I already know I’m going to get someone going, “but you don’t understand!” or “that’s easy for you to say!” or some other means of validating and justifying a low opinion of yourself as a black woman or of black women as a group.

I’ll try and save you the trouble: I’m not interested. I am never interested in a point of view that is absolutely determined to put black women down or to hear out people reaching for any and every excuse to convince themselves and every other black women that “they aren’t a prize” or that “nobody wants us.”

I cannot force someone to have a high opinion of themselves as individuals. I can’t make you like you if you don’t like yourself. And I certainly can’t make you love yourself or want to feel worthy of being loved. That is just something that no one can do for you except YOU.

But, one thing I can do is try to get across a very basic idea when it comes to looking for love:

You won’t find it with people who are N-O-T interested in loving you.

Whether it’s bigots or men who are with you for reasons having nothing to do with love, it doesn’t matter. You won’t get what you want and need from these people and you are wasting time and energy not drawing this conclusion and electing to move on to the alternative: Persons that DO love and support you.

This seems like a very simple and obvious idea, but take nothing for granted when it comes to black women and the concentrated efforts by some parties to make black women face a reality where “nobody wants you” or “you are last pick” or any other variation of mental and emotional abuse. Make no mistake, this is a VERY popular tactic used by people who want to abuse others in order to ensure that the victim feels so low about his or herself, they become immobilized because they believe no one else will ever want/love them so they’d might as well stay where they are and take the abuse.

Even putting abuse aside, I recall a conversation where black women said what types of persons they weren’t interested in. And did you know what people absolutely went to town on how wrong and unfair that was, rather than accept the reality that YES, it is within an individual’s rights to NOT want you? All the energy spent arguing about fairness could just as easily be spent realizing that (1) such people have every right to rule you out as a mate (2) you have just as much right to accept this and rule them right back out and (3) fixate instead on worrying about finding and loving someone who loves and wants you as much as you want and love them back.

This is why I cannot get behind the pity-parties for black women who want to be assured about how nobody wants us and how much everything sucks for us because we are black women and all the digested and accepted mental abuse that is now the reality for black women who have been indoctrinated to make it their truth. Because it is not and has never been a universal reality for black women everywhere.

It can be and is painful to have people dislike you, say mean things about you, or do things to hurt you. And some people are often tempted to ponder why these people are the way they are, why these people don’t want you or what you need to change about yourself to make these people like you. Resist this temptation, because it’s a waste of time. Bjork, broken English and all, said it best:

“You’ll be given love
You have to trust it

Maybe not from the sources
You have poured yours
Maybe not from the directions
You are staring at

Twist your head around
It’s all around you”

Too many black women are crying out about love that is lacking and instead of being encouraged to “twist their head around” in directions where love, true love, is coming from, they continue to look for it in a direction from which it is not forthcoming. And it’s very sad to me. I cannot mentally process a way of thinking where you prioritize who doesn’t love you or want you or why above figuring out who *does* and why and focusing on that second group. Because I find people who love me and support me to be much more attractive and certainly persons I’d want to spend time around.

Ladies, love and support itself is simply not not NOT something you will find with people who hate you, are not attracted to or otherwise not interested in offering these things to you. So the question you must ask yourself is: Why am I so determined to pour out resources (be it time, energy, money, etc.) into people and institutions that do not want me? Why am I concerned about who doesn’t love or want me rather than who *does*?

This part is more or less asking the question of why some black women fixate on who doesn’t want them. The second part will attempt to offer theories for this behavior and how the women affected get past it.