Exposing #Divester Propaganda
A fellow Medium reader replied to a comment I made on “Why Black Women Are Saying ‘F’ Black Men!” by this writer. The time and space I spent debunking the misinformation in that article makes it only logical to elevate my response from a comment to its own piece.
Before reading this piece, you should read the article to which I’m responding. I’ve noticed a glut of anti-black male writers popping up on my “For You” list. Here I am, a whole, college-educated, gainfully employed black male, minding my business and bam!: Psych-ops in my feed, jooking for my imagined inner simp. The ‘80s-woke part of my mind is wondering what in the COINTELPRO is really going on. Apparently not enough black women (and black men) are really that connected with even mildly successful black men — which I actually find hard to believe, but I digress.
The writer began her article by blaming black men for black poverty. While some of the stats she quotes are accurate, she propagandizes them to support her claim that “Black men are the reason for poverty amongst the black race.” (🤨)
Starting from the beginning, she cites a Brookings study that was not meant to lay black poverty at the feet of black men, but was meant to highlight the far-reaching effects of black male poverty when it comes to racial disparities in a host of circumstance. This is because boys typically suffered starker consequences due to things like parental unemployment, divorce, etc. (https://www.brookings.edu/research/poverty-hurts-the-boys-the-most-inequality-at-the-intersection-of-class-and-gender/)
That black women are more educated than black men is a long-standing tradition in Black America. Black women were educated when possible to get teaching positions and other white collar roles, while black men were assumed to be able to work physically or start a business. (https://journalistsresource.org/economics/black-gender-gap-college/)
While black women have been starting more businesses, black men actual have more businesses that employ at least one other person. Put differently, it takes next to no money and some paperwork to register a business, but the majority of successful black-owned businesses are male-owned. (https://usafacts.org/articles/black-women-business-month/)
When it comes to child support, not only have I personally seen instances where judges choose to jail black men rather than let them work (once even after payment was made), but most of the men who owe back child support are indigent (https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/child-support-enforcement-can-hurt-black-low-income-noncustodial-fathers-and-their-kids). Why black women are having babies with men who have no money appears to be somewhat beyond the depth and scope of the original author.
Skipping a bunch of rants, she mentions that the black marriage rate for women is low due to a comic miscalculation of the stats:
[Black men] date and marry outside their race by 24% when black marriage is only 30%. So 24 out of 30% of black marriages are interracial. Only 30% out of 100% of black men marry at all and out of the 30% only 6% are black with black love.
In reality, about 2/3 of all black adults get married at some point (percentage is higher when you exclude very young adults), and black men marry black women almost 9 out of 10 times. (https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divorce-patterns-by-gender-race-and-educational-attainment.htm) (https://www.thoughtco.com/the-top-myths-about-black-marriage-2834526)
In my reply to the original article, I commented that hope the writer finds peace, but I doubt she has, screaming as she did into the ether. If she feels blessed to have found one of the ~1% of white men and similarly tiny proportions of other racial categories of men that report marrying black women, good for her. Personal experiences are just that, and good or bad, one person’s experience cannot reliably speak to patterns across a population of millions. I’m not even going to get into how this kind of performative writing presupposes and engages the white gaze.
Peace and healing, fam. ✌🏿
