Let Us Not Wait: a Black Male Feminist Response to 4:44

Since the release of Jay-Z’s 4:44, testimonials of black women’s pain in response to the title song’s apology — if we are going to call it that — have rung out across the web. They have taken precious time to let us know many things, among them being Beyoncé is not alone in having a relationship with someone who is emotionally unavailable and enjoys infidelity. A turn must happen…

It is time for black men to take on the labor of deciphering Jay-Z’s misdoings and the historic measure of black women’s pain groomed by our emotional unavailability and seeds sown in patriarchy. Black men’s conversations about the album have been relegated to conversations about the capitalism that appear in “The Story of Jay-Z” because it is easier to analyze how systematic poverty and racism affects us than to hold up a mirror to how we are just like Jay-Z.

This is a call for black men to do better, for us to love black women, black folx, and ourselves more fully. To not wait to find new fields and land where we can live better lives.

Black men have unfortunately sown seeds onto the hard rocks of patriarchy for far too long, there the bodies of black women lay raw with their anxieties, their insurmountable pain, their stress, all on which we continue to trample. The seeds we sow are salt, their wounds are the ground; the rain is tears shed, they painfully wash away our shriveled seeds from her Earth. We had sown without caring if anything grew, we were careless, played with their emotions knowingly, we were sowing in other yards, and few of us apologize.

For 20 years, or certainly more, Shawn Carter tilled the Earth of many gardens unapologetically. Then he met Beyoncé when she was 18, asked her to go steady when she was 21 — he was twelve years her senior, and even still, she “matured faster” than he did. Yes, he tilled the soil under Beyoncé’s feet while still hoeing other grounds, perhaps sowing unloyal oats, coming back to her to garden and wondering why the grass was brown with resentment. The entitlement is sickening.

Through some miracle or by pain, a tree sprouted from their work together to bear the fruit we know as Blue Ivy and the newborn twins. This oak forced the rapper to appreciate her, not the garden itself. Not the garden that certainly fed him when he hungered and provided covering from the elements. He couldn’t appreciate the land until something stood up and was evidence of his being there.

This is the problem.

We only apologize for the damage we cause to our women’s gardens, their life, when we learn that it could have damaged something that we believe belongs to us.

Many of us weren’t taught to apologize at all.

And he wasted so much time, so much energy, used so many women, broke them and learned at 47 that he was wrong — there is a better way, a way that does not flood the fallows of our partner’s with tears. We shouldn’t have to see fruit to know the garden is worth loving.

Black men are not taught water our own fields — much less someone else’s — with tears. We are demanded to “man up” immediately when drought hits the land and never take the deliberate time to grow up. Manning up hardens our soil. We don’t know the sweet whistling voice of vulnerability that passes through the branches of our grandmother’s willows. We are not expected to soul-search, like our foremothers, or do self-work or emotionally labor. Nevertheless, we cannot continue to use our upbringings as excuses for today’s laziness. We cannot waste our and others’ time for us to become whole and more responsible any longer. Don’t wait a half-century to fix what can be fixed today.

Black women sow love into our immature grounds, reap harvests of puny fruit and we expect them to bake sweet peach cobblers from our abuse. We are out of order. We are given licence to be prodigal sons, to use someone else’s time, love, and resources and to give no kind of reciprocation with impunity. And we think black women are to forever embrace us as the parable’s father with longsuffering and perennial patience for immaturity that should’ve been squashed. We may apologize for our imprudence, but those apologies empty to nothing as we repeat “4:44”’s lyrics, “I’m never gonna treat you like I should…” And we somehow still expect unconditional love in return. And, deep down, many of us still don’t believe we can do better.

Why was he with her for tens years before admitting the neglect of her soil? After many years of marriage… Why does he believe he will never treat her right?

Has Shawn gone the true mile to repent? To divest from the thinking, the actions that cause harm? No. He hasn’t. He, like us all, needs a community of people, perhaps of black men, who will hold him accountable, who will demand he decolonize his love. Too often men have struggled and labored over our yards by ourselves, and we’ve been expected to do so willingly, not caring for our mental or physical well-being in the process. What if we gathered together to sow and reap? Would it not be beautiful for black men to come together be a community, would it soften our soil?

We have got to stop blueprinting by ourselves and start building and growing together. We need to learn that loving ourselves doesn’t destroy who we are, it makes us whole. We can’t share intimate space with black women until we share intimate space with one another. We have to find new gardens to grow in. This requires a lot of work that will ask for more selflessness. It will ask for emotional maturity and vulnerability, It will ask us to drop our beliefs about what our society (or we ourselves) requires of manhood. Finding new gardens will ask you to rethink how you’ve been walking in the world. We must burn the fields of patriarchy, cry and wash the land clean, and till new grounds for healing and wholeness; this is more than possible.

We shouldn’t have to wait until we have children to desire better fields. Don’t we want to leave a better harvest for our children? We have to burn these fields, this hard soil. It doesn’t love us. Patriarchy doesn’t even believe we’re human — its fields won’t bear any good fruit. It never has. We’ve been lied to over and over and over and over again. We were told it works, but it fails us all. If we search long enough in our mothers’ gardens we would realize that though the hydrangea blossomed in beautiful hues of periwinkle and fuchsia, the presence of ungroomed, feeble sprouts lay where our fathers stepped. We must stop treading carelessly so we can walk upright alongside one another.

Let’s not wait.

Let’s not wait until we are 30, 50, 65, 70, 100 years old to learn how we’ve harmed those we say we love.

Let’s not wait to learn how to say, “I love you” and mean it. To each other.

Let’s not wait to stop telling our young boys, “Man up.”

Let’s not wait to figure out emotional availability and labor.

Let’s not wait to embrace each other, to hug, to laugh, to call, to check up on each other.

Let’s not wait to cry together. We shouldn’t have to cry alone.

Let’s not wait to believe in womanism.

Let’s not wait to stop equating who we sleep with with our worth.

Let’s not wait to go to therapy, or to the doctor.

Let’s not wait to stop slut-shaming women.

Let’s not wait to stop murdering queer and trans folx in the street.

Let’s not wait for no to mean no and to accept it.

Let’s not wait to communicate, to feel, to yearn for better.

Let’s not wait. Let’s not wait. Let’s not wait.

Let’s.

Not.

Wait.

Let’s start now.