Recently Roissy gave his take on a spate of articles making the rounds of the nation’s leading papers and sites about the chances are for today’s Women getting and staying married; here’s the link to get his spin:
http://roissy.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/one-key-to-marital-success-have-fewer-options/#comment-154747
In the ensuing comments, commenter Jamilla says the following:
“
As a black woman who has had most of her experience with black men I can say that I have definitely had to play down my intelligence for the average black man that I’ve been involved with.
When I was in college the black men were obviously a different group of black men as far as intelligence, ambition, and–dare I say it?–morals and values from Joe Shmoe-black guy walking the streets. There the black men preferred intellectual women.
Now that I’m not in the insulated world of academia anymore I’ve had black men get extremely angry with me to the point of telling me to “kick rocks” and get lost after I disagreed with them regarding politics or economics.
White educated men tend to marry educated white women. So from my experience and what the statistics say about who marrys whom I have to believe that there will have to be fair amount of “dumbing down” for the average educated woman to get along with a man who doesn’t have as much education as her.
*Note: education does not equal intelligence and/or a knowledge about politics, history, economics, etc., but for the sake of keeping this post simply I didn’t distinguish between the two.*”
StrikeForce responds:
“
Jamila,
As a black man who has had the experience of debating with a black woman with a higher education degree over political policy or other matter of import, I can tell you that they seem to only really be focused on how that decision effects them as a woman. Also I notice an overbearing urge to upstage and dominate me as a man to prove that they can hold their own against me. Black men have it hard enough as it is from society to prove themselves equally qualified for positions in the workplace, and other parts of society. What black man wants to deal with that ish from a black woman.
I think what you mean to say is that you can’t seem to understand why your phone doesn’t ring after trying to upstage these men
Obsidian has an excellent post on this very subject. I strongly suggest that should go over there and check it out. I think you might learn something.”
Jamilla’s retort?
“
strikeforcemorituri,
Please spare me the “I’m a black man and I have it SOOOOOO hard in society” spiel.”
I dont know whether or not the overbearing urge to upstage that you say you get from these women is really occurring or if its only in you mind, I suspect the latter. Did these attempt to speak louder than you? Did they attempt to embarrass you in front of people?
Or did they just refuse to agree and in your mind a woman that won’t agree after you’ve expressed your far superior male intelligence along with buttressing your arguments with “its a hard world out here for a black man, ” is overbearing?
However I do understand your point that many black men have fragile egos. After spending the day being dominated by the white man he should atleast be able to dominate the black woman. Makes perfect sense to me.”
And so, since my name came up, I decided to contribute the following, addressed to Jamilla:
“Jamilla, SFM,
Since my name came up in the comments, I thought to join in.
I can’t speak for SFM Jamilla, but for me, the issue isn’t agreement, but rather factfinding and clarity on where and my interlocuter, in this case a college educated Black Woman may disagree. In fact, I’ve found that if anything, it’s the exact opposite of what you suggest, that it’s the Sista who’s trying to get me to agree with her point of view. This makes sense, since it’s a fact that Women as a rule don’t like dissention or being a raised nail, hence one major reason why Black girls go farther than boys in school. I was kicked out of class continually for refusing to play along to get along, and for calling my WHITE teachers pathetically incompetent in their inability to hold my attention and make the realworld case for my needing to learn the ruminations of long dead White Men, and how that directly appiled to my world as a Black Man. And since I’ve had considerable experience in both the Blue Collar and college campus worlds, I can say without reservation that most college educated Black Women couldn’t hold a candle to me when it comes to political debate on the issues. In fact, most have never studied a Logic 101 course, to say nothing of debate, and most suck at rhetoric, both in terms of formulate a convincing argument and the ability to deliver it in oral form. What they often do, is use their credentials as a foil for their subjective poilitical views, which is fine, but then if we’re going to have a pissing contest about such things, SHOW ME YOUR DATA, I’ll show you mine, and then we can determine where the rubber hits the road. What a lot of Sistas in this cohort get it twisted is that what either of us knows or doesn’t about Churchill, Reagan, Burke or Cicero has ZERO to do with what goes on under the covers at night.
Having said all that, yes, there are some Black Men who are indeed intimidated by “strong” Black Women. However, based on again, my direct experience in these matters, it’s alot more overblown than it is currently presented.
In any event, I too have been aware of the articles that are at the heart of this post and am very familiar with Coontz’s work as I have read her book on marriage and other matters. By the way Jamilla, fun question, have you read Coontz’s book? What about Hacker’s Mismatch? Or Tiger’s The Decline of Males? Or the book, Promises I Can Keep? They all directly speak to the issues we are examining, and I can promise you, I can find more Ivy League educated Black Women who haven’t even heard of the aforementioned books let alone their authors, than you can who have read them. To say nothing of the Federalist Papers, The Prince , Plato’s Republic or Churchill’s memoirs, just to name a scant few.
So…you were saying?
The Obsidian”
Because this is a forum that is much more amenable to discussing the Black dynamics of the initial topics broached over at Roissy’s, I thought to take the liberty of bringing said portions of that dialogue over here, so we can properly hash it out. Clearly, Jamilla feels strongly about this issue, and so do I and StrikeForce.
Come, let’s sit upon the ground and sort it all out…
Holla back
The Obsidian
PS: The post of mine that StrikeForce was referring to was:
