.e., with numerous women). Wisely, Lackey's lawyer made his client clam up. Incredibly, the judge later said she let the matter drop as not relevant to the proceedings. SOURCENow folks, don't think that Rickey here is an aberration, oh no my friends, "I be concubining" has gone mainstream. The Concubine Conspiracy can find no greater friend than Essence Magazine.
Because we're less than, we ought not to be so outrageous as to wait for an offer of marriage before popping out three kids by the same man. Oh no, we ought to rent out our wombs as part of the "concubine conspiracy" (copyright WAOD September 10,2007. Yeah, I'm claiming it!)so that Essence magazine can put us on the cover of an issue called "No Ordinary Love" waxing poetic about why you still with a man that will impregnate you repeatedly, but won't make you his wife. ( Yeah, went. there. again.) While he is running all over the place sowing his wild oats apparently impregnating other women too.
When the "ordinary love" goes *poof* as if the fiction ever existed in the first place, Essence turns around and gives you more free space to advertise the virtues of renting out your womb. As if you are victorious for having to pack up your kids AGAIN and flee your home in a clandestine operation the likes of which the CIA could not pull off with such precision. You get an entire article when y'all part ways for the 1003th time telling us all about yo baby daddy impregnating yet another girl down in Atlanta. Who cares? Really Essence WHO CARES?
Essence if you want to do some real reporting, go out and find some Black men who actually marry the mothers of their children. Put them on the cover. They are out there yet we wouldn't know it from reading your magazine. That's investigative reporting right there! Interview a couple thats been together for more than five years, put them on the cover. Why not? Well because that doesn't fit the script for popular culture dominated by the Hip Hop industrial complex. In the that realm, women aren't just less than, they're the enemy. Despite the fact that they have enough lawyers to draft fifteen thousand prenuptial agreements, De' Ebil Black woman is trying to stick em for their paper.
Since all of these moguls want to be Billionaires... Let me ask you this. How many Non black Billionaires in the world have children, that they claim(yes, I went there Prince Andrew and Stephen Bing!), but don't have a wife? Donald Trump? Nah, he married all of his babies mamas. Bill Gates, Married his Baby Mama. Rupert Murdoch, married. They even marry their mistresses (see Donald Trump and Jack Welch). And please don't talk about Brad Pitt and Angelina. Because I will come back with a laundry list of to combat them. I suspect they are married anyway and when was the last time you saw Brad Pitt up in the club swilling Crystal straight from the bottle, wrapped around another woman while the baby mama is sitting at home nursing twins? Read Bossip's Compendium of "Where is Kim Porter" posts. Oh yes, Essence Magazine. This is "No ordinary love" alright. Foolishness!
Oh and did I mention that when Essence readers got upset with the original "we don't need no stinking marriage" article about Kim Porter and P Diddy Duffy Puffy, the editor in chief had the audacity to get SALTY with Essence readers?
Folks reject the "concubine conspiracy"wherever you see it commodotized, glamorized and promoted. It is just part of the War on Black Women. We ought to start our own magazine as an answer to Essence. We ought to call it "Sense: A Publication for Black Women With Common Sense... Because Lord Knows We Need One."
Consider cancelling the Essence subscription until they bring back Susan Taylor and reinstall the grownups!
Stop funding foolishness!
UPDATE:How on EARTH did I miss Travis Henry, an NFL player with 9 kids in nine different babies mamas. Four different states and this multi-million dollar man is having problems meeting his child support obligations. What's worse than having four babies by five different men ( and naming three after an alcoholic beverage... looking at you Alize' Tang-O-Ray)? Having four babies by one man who didn't take care of the first three. Jesus.... Just. Take. the. Wheel! I am calling foolishness on all involved, the man and the women. Y'all know that if he has any money left by the time he dies, he gone end up stuck lying in his casket in the pool house for a month a la James Brown while all these half-siblings fight over whatever he got left. You know he ain't done yet. He is only 28! Essence, when you gone write a story about this fool? December is open I hear.
