Ladies Only
By Todd A. Smith
Ladies, you will not like this because the truth hurts, but the truth will also set you free.
It is often said that many educated Black women are not married because today’s Black men cannot handle a strong woman, are incarcerated, are adulterous or effeminate. Society often accepts this rationale as if it is gospel, never questioning if this argument is biased and never exploring the male side of the argument.
Many women think being college-educated and good looking automatically makes them a good woman and therefore perfect “wifey” material. However, many in today’s society of immorality lack the values needed to make an effective wife or mother. Therefore, many females who believe they are good women are sadly mistaken and misguided in their logic.
A woman once told me that if I lost my job or my money she would cheat. It goes without saying that she lost me and any respect I had for her after such a comment, but that same woman became like many other women, blaming the world that there were no good men left and wondering why she could not find her second husband to help her with her two children.
According to a Pew Research poll, by the age of 30, approximately 81 percent of White women have married and 77 percent of Hispanic and Asian women have married. For African American women, only 52 percent marry by the age of 30.
For years, thanks to Essence and the “Oprah Winfrey Show,” women have falsely believed that their relationship rut has always been caused by no-good men. Women constantly chastise men for not being like the men of previous generations who were the bedrock of their families, but at the same time refuse to be like the women of yesteryear who were able to deal with the difficulties of marriage while remaining loving, classy and faithful.
Unlike some African American men, I grew up around strong and educated African American women, so I empathize with women not totally wanting to go back to a subservient role.
However, women must realize that everything done in the past was not demeaning to women or ultra-conservative and many of our relationships are struggling because we want to change the rules that God gave us for relationships and marriage.
Because of a lack of morality, we live in a day in which men who do not have children out of wedlock or do not have at least one failed marriage are looked at as strange.
Men who do not want to cheat on their wives are suspect and men who want to have a godly relationship before marriage are simply considered gay.
Our morals as a society are in such decay that women do not know a good man when they get him, because he is so different than the status quo they are used to dealing with.
Nevertheless, men deserve some of the blame for women not understanding our plight because we are less vocal about relationship problems than women.
While women will complain about no-good “dogs” at beauty shops, men will just move on to the next one because we have fragile egos and refuse to admit when we have been hurt.
However, it is time that women realize that just because men are not as vocal with our beef, does not mean we do not have beef with the shortcomings of women. And many women are single, because they are not real women at all and men are looking for a real woman just like women are looking for real men.
While describing the aforementioned woman to a colleague, she stated that a woman that cheats on her man is just a liberated woman. As a result I have come to the conclusion that some women are so liberated in their behavior and their thinking that they will remain liberated, free and single until they return to the classy ways of women of yesteryear.
And as Samuel L. Jackson would say in the movie Do the Right Thing, “and that’s the truth, Ruth!”
Smith is publisher of Regal Magazine, a publication dedicated to the African American community.
