On the surface, the obvious reaction to this question might be a knee-jerk: “Heck to the naw, Chris, whatchutalkinbut?” And on the whole the obvious answer is “No.” (Just thought I’d throw that in up front in case somebody decides to put a hit out on me.)

But peel away the oh-so-phallic banana, and take a look at some of the actions black men have taken against black women and the answer might just become a little more nuanced.

Take a gander at this sorry sack of a Memphis high school that has 90 students knocked up or already lactating–ALL IN THE SAME SCHOOL YEAR.

Wanna guess how many of them are married? How many parents of these mothers have had Ray-Ray arrested if he was a 45-year-old playa knocking boots with their 13-year-old daughters? I’ll bet my left eye you’ll hear a WHOLE LOT from the men at the church (with the women saying amen), “These girls’ mommas need to teach these babies how to keep their legs closed!” Followed by a significantly more muted, “Unless of course it’s me that is trying to open them!” So far, I haven’t heard A THING about a scheduled public tar and feathering of the boys, full grown males, or potential candidates for AARP who are EXACTLY 50% responsible for the teenie-weenie baby boom in Memphis too.

Lil Wayne, the gremlin who got away, is just one of a string of rappers who openly and proudly lace their lyrics with melodic insults against dark-skinned black women while uplifting his beloved “red bones.” And let’s not forget about this little exposé:

And let’s just take look-see at the The Official List of Known Insults to reference black women intermixed for the rapper’s rhyming convenience:
–bitch (by far the rapper’s favorit-est reference to ALL black women except his momma)
–hoe
–gold digger
–dark butt
–red bone (yes, this too is insulting)
–hooker
–slut
I know there’s more, it’s just that I’ve stopped listening to the stuff and I know they’ve gotten A LOT more creative, but I’m just not up to speed on all the new lingo aimed at degrading me and my daughters. Anyone have some updated slights, or should I check in the Urban Dictionary under, “rapper’s synonyms for black women”? Is there an Urban Thesaurus?

Regarding the teen pregnancy outrage, Maurice, a very respectful black man and one of my FB friends said this:

I don’t think the problem is misogyny rather our society and law dictates this. Most of us feel that the problem is girls (men and women), but fathers that have daughters know very well that whether a girl gets pregnant or not depends heavily on the boys.

Here’s me:

@Maurice, I believe everything you said is true–EXCEPT–the misogyny part. I KNOW for a FACT that many men think that what makes them “men” is how many girls they can have sex with.

Here’s Maurice again:

Christelyn I agree but that’s not misogyny. Misogyny is hatred of woman. The average man doesn’t hate women, if so he wouldn’t want her at all. But the average man and woman only sees each other by our given societal roles and what we consider our role in society be. These roles are not defined by each man per see but by those who govern our society. The notion that a man has to be a certain way to be a “man”, or woman has to be a certain way to be “woman”, is no more misogynistic than a man who sleeps around with multiple women, furthermore a woman who seeks men with money is not being misandristic, rather she is fulfilling a typecast script.

Then another friend, Cynthia jumped into the convo:

Do you really believe that a man ‘wanting a woman’ is indicative that he doesn’t ‘hate that woman? Misogyny shown to women manifests itself in many ways and sex is but one tool that is used to show hatred of women. A man doesn’t have to restrict himself to ‘beating a woman’ or verbally and emotionally abusing her to show his hatred.

I think this is something that patriarchy has convinced women to believe. That a man who has sex with you shows that he doesn’t hate you. This kind of thinking keeps a woman involved with a man when she should really leave him alone. She has convinced herself that. “Well he is having sex with me, that shows that he ‘wants’ me. So I should dismiss all that other evidence in how he treats me that shows me differently. As long as he is sexing me that contradicts that he hates me. Come on Maurice. Using that logic we could say:

Nope that person isn’t racist, if they were racist they wouldn’t ‘smile at me’. Never mind that I’ve noticed some racist behavior coming from them, they are ‘friendly and smile at me and that’s all that matters.’

But this is comment from my FB friend Meredith gave me pause:

Maurice im sure you mean well, but it sure feels like hate most of the time. Im here to tell you, we dont know its not hate (empathsis mine).

That about sums it up for me too. I could delve into some of what I think might be the root (or at least an offshoot) cause of this dysfunction, but I’m no PhD.

But if anyone asked me, I’d say a lot of boys have A LOT of anger toward their mothers, and since 72% of them were born without their dads, they have a lot of displaced rage that is projected toward black women in general because the real target, the mom who got knocked up by Ray-Ray and left her son with a nothing arse excuse for a father, is off limits. Mom is god-dess but the rest of us are hot-mess.

But that’s just me.

Thoughts?