(Lighting my cigar) Leaning back in my chair.
I am going to touch on the NYT article at the end of this post.
I thought it was an interesting piece on a black girl going to a gifted high school. I spend my time reading about “real life”. I don’t really sit around listening to superficial arguments BWE Black women have on whether people “hate them swirling”.
Why they never address white people or white men is beyond me at this point? A majority of white folks “hate swirling”. The few black people that dislike it, they are like a voice in the “wilderness”. To be honest with you, most black folks swirl.
I am in the “very very very small minority”, as far as dating or socially involved with black women. Well, to be honest with you, I don’t really associate with black women out in public or college. That is my own choice though because I am often “very busy”.
Anyway, I will talk about the NYT article in a few. I had to address the Christelyn slight at “1 of my readers”. Apparently, it is one of my readers pointing out that white men are not interested.
The response by Chrissy Lyn is why do you care? No, WHY DO YOU CARE? You put all these resources and money to do a blog worshiping white men. After it was all said and done, you left the BWE movement and said “uh men ain’t biting the apple so oh well”.
At the end of the day, you got to live with that failure. I guess black men will be the punching bag again. LOL Let’s move on.
—————————————————————
Looking at the Chrissy Lyn video. I normally wouldn’t even comment. Since she did bait me by mentioning me 1 of MY readers comments in her video . It must bother her to a certain degree that she lost the momentum she had.
(Sigh) After that brutal split from the Evia “camp”. Now Christelyn is dragging black men back into her mess. Now, we supposedly hate them or hate them “swirling”. They won’t address the white men that pick them last. All they can do is point the finger at black men for some reason.
I am honestly perplexed by why they always do this shit.
Let’s get past the little hysterical comments by Christelyn.
Number 1. This suggestion that (black people that look like her) are somehow sabotaging black women. More specifically, “sellout” black women is utter nonsense.
See this is what happens when they are losing and cannot blame the precious “rainbeaus” anymore. They have to say things like “why is this happening, why do the hate me?
Nobody hates you. You just actively pursue bashing black men. When black men give you a taste of your own medicine. Now its “oh put the guns away”. This is my theory on the whole failing BWE movement. Since I know some of the sellouts read my commentary from “time to time”.
When things are “going good”, you ain’t say shit about black people or black men hating “y’all”. You ain’t give a damn. NOW that the rainbeau does not actively participate by your “own admission” in your little BWE movement. You want to say “why is everybody turning on me”?
Let me give you the proof of the comments. I do archive some things when they go public on a sellout black woman’s blog. Let me show you all something.
Excerpts from the Civil War
“You know…the conversation in which you were a participant where Christelyn passively sat back and—without saying anything in response—allowed individuals to use her forum as a platform for denigrating her BW blogger colleagues. The same BW colleagues who actively helped her (out front and behind the scenes) with her NWNW campaign. Once it was brought to my attention, I found all of that quite fascinating to watch.”
Khadija, in all due respect, why would you do this publicly? There are a lot of commenters on my blog that get into beefs and quibbles, and I (almost always) try to stay out of the fray. I saw the comment you were referring to, when a woman said that Evia denigrates black men, and you’re right–I didn’t comment–because I don’t know enough about her to know whether that is true. Conversely, I don’t know enough about the writer to know if they are just trolling and trying to start an argument, and I’ve learned the hard way not to engage with people who try to goad me.
Obviously I got more info of course. See, I was going to leave it alone. I simply cannot ignore the subtle shots she takes at black men.
They cannot even get along with themselves but the so called “black people like her”, hate them swirling!!!!!!! GIVE ME A BREAK!
I am not fan of Evia or Khadjia. Clearly, they were on their “last legs’ until Christelyn put life back in the game for them. The problem with black women is that they don’t like to see each other “shine”. They pretend like its “all good”. The truth is its not all good.
Black women love attention that is the problem. You will see this even played out on a “smaller scale”. The problem is the black community has fostered this delusional behavior.
I kid you not. I remember I spoiled my daughter to the point that I stepped back and said “wtf am I doing here”. She would demand a doll or a sneaker or something. After awhile it became tantrums and fits. Eventually she broke that habit, ( I picked up some things while I worked with NHS, child psychology).
What you basically got is a segment of BWE black women that feel entitled to a white man. They are mainly middle aged, bitter at black men, and washed up. A majority of them already know rainbeaus will not marry them. The say things like ” I dated several white men and they were good to me”. Okay, you dated “several white men”. The goal was to have “1″. The response “well the white men was nice to me after he dropped my ass and never called me back”.
I see!
Everybody is good to a woman when they want sex. After all that “dating”, where is the rainbeau at? After all that ‘worshiping”, what is the results of your conquest. It just more of the same. More books to appease you, more people rubbing it in your face that you cannot get a white guy to settle down with you.
They need to address the rainbeau, not why black people hate them swirling. They may hate the fact you bash black men. They may hate the fact you put your ass on the line and only 1 white guy came to your defense. But we are the problem now????
If you had a backbone you would confront the rainbeaus. You even admit you left the BWE movement for that reason.
Christelyn’s own words from the post she pulled down. Evia and them “cowed her down”. She bowed to the pressure. Don’t worry Christelyn I saved it for you.
I am the founder and organizer of No Wedding No Womb (NWNW), an initiative to raise awareness and find solutions to the 73% out-of-wedlock epidemic in the black community. I rallied over 100 bloggers from all sides of the political and philosophical spectrum–some of whom hated each other–to come together to say one thing in unison: fatherlessness is out of control in the BC, and something needs to be said and done. The movement went viral, and many of the core supporters were BWE bloggers. I am so grateful for their support. NWNW just filed for non-profit status, and we are on our way to making some real, tangible changes in a lot of lives. Great news, right?
But unfortunately, when you get a bunch of people with differing opinions together, you are bound to get some drama–and boy did it. You see, in order to get MEN to listen to this message and have it penetrate to mainstream, I have to recruit men who are not necessarily allies of BWE. And while I cast a wide net for REAL men, I only get back a few bites, and so I had to work with what I could.
Chrissy lyn casted a net for rainbeaus and got a few bites back. So who hates “who” swirling here? This is the type of slave mentality that makes me shake my head. It is similar to the Mr Banks argument. He puts the pressure on black women to date out.
When do you got to make women “pursue” men? That is “ass backwards”. It should be the other way around.
Do they ask white women to do this shit? They got just as many single women in that subgroup.
Do they ask Hispanic women do this shit? They got just as many single women in this sub group.
Yet black women got to jump through hoops to get a piece of a man that ain’t even interested in them. That is the real argument, not that black people hate swirling.
In the real, world Negros don’t give a shit. Obviously black men are dating outside of their race at damn near 20 percent, while black women stay stagnant at 9 percent. I find these stats disturbing. Simply for this reason, black women are the only sub group to lose so many men in their own “racial group” next to “Asian men”.
You are going to say ‘why is this important, I don’t care, I will be the white man Sally Hemmings”.
Alright, I will explain it to your nappy headed ass. Men pursue women that other men “want”. That is just how men are. If black women continue to be undesirable to their own men. The other “group of men” are going to say “shit, black men don’t fuck with you, must be something wrong over in that camp”.
What BWE Black women “banked on” was that white men were going to say ” Yes you turned on those damn nasty ass black men, come to me”. Na it worked in reverse, what they see is desperate black women.
ONCE AGAIN, I HAVE SAID THIS FOR HMMM YEARS. RELATIONSHIPS ARE A POWER GAME!
When black women are losing that power game. They start jumping out of the window. That is one of the fatal flaws of black women. They lose their temper and say ” I don’t need no man fuck that”. They get totally taken out of their game. Now, no man wants to approach a bitter, angry black woman.
They already complaining about rainbeaus on youtube. Shout out to Airforce guy for this video.
She said “they want chocolate pussy”. The white man introduced his family to your trifling ass LOL.
Ugh “my head hurts here”. Why she is playing with her glasses? You ain’t even being yourself, like you need glasses. LOL
You want that “black sex, black fetish”. LOL She said cut that stuff out. Now they are telling white men how to act, what to wear, what to say!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Man shut your dumb ass up. “Review your dictionary”???
Honestly, I didn’t even understand half the things she said.
I think she got a down syndrome white guy or something.
I am just going to move on from this.
The NYT article
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/education/black-at-stuyvesant-high-one-girls-experience.html?_r=1&hpw
For Rudi, being black at Stuyvesant has been a journey of self-discovery. In Jamaica, as in parts of the Bronx, it is not skin color that distinguishes people, she said, but the car they drive, the neighborhood they live in or the job they have.
At school, she embraced her racial identity, becoming president last May of the Black Students League, the smallest of the school’s four diversity clubs, which usually draws fewer than 10 regulars to its weekly meetings. She had run unopposed.
Rudi said the league wasn’t “about black power or anything like that,” but to “make Stuy aware of our community and our culture.”
It has been a frustrating task.
As part of Black History Month, the league screened an hourlong documentary, “Slavery and the Law,” which chronicles the status of blacks from colonial times through the civil rights era. There were 100 chairs in front of the pull-down screen at Stuyvesant’s sixth-floor library; 15 students showed up.
“We’ve just never had the numbers to make it work,” Rudi lamented.
This is very interesting, In a high school made up mainly Asians and whites. Nobody cared enough to read about American History. The Civil rights era is “American History” for the record.
The reason I point this out to all my readers is this is small microcosm of the “real world”. Nobody wants to associate with black people or black women ( if its sexual they will associate with black women).
To make matters worse look at this paragraph.
Rudi has never harbored regrets. There have been disappointing and enraging moments, she said, like when a good friend, the only black senior in Stuyvesant’s esteemed speech-and-debate team, was given a book on rap lyrics as a holiday gift from a white boy she had been mentoring.
Given a book on rap lyrics. I think the BWE need to reevaluate what is important. Instead of their petty book deals and pointing the blame on other black people for their failures.
I am out.
Of course this is an attention grab. Ive said it a long time ago. They thrive on the perceived attention they get from black folks especially black men. All the attention they didnt get based off their looks or talent they want and feed off of from their relationships with white men. Its the white men actually receiving the attention not them. Its the white men with the black woman that is getting the attention. Their whole movement is a mask for their unadulterated attention whoring. Its a shame that at their ages, many of them are middle aged, they are still playing these childish games of, Im going to hit you but you dare not hit back and if you do it isnt because I just assaulted you but because Im living well with a white man. Then they have the nerve to accuse others of gaslighting when their whole project is one huge flame of retaliation against a community they felt didnt give them enough attention or obedience.
Could you imagine if I went up and hit someone and when they hit me back I try to reason that I got hit back not because I hit first but because of my inter racial relationship? This is the nature of their own gaslighting of black men. Trying to convince black men that they arent attacking them on their blogs so therefore black men have NO reason to defend themselves.
Kigali,
the longer your posts are the better they are! So punchy and on-point. its hard to find what to say after you’ve had you say.
Peace.
BTW still Liverpool, is it?
Dont believe them when they say they dont want relationships with black men. They do. They do. Do you know they would have to manufacture grievances if the black community just ignored them. These girls are mental midgets, psycholigically damaged and mentally stunted. Still trying to get revenge against their childhood crush that didnt pay them attention.
Oh and what the hell is up with that Chinese man on Chrissy Lyns blog who is obsessed with black men’s genitalia? The few non black men on their site are using their grievances against black men to grind their own axe with black men. Why do black women love being used? Chinese people are some of the most insular racist xenophobic and heartless people on the planet. They arent required to be politically correct about it either. You have to really question the self esteem of a man who has to go on these sites and vent about black men. Why is he so anxious? What the hell is he doing in real terms to help black women besides bash black men? He doesnt see that that hasnt helped black women at all. Whats the definition of insanity again?
Oh and that blog they had about Jeremy Lin was so fucking pathetic. The nerve of those black women talking about they hope more non black men join professional sports so that black men will find something else to do. LOL. Tell those little black girls on You Tube to find something other than shaking their ass. The audacity of them claiming black men are phallocentric when they ALL went into mass derangement when Kim Kardashian and a few other non black women came on the scene with their big behinds. Black women began to feel obsolete when all those Latinas and white girls were being promoted in the media for something black women thought they had the corner on, i.e. a butt. Black atheletes will survive Jeremy Lin like they did Larry Bird, but black women completely played themselves when they went ballistic over the Kim Kardashians of the world. Shit at the very least black men can claim marketable talents that have given them world wide recognition, fame and fortune. Black women had no problem riding their coat tails either. They didnt have a problem with being apart of the black community then.
How much do you want to bet Jeremy Lin has a white girlfriend.
Lastly, I want black women to stop talking about black athletes that go broke because you know good and dam well that they went broke trying to take care of their begging ass relatives who are largely black women and their children. That boy Landon Collins is going to get financially raped by his mother. Look at that tacky bitch. How could she go on national television and embarrass her son like that? BTW that boy is so fucking handsome. I mean dam… Ok, he is a little boy let me quit. But I wonder how much of Landon’s future earnings are going to keep that witch’s weave tight. Ok Im done venting…
Spot on observation Kilgali, its funny that these women are complaining about black men giving them grief, when these same women were probably doing the same thing to black men when they were with white women. I find it funny how many black women can be hypocritical about interracial relationships. They have a problem with them when black men are in one, but when they themselves are involved in one, it the greatest thing in the world. Also in that video, did you notice that the girl said this is her first “official” interracial relationship? I take it before that she was probably just a jumpoff for white dudes.
I actually cant look at the girl. I have no desire to watch her videos. Yes, the smell of hypocracy is wafting through the internet. THese IR promoters were probably the biggest haters of black men in IR relationships. In fact it was probably black men’s IR relationships that motivated them to date IR. Its a fucking contest with them. Can I just say that black men due to social reasons have NEVER had the opportunity to promote inter racial relationships. He would get a serious side eye from society if he did such a thing. Black men are just now promoting it. It took decades. They are barely in their infancy and are already barking like mad dogs. Its their lack of discretion that pisses me off as someone who has always and eventually married IR. Im like, “what the fuck are you doing?” I didnt need your help or the bashing of black men to find and marry my husband so please shut the fuck up. You notice that they are still, even after having escaped the plantation of intra racial relationships are still the bossy bitches they probably were with black men? Its all about control.
I had to give them a side eye when they had that post about the Light skinned dark skinned party minutes after they talked about the virtue of being classist. YEah, when your biracial progeny are considered a higher grade of black folk at the expense of mono racial black people they will not breathe a word. COmplexion and class have always gone hand in hand in most societies and their little biracial children will benefit from their somewhat whiteness and be put ahead of the little black girls they say they care so much about. Fuckouttahere!!!!
Kigali,
The angry, dark-skinned BWE women don’t mind classism if it is based on education because it is fairly easy to get a college degree. They walk around thinking that they are better than black people who don’t have college degrees and they don’t feel it’s wrong.
But when classism is based on skin color (or facial features or hair texture), then they start crying about the unfairness of it all because they are not light-skinned with chiseled features and naturally straight hair.
The fact is that white men will choose a lighter-skinned black woman over a darker one. Most dark-skinned BW are married to black men or varying shades. I have seen way more light skinned black guys with darker skinned companions than I have seen with men of other races.
Many of the men in my family are light skinned and they have always chosen black women who are darker than they. My maternal grandmother was much darker than my grandfather. While it is true that black people have color issues, a dark skinned BW still has a much greater chance of being chosen by a black man than by men of other races.
I was listening to Sgrt WIllie Pete and I had to disagree with him about white men’s preference for dark skinned black women. First off there are more dark black girls than ligth and I theorize that many more dark women are interested in non black men than light girls in the community. If you consider all the reasons these girls have for dating out it is more common for a dark girl to want to do it than light girls. Also many of the light girls in our community are in fact bi racial. They have different views of white people than regular black folks. They are also tragic mulattos who have to prove how black they are a la Alicia Keyes. The light girls dont have the same to gain dating white than the dark girls do. Remember they are the trophies in our community while for these dark girls these non black men are their trophies.
Could someone give me the link where this Chinese man is ranting about Black men’s ding dongs?
Kigali: “Oh and what the hell is up with that Chinese man on Chrissy Lyns blog who is obsessed with black men’s genitalia?”
This Chinese guy has already stated that when he is ready to marry, he will ask his grandmother to find him a Chinese bride from back home. He is commenting on a BW interracial blog but he does not intend to marry a BW. He clearly has something against BM and is using the blog as a forum to voice his hatred.
I agree that Chinese people are very racist, much more so than whites. And they get away with their racism because they are not white. I went to a high school with mostly Chinese and whites. And being in the sciences, I interact with more Chinese people than I would in other professions. It is scary how much they hate black people and will try to sabotage us. I’d rather work with a white person who is a member of the KKK than with a Chinese person. At least the Klansman is open about his racism and I know where I stand with him.
This Chinese guy probably hates the fact that BM attract white men more easily than Asian men do. So he joins forces with angry black women, who will gain nothing in the end because he does not intend to marry a BW.
What shit! What absolute shit. This is how black women choose their allies? Men who arent even interested in dating them yet only bring their hatred of black men to the table? Really? Really? So these rainbeaus dont even have to date or marry them, just hate black men and they are considered allies? Those black women are stupid. Black women like to be played. They bash the men who only date black women- black men- yet embrace non black men solely for their hatred of black men? This is what BWE is about. Nothing but hatred of black men and it is a huge tent.
Andrew: “When do you got to make women “pursue” men? That is “ass backwards”. It should be the other way around.”
According to Halima, BW pursuing WM is a form of self advocacy.
Halima:
“Self advocates dont dwell on the fact that Asian women are not being asked to ‘pursue’ white men, or are not asked to talk to men first, they push all that to the back of their minds and strike up conversation with the white man standing at their side on the queue.”
http://dateawhiteguy.blogspot.com/
Girl, did you read the comments on the topic of Whitney Houston on that blog dateawhiteguy? Whitney pursued Bobby, she has always had access to white men. Shit Bin Laden wanted to fuck with Whiteny but Whitney was a ghetto girl who wanted a ghetto man and got one. They dont want to call about Whitney’s sweet tooth for bad boys. They want to accuse Whitney of being indoctrinated in the Nothing But A Brotha mantra yet Whitney, since the time she was a teenager was out the black community, modeling, acting and singing- in the perfect position to be exposed to races of other men and still chose Bobby Brown. They will not call Whtiney DBR even though she obviously was.
The woman, Halima, is absolutely mad!
“Obviously black men are dating outside of their race at damn near 20 percent, while black women stay stagnant at 9 percent.”
A recent report indicated that 24% of the black men who got married in 2110 married non-black women. While 9% of black women who married in that same year married non-black men.
It’s interesting that after 5-6 years of intense BWE activity the figure for black women marrying “out” is stuck at 9%.
Evia must be frustrated with the numbers because she recently released, yet again, a study showing marriages between BW/WM last longer than any other racial combination including WW/WM. That seems to be the only good news the BWE bloggers have going from themselves on the BW/WM marriage front.
It’s interesting to me that even though news about black men seems to be almost uniformly bad these days so many of them seem to have no trouble marrying “out”, if they want to. It seems that the black man’s reputation for having a larger than average penis AND being highly skilled in the bedroom STILL works to his advantage with a lot of non-black women. This is true despite the fact that so many black men have criminal records.
The Casual Observer, what point are you trying to make? The stereotype of black men getting women because of his sex and penis has been debunked by the study that has been mentioned about inter racial relationships. Did you read, its about the middle class status of some black men that push them into IR dating and marriages? What, do middle class black men have bigger dicks than working class black men?
“It seems that the black man’s reputation for having a larger than average penis AND being highly skilled in the bedroom STILL works to his advantage with a lot of non-black women. This is true despite the fact that so many black men have criminal records.”
Again, read the study. Black men in the middle class who probably DO NOT have criminal records are the source of the increase in IR marriages between black men and non black women. Youre so stupid. So its the black men who are defying the stereotypes of the hyper sexualized criminally inclined black men who are marrying IR not Pookie and Ray Ray. Go sit down!
Loool, come, Sis, go easy on ‘Casual Observer’ lol
“I am the founder and organizer of No Wedding No Womb (NWNW), an initiative to raise awareness and find solutions to the 73% out-of-wedlock epidemic in the black community. ”
Ain’t it amazing how they never point out their own HIGH DIVORCE RATE and unflailing support/defense and encouragement of single-mother households.
White men, from my experience online and elsewhere, are more aware of what’s happening to ALL American families than black women (and some Socialist black men-BANKS, Kevin Powell, Tavis Smiley, Cornell West etc.) will ever admit.
They also happen to be way more religious than black women PRETENDING every Sunday in their Abortion-supporting, poverty-pimping black churches.
The solutions to out of wedlock pregnancies has existed for decades now. Its called birth control. COnsidering the number of abortions black women have, its clear they know how to keep from being a single mother. She need to sit down.
white men do like dark skin black women however you find them in europe especially in Italy. Basically africans and they have to be slim not overweight. Light skin women do not get a lot of play overseas when I was stationed in Italy, Germany and Turkey via Army
This is not Europe.
Most of the black women in Europe are of pure African descent so a white man who is attracted to Bw is limited to dark-skinned black women.
Light skinned women, as Kigali has pointed out, are usually not interested in white men because they are already seen as trophies by black men. Why would a woman give up her trophy status in her own community to become second or third to women of other races by being with a white man?
Most of the African women in Europe are prostitutes or semi-prostitutes. Norway had to pass a law to curtail prostitution because the African prostitutes were becoming a problem because they were not as discreet as white prostitutes. Some white men do marry because of their fetishes.They take what they can get and the dark skinned African women want them.
There are West African women living in the city where I live and I don’t see any white men snatching them up.
Yeah there is a lot of prostitution going on that is a fact. That pretty much sums it up its been awhile since I been over there like in the early 90′s. Well I guess bwe better get used to being picked last lol.
Thanks for all the comments people!
Sorry for the delay. Obviously “behind scenes” the BWE are a bit upset at me. Especially “you know who”.
Let me just say something concerning the Christelyn episode. I only put up her video because she mentioned 1 of my readers making an observation about “putting fingers in your ears and screaming as loud as you can”. Something to that effect.
Sorry if my memory is bad. I don’t know if Kigali said that or gloree.
I know somebody said it here. The whole video Christelyn did is so hypocritical.
I just couldn’t let it slide.
She says people follow “communities to spread hate”. She latched onto Evia’s crew. She publicly denounces Evia, Khadija and Faith. She bashes black men. The BWE movement is based on bashing black men. Yet “we spread hate”.
I can’t recall black men actively saying “black women are this and that”. It may happen on youtube. I am aware of that. However, the issue goes back and forth. There are no Angels on this topic.
If there was a conspiracy to keep black women from white men. I would think “the majority” would have more sway. Most white folks do not want a black person as a “family member”. That goes for black men and black women.
If anybody is hating on the swirl, its white folks. LOL
Christelyn turns around and says she ain’t part of the BWE movement. After they put her in a position to be the leader. Evia does not want to go public, nor the rest of them. I got the transcripts.
It is beyond me why Chrissylyn is so delusional. She is constantly viewing herself as a “victim”.
Christelyn’s “ego” got the best of her because she did a couple mainstream media interviews.
Now that people are “turning on her”. She wants to blame black men for allegedly “hating the swirl”.
Normally, I wouldn’t even got upset. Blogging is “wrestling”. There is a lot of um “fakeness”.
It got past that point concerning her because she wants to control what people say. She wants to sue you. LOL She got no legal grounds to sue me. She won’t sue her other detractors. She won’t sue Evia and them.
That is why she is never going to prosper. She used the BWE movement to sell a book.
Her momentum has stalled because she split that whole camp down the middle.
Evia don’t fuck with Christelyn, Christelyn don’t fuck with Evia (took her off her blog roll).
But black people are allegedly hating the swirl.
She is just crashing and burning. It is really sad at this point.
I was the one who made the comment about BW putting their fingers in their ears.
Why is Christelyn worried about what goes on over here?
Why does she not go to stormfront or American Renaissance and confront those white guys with the awful things that they say about black women? Why does she not accuse them of being against swirling? The only way that IR can take off for BW and WM is if white men warm up to the idea.
The fact is, white male disapproval of IR between BW and WM is much more likely to discourage a WM from doing it than anything black people can ever do or say.
White men don’t give a damn what black men think. If white men wanted to marry black women, nothing could stop them. They are, after all, the ones in power. When white men were raping black women and using them as concubines during slavery, did they care what black men thought about it?
At least black men have the courage to go after the white women that they want. While it is true that WW/BM couples have a high divorce rate, at least they got married. BWE bloggers want to boast about the low divorce rate among WM/BW couples. But what is the point of that if the chances of making it to the alter is so low? That’s like expecting to win a lottery. If you win the jackpot, then you are set for life. But the chances of winning the jackpot is so ridiculously small that you may as well not get your hopes up.
Chrissy Lyn is the perpetual black female victim. Everything that she does not achieve in life is someone else’s fault. Did she really think that she could force white men to marry black women?
Münchausen syndrome is a psychiatric factitious disorder wherein those affected feign disease, illness, or psychological trauma to draw attention or sympathy to themselves.
This is the BWE crew in a nutshell.
@Kigali
“The Casual Observer, what point are you trying to make?”
The point I made was that black men married “out” (in 2110) at an even HIGHER rate than Mr. Queens indicated. He indicated 20% when it was actually 24% (in 2110). BTW, this figure (24%) does not account for an even larger number of black men who are living with (but not married to) non-black women OR those black men who exclusively “date” (i.e., sex) non-black women but are not living with or married to these non-black women.
“Black men in the middle class who probably DO NOT have criminal records are the source of the increase in IR marriages between black men and non black women. So its the black men who are defying the stereotypes of the hyper sexualized criminally inclined black men who are marrying IR not Pookie and Ray Ray. Go sit down!”
Black men are apparently benefiting from the “stereotype” about black male sexuality whether an individual black man has a criminal record or not. Similar to Asian women benefiting from the stereotype of being submissive man-pleasers whether a particular Asian woman is actually “submissive” or not.
Nuance is obviously something you are not very good at, Kigali.
The Casual Observer
Like I said, if it was down to the sexual prowess of black men you would see these IR marriages across economic lines for black men. But since its happening in the middle classes for black men, it has to be due to the proximity to non black women that a middle class lifestyle would bring. Go sit down.
Dear Casual Observer
You failed to mention something. Black women have benefited from ABC News, books, websites that encourage them to do date outside of their race. They had a good PR campaign going on.
They continually to stay at an abysmal 9 percent after all that promotion.
A recent survey said that roughly 70 to 80 percent of black women are open to interracial relationships.
The problem is “the rainbeaus” are not exactly banging down the door to marry them.
My question is where are the media special, books, panels encouraging white men to be with black women?
Where are all the blogs devoted to black women from white men that are “not porn”?
I think sellout black women have been “hoodwinked”.
According to The Casual Observer, its the big black dick that is the source of the increase in marriages and dating between black men and non black women. Apparently black men, or rather- at least according to the article on Yahoo- middle class men benefit from the stereotype of the sexually powerful black man that explains non black women’s interest in marriage. Poor black men dont benefit, even though they are black living with the same stereotype, but its middle class black men who benefit.
“Like I said, if it was down to the sexual prowess of black men you would see these IR marriages across economic lines for black men. But since its happening in the middle classes for black men, it has to be due to the proximity to non black women that a middle class lifestyle would bring. Go sit down.”
Of course, proximity is part of it but middle-class black men (not just pookie and ray-ray) benefit enormously from the “stereotype” of the black man being the king in bed. And some middle-class black men (not just pookie and ray-ray) make every effort to live up to it. And why wouldn’t they if the opportunity presents itself?
The Casual Observer,
“Of course, proximity is part of it but middle-class black men (not just pookie and ray-ray) benefit enormously from the “stereotype” of the black man being the king in bed.”
Apparently they dont if the increases are in the middle classes and not across the board.
“And some middle-class black men (not just pookie and ray-ray) make every effort to live up to it.”
Yes because other men never try to be good in bed because they know its futile.
“And why wouldn’t they if the opportunity presents itself?”
Why shouldnt they is the question? What man wouldnt try to be good in bed?
Let’s cut the bullshit out.
Whether the sexual prowess of black men is true or not. It does not matter whether if its true or not.
Clearly black men is pulling women whether the nappy heads like it or not. Black men are interracial dating at damn near 24 percent.
DESPITE the negative things said about us.
Sellout black women get all the good PR in the world and stay at 9 percent.
So who hates “swirling here”? Certainly not black men!
@Mr. Queens
“They continually to stay at an abysmal 9 percent after all that promotion.”
Several of the BWE bloggers have alluded to the fact that a black woman who is looking to seriously date and/or marry a white man has, perhaps, the best chance of this with a white man who has a so-called “fetish” for black women. Many of these white men with “fetishes” for black women only want to have sex with a black woman (and nothing more) but some of them would seriously date/marry a black woman. It’s up to each black woman who wants to date/marry “out” to establish for herself if the white man who has targeted her (or she him) wants to build a productive, respectable life with her. She has to vet this type of white man carefully to make sure he is the real deal. It is best for her NOT to have sex with him until she makes sure he is the real deal. It’s called old fashioned “dating”. Not the hook-up thing so common these days. If and when she decides that he loves her and would do anything for her (i.e., marry her) regardless of the social/family pressures (if any), she can close the deal. It doesn’t seem that many black women who want to date/marry “out” are as aware of this as they should be.
BTW, I realize that when some people see the word “fetish” they automatically think of something bad but that’s not necessarily true. It could be bad but not necessarily. After all some men “like” blondes, Asians, big breasts, large behinds or whatever and no one says a thing about it. Some black men (Tiger Woods, etc.) are ONLY attracted to white (or non-black) women.
A white man who have a “fetish” for black women could be a creep with a problem OR he could be a good man who wants to love/honor and marry a black woman. It’s up to her to find out which one he is and act accordingly.
I dont believe in white men with a fetish for black women. Its not that serious. Men want to have sex with women. If a black woman is available and he is attracted to her, he is going to have sex with her. It isnt based on a fetish just the natural sexual desire a man would have for an attractive woman. This doesnt have anything to do with wanting to date seriously and eventually marry a black woman or any woman a man is having sex with. A sexual fetish isnt what black women have to be weary of, its the fact that many men arent interested in marrying them. Its easy to have sex with a woman. Seldom do men want to marry 98% of the women they have sex with.
“Whether the sexual prowess of black men is true or not. It does not matter whether if its true or not.
Clearly black men is pulling women whether the nappy heads like it or not. Black men are interracial dating at damn near 24 percent.
DESPITE the negative things said about us.
Sellout black women get all the good PR in the world and stay at 9 percent.”
I am not disagreeing with any of this, Mr. Queens.
(Drinking coffee) Listening to you Casual
I see what your saying but 10 years later!!! They ain’t made any progress.
How many white men does a sellout black woman have to “vet” to find that shining example of a “white simp’ they can take advantage of.
10 years from now, we will still be having the same argument.
The biggest problem for black women is their “own men” leaving them at a rapid rate.
If you were to tell me that 24 percent of black men are interracial dating. I would have laughed.
The only thing I agreed with Mr Banks on is the fact that black women sort of have to expand their options to maintain desirability.
My own “peers” got mad at me for agreeing with Mr Banks.
It is sort of true, men want women “other men got”. Kim K is popular because famous black men hit that ass.
My theory on this whole interracial dating thing.
The reputation of black women is hurting them in the dating game. The media tends to report the “worse things about black women”.
To make matters worse the economy has not been kind to black women. It is has put them in a vulnerable position.
So what is a black woman to do with “limited skills, education and maybe some kids”.
10 to 15 dollars an hour is not going to cut it. They are sort of forced to kind of depend on men.
They don’t got no leverage in relationships.
The white guys are just “nicer” to them when they put the “power game on them”.
A white guy will make some bs excuse up as to why he can’t be with a black woman.
Black men tend to be brash and have bravado.
You are going to ask how I do know this?
I am a black man!
I don’t apologize for what I am. I told my ex if you can find a black man to support you. You go do that!
Unlike my peers that dislike me doing a blog “exposing the game”.
I would argue this point, if I never cared about black women. I could just be quiet and “get mine”.
At the same time, I don’t preach on my blog like BWE bloggers do.
I don’t expect all black men to treat all black women good or vice versa. Some women deserve the treatment they get. If you made a piss poor decision in the baby daddy you chose. All black men shouldn’t suffer for it.
I personally feel a majority of black women are not marriage material anyway. I don’t even sugar coat that shit. They don’t want to cook, clean, they want to go shopping all the time. Yet, they expect you to marry them. For what, because you have a big ass. I don’t think so.
Some may feel black men are not “marriage material. Simply point to our “financial situation”. I happen to think that is the main problem for black women. They say “looks, height and blah blah”. It is really about the money. Money changes everything. My theory has never been wrong concerning black women.
Money is very “important” to a black woman. I am not saying it to be mean. I am just saying that most black women grew up without “having much”. Money is that stability for them.
A dope boy that makes decent money “hustling”. A black girl looking for the “outside” is like “yea he might go to jail but he got the money now”.
The dope boys “slut them out”. What can they really say? They figure well I got involved with this type of guy. I got to do what he wants sexually.
That is why the STD rate is so high. Its a myth that black women are “strong”. There is no strength in vulnerability.
I try to look at both sides of the coin here.
Sorry I got off topic in my conversation.
I am going to put all together for everybody later on.
My mind moves faster than I type.
The hard truth is there has been a drop off in marriage.
I think men increasingly feel like “what do we get out of marriage other than kids”.
To make matters worse, more women are giving it up easily.
If you can get easy sexy, I don’t see the incentive to get married.
I read sites like no marriage and etc. White guys literally whine and complain about marriage.
Society is just becoming more and more selfish.
The men that do got resources will not “settle” for an “average black woman”. Black women have no adapted.
They say things like black men get “ugly fat white women” or semi average non black woman.
The fact remains those women are doing something that you seem to be doing “wrong”.
Low income non black women seem to adapt. They will be with a Mechanic or Blue collar guy.
Black women just feel they are entitled to the “best”. Which is fine, if you meet the criteria “yourself”,
Being “chubby and cute” is not going to get you a Lawyer or a Doctor. You have to be the whole package yourself.
99 percent of black women are not the whole package.
They will perceive what I say as “lowering their standards”.
No, men will not lower their standards when they have achieved their goals. The same standards you hold for men can be used “against you”.
“You know…the conversation in which you were a participant where Christelyn passively sat back and—without saying anything in response—allowed individuals to use her forum as a platform for denigrating her BW blogger colleagues. The same BW colleagues who actively helped her (out front and behind the scenes) with her NWNW campaign. Once it was brought to my attention, I found all of that quite fascinating to watch.”
Khadija, in all due respect, why would you do this publicly? There are a lot of commenters on my blog that get into beefs and quibbles, and I (almost always) try to stay out of the fray. I saw the comment you were referring to, when a woman said that Evia denigrates black men, and you’re right–I didn’t comment–because I don’t know enough about her to know whether that is true. Conversely, I don’t know enough about the writer to know if they are just trolling and trying to start an argument, and I’ve learned the hard way not to engage with people who try to goad me.
Please post the link to the above quote
Andrew,
I believe that this generation, and how they view the other person in the relationship, has a lot to do with what someone may be willing to settle for. The older generation of men and women valued their mates, and many times they were willing to stand by them regardless of the circumstances. Loyalty and respect are nearly extinct in relationships today. Many of these black women today are delusional and suffer from delusions of grandeur. Everything is all about them!!!
It is always easier to hate the messenger instead of heeding the message.
They are angry when people point out facts, simple statistics: WM are not marrying BW.
Of course there are reasons for that, but that does not change the FACT that, at this point in time, WM don’t want to marry BW.
Because we are black, it is safer for them to attack us and claim that black people and the black community are responsible for WM not choosing BW, when in fact it is white men who punish other WM for stepping out of line. No black person can take away white privilege from a WM.
Seventy to 80% of BW are interested in IR, yet one study showed that 93% of WM have a negative opinion of BW. That is the real problem. And of those 7% who don’t have a negative opinion of BW, how many of them want to marry one? Don’t those grown women understand by now that sex does not invariably lead to marriage?
Halima certainly knew what she was doing when she named her site “dateawhiteguy” because dating is all that BW can expect from WM, if they get even that.
Michigan Welfare Cuts Forcing People Back To Work Or Straining Safety Net?
Last week, while working on a documentary about hunger in Michigan, Russ Russell had an experience that left him speechless.
“I was visiting with this family and one of the little boys said he wasn’t going to eat,” said Russell, development director for Forgotten Harvest, a Detroit-based nonprofit that rescues and redistributes fresh food. “He said, ‘Oh, I’m not eating dinner because it’s my brother’s turn tonight. Tomorrow is my night.’”
On Wednesday, state officials charged with helping to meet the needs of Michigan’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens publicly told a much different story. Maura Corrigan, director of Michigan’s Department of Human Services, assured lawmakers that changes to a core social safety-net program — cash welfare assistance — aren’t producing the kind of wide-scale woe critics predicted.
“There hasn’t been an uptick in the food banks; there hasn’t been an uptick in the homeless shelters,” Corrigan told the state’s House Appropriations subcommittee on human services, the Detroit Free Press reported Thursday. “It’s a dog that didn’t bite, as far as we’re concerned.”
Three months after implementing a plan to push many long-term welfare recipients off the state’s rolls, Michigan is deeply divided about its impact. It’s as if Russell and Corrigan are talking about different states.
Michigan’s poorest are clearly in need. About 9.3 percent of the workforce — more than 430,000 people, are unemployed, according to federal
data. In Detroit, 67 percent of the city’s children –- more than any other city in the nation — live in concentrated poverty, according to a report released Thursday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a Baltimore-based nonprofit research organization that advocates for poor children’s interests.
“You have to wonder if they are asking the right questions, really looking in the right places or if it’s just too early for the problems to show clearly,” said Gilda Jacobs, president and CEO of the Michigan League for Human Services, about Corrigan’s testimony and the impact of the changes to the welfare rolls. “I’m certainly hearing stories.”
Food banks and other agencies that help the needy are reporting a rise in those seeking help. Some of the more than 200 agencies to which Forgotten Harvest, a nonprofit that distributes fresh food, now have 30- to 45-day wait-lists for access to their food programs, Russell said. Forgotten Harvest provided the food for 12 million meals in 2008; f trends from the first two months of this year continue, the agency expects it will need to provide 36- to 40 million meals.
At the Gleaner’s Community Food Bank in Detroit, the agency distributed 22 percent more food between October and January than it did during the same period one year ago, staff said. But it’s unclear how much of the increase can be attributed to safety net program cuts.
The Michigan legislature voted last year on cuts to the welfare program, which is funded by a mix of state and federal money. Facing a huge budget deficit, it opted to cut off welfare recipients after four years. The change was designed to make the program more of a temporary safety net that does not deter self-sufficiency, said David Akerly, a Michigan Department of Human Services spokesman.
The previous limit was five years, but some families removed from the rolls had been on public assistance for a decade, the Detroit Free Press reported. The program had included exemptions for recipients trying to escape violent relationships, and those with disabilities, severely ill children and other challenges.
After the time-limit change, some exemptions were left in place. This allowed about 10,000 long-term recipients to stay on the rolls, but Michigan officials did reject every appeal that came in from households pushed out of the program, state officials told The Huffington Post Detroit this month.
The changes left about 11,000 households ineligible for the program. Since December, another 4,099 have also been disqualified. There are 60,551 households receiving cash aid.
Corrigan reached her conclusions after she and other staff contacted non-governmental social services providers, said Akerly. Enrollment in other government programs including Medicaid, food stamps and the state’s disability program have, on average, declined, Akerly said, and together this indicates that there has not been a surge in need.
Corrigan’s testimony suggested that many of the families pushed off the rolls have under-the-table income.
“This is the vulnerable against the gamers. We have a fair number of people gaming the system. The gamers take away resources from the truly vulnerable,” the Detroit Free Press quoted Corrigan.
Corrigan reached this conclusion because only about 10 percent of the people removed from the program have applied for rental or mortgage assistance, Akerly said.
Corrigan is also regarded as an expert on the underground, and barter and trade economy, he said. She helped to generate a report for Michigan on the issue and has recently been contacted by New York City officials for related information.
The state’s claim that need is declining or a raft of program cheats have been exposed may appear true when you look at certain data, such as food stamp program enrollment, but only because Michigan is also pushing people out of that program, said Gilda Jacobs, president and CEO of the Michigan League for Human Services.
Michigan is not alone in the decision to roll back cash assistance during a period of elevated unemployment and need. Arizona, California, Maine and Washington also decreased welfare time limits in 2011, said LaDonna Pavetti, vice president for Family Income Support Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The center is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. California is contemplating additional cuts this year.
Families that remain on welfare after five years often include adults with mental health problems, physical or cognitive disabilities, very limited English proficiency or education, Pavetti said. These are significant barriers to getting and keeping a job, she said.
In 2006, Pavetti studied the lives of long-term welfare recipients on the verge of being removed from Minnesota’s program. Many of the women she studied had worked physically demanding jobs or endured some sort of severe abuse while young. These women sustained serious physical damage, and had limited or nonexistent health care by the time they hit middle age, but they did not have the education or skills to do different types of work. Pavetti met a woman with such severe, untreated anxiety that she had open sores all over her scalp and another woman who got around her house on all fours.
Both of these women were expected to find work.
“There’s very little reason to believe that the situation in Detroit is vastly different,” Pavetti said.
Michigan does provide welfare recipients with access to GED programs.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/26/michigan-welfare-safety-net-jobs-social-services_n_1297370.html
Love: Still Not Colorblind
by Steve Sailer
February 22, 2012
Has the gender gap in interracial relationships changed over the decades?
As an urbanite in the 1980s and 1990s in LA and Chicago, it was hard not to notice trends among interracial couples. Black/white couples typically featured a black man with a white woman. But among white/East Asian pairs, I saw far more white men than white women.
This gender gap struck me as interesting, yet seemingly nobody had written about it. Most writers on interracial sexual attraction prefer to moralize rather than scrutinize the statistics. So while enduring chemotherapy in 1997, I puttered for a couple of hours per day on an essay I titled “Is Love Colorblind?” Assuming this might be the last article I’d ever write, I tried to make it good.
Data on interracial marriages from the 1990 Census confirmed the obvious. In 1990, black-husband/white-wife couples (such as O. J. and Nicole Simpson) were 2.5x as numerous as white-husband/black-wife couples (e.g., David Bowie and Iman). In contrast, white-husband/Asian-wife marriages (e.g., Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn) were a mirror image 2.5x as common as Asian-husband/white-wife combinations (such as Bruce Lee and Linda Emery).
“Most writers on interracial sexual attraction prefer to moralize rather than scrutinize the statistics.”
The chief reason for this struck me as “differences in perceived sexual attractiveness”—that on average, blacks were seen as more masculine than East Asians. This pattern can be seen in the two interracial marriages of Obama’s mother. While losing interest in her good-provider Indonesian second husband, she still carried a torch for the Kenyan first husband who had run off on her.
Fifteen years later, the cancer is gone (knock on wood), but I don’t get out as much as I used to. Therefore, I was pleased to see a new Pew Research Center report, The Rise of Intermarriage, quantifying interracial newlyweds in 2010. Today, when NBA player Jeremy Lin is relentlessly praised for “shattering stereotypes,” have these statistical disparities persisted?
More or less.
Much has changed, though. Except among college graduates, marriage is in decline. Of all babies born to women under thirty, 53 percent are now illegitimate. People who bother getting married these days tend to be more upscale than in the past.
Methodologically, this Pew 2010 analysis makes for an apples-to-pears comparison with my 1990 numbers. For instance, while I looked at the gender gap among blacks and Asians marrying whites, Pew reports the gender gap among blacks and Asians marrying anybody outside their race.
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Keeping those caveats in mind, Pew’s gender gap for blacks in interracial weddings in 2010 still winds up the same 2.5x as I saw for 1990.
In Britain, the black-white marriage gender gap is smaller than in the US. It was reported at 1.4x in 1991 and 1.5x recently. This suggests that American culture is more masculinizing than British culture. In the interracial mating market, perhaps our cult of black machismo gives advantages to African American men while disadvantaging their sisters.
For Asians who wed interracially in 2010, the ratio of Asian brides over Asian grooms was 2.2x, down slightly from the 2.5x I saw in 1990 marriages.
One change over the decades is that South Asians, who tend to hoard their womenfolk, make up a much larger share of all Asians than 20 years ago.
Still, long-term trends appear hopeful for Asian-American men. The gender gap most afflicts Asian immigrant men, while among Asians born in the US it was only 1.34x in 2010. Being born in America appears to be masculinizing for East Asians, which increases their odds of snagging a wife.
Using a Census Bureau survey of one percent of the population, Pew fills in some new demographic details. Over the last 30 years, white/Asian couples have become increasingly upscale in educational levels. In contrast, black/white marriages have headed down-market.
Back in 1980 a noticeable fraction of white-husband/Asian-wife couples were veterans with war brides, so only 17 percent of white husbands in white/Asian marriages then had college degrees. By the time I was at UCLA in the early 1980s, though, white/Asian couples were becoming an upper-middle-class Californian cliché. Today, 41 percent of white husbands with Asian wives have college diplomas.
Not surprisingly, white-husband/black-wife interracial couples tend to be better educated and have a higher income than black-husband/white-wife couples. Back in the day, a remarkable fraction of the white guys I saw with black girls had professorial beards, which are handy for covering up a jawline that is less than turbocharged by testosterone. In 1980, one-third of white men with black wives had college degrees, but that recently fell to 22 percent. And black-husband/white-wife couples are significantly less educated.
Although American commentators frequently praise interracial marriage as a cure for inequality, these trends—plus Latin America’s long experience—suggest that American society’s upper reaches will become increasingly Eurasian and the lower reaches increasingly mulatto.
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Thanks Airforce
Gloree I think your comments has touched a nerve in the BWE camp. It is funny to me how the BWE blame everybody but the rainbeau’s lack of interest in them.
They say black people hate the swirl more. Oh really, black people have been swirling for centuries.
The problem we have with them is there bashing of black men. They need to use black men to get a pat on the head from white men.
When white men ignore them and pick them last. You don’t hear a peep out of them. They don’t got nothing negative to say.
Now they say “I will take chances with white men”.
LOL It is such a pathetic argument. Nobody is stopping them from being with white men.
They would like to think that is happen. They need something to talk about I guess.
Listen the BWE will never go negative about white men. You saw the debacle with the facebook incident.
White men cursed Christelyn out. After that she ain’t never bring it up again.
personally I just think she is a coward at this point. Just trying to hold onto her book deal.
Once she goes away from bashing black men. They will drop her or simply ignore her.
She is so desperate she is doing stupid youtube videos, lecturing people on “going on youtube” and joining hate groups.
The sheer absurdity of her makes me laugh.
You ain’t join the BWE hate group, are you not youtube yourself.
LOL
Gloree,
Here’s an example of what happens when a promenant wm publicly courts and marries a bw. Case in point: Bob and Janet Cohen:
“In Defense of Love Beyond Race
By Kevin Merida
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 14, 1997; Page F01
They were in the takeoff phase of a rocketing romance, Bill Cohen and Janet Langhart, dining in New York, clearly enjoying each other’s company. At the time he was Maine’s senior senator, rebounding from divorce, and she was host of a syndicated television talk show, recovering from her husband’s suicide.
As they left their table and headed toward the door, a diner who recognized Cohen approached in a familiar manner that presumed too much. “It must be very difficult for you,” he began.
In what way?
“Well, privacy. You probably don’t have any moments to yourself.”
It’s not bad. It’s a pretty good life, and I have my moments of privacy.
“Well, it must be very difficult for you.”
Well, to do what?
“Well, you know.”
The fellow obviously was struggling, but Cohen was certain he understood the stranger’s shorthand: White U.S. senator being romantic in public with a black woman. Still taboo.
“He couldn’t bring himself to say it,” Cohen recalls, “but that was what he was getting to.”
Seven years later, Cohen is secretary of defense and Langhart is first lady of the military. Together, they are perhaps America’s preeminent interracial couple. Which is to say a magnet for curiosity, examination, hope.
It’s not easy being a symbol of any kind, let alone carrying the extra weight that race often packs. They host dinners for foreign defense ministers, travel the globe representing their country, tour U.S. bases to exhort the troops. In the process they have become the best advertisement for the kind of dialogue and interpersonal racial progress President Clinton is now pushing, the kind of progress that can’t be legislated.
Washington has long been home to prominent interracial couples: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), Clinton’s budget director Franklin Raines and Children’s Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman are all in mixed marriages.
But it’s rare for an interracial couple with the stature of Cohen and Langhart to discuss candidly and publicly their views on race and the episodes that have shaped their thinking. To them, their union is testament that it’s possible to scale the cultural walls that divide many Americans.
“I take quite a measure of pride when I step off that plane that says ‘United States of America,’ and there is a woman that I am proud to have as a partner walking down that set of steps wherever we go,” says Cohen. It says that “this is not an issue for us,” he adds, “that this is something that transcends race, that two people can love each other.”
“When I look at Bill,” Langhart says, “I don’t see color, even though he’s got the most beautiful set of blue eyes I’ve ever seen. I don’t think color. I think Bill.”
Since 1970, the number of interracial married couples in the United States has quadrupled – evidence, it would seem, that attitudes about intermingling have softened following Jim Crow’s demise. The youngsters are leading the way: Fifty-seven percent of teenagers in a recent USA Today/Gallup poll said they had dated interracially.
Yet the mere sight of a white man and a black woman together – or vice versa – still can provoke steely stares, whispered disparagements or worse.
Audrey Chapman, a prominent Washington couples therapist who has worked with interracial pairs, recounts an episode in which a black female friend and her white suitor were chased by a group of epithet-shouting white bullies as they strolled late at night in Manhattan’s theater district. Frightened and out of breath, they finally gained refuge in a trendy apartment building with a sympathetic doorman.
“The larger picture is there’s still a lot of racial tension and disharmony in America,” says Chapman.
Cohen and Langhart have not been confronted with the kind of scary situation Chapman described. But neither of them is naive.
Langhart acknowledges having to overcome her own “attitudes about how white people have treated my people and some of them have treated me.” She once went to an audition for a modeling part in a Hotpoint appliance ad, only to be told the company was still debating whether it was ready to let a black woman advertise its stoves and refrigerators.
“I thought, they have dogs in their ads . . . and I’m a black person and they’re going to have a big meeting about whether or not [to use me]?”
She walked away from the audition.
In taking her as his bride, Langhart says, “Bill had to be courageous because there are greater consequences, perhaps, to him for marrying me than any consequence to me for marrying him.”
How so?”
To blame the black community for the rarity of bw/wm marriage is absurd and plain projection of their (wc)opposition to IRs.
What are your thoughts?
La Reyna
La Reyna,
This was a good article to support some of what we have been saying.
Mr Cohen is a powerful and connected politician and even he cannot escape white scrutiny. Imagine a less powerful white man. That encounter in the restaurant would be enough to turnoff the typical WM who may decide that he does not need the added stress of being with a BW.
I am sure you have seen a picture of Janet. She is very pretty. But she is also very light skinned with light eyes, light hair and Caucasian features. But even she has to deal with foolishness. When she is with a WM, she is not considered a trophy by other WM.If a BW as light as Janet can still stir disapproval among other whites, then how can a dark-skinned woman with West African features have an easy time dating a WM?
Also, Mr Cohen and Janet have no children together. His first wife and mother of his children is a white woman. He has his white offspring, whom he raised and who will benefit from his wealth and power. By the time he married Janet, it was too late for her to have children. It is possible that Janet did not want children, as I think she was married twice before marrying Cohen. But it is very interesting that Mr Cohen finds love with a black woman so late in life.
And notice that the other interracial couple mentioned was chased by a bunch of white guys. And the BWE crowd claim that black men are the ones who are so against IR that BW are afraid to date WM? What a joke!
If the BW bloggers really want o advance BW/WM IR, they need to turn their focus to WM because WM are more averse to BW/WM IR than WW,BW and BM.
The Cohens and the other Washington power couples mentioned do not live in the “real” world. They can get away with doing things that you and I can’t.
Gloree,
You’re right. Also, Ms. Cohen was once married to Bob Kistner, famous gynecologist.
La Reyna
Gloree,
Here’s more from the WashPo 1997 article:
“”He could be considered an outcast. Why would you marry a black woman? Because his world sets the tone, at least they think they do.” She is talking about the world of influential white men. “Who has the power to be racist? The person in charge.”
So black people can’t be racist?
“I think we can have racial hatred comparable to theirs, probably with greater provocation,” she says. “On the other hand, we don’t have the power to prevent them from progressing the way that they can stifle our opportunities, whether it’s where our children go to school [or] whether or not we get the job.”
By and large, Cohen and Langhart say, they have been embraced by official Washington, hugged by their own nation and welcomed in other countries “with virtually no hostility expressed,” he says. “That has been more surprising to me,” Cohen states, “and pleasing, I must say.”
Historically, it has been more common to see black men wedding white women than the reverse. But according to research by American Enterprise Institute scholar Douglas Besharov, marriages between black women and white men are climbing faster. Of the black women who married last year, Besharov estimates, more than 5 percent married white men.
Even for the most high-powered of interracial couples, those who travel by chauffeur and are insulated from the kind of hate directed at the Manhattan couple, there’s always something. An ignorance to correct, a faux pas that wounds.
In the circles in which Cohen and Langhart move it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish racism from misperception, discrimination from stupidity. Call this the battlefield of subtlety. Here, prejudice is often locked away in minds and hearts where it can flourish in the darkness.
People who say, “Now wait a minute, I’m not racist, I’m not bigoted, I’m not,” Cohen asserts, “don’t really understand they could be saying something which, in fact, reveals it.”
They’ll be at dinner parties of Washington’s elite and the guests will turn to the only African American at the table – Langhart – and initiate a discussion about Colin Powell.
“I can’t measure what they’re thinking,” she says, “but I would imagine by their behavior they were trying to seem tolerant and liberal. And while he’s well-deserving, Colin is, he’s the flavor of the month. It gives them a place to assuage whatever guilt they have for the trespasses of others of their kind. Or an effort to make me, an enlightened one, say that they’re equally enlightened.”
A former runway model, Langhart is striking, radiant. When she walks across a room, you can spot the eyes following. She has a piercing gaze and the seductive charm of an interviewer who knows how to get to the heart of the matter. But something about her beauty – smooth cafe au lait skin? flowing hair? green eyes? – causes some to verbally impale themselves. There was the time a U.S. senator asked Cohen which of Langhart’s parents was white, and the time two Duke University scientists posed a similar question to her late husband, who was white.
“I mean what kind of nonsense is that?” she asks, wearing the frown of incredulity. “And I don’t think they mean any harm, I just think . . . some people have gotten caught up in that syndrome that if you’re white, you’re right.”
Her husband’s reaction to such insensitivities is often stronger than hers. “I think it hurts him more than it hurts me,” she says.
Growing up in Bangor, Maine, the son of a Jewish father and an Irish mother, Cohen also was treated as an outsider, a misfit. Though he was a whiz in Hebrew school, the local rabbi told him he could not be bar mitzvahed unless his Protestant mother converted. Either that or undergo a conversion ceremony that required the rabbi to draw a drop of blood from his penis. Cohen, then 12, was infuriated – and afraid. With his parents’ blessing, he broke with the Jewish faith and chucked the mezuza he wore on a neck chain into the river.
And yet because his last name was Cohen, the youngster still faced antisemitism: An adult once hurled beer cans at him while he pitched a baseball game, screaming, “Send the Jew boy home!”
“So it made me more sensitive, perhaps, than I otherwise might have been,” he says.
Cohen raised his own sons to think independently. One of them is married to a black woman too.
After his 25-year marriage ended and he and Langhart became an item, a prominent Connecticut couple – financial backers of his Senate campaigns – wrote him that he was destroying his career by taking up with a black woman. Cohen responded with a forceful letter of his own.
“I expressed it very clearly that I did not want their support under any circumstances.”
The Romance
Together they radiate simpatico. Individually they are as different as Jell-O and crème brûlee.
Cohen, 57, is the product of a two-parent home in a rural, overwhelmingly white New England community. His father, the baker, worked 18-hour days to provide for the family. Langhart, 55, was raised by a single mother, a hospital ward secretary, in an Indianapolis housing project. Her world was virtually all-black.
Bookish and introspective, he writes poetry and mystery novels and is fascinated by Civil War history. A world-class schmoozer, she loves big events – like the Kennedy Center Honors gala she and Cohen attended.
He’s a lifelong Republican. She’s a lifelong Democrat who worked in Michael Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign.
At home, he relaxes by devouring a James Carroll memoir. She relaxes by devouring the competition on “Jeopardy!”
They were writing a novel together based loosely on their lives. It’s called “Fatal Connections.” But the project has been put on hold. Too busy right now.
He’s immersed in his work. She shares in it: During a trip to Bulgaria earlier this year, Langhart toured local hospitals and discovered how badly they needed basic medical equipment. At her instigation, the U.S. military airlifted excess medical supplies to the country and a private firm donated pharmaceuticals. Being first lady of the military has its privileges.
Cohen and Langhart first met in 1974 when he, as a freshman congressman, was interviewed on the Boston-based “Good Day” show, which she co-hosted. They stayed in contact over the years. She would occasionally send him notes asking for his assessment on political figures she was interviewing. But it was a distant friendship.
When Cohen’s marriage to his childhood sweetheart dissolved in 1987, Langhart called to check on him. Cohen returned the concern when Langhart’s estranged husband Robert Kistner, a prominent gynecologist and co-developer of the oral contraceptive, committed suicide in early 1990.
They began conversing by phone, then rendezvoused in New York that same year.
“We talked about life, about politics, about philosophy, poetry, his stuff,” she remembers. “Neither of us was the dating kind. We were never out there looking for a date, even when we were younger. So, it was like, ‘Oh, we’re friends. We can share.’ ”
Though there was a strong mutual attraction, their relationship developed slowly.
“I was divorced in ’87 and lived alone for quite a few years,” Cohen recalls, “and kind of got adjusted to living alone, cooking too many microwave dinners.”
In October 1995, Cohen’s father collapsed suddenly at his bakery and died. The death prompted Cohen to think harder about the rest of his life. Three months later, he announced he was retiring from the Senate. “And then I said, ‘Well, that’s one very big decision. Now, how about another one? And why don’t we get married? And Janet said yes.”
Three weeks later, on Valentine’s Day, they were wed in the Mansfield Room of the Capitol. The marriage – his second, her third – made sweet an otherwise traumatic period. Then, just as Cohen was preparing for private life, President Clinton asked if he wanted to be defense secretary. He couldn’t resist. In Cohen, Clinton had found the perfect Republican to add some bipartisan flavor to his Cabinet: a respected moderate with a specialty in military affairs. During Cohen’s last two years in the Senate, observes Langhart, he was just “trudging along. But he’s come alive. It’s like his life is complete now.”
Speaking Bluntly
Cohen’s Pentagon office is huge. It has a shower and a whirlpool and polished mahogany furniture. He is, after all, secretary of defense. But on this day, at this moment, Cohen is not much interested in the perks of office, or the latest developments in Bosnia. In fact, he would prefer that the Defense Department technicians who routinely record his words for history skip this interview session. He would just as soon not have his spokesman there, either. This is personal – it’s about his wife and race, two subjects he’s passionate about, but careful and skittish about, too. He doesn’t want to come across as whiny or melodramatic.
But he does want to keep it real.
“I’ve always said, ‘Well, why hasn’t she really achieved the kind of recognition that someone of this talent really should achieve?’ And all of the excuses I’ve heard over the years, it’s just been – I mean it’s pathetic, in my words.”
Cohen believes Langhart, who broke into television nearly three decades ago as a weather forecaster in Chicago, should have made it all the way to the top – like Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters. Her career was progressing nicely until she was fired in 1987 from Boston’s Channel 5 for refusing to pick lottery numbers, saying she did not want to become “Vanna Black.”
She bounced around television for the next nine years, including stints as an “Entertainment Tonight” correspondent and as a Black Entertainment Television talk-show host. But she never cracked the big time.
“I think race obviously had something to do with it. That’s my judgment,” says Cohen.
At points in her career, according to Cohen, white television execs told her, “Well, you really are too attractive” or “you speak too well.” (Code: She’s not ethnic enough.)
“I’ve never heard that used against any person who is white,” he says. “She is also very forthright and very strong,” he adds, “and I think over the years that has presented problems to people who would expect her to be compliant or needy, subservient.
“Obviously, there are many stories I could tell,” he says, “and she could tell even more, but she is not complaining about it.”
Cohen’s right. She’s happy being the grande dame of defense and running Langhart Communications, which teaches corporate captains how to become more media savvy. She’s planning to do some writing on the side, and some television on the side.
But he still feels for her, even if she doesn’t moan much herself. Clearly he’s angered by what has happened to his wife’s career, but he’s also pained. It’s a recurring topic in his private conversations, as though talking about it offers some kind of catharsis.
At work, Cohen is CEO of a $250 billion a year military structure. The CEO is under more pressure than the senator from Maine ever was. There’s a constant bombardment of written and verbal communication he must attend to, and a constant bombardment of issues he must address: interdepartmental reform, NATO enlargement, China, Iraq. Just to tick off a recent sample.
But at home, Cohen finds time to process America’s racial angst. He and Langhart talk about “how to raise the consciousness of people who believe that it’s not a factor in our lives.”
All you have to do is pick up a newspaper or turn on the television, he says, and you’ll get a jarring reminder of how much work needs to be done. “You read a story about the [black] man in Chicago who can’t wear a beret or drive a sports car because the minute he does, he gets stopped” by suspicious police, says Cohen. “It’s part of the reality that’s still with us.”
Not long ago, the couple watched the film, “A Time to Kill,” the courtroom drama about a black father’s revenge against white men who brutally raped his young daughter. “And it’s fiction,” says Cohen, “but it’s not too far from reality.”
The irony is that Cohen presides over a military that has been struggling with its own real-life sex and race drama. Since November 1996, 22 drill sergeants have been accused of sexual misconduct at the Army’s three principal training bases. Of the 20 who have been found guilty so far, 16 are black. Most of the complainants have been white women. Blacks make up 20 percent of the military’s active duty forces.
Cohen said last summer that he intended to look at why “there seems to be a disproportionate number of African Americans who were charged and not white males.” That review is underway through the Pentagon’s Office of Personnel and Readiness. “If there’s any substance to it, obviously we’ll take action,” says Cohen. “I’m obviously very sensitive to that.”
Cohen’s interest in exploring racial topics has a long history. When he was a senator, he was part of a small group on Capitol Hill that met informally to discuss race relations. He once co-chaired hearings on the impact of “gangsta” rap music on society and is one of a dwindling number of prominent Republicans who still believe in affirmative action.
Back in the early ’70s, he was invited by then-D.C. Del. Walter Fauntroy to play with the Congressional Black Caucus in a benefit basketball game at Howard University. When he walked into the auditorium, he was booed and jeered, called “honky” and “white bread” by the black crowd. The hoots stopped once they saw that Cohen could shoot.
The experience gave him “just a little glimpse of what it must be like to be in a minority under those circumstances,” he says. “I had to demonstrate something beyond my color,” he adds, “in order to qualify for acceptance.”
In early 1995, he hand-delivered a letter to Clinton at a Rose Garden ceremony. The letter made the case for giving the subject of race concentrated focus, perhaps convening a national summit. It was one of many suggestions that helped convince Clinton he needed to pull the country into a more thoughtful discussion of race. Six months ago, the president launched a year-long initiative, complete with an advisory board and national town-hall meetings like the one he conducted recently in Akron, Ohio.
So it seems the letter was a little ahead of its time. That letter was written not by Cohen, but by his future wife, Janet Langhart.”
Any questions, BWE and those who support them?
La Reyna
Love: Still Not Colorblind
by Steve Sailer
February 22, 2012
http://takimag.com/article/love_still_not_colorblind#axzz1n3N6omlT
An interesting part of his article.
“In 1980, one-third of white men with black wives had college degrees, but that recently fell to 22 percent. And black-husband/white-wife couples are significantly less educated.”
Paperless Child Support Payments May Cost Poor Fathers Only Source Of Income
WASHINGTON — Old child support debts could cost thousands of poor men their only income next year because of a policy aimed at reducing the cost to the government of mailing paper checks to pay federal benefits.
The Treasury Department will start paying benefits electronically next March. It will stop issuing the paper checks that many people rely on to safeguard a portion of their benefits from states trying to collect back child support.
States can freeze the bank accounts of people who owe child support. A separate Treasury Department rule, in place since last May in a preliminary form, guarantees them the power to freeze Social Security, disability and veterans’ benefits that have been deposited into those accounts.
Once paper checks are eliminated, about 275,000 people could lose access to all of their income, advocates say.
“It’s kind of Orwellian, what’s being set up here for a segment of the population,” says Johnson Tyler, an attorney who represents poor and disabled people collecting federal benefits. “It’s going to be a nightmare in about a year unless something changes.”
In many cases, the bills are decades old and the children long grown. Much of the money owed is interest and fees that add up when men are unable to pay because they are disabled, institutionalized or imprisoned.
Most of the money will go to governments, not to the children of the men with child support debts, independent analyses show. States are allowed to keep child support money as repayment for welfare previously provided for those children.
In some instances, the grown children are supporting their fathers.
The rule change illustrates how a politically desirable goal like cracking down on so-called deadbeat dads can have complicated, even counterproductive, effects in practice.
“The rule doesn’t look at the fact that the money is mostly interest, the money is going to the state, the kids are usually adults, and it’s leaving the payer with nothing,” says Ashlee Highland, a legal aid attorney who works with the poor of Chicago.
Highland says her office has clients in eviction, in foreclosure and unable to pay their bills because of states’ aggressive efforts to collect back child support.
Marcial Herrera, 44, has had his bank account frozen repeatedly since 2009, blocking his access to $800 a month in government benefits. Unable to work because of a severe back injury he suffered in 2000, Herrera fell behind on child support. He owes more than $7,000 – not to his 22-year-old son, but to the state of New York, because his son received welfare years earlier.
Herrera sought help in court and had his son speak on his behalf, but the judge could not erase the thousands he already owed.
“I’m just waiting for them to lock me up,” he says. “I don’t see no other way of me repaying that debt.”
A legal aid attorney suggested Herrera collect his benefits by paper check. It costs him $15 to cash the check each month, but at least he can be sure that he will have money to pay his bills.
States have had the ability to freeze accounts for years. That’s why people like Herrera rely on paper checks to safeguard part of their income.
Starting next March, that option will disappear. The Treasury Department will deposit federal benefits directly into bank accounts or load them onto prepaid debit cards. Either way, state child support agencies will be able to seize all of it.
Electronic payments are expected to save the government $1 billion over the next 10 years, the Treasury Department says. It costs the government about $1 to mail a check, compared with about 10 cents for an electronic transfer.
The Treasury Department understands that forcing people into direct deposit could deprive them of all of their income, say officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the rule-writing process.
States can garnish only 65 percent of benefits before the federal government sends them out. But the limit does not apply once the money is in an account and states ask banks to freeze it, according to a Treasury Department memo obtained by The Associated Press.
A Treasury spokesman declined to discuss the policy. The officials who spoke on condition of anonymity say they believe the policy is legally unavoidable. They described a dilemma: Restrain states trying to collect child-support debts or risk depriving thousands of people of their only income.
Treasury’s legal justification assumes that receiving a paper check is still an option, says Tyler, the Brooklyn attorney.
Letting state agencies seize the money contradicts the public stance of the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency in charge of child support collections. The department does not want states to collect child support so aggressively that poor people lose their only income, spokesman Ken Wolfe says.
“Child support enforcement – getting that money and passing it on to parents and children – is a measure to fight poverty, and it doesn’t make sense to accomplish that by impoverishing somebody else,” he says.
Wolfe said HHS is developing guidelines for states to “make sure we’re not putting someone into deep poverty as a result of an automatic collection.” He declined to provide details of those plans.
Lawyers from HHS agreed with Treasury’s decision to let states seize benefits, according to the Treasury memo.
An early version of the Treasury department rule protected people from having their federal benefits frozen by debt collectors – including private collection agencies and states seeking back child support.
State child support agencies replied in public comments on the proposed rule that blocking their access to people’s benefits would cause great harm to parents and children receiving child support.
HHS research suggests the policy could deepen the hardship for people who collect benefits as well.
People who owe large amounts of child support are almost universally poor. Among those owing $30,000 or more, three-fourths had no reported income or income of less than $10,000, HHS says. Many had their earnings interrupted by disability or jail time and are unlikely to repay the child support debt, the government-sponsored research says.
The usual methods of collecting back child support often don’t work with the poor. States typically start by garnishing wages. If that doesn’t work, they can suspend driver’s licenses, revoke passports and take away professional credentials.
Those measures have little effect on poor people without jobs who rely on federal benefits. They have no wages to garnish and no passports. Many can’t afford a car and do not need a driver’s license.
State child support agencies echo the HHS view that child support enforcement should not be so draconian that people end up with nothing.
“You don’t want the noncustodial parent to go out and be living on the streets. You’re not going to collect anything at that point,” says Tom Shanahan, spokesman for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.
The Idaho department requires people who owe child support to show good faith by paying a minimum amount and seeking jobs when they are out of work, Shanahan says.
The White House is reviewing the final version of the rule. Its impact so far has been limited, legal-aid lawyers say, because people can still use paper checks. A White House spokeswoman did not respond a request for comment.
In a letter sent last week, the National Consumer Law Center and dozens of other groups called on the head of the Social Security Administration to withdraw his support for the rule.
“While both current and past due child support orders should be paid,” the letter said, it should not result “in the complete impoverishment of recipients” of federal benefits.
The issue has failed to raise alarm in part because most people feel little in common with men labeled deadbeat dads, says John Vail, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Litigation who provided legal services for the poor for decades.
“There’s not a lot of sympathy for deadbeat dads, and justly so,” Vail says. “But everybody’s got limits, and I think people who have never walked a mile in some of those old, worn-out shoes are a little quick to rush to judgment about what that life might be like.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/27/paperless-child-support-payments-cost-only-source-income_n_1303673.html
Real Talk: What Are We Teaching Our Young Men?
By Demetria L. Lucas
nfortunately, I’m accustomed to the casual sexism of hip-hop. Like many women, I have an internal conflict with liking what is ultimately offensive, a sentiment documented in Joan Morgan’s 2000 tome, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost. As a woman raised on “Money, Cash, Hoes,” I loathed the chorus but still found a way to enjoy the lyrics and dance to the beat — it takes a lot to ruffle my feathers.
But Too $hort — remember him? — and hip-hop magazine XXL managed to do just that. Last week, via Twitter, Morgan brought my attention to a video that XXL posted on its site where $hort, now 45, offers a bit of “fatherly advice” to young men in “late middle school, early high school.”
The video has since been removed, but the transcripts include such golden nuggets from $hort like suggesting, “A lot of the boys are going to be running around trying to get kisses from the girls, we’re going way past that. I’m taking you to the hole… This is what you do. You push her up against the wall or pull her up against you while you lean on the wall and you take your finger and put a little spit on it and you stick your finger in her underwear and you rub it on there and watch what happens. It’s like magic.”
What the heezy?
XXL and $hort are contributing to a culture where the degradation of women is already pervasive. In 2009, 20 teenage boys gang-raped a fellow 15-year-old student outside a school dance. In 2010, a national study found that 52 percent of girls in grades 7 to 12 reported being sexually harassed at school. In 2011, an 11-year-old girl was gang-raped in Texas by 18 boys and men, then blamed for her own assault.
I don’t expect much from a man whose favorite word is “biiiiiitch,” but the content of this video is insensitive, archaic, demeaning, sexist, and pro-assault. It’s bad enough when this mind-set is promoted under the guise of entertainment, but as a suggestion via a father-figure as a practice for boys ages 12-15, then promoted via a respected music publication? If this isn’t a crime, it should be.
Unsurprisingly, there’s been a widespread backlash against Too $hort and XXL, including two petitions calling for the resignation of its female editor-in-chief. Short took to Twitter to offer a standard no-real-blame-taking apology to “anyone who I may have offended,” then cited his pimp alter ego as the culprit. “When I got on camera I was in $hort mode & had a lapse of judgment [sic],” he added. “I would never advise a child or young man to do these things…”
Um… except, dude, you already did.
XXL EIC Vanessa Staten offered a vague apology that allows all speakers to distance themselves from any and all personal accountability.
“There has been some recent controversy surrounding a video interview with Too $hort that posted on XXLMag.com last week,” Staten wrote. “Many readers found the tone and content of the interview to be offensive and were angered that it was allowed to post on the website.”
Ya’ think?
Is an apology from XXL and Too $hort enough to make things right?
Read more: http://www.essence.com/2012/02/16/re…#ixzz1nbKIGuJM
Mr Queens here’s an excellent article from London’s the Guardian newspaper that you could use in a future post.
Being raped by a gang is normal – it’s about craving to be accepted’
Former gang member reveals how women suffer shocking sexual abuse in return for ‘status’
A female former gang member has exposed the growing levels of sexual violence against young women who join them, saying that many are willing to risk being raped in return for the status of membership.
Isha Nembhard, who was part of an 80-strong gang in Peckham, south London, said some girls readily accepted that they would be sexually abused when associating with male gangs.
The 20-year-old said that the problem had reached a point where being raped was becoming “normalised” among many young women. “Girls who are getting treated very badly know what they are getting into. They sleep with a boy and the boy asks if she will sleep with all his friends.
“It’s about low self-esteem and a craving for attention. Even if they know it’s wrong, they will do anything to get acceptance,” she said.
“A lot of girls are sort of prostituting themselves to have sexual relationships within a gang and get treated in a bad way. For example, she might know about what happens to girls in the gang but still sleeps with all of them just for the status.”
Nembhard, who was a teenage drug dealer, said that even those who are abused and called “pieces of shit” by gang members maintained sexual relationships with them because they felt “that they couldn’t do better”.
She added that cultural and social trends had exacerbated the problem since she left school. “When I was growing up, girls were more boisterous. I used to be a tomboy, but nowadays a lot of girls who go to school are more girly-girly and make sure they put on their makeup and wear the right sort of skirts. It’s changed dramatically.”
Nembhard said that girls tended to be more sexually active before the age of 16 than before. “In my day it wasn’t like that,” she said.
Social networking sites like Facebook had, she added, helped to encourage promiscuity among young women. “You’ve got young girls exposing themselves on there, making it normal, and so others follow suit.”
Earlier this month the home secretary, Theresa May, announced £1.2m of new money over three years to tackle the issue as part of the government’s revamped anti-gangs strategy.
Meanwhile, a senior Scotland Yard officer has voiced concern that the problem of young women being sexually abused by male gangs had grown sufficiently large to be classified as a “mainstream issue”.
The Metropolitan Police detective in charge of protecting vulnerable young women from falling into gang culture, Detective Chief Inspector Petrina Cribb, said that, although police were targeting girls as young as 12 to warn them of the risks associated with male gangs, she believed that educating youngsters of the dangers should begin even earlier, at primary school.
Cribb also admitted concern about the levels of ignorance among young women about sexual abuse, saying that many did not understand that being forced to give oral sex was rape. Cribb, who manages the Met’s Heart programme, which educates young people about the risks associated with joining gangs, added: “A lot of young people do not know what is the law, particularly with regard to being coerced into oral sex, which is rape, but some think it is just playing around.
“Young girls find that they may have no choice – a young girl who is surrounded by a group of boys might feel it’s normal to go along with it.”
Former girl gang members say that despite being aware of the risks many girls with low self-esteem are willing to risk being raped by entire gangs to increase their “status”.
The Heart programme, which involves police, local authorities and charities, aims to teach women about relationship issues, rather than the traditional emphasis on sex education. Already 180 girls identified as at risk have begun one-on-one tutorials for the rest of the year, with another 725 workshop places available to teach girls what is unacceptable in a relationship.
The scheme has so far been introduced in three London boroughs – Lewisham, Newham and Waltham Forest – but Cribb said she felt “very strongly” that every school should be delivering a form of relationship education to empower young women. “We are trying to explain that girls actually have a choice and that consent is key to a sexual relationship,” she said.
Gifford Sutherland of community group Foundation 4 Life, which uses reformed former gang members to educate vulnerable youngsters, said sexual abuse was not the only risk that gangs posed to girls. “Not only are girlfriends manipulated by young men for sex, but they become associates, hiding firearms, carrying drugs, and sometimes these young girls find that they have no choice.
“The key concern is that this sort of behaviour has been normalised, that they go through an initiation process or they are coerced into sex. We show that is not a healthy relationship.”
Although the Met has no detailed data on the numbers of potential victims, it believes that the estimated 250 active criminal gangs in the capital account for one in seven reported rapes. A survey by the NSPCC has suggested that a third of teenage girls have been forced into sexual activity against their will, while research by the Race on the Agenda charity shows that rape is used to punish girl gang members.
However, those with first-hand experience of the way in which gangs operate say that the factors driving such abuse are complex.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/20…rmal?fb=native
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/20…e-gang-members
Young girls using Facebook to ‘advertise’ to older gang members
As gang prevention programmes target children at risk of involvement, police warn that girls are particularly vulnerable
Girls as young as 13 are posting explicit photographs on Facebook to “advertise” themselves to older gang members, police say.
The children, who are often already involved on the periphery of street gangs, are putting up highly sexualised pictures, apparently in an attempt to gain status.
Detective Chief Inspector Petrina Cribb, who leads a gang prevention programme for the Metropolitan police, said: “Some of the things you see on Facebook are just horrendous – very young girls posting pictures of themselves with very little on. We are talking about really, really inappropriate images of very young girls.”
There is growing concern at the sexual exploitation of girls by street gangs. Last week the government announced £1.2m of funding to help girls involved with gangs who are raped or abused, with the equalities minister, Lynne Featherstone, describing the violence young women face as shocking.
While male gang members have posted videos and pictures online, often posing with weapons or boasting about their activity, for several years, Cribb, whose Heart Programme supports youngsters at risk of becoming involved in gangs, said the problem of young girls sharing explicit pictures of themselves online was not as widely known.
“You have very young girls putting inappropriate pictures of themselves – often of sexual poses and inappropriately dressed – that is associated with this gang phenomena,” she said.
Girls who have been involved in street gangs have told the Guardian how sexual favours are regularly swapped for drugs and how many young teenagers are trapped in abusive relationships – sometimes with more than one male gang member.
Cribb said it was a familiar pattern. “Young girls tend not to be in the gang as such, they tend to be more on the periphery. They may hide firearms or deal drugs for the gang members but often they are being coerced or manipulated or pressurised into this activity or quite often feel that is just the way life is, they don’t really realise it is not like that for everybody.”
Cribb said that despite their involvement in often very serious criminal activity, these girls should also be recognised as victims.
“I think the public sees it as quite polarised: there are the people who are offenders and they are in gangs and then there are the people who are victims who are victimised by gangs. But the reality I see is that quite often they are the two sides of the same coin.”
She said it was not just “bad kids” joining gangs, but often children in very challenging situations who made what they believed to be a “rational choice” to become involved. “It is kids who are under a lot of pressure who are often just trying to survive and what we need to do is provide them with the information and support to make them see that, although it may seem like the rational thing to do, it is incredibly dangerous and destructive.”
The Heart Programme is run by experienced youth workers and focuses on reducing the risk of young people committing, and or being subjected to, violence, particularly sexual violence.
Hundreds of school pupils in three London boroughs are being offered workshops conducted by the charity Foundation 4 Life – some of whose youth workers are former gang members.
Cribb said it was crucial that such projects were on hand to offer support to vulnerable young people to help them find a different route through their teenage years.
“When you hear the stories of these young girls you never stop thinking this is a life ruined and it is such a dreadful, dreadful waste.
“We need to get in at an early enough age to try and correct these skewed ideas and make them realise they do have a choice and they do have rights and it does not need to be this way.”
Last week, Scotland Yard announced an initiative to tackle gang crime in the capital with Trident – the Met unit that has worked to boost community confidence in the police and generate information about gun criminals – spearheading a new “gang command”.
The Met said that since its launch there have been 515 gang-related arrests in a three-day operation last week and a huge amounts of weapons, drugs and cash seized.
A spokesman said more than half of those arrested have been charged with a variety of offences ranging from GBH and possession of firearms to violent disorder and assault.
“Of the black women who married last year, Besharov estimates, more than 5 percent married white men.”
That was in 1997. Now 15 years later, we are at 9% while BM are at 24%. That is not very encouraging.
I hope the BWE crowd read this article. Because it shows clearly that it is the WM who has to take the lead and fight for an IR with a BW. Janet did not chase him all over the place. He was the one who decided that she was worth having, in spite of all the problems. I don’t think that Mr Cohen would have had the courage to marry a BW when he was a younger man.
Here’s a video people need to listen to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZDfAZgUqUc&lc=iwzvFLU-3IXb13QhaH7Uc9lXKO0ehKrVQnGQkYHF30s&context=G228ed33FAAAAAAAAAAA&feature=g-all-c
La Reyna
Here’s another video from Harvey:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuMQYRIi1z4&feature=g-all-u&context=G228ed33FAAAAAAAAAAA
Think about it!
La Reyna
Thanks for the videos La Reyna