by Lamar Tyler
Yesterday my man Janks Morton posted a link on his Facebook page that blew me away. He linked to a site called Black Informant that had another link to an edition of Ebony magazine from 1977 that focused on the rise of the new black woman. Inside of the pages there was an article that grabbed my attention by Dr. Alvin Poussaint and his wife Ann Ashmore Poussaint titled, “Black Women\Black Men Has Something Gone Wrong Between Them”.
I didn’t get far into the article before I had a bad feeling in my gut. What would it say about our people if I read an article defining problems to you from more than 30 years ago and these same problems were present today? To paraphrase the article Dr. Poussaint talks about black women not seeing black men as valuable, reliable and so on. He also states that black men are conditioned against the black female and accuse her of being too dominating, coming on too strong and being too materialistic. HELLO! Does any of this sound familiar?
The article goes on to talk about black men dating white women, the prospect that women could be educating themselves out of marriage and dating possibilities, the affect of women’s lib on black relationships and the power struggle between black men and women. It’s a great read and I encourage you to check out the entire article (starts on page 160). Sometimes we have to look back before we can move forward and to say that I was alarmed that this article looked like it could have appeared in last month’s Essence is an understatement.
BMWK family, what does it say about us that we haven’t addressed or overcome the same issues that plagued our relationships 30 years ago? What can be done to address this?