Dr. Umar, Single Mothers and the Blame Game
“The Black woman has been the be all, end all, in our community for half a century. And now we want to turn around and say she didn’t do it perfectly enough…when she had to absorb our responsibilities plus her own...”
— Dr. Umar Johnson
The molten essence of black cyberspace was in a troubled state once more.
It had taken one interview, just one, to stir those hyperheated depths of roiling magma to a frenzy: The discussion between educator and psychologist Dr Umar Johnson and the hosts of the Daily Rap Up Crew.
Video after video, thread after thread morphed onto the cyberscene with terrifying rapidity. Their claims unanimous: Dr Umar was blaming black men for single mothers’ mistakes.
Well, was he?
The Truth and Nothing But…
Nothing could be further from the truth. How could I tell? Because I had watched the interview, too. The algorithm had seen fit to toss it my way and I thought that was a combo which was bound to be interesting.
And I wasn’t wrong.
The Interview Itself
It all started innocuously enough. Dr Umar held forth on history and politics, on Obama’s usefulness to the black community — or lack, thereof — and the need for black folks to use their vote strategically.
And then the convo inevitably turned to the channel’s all time favorite topic: black women.
And boy, was it a sight to behold.
The Blame Game
The precise turning point came when Dr Umar asserted that black men were partly to blame for the flaws they complained about in black women, delving into mass incarceration and the resulting burden on black women who had been left to raise two thirds of black children all alone for half a century, no less.
Clearly a systemic issue — one which affected both sides.
At which point Eli a member of the trio pointedly asked if black men had to be held accountable for black women’s poor choices.
??????????
How the hell had he made the leap from systemic white nationalism and racism to blaming black women for “poor choices”?
Yet More Quantum Reaching
Once again, the good doctor of psychology returned to the role of black men as providers and leaders at a community-wide level and the need to grant respite to black women.
“We have to be held accountable for their poor selection?” That was Jeuu, the second member of the trio deliberately missing the point — again.
The unspeakable cruelty, they had been forced to endure, Dr Umar explained, by now clearly exasperated, was the cause of the very flaws they were complaining about in black women.
But the trio’s Number Two simply wasn’t having it: “I understand that, (clearly, he didn’t), bUt sHe NeEDs tO bE moRe SeLEctIVe.”
Right. Because ALL black women were hardwired to make wrong choices. No one else. Just black women. Got it.
Not to mention little girls also exposed to the nuclear fallout before they ever got to grow to choose better.
A supremely dumb take if ever there was one.
Blame Chip Fully Activated
“If we loved our women, and cared for our women, do you think they’d be the way they are?” Dr. Umar asked.
An interesting question. I mean the neglect suffered by black women could be seen everywhere — on the continent and in the diaspora.
Most embarrassing of all it was visible to all and sundry. And that’s before you factored in the economic hardship and racism which left black women far more vulnerable, in general, to hardship compared to women of other races. A phenomenon I strongly believe is a feature and not a bug of world governance. Yup, a very deliberately designed set of circumstances.
But the trio’s Blame Chip was fully activated at this point, launching them fully into Artful Dodger Mode.
“If she’s choosing Pookie and Ray Ray…”
What?
The cognitive dissonance and self absorption required to make such a quantum reach, had to be colossal. There was simply no other way.
“You’re making her a scapegoat,” Dr Umar responded.
“No, she’s picking a scapegoat,” there was no stopping Jeuu.
“When I have this discourse and hear this, it tells me black men want to act like they don’t know why black women are they way they are.” The Daily Rap Up Crew squad certainly didn’t.
A Virtue Common to All
“I understand,” Jeuu conceded at last. Did he? Really?
“…but if I’m a hardworking man, and I’m only looked at as resources and she’s willing to jump on any Tom, Dick and Harry because cos he’s got flash, he’s shining a little bit more, his access to money is quicker than mines…?”
I had to shake my head at this point. Who on earth wasn’t hardworking? Certainly not black women who had had to labor in a way certain of their counterparts were able to avoid.
It is no secret that most backbreaking forms of labor women are forced to endure are undertaken by black women, for the most part. The world over. From bricklaying in Africa to care work in the west.
Even hairdressing incomparable to the other two itself was no joke — standing for hours creating one intricate style after another was certainly not for the weak.
So…who wasn’t hardworking again? Who was looking at him as “resources”?
“I agree with you,” Dr Umar responded.
I didn’t.
“But that’s not all sisters,” Precisely. I was fed up with the erroneous insistence on black women’s love for bad boys. Because in truth it was nothing but a lie and a favorite, flawed form of scapegoating.
Fundamental Differences
Their focus, Dr Umar explained, had to be on their responsibilities as black men and not on what black women were doing. Exactly.
Because that was the fundamental difference I found between redpilled spaces (and divestors, too) and black women like Eloho, Jessie Woo and Chrissie who have no problem whatsoever calling black women out and focusing on providing solutions rather than indulging in a blamefest.
But the heady fumes of the Blame Serum are not so easily diffused. In fact, they were only just kicking in to their full effect.
Act II: Part One
Enter Jeuu:
“Women bring the choice of life? Right? We understand that, right?
I can’t have a child unless a woman agrees.”
Jesus. Face palm. Had those black women reproduced by parthenogenesis? Binary fission? All on their own without outside "assistance”?
“She can’t carry one if you didn’t put it in her.” Boom. (Love you Tamar Braxton.) Dr. Umar had gotten me infuriated on occasion. But now his ripostes simply hit the mark every time.
Host Number Two, conceded the point but determined to evade responsibility with an adroitness that was simply beyond Spiderman’s capabilities, finished, “…it’s only up to her.”
Mscheeeew.
Smh.
Kmt.
It Takes Two
And there it was. The utter lack of basic reasoning skills and that all-powerful urge to blame someone else all out in the open. And the reason for the irrational hatred of single mothers and the sheer audacity that has allowed certain men in the community to voice their disdain for them while granting absent fathers complete absolution. Flabbergasting. Exasperating. And disgusting.
“If you don’t put a seed in her, nothing else happens. And no woman can make you put a seed in her. So the original act was the responsibility of a man!” Hmmm. (I personally am of the belief it takes two to tango.)
Neither Jeuu nor his sidekicks Eli nor Ace had any comeback to the irrefutable logic that had shattered that blameshifting argument to smithereens. But the Blame Serum was still coursing through those veins in powerful doses and there was more to come.
Act III: Part One
Enter Ace and Eli.
Did black men deliberately leave the home, or where they made to leave,
Ace wanted to know?
The reason for their departure and absence was systemic, Dr Umar explained.
So why weren’t they getting the same grace black women were getting, not to mention some R.E.S.P.E.C.T, since it was not their fault, the third member of the trio whined.
Leaders stepped to the plate and took responsibility, the doctor replied.
Eli could no longer handle it. Displaying the trio’s singular penchant for reckless reaching he declared no one wanted to be held responsible because “she” had chosen a Pookie and a Ray Ray. He, he intoned, had worked too hard all his life.
How commendable — his work ethic, I mean. Except that it was by no means exclusive to him.
Besides, the self pitying spiel and determination to misunderstand the good doctor’s point was getting tiresome. And it was clear Eli had gone far off on a tangent baring what looked like a personal issue. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong discussion.
Different Folks, Different Standards
Not that he was done yet. Discussing single mothers he insisted the proverbial “she” knew those men were no good. Again, blaming every woman who had ever had an entanglement that ended in disappointment.
“Would you make the same assumption if she was of a different race?” the doctor asked.
“Yes, I would.”
“So you say.” Dr Umar responded before proceeding to let them know just how several black men, avoided holding other women to the same stringent standards and cruel judgements they did their own.
Damn.
Skewed Statistics
Eighty-seven percent of Black men, Eli intoned, gesturing expansively, married black women. (An inherently flawed, all-time favorite claim. Because if the one drop rule were to be jettisoned like a hot potato, that number would be bound to plummet — drastically.)
And he wasn’t done yet. According to him, 92% of black women married outside of their race: will you keep kwayet!!!!!
I kid you not.
Once again it fell to the guest to correct that wildly erroneous figure conjured straight from the host’s very own Multiverse of Mayhem.
A Dogged Determination
The truth was the only people doing all that blaming were the trio. Each time Dr Umar exhorted them to understand the role of systemic racism in the black community, they displayed a dogged determination to heap yet more blame on black women.
Black women did not want to listen to them, black women had chosen Pookie and Ray Ray. Their point of view was by no means new: Black women were the root cause of all the ills in the community — and the globe: the war in Ukraine, the war on terror, global warming, and the melting ice caps. (Sarcasm fully intended, here.)
Men like themselves? Totally and utterly blameless.
The Presence of the Hydra-Headed Monster
In their defense, the Daily Rap Up Crew were courteous and engaging hosts, displaying interest in Dr. Umar’s school and even promising to help with his community initiatives. Supremely commendable.
Yet their dogged determination to blame black women for an issue which both black men and women were responsible for fixing — and caused by systemic racism, no less — was symptomatic of a powerful self hatred rearing its many heads like the hydra of lore.
Of Optics and a Possible Solution
It is not pleasant to watch black women blame black men. (One reason I cannot abide divestors.) And it certainly hadn’t been pleasant watching these men in Artful Dodger Mode shrieking and whining by turns.
Besides black single mothers’ mistakes were also the mistakes of black single fathers (absent or involved) too. A point the trio and their supporters had completely missed claiming black men had been blamed for black women’s mistakes.
I personally think the trio — and their supporters — are better off avoiding black women. And yet, as is so often the case, their daughters in future will seek out the very women they despise and have disparaged in a bid to ease the burden of their blackness in a world which penalises black people (and those adjacent to them) for daring to exist as they are.
A burden the trio are likely to make more onerous in their apathy. A thought they and their diehard fans would do well to consider, but which is quite probably beyond them, too.
