I've been browsing a few blogs and have added Fish's Assault on Black Sanity to my Google Reader. Some dude named Makheru went off there about Moynihan. There wasn't a lot of commentary on point and I think that's because of the assumptions in the above comic.
When you get down to the raciest raciality of race, it's all about black sex.
There are a million points to be made here, and I know I'm not going to be able to be pointed in this discussion but I'll try.
Getting BJs
The first starts with a man I know named BJ. BJ is a young single black man I know who owns a six bedroom house, 12 rental properties, an auto repair business and has a part-time job in the corporate world. He's buff and has hazel eyes. I was hanging out with some married buddies in a bar and he said he was about to hit the town. One of my buddies says "Damn, he can't get in trouble." Meaning basically, that he can get away with some serious skirt chasing and nobody's going to call him on it. Now I know BJ is a good man and he has had his fill of trifling women. So, left to his own designs, he's not going to get in trouble. He's got too much to lose. But I still remember that comment in the bar, and I know it has some deep significance.
When it comes to the dating game, it is said that men play for fun and women play to win. I believe that is mostly true. BJ has to play to win, because women get crazy foolish around men who have got it going on. And unfortunately men who have all the right stuff see an extra share of women that most men do not. We (yes I mean me) see through the games and have more reason to be cynical about the deeds that women do. But then again, that's because we can get away with it. It's a dangerous game of gotcha.
Fight or Switch
I had the itch a couple times, but I can remember purposefully avoiding a white girl I liked because I was part of the black leadership on my college campus. I can't say that I've ever played the white girl card in order to score with a black girl, but I know that trick very well.
What does it say about myths about black sexuality and the way black men and women really do interact when (damn, this is going to be fun) blackfolks would rather hookup with blackfolks in order to prove something about their blackness?
Looking back to college days again, I remember one young couple, black dude white girl. They were both on the short side, but both were really muscular and athletic. Every time I saw them together it reminded me of circus sex. You know when you go to the circus and you see these obscenely acrobatic chicks and dudes, and you're watching them perform all kinds of crazy stunts and you figure.. damn what must go on in the big top when the crowds are gone and the leotards come off. Those two would always be doing the nasty dances when we had frat parties. Everybody stared until we could figure out ways to dismiss them. They weren't weird, but we had to come up with ways to consider them weird.
The 'Afrikan' Family
Mekheru's piece doesn't say anything about Marriage, which is completely crazy to me. I never made a whole lot of talk about such concepts as 'valid' black family structures in my early political days. Like most progressives, I was more interested in institutional racism than the breakdown of black families. During those Reagan years despite my affinity for Bill Bennett, I wasn't trying to hear anything about 'family values'. My arguments were three and simple.
1. If teenagers *can* get pregnant, by what authority should we say they shouldn't? If we just changed our economy, it would be in line with what God intended, seeing as he makes no biological mistakes.
2. Anti-abortionists are just jealous of the fact that black extended families work. White women have abortions primarily out of embarrassment because they cannot get along with their own dysfunctional nuclear families. Not like us blackfolks. We can handle it.
3. Divorce is just a fact of modern bourgie life. We boink all over the place just like movie stars because we are healthy and wealthy and following our desires. It's the poor impoverished soul who can't do it. Plus the American middle class is just Puritanical and repressed.
Now I think I was just making excuses. There's a grain of truth in all that, and you can say it's all true, especially if you're gay. The fact of the matter is when it comes to your own children all of that excuse-making becomes transparent, especially if you've known better. I can't guess what folks who grew up in single- or alternative parent families think, but nobody surveys them very often. That is to say of all the things you say you'll do better than your parents, I wonder how many say 'marry better'? Or are they too stubborn to admit it? Or do they shy away completely from the subject?
All of this goes to say that there are a lot of excuses out there for blackfolks to play by different rules, some of which are just begging to stand in as legacy of slavery excuses, when they are not Afrocentric claptrap.
Marvin Gaye & Tammy Terrell
The first record I ever bought was a 45 of 'Lets Get It On' by Marvin Gaye. There's nothing wrong with me loving you, and giving yourself to me could never be wrong if the love is true. So stop beating around the bush. Yeah well even if the love wasn't all the way true, I didn't want to beat around the bush. Who's to say that what I'm feeling isn't real? The reasons, the reason's that we're here, the reasons that we fear our feelings won't disappear. And after the love game has been played, all illusions were just a charade and all our reasons start to fade. I still don't know what all that means, but I know it worked. And don't let me get started on Prince. Well, maybe I should, because I sure as hell did know what he meant, and I meant it too.
Lots of lovemaking is made to the rhythm of the boogedy beat and sometimes you just don't have to think your way through it. Romance for its own sake is still romantic. Nothing new in that. So while I play fuddy duddy daddy when it comes to today's bump and grind, which truly is obscene, I don't pretend that all of the blue lights in my basement were the color of true love. Still, you have to admit, that there is a lot less dignity in the doing and a lot less respect in the romance coming from today's popular culture.
Recent Comments