What The Media Thinks About Black Love

President and FLOTUS

by Lamar Tyler | on January 27th, 2009 | 19 comments

Audio of Barbara Walters and Sherri Shepard discussing the President and FLOTUS being positive black images.
[audio:http://184.168.89.220/Audio/theview.mp3]

Over the past few weeks and months I’ve seen two different schools of thought developing when it comes to what people think about the media’s recent acknowledgement and fascination with black love. Every magazine you pick up has a picture of our President and First Lady on the cover looking like they’re so in love and I think everyone appreciates the bond that is evident between these two but what do you think about the way the media is handling it? Based on comments I’ve seen on our site and others basically people fall one way or the other.

Group A is just happy that finally it’s our time to shine. After so much negative press the media is finally putting positive black images in front of the masses. As long as it’s positive they say keep it coming and want to enjoy the ride till the wheels fall off!

Group B is tired of the media acting like Barack and Michelle are the first black couple that’s been married and in love with a father in the home since the fictional Cosby Show. (Sherri Shepard would fall into this group ) They want to know when they’re going to parlay this new found fascination into magazine and newspaper pages with normal black families in them that aren’t named Obama.

Either way it’s obvious that the media isn’t reading Blackandmarriedwithkids.com or they would have known a long time ago that successful black families do exist and you don’t have to be President to have one lol. If you’re in the media and you need more info on this feel free to contact us at info [at] blackandmarriedwithkids [dot] com.

BMWK family, which group do you fall into? Do you fall into a totally seperate group we haven’t thought of? Let us know.

About the author

Lamar and Ronnie Tyler are the creators of the award-winning blog BlackandMarriedWithKids.com . They also are behind the Amazon.com bestselling DVDs Happily Ever After: A Positive Image of Black Marriage, You Saved Me and Men Ain’t Boys that explores manhood in the African American community. The Tylers are also the proud parents of four children.

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Comments (19)

Crafty Mama Tuesday - 27 / 01 / 2009 Reply

First! Oh, a YBF reference... I think it's great, but I agree--yeah, seen it in my parents for thirty years; yeah, seen it in my great aunt's for over fifty; yeah, seen it all of my life. I think that because we've been othered for so long, for the mainstream to consider that we are regular folks is fascinating. As long as the media portrays it in a positive light, then it's a burden off of our shoulders that we won't have to try and explain until that trend goes away ^_^ Crafty Mamas last blog post..Easy No-Sew Bag
Harriet Tuesday - 27 / 01 / 2009 Reply

I think I fall into Group C...a mixture of both. Yes, I saw that kind of love all my life, yet I think it's healthy and a great thing that it's being placed in the spotlight like it has. It's nothing new, but it's still beautiful, and I'm glad its luster is shining forth now.
SingLikeSassy Tuesday - 27 / 01 / 2009 Reply

FYI, some of "the media" are happily married black people.
blkbutterfly Tuesday - 27 / 01 / 2009 Reply

Well, what else is the media going to talk about? This is a great angle for them, coz it's non-threatening. And besides, since the Cosby Show, when has 'White America' been allowed such a look at a healthy, happy, loving Black family? The First Family is changing people's deep-deep-down attitudes about young successful intelligent Black people. For us, who are all of that already and come from that background, they're preaching to the converted...
E. Payne @ MakesMeWannaHoller.com Tuesday - 27 / 01 / 2009 Reply

I think I would fall into a combination of both categories. President Obama and First Lady Michelle are no the measure of "Black Love" or rather black men and women loving one another. I do feel they are a pretty strong example for the media and let's be real - the media is about sensationalism and has been for decades. Within our own community I'm not cool with them as the standard, but for the mainstream their [obamas']love may open the media's eyes that many, if not most, of us do love our women and men similarly if not even stronger. Maybe, one day. For anyone who is black and in love or black and looking for love or knows what love looks like: a father you see strolling (not walking) down the street with his kids, the couple out to dinner or walking hand in hand in to church, my parents being married for better or worse for forty years that's black love as are a thousand more examples.
MissJay Tuesday - 27 / 01 / 2009 Reply

I'm a mixture of both also. While I'm glad black love is coming to light I am wondering why the Obama's are the only couple the media seems to find that can be the example.
Anna Tuesday - 27 / 01 / 2009 Reply

Ok, I am going to kiss butt and say it's a combo of A, B and C. We in the black community know ppl within our own famiy who have weatherd the storm through triumph. Our President and Fist Lady have put a notion in our "Old Young" heads that anything is possible, and C, black urban sites such as BMWK will make you rethink many things. I love that this site is not about celebrities all the time. I can get that watching the news. I love that we get to comment about our marriage(good or bad and our kids, good or bad). We share ideas and share who we are. A family is not necessarily one that you see every day, a family is also one that we chat/comment together within this room.
Lisa Maria Carroll Wednesday - 28 / 01 / 2009 Reply

I LOVE the way President Obama adores his wife. And since I'm the minority in the group (single mom with grown kids), I'm going with group D. Many of you said that you saw committed long-term marriages first-hand. I don't have that same point of reference of Black love, and neither do a lot of other Blacks, including my children. My grandparents were married for almost 60 years when my grandfather died. But since then, there seems to be some sort of generational curse of divorce looming over my family. My parents were divorced and I'm now divorced. Several of my aunts and uncles are also divorced. My ex-husband's grandparents were married for almost 50 years before his grandmother died. But, his parents are divorced. Where are the Titus 2 women who are to teach the younger women in the church how to treat their husbands? Well, you can't teach what you don't know, because the divorce rate in the church is as high as it is "in the world." So, while we once turned to the church for certain influences and examples, the only place we're likely to get it now is by watching the Obamas on TV...or reading BMWK. Last week Michelle Obama talked about the advice her mother gave her about Barack: He's a good man, don't be mad at him... How many mothers talk to their daughters like that? Most of them are bitter like Clarice's mom in Not Easily Broken, and passing their resentment on to their daughters. So, while some people may think their PDA is overkill, there are others who are seeing a semblance of Black-on-Black affection for the first time. Lisa Maria Carrolls last blog post..Wifeyhood or Motherhood, Which is More Important?
Anna Wednesday - 28 / 01 / 2009 Reply

Great points Lisa Maria. "Last week Michelle Obama talked about the advice her mother gave her about Barack: He’s a good man, don’t be mad at him… How many mothers talk to their daughters like that"? Sometimes it takes a mother to tell her son the same thimg. I am proof positive of that. I also blame ppl for not picking a church that will really uplift them but "suck them in". Divorce happens for some after the kids leave or because of "outside kids" that one can no longer deal with. I also blame 'Vigara'. Hubby does not need it, but if my dad does not quit calling my cell to have me get it for him like he's a 'crack head' I will have to change my number. LOL.
Lisa Maria Carroll Thursday - 29 / 01 / 2009 Reply

Thanks Anna. My brother is the Cialis distributor in my family. My cousins are taking those things like candy, and they're only in their 40s. As for picking a church, it's hard to find a church that's not caught up in nonsense. Pastors are getting divorced, having affairs, impregnating women and paying for abortions, preying on teenage girls... We're seeing pastors and ministers being removed from one pulpit, and then packing up and moving to another city to start another church. Some of them get divorced and won't even take a timeout to deal with their issues. So, who do parishioners turn to when their marriages are in trouble, the divorced pastor who couldn't heed his own advice on how to save your marriage? Lisa Maria Carrolls last blog post..Wifeyhood or Motherhood, Which is More Important?
Harriet Thursday - 29 / 01 / 2009 Reply

Lisa said: So, who do parishioners turn to when their marriages are in trouble, the divorced pastor who couldn’t heed his own advice on how to save your marriage? ************************** Wow, that's a great question! I've been blessed to have been involved in two churches (the one where I got my license of ministry 8 years ago, and the one I'm committed to now) that transcended the kind of negativity and foolishness you wrote about. I took the time to think about it, and there were two common threads in both of these churches. 1. They were not stagnant. The leaders of the church had the crux of their focus on getting God's work done. They dealt with issues that had the potential to distract the church as a whole from that goal, but in the meantime, they kept moving. 2. They had a system of accountability!!!!! I can't stress that enough. So many of these churches are popping up out of nowhere, and the pastors foolishly think they're supposed to be these lone rangers that can do no wrong. Without accountability to spiritual authority (I believe EVERY pastor needs to have a pastor they submit to in terms of accountability), a church and its leaders can easily be led astray. But the accountability figure can't be doing dirt. There are very few ministries these days that follow those two principles. If you find a church that adheres to them, don't leave! Stay put and get taught.
Lisa Maria Carroll Thursday - 29 / 01 / 2009 Reply

@Harriet, 1. Too many churches nowadays won't deal with issues. Hurting people turn to the church for answers, but they're not getting any. Instead, they're getting pastors and preachers pimping from the pulpit to the pews, preying on people's vulnerability. One of the biggest ways people get caught up is they look at the pastor as the savior, instead of the messenger. I worked on a project in Dallas for a few months last year. While I was there, I fell in love with Friendship West. Hear me well, I fell in love with the church, not the pastor. There is a difference. 2. ACCOUNTABILITY, ACCOUNTABILITY, ACCOUNTABILITY!!! I had the hardest time finding a church when I lived in Minnesota, because there were so many church splits. Everybody wanted to lead, but nobody wanted to follow. And there was no accountability to spiritual authority. My brother is a pastor. We were raised Baptist, but right after he finished high school, he converted to AME. He started pastoring soon thereafter. While an AME pastor, he married three times, and impregnated a few women other than his wives while he was married. After about 13 years of taking care of their child by herself, the first wife finally got fed up with him not paying child support and wrote a letter to his bishop (accountability). The next thing I knew, the family got invitations to attend his ordination--he was converting back to Baptist. Stop the madness. During his ordination, the ordaining pastor smiled and said, "You're the head of your church. You don't have to report to anyone now." HUH? Well, as it stands, Baptist pastors are not lone rangers, because they cannot be their own pastors. But, they CHOOSE their pastor, in opposed to having one appointed to them. And, in all likelihood, they're going to choose someone who will touch and agree with their nonsense. After all, how can two walk together if they don't agree? Lisa Maria Carrolls last blog post..Wifeyhood or Motherhood, Which is More Important?
Harriet Thursday - 29 / 01 / 2009 Reply

Lisa, This is probably something for another topic, but since we're on it, let's discuss it! LOL You're right...your first point should have been added to what I wrote at first. My pastor always says that he's not going to make it easy for people to choose to go to hell from the church he has been given charge over. That's serious. To teach a message flat footed and unadulterated from the Word of God is important, but seriously lacking these days. A Christ centered message that removes innuendo and excuses that causes people to come through the doors one way, but leave forever changed is important, but seriously lacking these days. Denominations are movements that turned into monuments and became stagnant and irrelevant in the process. That's why I don't harp on them. Where I am now I can tell you who my pastor's pastor's pastor's pastor is. Pastor Bryan, Bishop Cooper, Bishop Filkey, Bishop Hooks. I can tell you who their wives are, because they are just as powerful and full of anointing and authority. I can tell you who their children are, because they all have a relationship with the Lord, and it's not fake. I can tell you the weapons that formed against them but didn't prosper, from lack, insufficiency, cancer, anxiety...every last one of them went through, but came out with their hands held high. I never thought such a pure thing was possible. No, not perfect, but loving. I follow them because they follow Christ. If they have a brain fart and decide to do what your brother did, then all bets are off. But right now, I thank God for loving me enough to place me under the leadership of pastors that are after His heart. Not that I deify them...I read the Word daily, and I have my own relationship with Christ. But I'm glad that I got to see true godly leadership on this side of heaven. I'm glad that what you talked about is not the norm for either of the churches I described, whether my past one when I was in FL or the current one here in LA. Not to negate what you said, because DANG...that's what I call an abnormal normality that folks get victimized by on a daily basis (or at least weekly at Sunday morning service). It's so common that folks' viewpoints are skewed by that behavior and they think they will never be able to find what I talked about. It is possible, though. I promise you. There's a little niche doing things properly in the kingdom.
Lisa Maria Carroll Thursday - 29 / 01 / 2009 Reply

Harriet, Leave it to you and me to turn a blog into a bible discussion. I dated a married man a about six years ago. (Oops, did I say that out loud? Stay with me because I'm going somewhere with this. I'm about to confess my faults...) He was separated from his wife (they lived in different states), so we were "free" to date like singles, right? WRONG! Even though he was separated from his wife, me dating him never felt right, because a married man who is separated from his wife is still a married man. But, I'd seen other people do it and live happily ever after, so why couldn't I? 1. As a Christian who was born and bred in the church for 40 years, I should be feasting on meat, and not still drinking milk. I knew better and therefore was held to a higher regard. And there was no way I was going to start playing God for crazy and calling wrong right. 2. God has a way of saving us from ourselves, and when the Paraclete convicts and arrests us in our wrongdoing, it's for our good. From the outside the relationship looked great. The gifts. The trips. The affection. But the more I learned about him, the more disgusted I got. He was a minister who had been sat down from the pulpit because of an adulterous affair he'd had a few months before we met. THAT was the reason why he was getting a divorce. He explained to me that he didn't tell people that he was a minister because he didn't want people treating him differently (when he was doing his dirt). I found that out about two months into the relationship, and all hell broke loose after that. The devil came in and ran roughshod all over my house...but I had opened the door and let him in. Stuff started happening with my kids. My ex-husband came back after almost five years, and wreaked havoc on my life. It was time to shake that devil off and fight back. But you can't fight the devil when you're walking with him, so I broke off the relationship. And when he wouldn't go away as easily as I wanted him to, I called a childhood friend (my pastor's daughter) and told her the pure, unadulterated version of the story. Some of my friends thought I was crazy for breaking up with him because of his money, his car, his house... But, thank God I've got friends who will tell me when I'm acting like I've lost my mind. And that's exactly what she did. She didn't sugarcoat anything, just gave it to me straight, no chaser. I talked to him for the first time almost two years ago and found out he got another woman pregnant right after we broke up. He decided he didn't want a child with her, so she had an abortion. The next month he got another woman pregnant, and she decided to keep her baby. All of this while he was still married and on a timeout from the pulpit. He told me he still wasn't in the pulpit, but God is dealing with him about starting HIS OWN ministry (his words, not mine). The sad thing is, he is so charismatic, that he'll have plenty of followers, including the harem of women who he slept with while he was married. After that I blocked his email addresses and phone numbers again, because I have to do due diligence against my heart and also guard my ear gate. Lisa Maria Carrolls last blog post..Wifeyhood or Motherhood, Which is More Important?
Harriet Thursday - 29 / 01 / 2009 Reply

@ Lisa, Man, I'm going to have to write an article about this so we can really get down to the nitty gritty. We're WAY off topic here! LOL But I think in a lot of instances, we place too much stock in the power of the devil, and not enough in our God given ability to make CHOICES. We are crowned with God's glory and honor, yet we say we cannot be holy because the standards are too high. God never would have given the command if He knew we could not fulfill it. Many times, God has more faith in us than we have in ourselves! He said He would make us the head and not the tail, yet with our choices, we DECIDE (through mere REASONING & LOGIC instead of OBEDIENCE) to be the tail. He said that as women, strength and dignity are our clothing, but with our choices, we act like the women Jeremiah talked about, sniffing at the wind for another person to bed. No one needs to chase us because we make ourselves readily available by putting a scent out there that causes us to be targeted by the worst kind of predators. We become the "silly women" Paul warned Timothy about. The devil doesn't force us to make piss poor decisions. All he has the power to do is plant a thought and then deceive us into thinking our own mind generated that thought. He leaves the rest up to us. The thought that no man would value you becuase you're a single mother and divorcee was planted, and because you believed your own mind generated it, you reflected that in your choices and actions. So then you find yourself settling for men who are experts at making plays on the mindset you have erroneously accepted. The power is not with the devil. In fact, that joker takes notes from us, because Romans 1 says we have the tendency to INVENT new types of evil. We give him the doggone fodder to wreak havoc, and we have the nerve to blame him for it. It ain't his fault! I feel sorry for the devil (not enough to succumb to him, obviously). But can you imagine being blamed for stuff you didn't do every day? Can you imagine how he feels every morning when people like you and I wake up? Because we know what his MO is, and we have the ability to expose him for who he is: a toothless lion that has no power to do anything to us unless we allow him to! Since we know that, we have the RIGHT to take back what was stolen from us when we walked in a victimized mindset.
Lisa Maria Carroll Thursday - 29 / 01 / 2009 Reply

Okay Harriet, I'll try to get us back on point here, if I can remember what that is. :-) I know the only power Satan has is the power we give him. I know that I'm the head and not the tail, above and not beneath. My downfall was CHOOSING to dance with the devil and allow the seed that he planted to take root by telling myself it was going to be a one-time date with a friend. That's where the accountability factor comes in. I should have held myself accountable to my Super Saints BEFORE I went out, not after. In less than two months (from Dec. 29-Feb. 16), I had allowed that relationship to drain the life out of me...and we lived in different states. So we saw each other only every other weekend. The relationship wasn't "bad," it was just wrong. Period. We weren't doing things decent and in order, and I felt convicted all the time. TBN was my favorite TV station at that time, and it seemed like every time I tuned in, somebody was speaking to me, especially Bishop Jakes. I was also embarrassed and ashamed that I was teaching my children one thing, but living another. That's when I knew it was time to stop walking with pallbearers and return to a right fellowship with armor bearers. It was because I knew that I was better than that relationship, even as a single mother and divorcee, that gave me peace in my decision. And don't think for one minute that Satan has given up. But, I keep telling myself to resist the devil and he will flee, even when it seems like he just won't go away. I didn't do a good job of bringing us back, huh? Lisa Maria Carrolls last blog post..A Gay Daughter or a Black Roommate…
Harriet Thursday - 29 / 01 / 2009 Reply

I think this is a great example of celebrating black love, Lisa! I mean, how can we love one another if we don't have the capacity to love our individual selves? "Super Saints..." most of them have made it through their own storms, whether self inflicted or sent from the pits of hell. But the real ones will tell you that they've made their own mistakes, and doubted their authority and been angry at the Lord, but yet they still held on. Eventually this will break. Love God, love yourself, and realize His love for us is much, much greater than we can imagine.
MissJay Friday - 30 / 01 / 2009 Reply

@Harriet and Lisa Man I hope yall go off on a tangent again because that was insightful! You've touched on this post as well as others all in one post's comment section.
Harriet Friday - 30 / 01 / 2009 Reply

@ missjay girl, i'm breathing a sigh of relief now. we went all around the world with our convo, didn't we? i'm glad it at least was insightful for someone else. i thought for sure that lamar and ronnie were going to evict us for going off topic. LOL lamar already threatened to fire me because of production up in here. ...he's just ungrateful. i'm the best commentator he's got, and he threatens to fire ME? LOL