After an unforeseen health scare, I’ve had an epiphany: my life is perfect. I’m not exactly where I dreamed I’d be after 6 years in LA but I have everything I could possibly need: my health, trusting relationships, and disposable income while repaying debts. I don’t want to be an Edgar Allen type without anything to write about because things are cloud nine so I pondered…

 

I read nearly all the comments to all the posts of this site and people have some strong opinions about what a single woman’s (or male’s) actions mean for our community as a whole. Especially with all the police and political violence accompanying plebeian outcries for due process, I ask, is it fair to put the weight of one person’s actions on the entire group?

 

During the whole ‘emotional warrior’ fiasco, I was badgered by one commenter to “keep the image of swirling black women intact (referencing the steamy details).” Including my shortcomings, lets address the less than informed blacks that walk the earth causing fights, raising their voices, cursing out strangers and airing custody drama and the latter. Do the mistakes of one equate the shortcomings of all?

 

For instance black men. 

 

I have a friend who is successful in my industry, a beautiful NBAB black woman whose decided to stop looking for a catch due to the frequency of the need to release. She was meeting (black) guys for drinks and coffee and it always ended with him inviting himself to her doorstep and asking for sex, in the most rude and desperate ways possible (She later dumped an Asian doctor because he wasn’t exciting or sexy enough for her).

 

But what about that kind and handsome photographer whose homage to natural hair shocked and muted the lot of us? What could we say then when the outlier steps up and does the right thing for BOTH genders of his people?

 

Nothing. 

 

I received commentator pushback about labeling a woman’s past because she had been a stripper, was it wrong to do so? Yes, oftentimes strippers treat men like ATM’s, which lead me to believe she was an unsuitable woman who put herself in her situation, which could be total speculation on my behalf. Point being, if one outlier to the ‘ain’t s**t’ norm exists, maybe we should recognize that just as often. 

 

Black men have done nothing but impregnate my friends and dump them, positing photos of spent child support Instagram. But black men are flawed human beings as we all are. Is the attitude we project toward them making the outlier’s love the NBABBW any more or less? 

 

You don’t care. I guessed that.

 

You say don’t care, but what about that sweetheart nurse and makeup artists whose heart is set? Are we abetting or repelling that one in one-hundred-thousandth guy’s opinion of all of us by focusing on the negatives and not the single positive? 

 

My stepfather has 6 children. Knocked up a bunch of hoodrats in the late 70’s to the early 80’s. He turned his life around and is all about my mom, widowed by my father, and adopted her three children and cared for us as if we were blood. His son, my youngest step-brother, now has three different children with three mothers and was shot in the projects three times a month ago. Doctors are unsure if he will regain motor skills. Still never touching a black man ever again, and my stepfather agrees with my decision to do so. The last black man I was with left me for a gross white girl, but I’m so at peace with his decision. I’ve been with quite a few guys and only two black men and that was enough for me. 

 

In sum, black men defend themselves with their own doings INDIVIDUALLY not as a whole, same as women, hell humankind! 

 

It does make me upset to see women strung along, pumped an dumped, but I don’t blame men for every broken heart in the world: Blac Chyna, my situation with the emo, Kenya Moore. 

 

I think we should start saying, ‘what are you accountable for,’ in lieu of ‘that’s what __________ group does because they are all animals.’ Sounds like FOX news.

 

Empathy before condemnation does not make you weak or a fool. It is a true badge of strength. I am not defending or favoring, simply being at peace with the depraved nature of humans, which takes a certain level of tolerance and forgiveness of ill-conceived logic.